Rejection Slips

Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have been rejected for publication more than once. Here are a few of them …

Less Heroic Couplets: Rejection Slips
by Michael R. Burch

pour Melissa Balmain

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

I consider the term “rejection slip” to be a double entendre. When editors reject my poems, did I slip up, or did they? Is their slip showing, or is mine?

 

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

 
Moonbeams on water―
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night ...
So your memories are.

 
Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter ...
So near, yet so far.

 
This is probably my favorite of my rejected. The next poem has the same title but is very different.
 

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

 
There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.
 

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.
 

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.
 

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.
 

Well, actually after rechecking the second “Distances” has been published by Verse Libre, Triplopia and Lone Stars!
 

Winter
by Michael R. Burch

 
The rose of love's bright promise
lies torn by her own thorn;
her scent was sweet
but at her feet
the pallid aphids mourn.

The lilac of devotion
has felt the winter hoar
and shed her dress;
companionless,
she shivers―nude, forlorn.

 

Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

 
Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite . . .
 

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to

fall?

Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you
stall,
spread-eagled, as the canvas snaps

and flaps
its white rebellious wings,
and all

the houses watch with baffled eyes.
 

The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch

 
Yesterday I saw you
as the snow flurries died,
spent winds becalmed.
 
When I saw your solemn face
alone in the crowd,
I felt my heart, so long embalmed,
begin to beat aloud.
 

Was it another winter,
another day like this?
Was it so long ago?
 
Where you the rose-cheeked girl
who slapped my face, then stole a kiss?
Was the sky this gray with snow,
my heart so all a-whirl?

How is it in one moment
it was twenty years ago,
lost worlds remade anew?
 
When your eyes met mine, I knew
you felt it too, as though
we heard the robin's song
and the sky was turning blue.

 

Love’s Extreme Unction
by Michael R. Burch

 
Lines composed during Jeremy’s first Nashville Christian football game (he played tuba), while I watched Beth watch him.

 
Within the intimate chapels of her eyes―
devotions, meditations, reverence.
I find in them Love’s very residence
and hearing the ardent rapture of her sighs
I prophesy beatitudes to come,
when Love like hers commands us, “All be One!”
 

Kindred
by Michael R. Burch

 
Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?
 

Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,

so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?
 

What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.
 

We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,

and yet we will not.
 
We will let her be,
let her abide,

for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.
 

Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

 
When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.
 

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.
 

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.

 

Dust
by Michael R. Burch

 
Flame within flame,
we burned and burned relentlessly
till there was nothing left to be consumed.
Only ash remained, the smoke plumed
like a spirit leaving its corpse, and we
were left with only a name
ever common between us.
We had thought to love “eternally,”
but the wick sputtered, the candle swooned,
the flame subsided, the smoke ballooned,
and our commonest thought was: flee, flee, flee
the choking dust.
 

Consequence
by Michael R. Burch

 
They are fresh-faced,
not innocent, but perhaps not yet jaded,
oblivious to time and death,
of each counted breath
in the pendulum’s sway
falling unheeded.
 

They are bright, undissuaded
by foreign tongues,
by sepulchers empty and waiting,
by sarcophagi of ancient kings,
by proclamations,
by rituals of scalpels and rings.
 

They are sworn, they are fated
to misadventure and grief;
but they revel in life
till the sun falls, receding
into silent halls
to torrents of inconsequential tears . . .
 

. . . to brief tragedies of tears
when they consider this: No one else sees.
But I know.
We all know.
We all know the consequence
of being so young.
 

Cycles
by Michael R. Burch

 
I see his eyes caress my daughter’s breasts
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe . . .
 

And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers . . .
 

and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again―hard, staring, and silent―

though long-ago forgotten . . .
 

And I remember conjectures of panty lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares . . .
 

Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard―
with a long, ineffectual stare

that years from now, he may suddenly remember.
 

The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

 
Love among the infinitesimal
flotillas of amoebas is a dance
of transient appendages, wild sails
that gather in warm brine and then express
one headstream as two small, divergent wakes.
 

Minuscule voyage―love! Upon false feet,

the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep
toward self-immolation: two nee one.
 

We cannot photosynthesize the sun,
and so we love in darkness, till we come
at last to understand: man’s spineless heart
is alien to any land. We part
to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears,
amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ...
and still we sink.
The night is full of stars
we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours.
 

Have we such cells within us, bent on love
to ever-changingness, so that to part
is not to be the same, or even one?
Is love our evolution, or a scream
against the thought of separateness―a cry

of strangled recognition? Love, or die,
or love and die a little. Hopeful death!
Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.
  

Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch

 
In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.
 

Great pyramids, the looted tombs
―how still and desolate their wombs!―
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.
 

Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?
 

Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?
 

or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”
 

Her Preference
by Michael R. Burch

 
Not for her the pale incandescence of dreams,
the warm glow of imagination,
the hushed whispers of possibility,
or frail, blossoming hope.
 

No, she prefers the anguish and screams
of bitter condemnation,
the hissing of hostility,
damnation's rope.
  

The Poet's Condition
by Michael R. Burch

 
The poet's condition
(bother tradition)
is whining contrition.
Supposedly sage,
 

his editor knows
his brain's in his toes
though he would suppose
to soon be the rage.
 

His readers are sure
his work's premature
or merely manure,
insipidly trite.
 

His mother alone
will answer the phone
(perhaps with a moan)
to hear him recite.
 

The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch

 
The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,
 

the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,

the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,
 

the face in the photograph
no longer dissolving under scrutiny,
becoming a keepsake,
 

the useless mower
lying forgotten
in weeds,
 

rings and crosses and
all the paraphernalia
the soul no longer needs.
 

Dancer
by Michael R. Burch

 
You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,
waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.

Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.
They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled

of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,
of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.

They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh
for ages,
stages
slipping by.

You pause;
applause
is all you hear.
You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.
 

Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray
by Michael R. Burch

 
It was not so much dream, as error;
I lay and felt the creeping terror
of what I had become take hold . . .

The moon watched, silent, palest gold;
the picture by the mantle watched;
the clock upon the mantle talked,
in halting voice, of minute things . . .

Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings
scored anthems to my loneliness,
but I have dreamed of what is best,
and I have promised to be good . . .

Dismembered limbs in vats of wood,
foul acids, and a strangled cry!
I did not care, I watched him die . . .

Each lovely rose has thorns we miss;
they prick our lips, should we once kiss
their mangled limbs, or think to clasp
their violent beauty. Dream, aghast,
the flower of my loveliness,
this ageless face (for who could guess?),
and I will kiss you when I rise . . .

The patterns of our lives comprise
strange portraits. Mine, I fear,
proved dear indeed . . . Adieu!
The knife’s for you.

Another strange one, written after reading Wilde's macabre novella.

Love Unfolded Like a Flower
by Michael R. Burch

 
Love unfolded
like a flower;
Pale petals pinked and blushed to see the sky.
I came to know you
and to trust you
in moments lost to springtime slipping by.

Then love burst outward,
leaping skyward,
and untamed blossoms danced against the wind.
All I wanted
was to hold you;
though passion tempted once, we never sinned.

Now love's gay petals
fade and wither,
and winter beckons, whispering a lie.
We were friends,
but friendships end . . .
yes, friendships end and even roses die.
  

Doppelgänger
by Michael R. Burch

 
Here the only anguish
is the bedraggled vetch lying strangled in weeds,
the customary sorrows of the wild persimmons,
the whispered complaints of the stately willow trees
disentangling their fine lank hair,

and what is past.

I find you here, one of many things lost,
that, if we do not recover, will undoubtedly vanish forever ...
now only this unfortunate stone,
this pale, disintegrate mass,
this destiny, this unexpected shiver,

this name we share.

Old Pantaloons, a Chiasmus
by Michael R. Burch
 

Old pantaloons are soft and white,
prudent days, imprudent nights
when fingers slip through drawers to feel
that which they long most to steal.
 

Old panty loons are soft and white,
prudent days, imprudent nights
when fingers slip through drawers to steal
that which they long most to feel. 

Burn

by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

Sunbathe,

ozone baby,

till your parched skin cracks

in the white-hot flash

of radiation.

Incantation

from your pale parched lips

shall not avail;

you made this hell.

Now burn.

This was one of my early poems, written around age 19. I dedicated the poem to Trump after he pulled the United States out of the Paris climate change accords. 

You Were My Death

by Paul Celan

loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You were my death;

I could hold you

when everything abandoned me―

even breath.

O, little root of a dream
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
 

O, little root of a dream
you enmire me here;
I’m undermined by blood―
made invisible,
death’s possession.

Touch the curve of my face,
that there may yet be an earthly language of ardor,
that someone else’s eyes
may somehow still see me,
though I’m blind,
here where you
deny me voice.
 

Originally published by Bewildering Stories

Children

by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment

suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall,

impendent, pregnant with possibility ...

when we might have made ...

anything, 

               anything we dreamed, 

                                                   almost anything at all,

coalescing dreams into reality.

Oh, the love we might have fashioned

out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos

and the rhythms of evening!

But we were young,

and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss

and what we have left is not worth saving.

But, oh, you were lovely,

child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars,

and for a day ...

what little we partook

of all that lay before us seemed so much, 

                       and passion but a force

with which to play.

Dream House
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to the house of my fondest dreams,
but the shutters are boarded; the front door is locked;
the mail box leans over; and where we once walked,
the path is grown over with crabgrass and clover.

I kick the trash can; it screams, topples over.
The yard, weeded over, blooms white fluff, and green.
The elm we once swung from leans over the stream.
In the twilight I cling with both hands to the swing.

Inside, perhaps, I hear the telephone ring
or watch once again as the bleary-eyed mover
takes down your picture. Dejected, I hover,
asking over and over, “Why didn’t you love her?”

Confession

by Michael R. Burch

What shall I say to you, to confess,

words? Words that can never express

anything close to what I feel?

For words that seem tangible, real,

when I think them

become vaguely surreal when I put ink to them.

And words that I thought that I knew,

like "love" and "devotion"

never ring true.

While "passion"

sounds strangely like the latest fashion

or a perfume.

NOTE: At the time I wrote this poem, a perfume called Passion was in fashion. 

Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds!
by Michael R. Burch

"Bury St. Edmonds―Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, files or surf the Web, absolutely free."―Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.)

Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let
you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet,
commune with nature, interact with hackers,
design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers.

Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs―
four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs,
so your privacy's assured (a threesome's fine)
while invited friends can scan the party line:

for Internet alerts on new positions,
the randier exploits of politicians,
exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!) .
The cybersex is great, it's guaranteed

to leave you breathless―flushed, free of disease

and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees,
the birds, the bench―this product of Our pen.

We won in with an ode to MSN.

Shadowselves
by Michael R. Burch

In our hearts, knowing
fewer days―and milder―beckon,

how now are we to measure
that wick by which we reckon
the time we have remaining?

We are shadows
spawned by a blue spurt of candlelight.
Darkly, we watch ourselves flicker.
Where shall we go when the flame burns less bright?
When chill night steals our vigor?

Why are we less than ourselves? We are shadows.
Where is the fire of our youth? We grow cold.
Why does our future loom dark? We are old.
And why do we shiver?

In our hearts, seeing
fewer days―and briefer―breaking,

now, even more, we treasure
this brittle leaf-like aching
that tells us we are living.

Dust (II)
by Michael R. Burch

We are dust
and to dust we must
return ...
but why, then,
life’s pointless sojourn?

Leave Taking (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Although the earth renews itself, and spring
is lovelier for all the rot of fall,
I think of yellow leaves that cling and hang
by fingertips to life, let go . . . and all
men see is one bright instance of departure,
the flame that, at least height, warms nothing. I,

have never liked to think the ants that march here
will deem them useless, grimly tramping by,
and so I gather leaves’ dry hopeless brilliance,
to feel their prickly edges, like my own,
to understand their incurled worn resilience―
youth’s tenderness long, callously, outgrown.

I even feel the pleasure of their sting,
the stab of life. I do not think―at all―

to be renewed, as earth is every spring.
I do not hope words cluster where they fall.
I only hope one leaf, wild-spiraling,
illuminates the void, till glad hearts sing.

It's not that every leaf must finally fall ...
it's just that we can never catch them all.

Originally published by Silver Stork

Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals
by Michael R. Burch

"I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble." ― Mark Twain

Making sense from nonsense is quite sensible! Suppose
you’re running low on moolah, need some cash to paint your toes ...
Just invent a new religion; claim it saves lost souls from hell;
have the converts write you checks; take major debit cards as well;
take MasterCard and Visa and good-as-gold Amex;
hell, lend and charge them interest, whether payday loan or flex.
Thus out of perfect nonsense, glittery ores of this great mine,
you’ll earn an easy living and your toes will truly shine!

Originally published by Lighten Up Online

Marsh Song

by Michael R. Burch

Here there is only the great sad song of the reeds
and the silent herons, wraithlike in the mist,
and a few drab sunken stones, unblessed
by the sunlight these late sixteen thousand years,
and the beaded dews that drench strange ferns, like tears
collected against an overwhelming sadness.

Here the marsh exposes its dejectedness,
its gutted rotting belly, and its roots
rise out of the earth’s distended heaviness,
to claw hard at existence, till the scars
remind us that we all have wounds, and I
have learned again that living is despair
as the herons cleave the placid, dreamless air.

Originally published by The Lyric

Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark . . .
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?

Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared―
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?

Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly

Tomb Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Go down to the valley
where mockingbirds cry,
alone, ever lonely . . .
yes, go down to die.
And dream in your dying
you never shall wake.
Go down to the valley;
go down to Tomb Lake.

Tomb Lake is a cauldron
of souls such as yours―
mad souls without meaning,
frail souls without force.
Tomb Lake is a graveyard
reserved for the dead.
They lie in her shallows
and sleep in her bed.

I believe this poem and "Moon Lake" were companion poems, written around my senior year in high school, in 1976.

Mother of Cowards

by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

So unlike the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Spread-eagled, showering gold, a strumpet stands:
A much-used trollop with a torch, whose flame
Has long since been extinguished. And her name?
"Mother of Cowards!" From her enervate hand
Soft ash descends. Her furtive eyes demand
Allegiance to her Pimp's repulsive game.

"Keep, ancient lands, your wretched poor!" cries she
With scarlet lips. "Give me your hale, your whole,
Your huddled tycoons, yearning to be pleased!
The wretched refuse of your toilet hole?
Oh, never send one unwashed child to me!
I await Trump's pleasure by the gilded bowl!"

Frantisek “Franta” Bass was a Jewish boy born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1930. When he was just eleven years old, his family was deported by the Nazis to Terezin, where the SS had created a hybrid Ghetto/Concentration Camp just north of Prague (it was also known as Theresienstadt). Franta was one of many little boys and girls who lived there under terrible conditions for three years. He was then sent to Auschwitz, where on October 28th, 1944, he was murdered at age fourteen.

The Garden
by Franta Bass
translation by Michael R. Burch

A small garden,
so fragrant and full of roses!
The path the little boy takes
is guarded by thorns.

A small boy, a sweet boy,
growing like those budding blossoms!
But when the blossoms have bloomed,
the boy will be no more.

Jewish Forever
by Franta Bass
translation by Michael R. Burch

I am a Jew and always will be, forever!
Even if I should starve,
I will never submit!

But I will always fight for my people,
with my honor,
to their credit!

And I will never be ashamed of them;
this is my vow.
I am so very proud of my people now!

How dignified they are, in their grief!
And though I may die, oppressed,
still I will always return to life ...

My Forty-Ninth Year
by Michael R. Burch

My forty-ninth year
and the dew remembers
how brightly it glistened
encrusting September, ...
one frozen September
when hawks ruled the sky
and death fell on wings
with a shrill, keening cry.

My forty-ninth year,
and still I recall
the weavings and windings
of childhood, of fall ...
of fall enigmatic,
resplendent, yet sere, ...
though vibrant the herald
of death drawing near.

My forty-ninth year
and now often I've thought on
the course of a lifetime,
the meaning of autumn,
the cycle of autumn
with winter to come,
of aging and death
and rebirth ... on and on.



Progress
by Michael R. Burch

There is no sense of urgency
at the local Burger King.

Birds and squirrels squabble outside
for the last scraps of autumn:
remnants of buns,
goopy pulps of dill pickles,
mucousy lettuce,
sesame seeds.

Inside, the workers all move
with the same très-glamorous lethargy,
conserving their energy, one assumes,
for more pressing endeavors: concerts and proms,
pep rallies, keg parties,
reruns of Jenny McCarthy on MTV.

The manager, as usual, is on the phone,
talking to her boyfriend.
She gently smiles,
brushing back wisps of insouciant hair,
ready for the cover of Glamour or Vogue.

Through her filmy white blouse
an indiscreet strap
suspends a lace cup
through which somehow the n****e still shows.
Progress, we guess, ...

and wait patiently in line,
hoping the Pokémons hold out.



Reflections on the Loss of Vision
by Michael R. Burch

The sparrow that cries from the shelter of an ancient oak tree and the squirrels
that dash in delight through the treetops as the first snow glistens and swirls,
remind me so much of my childhood and how the world seemed to me then,
that it seems if I tried
and just closed my eyes,
I could once again be nine or ten.

The rabbits that hide in the bushes where the snowflakes collect as they fall,
hunch there, I know, in the fast-piling snow, yet now I can't see them at all.
For time slowly weakened my vision; while the patterns seem almost as clear,
some things that I saw
when I was a boy,
are lost to me now in my "advancing" years.

The chipmunk who seeks out his burrow and the geese now preparing to leave
are there as they were, and yet they are not; and if it seems childish to grieve,
still, who would condemn a blind man for bemoaning the vision he lost?
Well, in a small way,
through the passage of days,
I have learned some of his loss.

As a keen-eyed young lad I endeavored to see things most adults could not�"
the camouflaged nests of the hoot owls, the woodpecker’s favorite haunts.
But now I no longer can find them, nor understand how I once could,
and it seems such a waste
of those far-sighted days,
to end up near blind in this wood.

NOTE: I believe I wrote the first version of this poem around 1978 at age 19 or 20. I put it aside for many years and didn’t finish it until 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. This is one of my more Robert-Frost-like poems and perhaps not a bad one for the age at which it was written.

Remembrance
by Michael R. Burch

Remembrance like a river rises;
the rain of recollection falls;
frail memories, like vines, entangled,
cling to Time's collapsing walls.

The past is like a distant mist,
the future like a far-off haze,
the present half-distinct an hour
before it blurs with unseen days.

Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior�"
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...

a diode of amethyst�"wild, electric;
its sequined cavity�"parted, revealing.

Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.

Each spire inward�"a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails�"fractured light,

the heart ice breaking.

Originally published by Poet Lore

The Quickening
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I never meant to love you
when I held you in my arms
promising you sagely
wise, noncommittal charms.

And I never meant to need you
when I touched your tender lips
with kisses that intrigued my own�"
such kisses I had never known,
nor a heartbeat in my fingertips!

Benji and Miss Beth
by Michael R. Burch

Benji and Miss Beth
have found the source of Love:

It begins with opening the heart,
like the sun, when it blossoms above;

and then there are opening arms
like the sweetest flowers’ petals;

’cause Love gives the greatest hugs
and never with thorns or nettles!

Yes, I’ve heard it’s true that the Angels
are watching and learning above

since Benji and Miss Beth
have found the source of Love!

Willibrordus Surendra Broto Rendra (1935-2009), better known as W. S. Rendra or simply Rendra, was an Indonesian dramatist and poet. The press gave him the nickname Burung Merak (“The Peacock”) for his flamboyant poetry readings and stage performances.

THE WORLD'S FIRST FACE
by W. S. Rendra
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Illuminated by the pale moonlight
the groom carries his bride
up the hill�"
both of them naked,
both consisting of nothing but themselves.

As in all beginnings
the world is naked,
empty, free of deception,
dark with unspoken explanations�"
a silence that extends
to the limits of time.

Then comes light,
life, the animals and man.

As in all beginnings
everything is naked,
empty, open.

They're both young,
yet both have already come a long way,
passing through the illusions of brilliant dawns,
of skies illuminated by hope,
of rivers intimating contentment.

They have experienced the sun's warmth,
drenched in each other's sweat.

Here, standing by barren reefs,
they watch evening fall
bringing strange dreams
to a bed arrayed with resplendent coral necklaces.

They lift their heads to view
trillions of stars arrayed in the sky.
The universe is their inheritance:
stars upon stars upon stars,
more than could ever be extinguished.

Illuminated by the pale moonlight
the groom carries his bride
up the hill�"
both of them naked,
to recreate the world's first face.

SONNET
by W. S. Rendra
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Best wishes for an impending deflowering

Yes, I understand: you will never be mine.
I am resigned to my undeserved fate.
I contemplate
irrational numbers�"complex & undefined.

And yet I wish love might ... ameliorate ...
such negative numbers, dark and unsigned.

But at least I can’t be held responsible
for disappointing you. No cause to elate.
Still, I am resigned to my undeserved fate.
The gods have spoken. I can relate.

How can this be, when all it makes no sense?
I was born too soon�"such was my fate.
You must choose another, not half of who I AM.
Be happy with him when you consummate.

Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Eagle, raven, blackbird, crow . . .
What you are I do not know.
Where you go I do not care.
I’m unconcerned whose meal you bear.
But as you mount the sunlit sky,
I only wish that I could fly.
I only wish that I could fly.

Robin, hawk or whippoorwill . . .
Should men care that you hunger still?
I do not wish to see your home.
I do not wonder where you roam.
But as you scale the sky's bright stairs,
I only wish that I were there.
I only wish that I were there.

Sparrow, lark or chickadee . . .
Your markings I disdain to see.
Where you fly concerns me not.
I scarcely give your flight a thought.
But as you wheel and arc and dive,
I, too, would feel so much alive.
I, too, would feel so much alive.

This is a poem that I believe I wrote as a high school sophomore. I seem to remember the original poem being influenced by William Cullen Bryant's "To a Waterfowl."



El Dorado
by Michael R. Burch

It's a fine town, a fine town,
though its alleys recede into shadow;
it's a very fine town for those who are searching
for an El Dorado.

Because the lighting is poor and the streets are bare
and the welfare line is long,
there must be something of value somewhere
to keep us hanging on
to our El Dorado.

Though the children are skinny, their parents are fat
from years of gorging on bleached white bread,
yet neither will leave
because all believe
in the vague things that are said
of El Dorado.

The young men with the outlandish hairstyles
who saunter in and out of the turnstiles
with a song on their lips and an aimless shuffle,
scuffing their shoes, avoiding the bustle,
certainly feel no need to join the crowd
of those who work to earn their bread;
they must know that the rainbow's end
conceals a pot of gold
near El Dorado.

And the painted “actress” who roams the streets,
smiling at every man she meets,
must smile because, after years of running,
no man can match her in cruelty or cunning.
She must see the satire of “defeats”
and “triumphs” on the ambivalent streets
of El Dorado.

Yes, it's a fine town, a very fine town
for those who can leave when they tire
of chasing after rainbows and dreams
and living on nothing but fire.

But for those of us who cling to our dreams
and cannot let them go,
like the sad-eyed ladies who wander the streets
and the junkies high on snow,
the dream has become a reality
―the reality of hope
that grew too strong
not to linger on―
and so this is our home.

We chew the apple, spit it out,
then eat it "just once more."
For this is the big, big apple,
though it is rotten to the core,
and we are its worm
in the night when we squirm
in our El Dorado.

I believe I wrote the first version of this poem during my “Romantic phase” around age 16. It was definitely written in my teens because it appears in a poetry contest folder that I put together and submitted during my sophomore year in college.



faith(less)
by Michael R. Burch

Those who believed
and Those who misled
lie together at last
in the same narrow bed

and if god loved Them more
for Their strange lack of doubt,
he kept it well hidden
till he snuffed Them out.



Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-stoned.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-stoned,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-stoned,
we first proved we had lives of our own).

Keywords/Tags: rejection, distance, distances, near, far, night, day, memory, memories, Faust, Robert Frost, Icarus, love, rose, lilac, seasons, winter