Modern SonnetsA Poem by Michael R. Burch These are modern sonnets that range from traditional to free verse and experimental verse. MODERN SONNETS
Maker, Fakir, Curer
without a word for flame, none for the mark A poet is no crafty artisan― must dance obedience, once called by name. Thin wand, divine!, this world is too the same― Originally published by The Lyric
Ebb Tide Massive, gray, these leaden waves while the wind seems to struggle to say Now collapsing dull waves drain away Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
The City Is a Garment
cascade their brilliant contents out like coins her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool When night becomes too chill, she softly dons Originally published by The Lyric Discrimination
I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads, Originally published by The Chariton Review The Harvest of Roses
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer― Originally published by The Raintown Review Love Has a Southern Flavor
Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines, Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights: Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet, Originally published by The Lyric Redolence
Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills, And now the pact of night is made complete; Published by The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003 Leaf Fall
And nothing in our laughter as we fell Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea In Praise of Meter
If moons and tides in interlocking dance as humble as it is?―or readers wince to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear Originally published by he Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003 Free Fall
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell? as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel toward some draining revelation. Air― two beings pale, intent to fall forever now separate, now distant, now together. Originally published by Sonnet Scroll In this Ordinary Swoon
Who I am and why I came, I do not fear the letting go; and feel the greater intensity Remembering Not to Call by Michael R. Burch a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch The hardest thing of all, after telling her everything, is remembering not to call. Now the phone hanging on the wall will never announce her ring: the hardest thing of all for children, however tall. And the hardest thing this spring will be remembering not to call the one who was everything. That the songbirds will nevermore sing is the hardest thing of all for those who once listened, in thrall, and welcomed the message they bring, since they won’t remember to call. And the hardest thing this fall will be a number with no one to ring. No, the hardest thing of all is remembering not to call. Huntress
Heed, hearts, your hope―the break of dawn. Originally published by Sonnetto Poesia Water and Gold
You came to me as riches to a miser You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly; I dreamed you gave me water of your lips, Originally published by The Lyric Fountainhead
to float awhirl on minute tides Originally published by Romantics Quarterly The Folly of Wisdom
We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go, And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss. She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well rings wildly above us. Some things that we know Originally published by Romantics Quarterly Pan
... Once there were paths that led to coracles ... where we cannot return, because we lost ... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair ... that led up to the Fortress in the trees ... we still might fit inside those splendid hours ... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls Originally published by Sonnet Scroll Mingled Air by Michael R. Burch for Beth Ephemeral as breath, still words consume the substance of our hearts; the very air that fuels us is subsumed; sometimes the hair that veils your eyes is lifted and the room seems hackles-raised: a spring all tension wound upon a word. At night I feel the care evaporate―a vapor everywhere more enervate than sighs: a mournful sound grown blissful. In the silences between I hear your heart, forget to breathe, and glow somehow. And though the words subside, we know the hearth light and the comfort embers gleam upon our dreaming consciousness. We share so much so common: sighs, breath, mingled air. The Darker Nights by Michael R. Burch Nights when I held you, nights when I saw the gentlest of spirits, yet, deeper, a flaw ... Nights when we settled and yet never gelled. Nights when you promised what you later withheld ... Moon Poem by Michael R. Burch after Linda Gregg I climb the mountain to inquire of the moon ... the advantages of loftiness, absence, distance. Is it true that it feels no pain, or will she contradict me? Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) The apparent contradiction of it/she is intentional, since the speaker doesn’t know if the moon is an inanimate object or can feel pain. This is a poem about a discussion between a young poet and an older poet―the very poetic Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I wrote this poem as a teenager under the spell of Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which for me is also a compelling poem. In the poem he is the upper-case Poet and I am the lower-case poet. Poet to poet by Michael R. Burch I have a dream ...pebbles in a sparkling sand... of wondrous things. I see children ...variations of the same man... playing together. Black and yellow, red and white, ... stone and flesh, a host of colors... together at last. I see a time ...each small child another's cousin... when freedom shall ring. I hear a song ...sweeter than the sea sings... of many voices. I hear a jubilation ... respect and love are the gifts we must bring... shaking the land. I have a message, ...sea shells echo, the melody rings... the message of God. I have a dream ...all pebbles are merely smooth fragments of stone... of many things. I live in hope ...all children are merely small fragments of One... that this dream shall come true. I have a dream! ... but when you're gone, won't the dream have to end?... Oh, no, not as long as you dream my dream too! Here, hold out your hand, let's make it come true. ... i can feel it begin... Lovers and dreamers are poets too. ...poets are lovers and dreamers too... Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) and Love Poems and Poets how many Nights by michael r. burch
how many Nights we laughed to see the sun go down because the Night was made for reckless fun. ...Your golden crown, Your skin so soft, so smooth, and lightly downed...
how many nights i wept glad tears to hold You tight against the years. ...Your eyes so bold, Your hair spun gold, and all the pleasures Your soft flesh foretold...
how many Nights i did not dare to dream You were so real... now all that i have left here is to feel in dreams surreal Time is the Nightmare God before whom men kneel.
and how few Nights, i reckoned, in the end, we were allowed to gather, less to spend. “Whoso List to Hunt” is a famous early English sonnet written by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) in the mid-16th century. The poem was first published in a 1557 anthology entitled Songes and Sonettes Written by the Ryght Honorable Lord Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, and others. The anthology was published in London by Richard Tottel and is better known today as Tottel's Miscellany. This was the modern English language's first printed poetry anthology, and thus a ground-breaking work of literature. Wyatt's poem, which has an alternate title, “The Lover Despairing to Attain Unto His Lady’s Grace Relinquisheth the Pursuit,” is commonly believed to have been written for Anne Boleyn, who married King Henry VIII only to be beheaded at his command when she failed to produce a male heir. (Ouch, talk about male chauvinism!) Here is my attempt at a modernization of the poem: PROFESSOR POETS These are poems about professor poets and other “intellectuals” who miss the main point of poetry, which is to connect with readers via pleasing sounds and the communication of emotion as well as meaning. Professor Poets by Michael R. Burch Professor poets remind me of drones chasing the Classical queen's aging bones. With bottle-thick glasses they still see to write― droning on, endlessly buzzing all night. And still in our classrooms their tomes are decreed ... Perhaps they're too busy with buzzing to breed? In my next poem the “businessmen” are the poetry professors and professional poetry publishers who speak dismissively of the things that made poetry popular with the masses: rhythm, rhyme, clarity, accessible storytelling, etc. The Board by Michael R. Burch Accessible rhyme is never good. The penalty is understood― soft titters from dark board rooms where the businessmen paste on their hair and, Colonel Klinks, defend the Muse with reprimands of Dr. Seuss. The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On ...) by Michael R. Burch Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts at “meter,” I crossly concluded I’d use each iamb in lieu of a lamb, bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded. Alien by Michael R. Burch for J. S. S., a poetry professor who believes in "hell" On a lonely outpost on Mars the astronaut practices “speech” as alien to primates below as mute stars winking high, out of reach. And his words fall as bright and as chill as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro― far colder than Jesus’s words over the “fortunate” sparrow. And I understand how gentle Emily felt, when all comfort had flown, gazing into those inhuman eyes, feeling zero at the bone. Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought? For if he is human, I am not. The opposite approach to the poetry professors, the poetry journalists and the uber-intellectuals is that of musicians to their instruments and the music they produce… Duet, Minor Key by Michael R. Burch Without the drama of cymbals or the fanfare and snares of drums, I present my case stripped of its fine veneer: Behold, thy instrument. Play, for the night is long. US Verse, after Auden by Michael R. Burch “Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.” Verse has small value in our Unisphere, nor is it fit for windy revelation. It cannot legislate less taxing fears; it cannot make us, several, a nation. Enumerator of our sins and dreams, it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings, a little quaintly, of the ways of love. (It seems of little use for lesser things.) The Unisphere mentioned is a spherical stainless steel representation of the earth constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age and dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." The lines quoted in the epigraph are from W. H. Auden’s love poem “Lullaby.” The Plums Were Sweet by Michael R. Burch after WCW The plums were sweet, icy and delicious. To eat them all was perhaps malicious. But I vastly prefer your kisses! Caveat by Michael R. Burch If only we were not so eloquent, we might sing, and only sing, not to impress, but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed. We might inundate the earth with thankfulness for light, although it dies, and make a song of night descending on the earth like bliss, with other lights beyond―not to be known― but only to be welcomed and enjoyed, before all worlds and stars are overthrown ... as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face and find it beautiful for emptiness of all but joy. There is no thought to love but love itself. How senseless to redress, in darkness, such becoming nakedness . . . Come Down by Michael R. Burch for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists Come down, O, come down from your high mountain tower. How coldly the wind blows, how late this chill hour ... and I cannot wait for a meteor shower to show you the time must be now, or not ever. Come down, O, come down from the high mountain heather blown, brittle and brown, as fierce northern gales sever. Come down, or your heart will grow cold as the weather when winter devours and spring returns never. Rant: The Elite by Michael R. Burch When I heard Harold Bloom unsurprisingly say: "Poetry is necessarily difficult. It is our elitist art ..." I felt a small suspicious thrill. After all, sweetheart, isn’t this who we are? Aren’t we obviously better, and certainly fairer and taller, than they are? Though once I found Ezra Pound perhaps a smidgen too profound, perhaps a bit over-fond of Benito and the advantages of fascism to be taken ad finem, like high tea with a pure white spot of intellectualism and an artificial sweetener, calorie-free. I know! I know! Politics has nothing to do with art And it tempts us so to be elite, to stand apart ... but somehow the word just doesn’t ring true, echoing effetely away―the distance from me to you. Of course, politics has nothing to do with art, but sometimes art has everything to do with becoming elite, with climbing the cultural ladder, with being able to meet someone more Exalted than you, who can demonstrate how to fart so that everyone below claims one’s odor is sweet. "You had to be there! We were falling apart with gratitude! We saw him! We wept at his feet!" Though someone will always be far, far above you, clouding your air, gazing down at you with a look of wondering despair. Sweenies (or Swine-ies) Among the Nightingales by Michael R. Burch for the Corseted Ones and the Erratics Open yourself to words, and if they come, be glad the stone-tongued apes are stricken dumb by anything like music; they believe in petrified dry meaning. Love conceives wild harmonies, while lumberjacks fell trees. Sweet, unifying music, a cappella ... but apeneck Sweeny’s not the brightest fella. He has no interest in celestial brightness; he’d distill Love to chivalry, politeness, yet longs to be acclaimed, like those before him who (should the truth be told) confuse and bore him. For Sweeney is himself a piggish boor― the kind pale pearl-less swine claim to adore. Untitled Haiku Fireflies thinking to illuminate the darkness? Poets! ―Michael R. Burch BeMused by Michael R. Burch You will find in her hair a fragrance more severe than camphor. You will find in her dress no hint of a sweet distractedness. You will find in her eyes horn-owlish and wise no metaphors of love, but only reflections of books, books, books. If you like Her looks, meet me in the long rows, between Poetry and Prose, where we’ll win Her favor with jousts, and savor the wine of Her hair, the shimmery wantonness of Her rich-satined dress; where we’ll press our good deeds upon Her, save Her from every distress, for the lovingkindness of Her matchless eyes and all the suns of Her tongues. We were young, once, unlearned and unwise . . . but, O, to be young when love comes disguised with the whisper of silks and idolatry, and even the childish tongue claims the intimacy of Poetry. Impotent by Michael R. Burch Tonight my pen is barren of passion, spent of poetry. I hear your name upon the rain and yet it cannot comfort me. I feel the pain of dreams that wane, of poems that falter, losing force. I write again words without end, but I cannot control their course . . . Tonight my pen is sullen and wants no more of poetry. I hear your voice as if a choice, but how can I respond, or flee? I feel a flame I cannot name that sends me searching for a word, but there is none not over-done, unless it's one I never heard. I believe this poem was written in my late teens or early twenties. The Monarch’s Rose or The Hedgerow Rose by Michael R. Burch I lead you here to pluck this florid rose still tethered to its post, a dreary mass propped up to stiff attention, winsome-thorned (what hand was ever daunted less to touch such flame, in blatant disregard of all but atavistic beauty)? Does this rose not symbolize our love? But as I place its emblem to your breast, how can this poem, long centuries deflowered, not debase all art, if merely genuine, but not “original”? Love, how can reused words though frailer than all petals, bent by air to lovelier contortions, still persist, defying even gravity? For here beat Monarch’s wings: they rise on emptiness! Over(t) Simplification by Michael R. Burch “Keep it simple, stupid.” A sonnet is not simple, but the rule is simply this: let poems be beautiful, or comforting, or horrifying. Move the reader, and the world will not reprove the idiosyncrasies of too few lines, too many syllables, or offbeat beats. It only matters that *she* taps her feet or that *he* frowns, or smiles, or grimaces, or sits bemused―a child―as images of worlds he’d lost come flooding back, and then... they’ll cheer the poet’s insubordinate pen. A sonnet is not simple, but the rule is simply this: let poems be beautiful. These are poems I have written about Shakespeare, poems I have written for Shakespeare, and poems I have written after Shakespeare. Fleet Tweet: Apologies to Shakespeare Remember, doggonit, To be or not to be? Ophelia for Kevin N. Roberts Ophelia, madness suits you well, Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 Refuted My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Seas that sparkle in the sun Coral formed beneath the sea, Bright roses’ brief affairs, declared Whose tender cheeks, so enchantingly warm, Originally published by Romantics Quarterly This was my first sonnet, written in my teens after I discovered Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130." At the time I didn't know the rules of the sonnet form, so mine is a bit unconventional. I think it is not bad for the first attempt of a teen poet. I remember writing this poem in my head on the way back to my dorm from a freshman English class. I would have been 18 or 19 at the time. Attention Span Gap What if a poet, Shakespeare, Yes, a sonnet may end in a couplet, Bring back that Grand Era when men Chloe There were skies onyx at night... moons by day... Soon impatiens too fiery to stay Where our feet were inclined, we would stray; What I found, I found lost in her face “Chloe” is a Shakespearean sonnet about being parted from someone you wanted and expected to be with forever. It was originally published by Romantics Quarterly as "A Dying Fall" Sonnet: The City Is a Garment A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,― cascade their brilliant contents out like coins her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool When night becomes too chill, she softly dons “The City is a Garment” is a Shakespearean sonnet. Afterglow for Beth The night is full of stars. Which still exist? once slow to match this reckless spark in me, for one pale flame that seemed to signify enough each night to bask in you, to know “Afterglow” is a Shakespearean sonnet. I Learned Too Late “Show, don’t tell!” I learned too late that poetry has rules, In any case, by dodging rules and schools, I learned too late that sentiment is bad― In any case, by following my heart, I learned too late that “telling” is a crime. In any case, by telling, I admit: Heaven Bent This life is hell; it can get no worse. This is a poem in which I imagine Shakespeare speaking through a modern Hamlet. That Mella Fella John Mella was the longtime editor of Light Quarterly. There once was a fella Shakespeare had his patrons and publishers; John Mella was one of my favorites in the early going, along with Jean Mellichamp Milliken of The Lyric. Chip Off the Block for Jeremy In the fusion of poetry and drama, NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be. Keywords/Tags: epigram, epigrams, epitaph, epithet, giggle, humor, humorous, irony, literature, word play, writing, short, brief, aphorism, adage, saw, proverb, saying, quote, quip, bon mot, witticism, gem, sally, motto, pith, pithy, jape, jest, chestnut, adage, wit, horseplay, sage Writing Verse for Free, Versus Programs for a Fee by Michael R. Burch How is writing a program like writing a poem? You start with an idea, something fresh. Almost a wish. Something effervescent, like foam flailing itself against the rocks of a lost tropical coast . . After the idea, of course, there are complications and trepidations, as with the poem or even the foam. Who will see it, appreciate it, understand it? What will it do? Is it worth the effort, all the mad dashing and crashing about, the vortex―all that? And to what effect? Next comes the real labor, the travail, the scouring hail of things that simply don’t fit or make sense. Of course, with programming you have the density of users to fix, which is never a problem with poetry, since the users have already had their fix (this we know because they are still reading and think everything makes sense); but this is the only difference. Anyway, what’s left is the debugging, or, if you’re a poet, the hugging yourself and crying, hoping someone will hear you, so that you can shame them into reading your poem, which they will refuse, but which your mother will do if you phone, perhaps with only the tiniest little mother-of-the-poet, harried, self-righteous moan. The biggest difference between writing a program and writing a poem is simply this: if your program works, or seems to work, or almost works, or doesn’t work at all, you’re set and hugely overpaid. Made-in-the-shade-have-a-pink-lemonade-and-ticker-tape-parade OVERPAID. If your poem is about your lover and sucks up quite nicely, perhaps you’ll get laid. Perhaps. Regardless, you’ll probably see someone repossessing your furniture and TV to bring them posthaste to someone like me. The moral is this: write programs first, then whatever passes for poetry. DO YOUR SHARE; HELP END POVERTY TODAY! © 2024 Michael R. Burch |
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Added on March 29, 2021 Last Updated on August 27, 2024 Tags: Modern, Sonnet, Sonnets, Traditional, Formal, Free Verse, Experimental Author
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