Members
Philippines
My Mind is a Dangerous Place...
20/M/Philippines
Every time I get hurt, I get wounded, and I start bleeding, I always try to turn those droplets of blood into ink. :>
PNW Dryad and Stargazer
Poems
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
iou
Michael R Burch
Apr 2020
iou
by michael r. burch
i might have said it
but i didn’t
u might have noticed
but u wouldn’t
we might have been us
but we couldn’t
u might respond
but probably shouldn’t
Keywords/Tags: iou, chit, debenture, bill, debt, relationship, lovers, impasse, silence, golden, I, owe, you, borrower, lender, Polonius, collectible, mrbiou
Passionate One
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Love of my life,
light of my morning―
arise, brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.
Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven―
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.
Talent
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
I liked the first passage
of her poem―where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.
There's something like love
in the rhythms of night
―in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end―
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.
So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
"If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!"
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.
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.
Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch
“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke
Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imagining watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.
Explicit *** was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.
I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue:
adultery, fornication, *******, ******.
Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush
of her unrouged cheeks,
by her pale lips
accented only by a slight quiver,
a trepidation.
What did those lustrous folds foretell
of our uncommon desire?
Why did she cross and uncross her legs
lovely and long in their taupe sheaths?
Why did her ******* rise pointedly,
as if indicating a direction?
“Come unto me,
(unto me),”
together, we sang,
cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,
my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:
all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.
This poem is set at Faith Christian Academy, which I attended for a year during the ninth grade. Another poem, "*** 101," was also written about my experiences at FCA that year.
*** 101
by Michael R. Burch
That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina ...
Where we sat exhausted
from the day’s skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity ...
Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ...
The most unlikely coupling—
Lambert, 18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ...
Beside him, Wanda, 13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving ...
And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew ...
that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters, deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way, or will.
I wrote the poem above as a teenager in high school. The lines started out as part of a longer poem, but I thought these were the two best lines and decided to let them stand alone on the principle that "discretion is the better part of valor."
Medusa
by Michael R. Burch
Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair:
long, ravenblack & melancholy.
Many suitors drowned there:
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.
Originally published by Grand Little Things
At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch
“Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.
At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,
while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound
of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—
to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember,
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.
Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.
Originally published by The Lyric
Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord,
established earth's fearful foundations.
Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof
for the sons of men: Holy Creator,
mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty!
Cædmon’s Face
by Michael R. Burch
At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,
while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound
of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked here too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—
to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember:
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.
He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike—as father unto son.
But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father’s face becomes his own.
He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker’s might, man’s lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth
suspended under heaven’s roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:
his face was Poetry’s, from youth.
Song from Ælla: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch
O! sing unto my roundelay,
O! drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more at holy-day,
Like a running river be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Black his crown as the winter night,
White his skin as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O! he lies by the willow tree!
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Hark! the raven ***** his wing
In the briar'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loudly sings
To the nightmares, as they go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
See! the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true love's shroud:
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Here upon my true love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coolness of a maid:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
With my hands I'll frame the briars
Round his holy corpse to grow:
Elf and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body, stilled, shall go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heart’s red blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Water witches, crowned with plaits,
Bear me to your lethal tide.
I die; I come; my true love waits.
Thus the damsel spoke, and died.
The song above is, in my opinion, competitive with Shakespeare's songs in his plays, and may be the best of Thomas Chatterton's so-called "Rowley" poems. The fact that Chatterton wrote it in his teens is astounding.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”)
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch
As wroten bie the goode Prieste
Thomas Rowley 1464
In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen,
Then hot upon the meadows cast his ray;
The apple ruddied from its pallid green
And the fat pear did extend its leafy spray;
The pied goldfinches sang the livelong day;
'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And the ground was mantled in fine green cashmere.
The sun was gleaming in the bright mid-day,
Dead-still the air, and likewise the heavens blue,
When from the sea arose, in drear array,
A heap of clouds of sullen sable hue,
Which full and fast unto the woodlands drew,
Hiding at once the sun's fair festive face,
As the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace.
Beneath a holly tree, by a pathway's side,
Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent lead,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide.
Poor in his sight, ungentle in his ****,
Long brimful of the miseries of need,
Where from the hailstones could the beggar fly?
He had no shelter there, nor any convent nigh.
Look in his gloomy face; his sprite there scan;
How woebegone, how withered, dried-up, dead!
Haste to thy parsonage, accursèd man!
Haste to thy crypt, thy only restful bed.
Cold, as the clay which will grow on thy head,
Is Charity and Love among high elves;
Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.
The gathered storm is ripe; the huge drops fall;
The sunburnt meadows smoke and drink the rain;
The coming aghastness makes the cattle pale;
And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain;
Dashed from the clouds, the waters float again;
The heavens gape; the yellow lightning flies;
And the hot fiery steam in the wide flamepot dies.
Hark! now the thunder's rattling, clamoring sound
Heaves slowly on, and then enswollen clangs,
Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drown'd,
Still on the coward ear of terror hangs;
The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swings;
Again the lightning―then the thunder pours,
And the full clouds are burst at once in stormy showers.
Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain,
The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came;
His chapournette was drenchèd with the rain,
And his pinched girdle met with enormous shame;
He cursing backwards gave his hymns the same;
The storm increasing, and he drew aside
With the poor alms-craver, near the holly tree to bide.
His cape was all of Lincoln-cloth so fine,
With a gold button fasten'd near his chin;
His ermine robe was edged with golden twine,
And his high-heeled shoes a Baron's might have been;
Full well it proved he considered cost no sin;
The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight
For the horse-milliner loved rosy ribbons bright.
"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"Oh, let me wait within your convent door,
Till the sun shineth high above our head,
And the loud tempest of the air is o'er;
Helpless and old am I, alas!, and poor;
No house, no friend, no money in my purse;
All that I call my own is this―my silver cross.
"Varlet," replied the Abbott, "cease your din;
This is no season alms and prayers to give;
My porter never lets a beggar in;
None touch my ring who in dishonor live."
And now the sun with the blackened clouds did strive,
And shed upon the ground his glaring ray;
The Abbot spurred his steed, and swiftly rode away.
Once more the sky grew black; the thunder rolled;
Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen;
Not full of pride, not buttoned up in gold;
His cape and jape were gray, and also clean;
A Limitour he was, his order serene;
And from the pathway side he turned to see
Where the poor almer lay beneath the holly tree.
"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake."
The Limitour then loosen'd his purse's thread,
And from it did a groat of silver take;
The needy pilgrim did for happiness shake.
"Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care;
"We are God's stewards all, naught of our own we bear."
"But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me,
Scarce any give a rentroll to their Lord.
Here, take my cloak, as thou are bare, I see;
'Tis thine; the Saints will give me my reward."
He left the pilgrim, went his way abroad.
****** and happy Saints, in glory showered,
Let the mighty bend, or the good man be empowered!
TRANSLATOR'S NOTES: It is possible that some words used by Chatterton were his own coinages; some of them apparently cannot be found in medieval literature. In a few places I have used similar-sounding words that seem to not overly disturb the meaning of the poem. ― Michael R. Burch
***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch
When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,
when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath...
tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?
Originally published as “Baring Pale Flesh” by Poetic License/Monumental Moments
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 is 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.
Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch
Davenport tomorrow ...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.
Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.
There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.
The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.
They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science ...
after all, what is life?
Davenport tomorrow ...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.
Dawn
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth, Laura, and all good mothers
Bring your peculiar strength
to the strange nightmarish fray:
wrap up your cherished ones
in the golden light of day.
Amen
Originally published by The Lyric
Twice
by Michael R. Burch
Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days
when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.
But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:
rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.
Originally published by The Lyric
Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch
Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot
born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,
dreaming of blood,
her fangs―white―baring,
revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring ...
Vampires
by Michael R. Burch
Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them ...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross―such common things.
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.
Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.
We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, the more he prays to find us ...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.
Published by Monumental Moments (Eye Scry Publications), Weirdbook, Gothic Fairy, Dracula and His Kin, NawaZone and Raiders’ Digest
The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch
O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!
This poem was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.
For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch
For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Ode to the Sun
by Michael R. Burch
Day is done...
on, swift sun.
Follow still your silent course.
Follow your unyielding course.
On, swift sun.
Leave no trace of where you've been;
give no hint of what you've seen.
But, ever as you onward flee,
touch me, O sun,
touch me.
Now day is done...
on, swift sun.
Go touch my love about her face
and warm her now for my embrace,
for though she sleeps so far away,
where she is not, I shall not stay.
Go tell her now I, too, shall come.
Go on, swift sun,
go on.
Published by The Tucumcari Literary Review. I believe I wrote this poem toward the end of my senior year in high school, around age 18, during my early Romantic Period. Keywords/Tags: Ode, Romantic, Love, Lover, Sun, Time, Night, Sleep, Dreams, mrbiou
To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch
Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.
Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.
Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.
A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?
A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss
from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:
the lost gold of vanished stars.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.
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 as “Geode”
Geode
by Michael R. Burch
Love—less than eternal, not quite true—
is still the best emotion man can muster.
Through folds of peeling rind—rough, scarred, crude-skinned—
she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale.
Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted,
in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows
that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle;
dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell.
And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster,
as she hints and shimmers, touching those who see,
she is not without her uses or her meanings;
in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows
the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer,
till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair.
What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch
This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?
How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?
Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?
Now I am truly lost!
PLATO TRANSLATIONS
These epitaphs and other epigrams have been ascribed to Plato...
Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
But go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
We left the thunderous Aegean
to sleep peacefully here on the plains of Ecbatan.
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, Euboea's neighbor!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
We who navigated the Aegean's thunderous storm-surge
now sleep peacefully here on the mid-plains of Ecbatan:
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, nigh to Euboea!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
This poet was pleasing to foreigners
and even more delightful to his countrymen:
Pindar, beloved of the melodious Muses.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Some say the Muses are nine.
Foolish critics, count again!
Sappho of ****** makes ten.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Even as you once shone, the Star of Morning, above our heads,
even so you now shine, the Star of Evening, among the dead.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Why do you gaze up at the stars?
Oh, my Star, that I were Heaven,
to gaze at you with many eyes!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Every heart sings an incomplete song,
until another heart sings along.
Those who would love long to join in the chorus.
At a lover's touch, everyone becomes a poet.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
NOTE: I take this Plato epigram to be an epithalamium, with the two voices joining in a complete song being the bride and groom, and the rest of the chorus being the remainder of the wedding ceremony.
The Apple
ascribed to Plato
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Here's an apple; if you're able to love me,
catch it and chuck me your cherry in exchange.
But if you hesitate, as I hope you won't,
take the apple, examine it carefully,
and consider how briefly its beauty will last.
Bubble
by Michael R. Burch
...…..….........Love
..…......fragile elusive
.......if held ... too closely
....cannot............withstand
..the inter..................ruption
of its............................…bright
..unmalleable.............tension
....and breaks disintegrates
..…...at the............touch of
....…....an undiscerning
.....................hand.
Breakings
by Michael R. Burch
I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: "Frail things must break!"
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?
I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.
But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.
Break Time
by Michael R. Burch
for those who lost loved ones on 9-11
Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
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?”
“Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”)
by Günter Grass
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Why have I remained silent, so long,
failing to mention something openly practiced
in war games which now threaten to leave us
merely meaningless footnotes?
Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first
might annihilate a beleaguered nation
whose people march to a martinet’s tune,
compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience.
Why? Merely because of the suspicion
that a bomb might be built by Iranians.
But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself
to name that other nation, where, for years
―shrouded in secrecy―
a formidable nuclear capability has existed
beyond all control, simply because
no inspections were ever allowed?
The universal concealment of this fact
abetted by my own incriminating silence
now feels like a heavy, enforced lie,
an oppressive inhibition, a vice,
a strong constraint, which, if dismissed,
immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.”
But now my own country,
guilty of its unprecedented crimes
which continually demand remembrance,
once again seeking financial gain
(although with glib lips we call it “reparations”)
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel―
this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads
capable of exterminating all life
where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence.
So now I will say what must be said.
Why did I remain silent so long?
Because I thought my origins,
tarred by an ineradicable stain,
forbade me to declare the truth to Israel,
a country to which I am and will always remain attached.
Why is it only now that I say,
in my advancing age,
and with my last drop of ink
on the final page
that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger
an already fragile world peace?
Because tomorrow might be too late,
and so the truth must be heard today.
And because we Germans,
already burdened with many weighty crimes,
could become enablers of yet another,
one easily foreseen,
and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity.
Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence
because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy
and because I hope many others too
will free themselves from the shackles of silence,
and speak out to renounce violence
by insisting on permanent supervision
of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s
by an international agency
accepted by both governments.
Only thus can we find the path to peace
for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else
living in a region currently consumed by madness
―and ultimately, for ourselves.
Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012). Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."
Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch
for the Religious Right
Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.
Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)
Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.
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.
Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch
for and after William Blake
I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.
I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked
nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.
II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,
the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.
III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,
I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,
were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild
I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.
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!
Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake
O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!
Published as the collection "IOU"
by michael r. burch
i might have said it
but i didn’t
u might have noticed
but u wouldn’t
we might have been us
but we couldn’t
u might respond
but probably shouldn’t
Keywords/Tags: iou, chit, debenture, bill, debt, relationship, lovers, impasse, silence, golden, I, owe, you, borrower, lender, Polonius, collectible, mrbiou
Passionate One
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Love of my life,
light of my morning―
arise, brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.
Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven―
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.
Talent
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
I liked the first passage
of her poem―where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.
There's something like love
in the rhythms of night
―in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end―
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.
So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
"If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!"
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.
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.
Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch
“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke
Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imagining watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.
Explicit *** was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.
I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue:
adultery, fornication, *******, ******.
Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush
of her unrouged cheeks,
by her pale lips
accented only by a slight quiver,
a trepidation.
What did those lustrous folds foretell
of our uncommon desire?
Why did she cross and uncross her legs
lovely and long in their taupe sheaths?
Why did her ******* rise pointedly,
as if indicating a direction?
“Come unto me,
(unto me),”
together, we sang,
cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,
my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:
all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.
This poem is set at Faith Christian Academy, which I attended for a year during the ninth grade. Another poem, "*** 101," was also written about my experiences at FCA that year.
*** 101
by Michael R. Burch
That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina ...
Where we sat exhausted
from the day’s skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity ...
Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ...
The most unlikely coupling—
Lambert, 18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ...
Beside him, Wanda, 13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving ...
And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew ...
that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters, deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way, or will.
I wrote the poem above as a teenager in high school. The lines started out as part of a longer poem, but I thought these were the two best lines and decided to let them stand alone on the principle that "discretion is the better part of valor."
Medusa
by Michael R. Burch
Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair:
long, ravenblack & melancholy.
Many suitors drowned there:
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.
Originally published by Grand Little Things
At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch
“Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.
At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,
while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound
of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—
to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember,
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.
Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.
Originally published by The Lyric
Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord,
established earth's fearful foundations.
Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof
for the sons of men: Holy Creator,
mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty!
Cædmon’s Face
by Michael R. Burch
At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,
while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound
of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked here too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—
to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember:
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.
He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike—as father unto son.
But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father’s face becomes his own.
He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker’s might, man’s lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth
suspended under heaven’s roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:
his face was Poetry’s, from youth.
Song from Ælla: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch
O! sing unto my roundelay,
O! drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more at holy-day,
Like a running river be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Black his crown as the winter night,
White his skin as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O! he lies by the willow tree!
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Hark! the raven ***** his wing
In the briar'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loudly sings
To the nightmares, as they go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
See! the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true love's shroud:
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Here upon my true love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coolness of a maid:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
With my hands I'll frame the briars
Round his holy corpse to grow:
Elf and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body, stilled, shall go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heart’s red blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Water witches, crowned with plaits,
Bear me to your lethal tide.
I die; I come; my true love waits.
Thus the damsel spoke, and died.
The song above is, in my opinion, competitive with Shakespeare's songs in his plays, and may be the best of Thomas Chatterton's so-called "Rowley" poems. The fact that Chatterton wrote it in his teens is astounding.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”)
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch
As wroten bie the goode Prieste
Thomas Rowley 1464
In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen,
Then hot upon the meadows cast his ray;
The apple ruddied from its pallid green
And the fat pear did extend its leafy spray;
The pied goldfinches sang the livelong day;
'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And the ground was mantled in fine green cashmere.
The sun was gleaming in the bright mid-day,
Dead-still the air, and likewise the heavens blue,
When from the sea arose, in drear array,
A heap of clouds of sullen sable hue,
Which full and fast unto the woodlands drew,
Hiding at once the sun's fair festive face,
As the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace.
Beneath a holly tree, by a pathway's side,
Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent lead,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide.
Poor in his sight, ungentle in his ****,
Long brimful of the miseries of need,
Where from the hailstones could the beggar fly?
He had no shelter there, nor any convent nigh.
Look in his gloomy face; his sprite there scan;
How woebegone, how withered, dried-up, dead!
Haste to thy parsonage, accursèd man!
Haste to thy crypt, thy only restful bed.
Cold, as the clay which will grow on thy head,
Is Charity and Love among high elves;
Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.
The gathered storm is ripe; the huge drops fall;
The sunburnt meadows smoke and drink the rain;
The coming aghastness makes the cattle pale;
And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain;
Dashed from the clouds, the waters float again;
The heavens gape; the yellow lightning flies;
And the hot fiery steam in the wide flamepot dies.
Hark! now the thunder's rattling, clamoring sound
Heaves slowly on, and then enswollen clangs,
Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drown'd,
Still on the coward ear of terror hangs;
The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swings;
Again the lightning―then the thunder pours,
And the full clouds are burst at once in stormy showers.
Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain,
The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came;
His chapournette was drenchèd with the rain,
And his pinched girdle met with enormous shame;
He cursing backwards gave his hymns the same;
The storm increasing, and he drew aside
With the poor alms-craver, near the holly tree to bide.
His cape was all of Lincoln-cloth so fine,
With a gold button fasten'd near his chin;
His ermine robe was edged with golden twine,
And his high-heeled shoes a Baron's might have been;
Full well it proved he considered cost no sin;
The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight
For the horse-milliner loved rosy ribbons bright.
"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"Oh, let me wait within your convent door,
Till the sun shineth high above our head,
And the loud tempest of the air is o'er;
Helpless and old am I, alas!, and poor;
No house, no friend, no money in my purse;
All that I call my own is this―my silver cross.
"Varlet," replied the Abbott, "cease your din;
This is no season alms and prayers to give;
My porter never lets a beggar in;
None touch my ring who in dishonor live."
And now the sun with the blackened clouds did strive,
And shed upon the ground his glaring ray;
The Abbot spurred his steed, and swiftly rode away.
Once more the sky grew black; the thunder rolled;
Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen;
Not full of pride, not buttoned up in gold;
His cape and jape were gray, and also clean;
A Limitour he was, his order serene;
And from the pathway side he turned to see
Where the poor almer lay beneath the holly tree.
"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake."
The Limitour then loosen'd his purse's thread,
And from it did a groat of silver take;
The needy pilgrim did for happiness shake.
"Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care;
"We are God's stewards all, naught of our own we bear."
"But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me,
Scarce any give a rentroll to their Lord.
Here, take my cloak, as thou are bare, I see;
'Tis thine; the Saints will give me my reward."
He left the pilgrim, went his way abroad.
****** and happy Saints, in glory showered,
Let the mighty bend, or the good man be empowered!
TRANSLATOR'S NOTES: It is possible that some words used by Chatterton were his own coinages; some of them apparently cannot be found in medieval literature. In a few places I have used similar-sounding words that seem to not overly disturb the meaning of the poem. ― Michael R. Burch
***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch
When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,
when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath...
tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?
Originally published as “Baring Pale Flesh” by Poetic License/Monumental Moments
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 is 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.
Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch
Davenport tomorrow ...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.
Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.
There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.
The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.
They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science ...
after all, what is life?
Davenport tomorrow ...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.
Dawn
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth, Laura, and all good mothers
Bring your peculiar strength
to the strange nightmarish fray:
wrap up your cherished ones
in the golden light of day.
Amen
Originally published by The Lyric
Twice
by Michael R. Burch
Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days
when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.
But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:
rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.
Originally published by The Lyric
Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch
Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot
born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,
dreaming of blood,
her fangs―white―baring,
revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring ...
Vampires
by Michael R. Burch
Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them ...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross―such common things.
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.
Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.
We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, the more he prays to find us ...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.
Published by Monumental Moments (Eye Scry Publications), Weirdbook, Gothic Fairy, Dracula and His Kin, NawaZone and Raiders’ Digest
The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch
O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!
This poem was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.
For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch
For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Ode to the Sun
by Michael R. Burch
Day is done...
on, swift sun.
Follow still your silent course.
Follow your unyielding course.
On, swift sun.
Leave no trace of where you've been;
give no hint of what you've seen.
But, ever as you onward flee,
touch me, O sun,
touch me.
Now day is done...
on, swift sun.
Go touch my love about her face
and warm her now for my embrace,
for though she sleeps so far away,
where she is not, I shall not stay.
Go tell her now I, too, shall come.
Go on, swift sun,
go on.
Published by The Tucumcari Literary Review. I believe I wrote this poem toward the end of my senior year in high school, around age 18, during my early Romantic Period. Keywords/Tags: Ode, Romantic, Love, Lover, Sun, Time, Night, Sleep, Dreams, mrbiou
To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch
Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.
Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.
Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.
A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?
A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss
from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:
the lost gold of vanished stars.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.
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 as “Geode”
Geode
by Michael R. Burch
Love—less than eternal, not quite true—
is still the best emotion man can muster.
Through folds of peeling rind—rough, scarred, crude-skinned—
she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale.
Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted,
in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows
that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle;
dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell.
And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster,
as she hints and shimmers, touching those who see,
she is not without her uses or her meanings;
in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows
the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer,
till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair.
What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch
This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?
How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?
Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?
Now I am truly lost!
PLATO TRANSLATIONS
These epitaphs and other epigrams have been ascribed to Plato...
Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
But go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
We left the thunderous Aegean
to sleep peacefully here on the plains of Ecbatan.
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, Euboea's neighbor!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
We who navigated the Aegean's thunderous storm-surge
now sleep peacefully here on the mid-plains of Ecbatan:
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, nigh to Euboea!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
This poet was pleasing to foreigners
and even more delightful to his countrymen:
Pindar, beloved of the melodious Muses.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Some say the Muses are nine.
Foolish critics, count again!
Sappho of ****** makes ten.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Even as you once shone, the Star of Morning, above our heads,
even so you now shine, the Star of Evening, among the dead.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Why do you gaze up at the stars?
Oh, my Star, that I were Heaven,
to gaze at you with many eyes!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Every heart sings an incomplete song,
until another heart sings along.
Those who would love long to join in the chorus.
At a lover's touch, everyone becomes a poet.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
NOTE: I take this Plato epigram to be an epithalamium, with the two voices joining in a complete song being the bride and groom, and the rest of the chorus being the remainder of the wedding ceremony.
The Apple
ascribed to Plato
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Here's an apple; if you're able to love me,
catch it and chuck me your cherry in exchange.
But if you hesitate, as I hope you won't,
take the apple, examine it carefully,
and consider how briefly its beauty will last.
Bubble
by Michael R. Burch
...…..….........Love
..…......fragile elusive
.......if held ... too closely
....cannot............withstand
..the inter..................ruption
of its............................…bright
..unmalleable.............tension
....and breaks disintegrates
..…...at the............touch of
....…....an undiscerning
.....................hand.
Breakings
by Michael R. Burch
I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: "Frail things must break!"
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?
I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.
But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.
Break Time
by Michael R. Burch
for those who lost loved ones on 9-11
Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
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?”
“Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”)
by Günter Grass
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Why have I remained silent, so long,
failing to mention something openly practiced
in war games which now threaten to leave us
merely meaningless footnotes?
Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first
might annihilate a beleaguered nation
whose people march to a martinet’s tune,
compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience.
Why? Merely because of the suspicion
that a bomb might be built by Iranians.
But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself
to name that other nation, where, for years
―shrouded in secrecy―
a formidable nuclear capability has existed
beyond all control, simply because
no inspections were ever allowed?
The universal concealment of this fact
abetted by my own incriminating silence
now feels like a heavy, enforced lie,
an oppressive inhibition, a vice,
a strong constraint, which, if dismissed,
immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.”
But now my own country,
guilty of its unprecedented crimes
which continually demand remembrance,
once again seeking financial gain
(although with glib lips we call it “reparations”)
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel―
this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads
capable of exterminating all life
where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence.
So now I will say what must be said.
Why did I remain silent so long?
Because I thought my origins,
tarred by an ineradicable stain,
forbade me to declare the truth to Israel,
a country to which I am and will always remain attached.
Why is it only now that I say,
in my advancing age,
and with my last drop of ink
on the final page
that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger
an already fragile world peace?
Because tomorrow might be too late,
and so the truth must be heard today.
And because we Germans,
already burdened with many weighty crimes,
could become enablers of yet another,
one easily foreseen,
and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity.
Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence
because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy
and because I hope many others too
will free themselves from the shackles of silence,
and speak out to renounce violence
by insisting on permanent supervision
of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s
by an international agency
accepted by both governments.
Only thus can we find the path to peace
for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else
living in a region currently consumed by madness
―and ultimately, for ourselves.
Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012). Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."
Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch
for the Religious Right
Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.
Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)
Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.
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.
Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch
for and after William Blake
I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.
I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked
nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.
II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,
the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.
III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,
I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,
were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild
I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.
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!
Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake
O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!
Published as the collection "IOU"
jake aller Mar 2019
cosmic dreams and nightmares
jake aller
Mar 2019
World According to Cosmos Updates March 3, 2019
Note: I am taking a two week trip to Vietnam and will update my blog when I return with my reflections on my trip, updated publications etc.
Cosmic Dreams and Nightmares
I don't dream dreams. I dream movies complete with action, music, food, smells everything. In this one I had a vision of a possible future. it was so vivid, almost as if I were watching the hearing take place.
Three stories
Dream Girl (true story)
General Zod (flash fiction
Sam Adams Vs. the Social Cleansing Board
Six Poems
Morphing Images from Hellish Nightmare
Endless Movie
Worlds within Worlds Lost in Hell
Rafting to Hell
Satanic Torture
Micro Stories
Don’t Go Jogging in the Middle of the Night
Don’t touch this button!
Don’t open the door
Don’t go to the theater tonight stay home with me
Don’t go to Dallas I have a bad feeling about the trip
Dream Girl
Cheating Death 100 Times
Guardian Angel
Medical Mystery
SLA Hit List
Dream Girl – A true Story – reprinted from Dreams and the Unexplainable
You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
Author Unknown
The dreams started when I was a senior at Berkeley High School in 1974. About a month before I graduated, I fell asleep in a physics class after lunch and had the first dream:
A beautiful Asian woman was standing next to me, talking in a strange language. She was stunning—the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was in her early twenties, with long black hair, and piercing black eyes. She had the look of royalty. She looked at me and then disappeared, beamed out of my dream like in Star Trek. I fell out of my chair screaming, “Who are you?” She did not answer.
About a month went by, and then I started having the dream repeatedly. Always the same pattern.
Early morning, she would stand next to me talking. I would ask who she was, and she would disappear. She was the most beautiful, alluring woman I had ever seen.
I was struck speechless every time I had the dream.
I had the dream every month during the eight years during which I went to college and served in the Peace Corps. In fact, when I joined the Peace Corps, I had to decide whether to go Korea or Thailand. The night before I had to submit my decision, I had the dream again and it made me sure that she was in Korea waiting for me.
After the Peace Corps, I still hadn’t met my dream woman. I got a job working for the U.S. Army as an instructor and stayed in Korea. I kept having the dream, until I had the very last one:
She was standing next to me, speaking to me in Korean, but I finally understood her. She said, “Don’t worry, we will be together soon.”
Why was that the last time I had the dream? Because the very next night, the girl in my dream got off the bus in front of me. She went on to the base with an acquaintance of mine, a fellow teacher, and they went to see a movie. I saw her and found the courage to speak with her.
We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet that weekend.
The next night, she was waiting for me as I entered the Army base to teach a class. She told me she was a college senior and she had something to tell me. I signed her on to the base and left her at the library to study while I taught, and then we went out for coffee after class. She told me she was madly in love with me, and that I was the man for her. I told her not to worry as I felt the same.
That weekend, we met Saturday and Sunday and hung out all day. On Sunday night, I proposed to her. It was only three days after we had met, but for me it felt like we had met eight years ago. I had been waiting all my life for her to walk out of my dreams and into my life, and here she was.
Her mother did not want her to marry a foreigner. One day, about a month after we met, she invited me to meet her parents. I brought a bottle of Jack Daniels for her father and drank the entire bottle with him. He approved of me, but her mother still had reservations. After a Buddhist priest told her my future wife and I were a perfect astrological combination, she agreed, and we planned our wedding.
The wedding was a media sensation in South Korea. My wife explained it to me years later. At the time, I was overwhelmed just by the fact that we were getting married and I didn’t fully understand how unusual this was. My wife was of the old royal clan, distant relatives to the former kings of Korea. In the clan’s history, only two people had ever married foreigners: my wife, and Rhee Syngman, who was the first President of South Korea. My father, who was a former Undersecretary of Labor, came out for the wedding, which fueled even more media interest. Our marriage defied the stereotypical Korean-foreign marriage where the women married some hapless GI just to escape poverty and immigrate to the U.S. We were the first foreign/Korean couple to get married at a Korean Army base. Over 1,000 people came to the wedding, and my father was interviewed on the morning news programs.
This all happened thirty-seven years ago, (45 years since the first dream) and I am still married to the girl in my dreams. Now in my dreams she watches over me when we are apart.
General Zod Conquers the World
SETI and the search for extraterrestrial life goes on overdrive when scientists report what appears to be radio and television broadcasts from a planet eight light years from earth, the same planet as the Vulcans came from in the Star Trek universe. The programs show a world where dinosaur-like creatures are running the world and there appears to be a civil war. Over the next six months, the world is transfixed watching the alien broadcasts which are translated in English via a supercomputer program. In the broadcast, a nuclear war has occurred. The surviving party regains absolute control and announces the formation of the Galactic Empire. General Zod is the First Emperor. They have discovered Earth as well. The aliens launch a crash project to develop interstellar travel so they can come to earth and conquer the earth.
The revelations that there is an external threat to the planet causes the United Nations to get together with the help of the United States and Russia another space powers, they put together Space defense International organization and also invigorates efforts to make the UN a real Planetary government including finally conquering climate change.
But it was too late. General Zod’s son arrives to take over the earth. He makes a broadcast saying that they were liberating Earth in the name of the Galactic Empire and that resistance would be futile.
They land at the White House and when President Trump comes out to greet them,
General Zod cuts off his head, and then cuts off the heads of all the staffers as they come out White House. After an hour of unimaginable horrors, including mass rapes, blowing up the Pentagon and the CIA, General Zod announces that he had taken over the world.
Life will continue as before as long as people behave and follow the rules they would be fine Resistance to the new empire will be met with instant death. Life in the Empire is not a democracy. They would not tolerate Freedom of speech, and Freedom of Press, and Freedom of Assembly And the freedom to oppose the State. The state is everything. As long as humans remember that they would be just fine. They took over the United States because it was the biggest country in the world. And that his forces will take over the rest of the world but in the next couple weeks. If people on earth accept the new order, their safety would be guaranteed. Companies would be taken over by Galactic Empire companies, and everybody would have to learn Galactic standard. Within one year older languages will be banned.
Sam Adams Vs. the Social Cleansing Board
the summons
Sam Adams was worried. He could not sleep. He got up at 4 am and wrote in his journal and tried to cope with the dread that was overwhelming him. He had received the summons yesterday that he was to report to the social cleansing board for a review on whether he would allow to continue to be on the automatic permit list or would be referred for final status determination. Sam was a retired Federal worker trying to live on dwindling savings.
Sam had Alzheimer’s and was rapidly depleting his life’s savings. Two years before he had been released from prison, one of millions of ex political prisoners. His crime? Authoring anti-government poems just before the beginning of the Christian States of America, right after the second civil war. Unfortunately for him and his millions of ex-prisoners, his side lost the war. He wanted to flee to the United Provinces and settle down in California but lacked money to move. And getting a job at his age, with Alzheimer’s and his political rating was proving difficult at best.
All of which added up to a 90 percent probability his last days were approaching.
Under the new rules imposed by the Christian republican party in the newly established Christian states, all citizens over the age of 18 were on the permitted list if they met all of the following criteria. He tried to think why he was being referred to the board. Perhaps it was because of the recent crackdown on social deviancy. Millions of homosexuals, transgenered people, atheists, drug users, alcoholics, and non-religious people had been rounded up and eliminated according to the rumors. Perhaps someone had fingered him as a possible deviant. He fit the stereotype, no children, known drug user, known alcohol user, suspect politically, atheist and now Alzheimer’s patient. And he was not racially pure having some black blood, some Asian blood and some Jewish blood. And he had married across the racial divide which was now illegal.
The story was that if you flipped and named names you would sometimes be spared for now, and if your info was correct, you could be rewarded. Of course, those whom you flipped were not too fortunate. That was probably the story or someone could have heard that he was an ex political prisoner, or simply that he had Alzheimer’s’.
He had no children. And he was a secret atheist and had been involved with the dissent movement and had spent five years as a political prisoner at the start of the Christian Revolution. He was determined to make a stand and denounce the whole rotten system before the board although that would probably seal his fate.
As an Alzheimer’s patient he could no longer work. His wife had died the year before while he was in prison after she had been deported to her native Korea. She left him some assets but he had little idea how to manage his finances and he was behind in his rent and had received an eviction notice which had probably triggered the visit by the social cleansing staff who recommend a final status determination. But it was just as likely he was on the list because someone flipped on him.
He also did not make it last time when they came for him at midnight. Always at midnight the story goes.
The soldiers came took him away from his wife and locked him up for two years. They deported his wife whom he heard had died shortly afterwards. He spend two years at hard labor in the dessert near Las Vegas and was released into Las Vegas.
Las Vegas was a different town now that the casinos had left town. All that was left were back office operations, and underground ***** and *** operations and underground casinos. It was a hot bed of political dissent and there was an underground railroad to California, which was not part of the Christian states. Sam had been preparing to leave which was a crime and perhaps that is why he was on the list.
The hearing would be at 10 am. He was meeting his lawyer at the hearing board but his lawyer was not too optimistic.
the Permit Criteria
The basic criteria for being on the permit list were:
For Males
Age 18 to age 70
White race
Married to a white woman with children
Must be either working, in school full time, serving in military duty, or working in prison if convicted of a crime.
Homelessness was not allowed. If unemployed and or homeless, would be referred to social cleansing department unless one had a relative who was willing to take care of your needs.
Since there were no pensions or social security anymore and no government provided health care, one must have sufficient assets through one’s work, or savings or through one’s relatives to provide for one ‘s needs. If not you would be sent to the social cleansing board for final status determination.
For Females
Same basic rules applied but if one were married, and had children one would be on the permitted list, if children are older, if spouse’s income is sufficient one would be on the list.
If single or divorced, and homeless one would also be subject to social cleansing unless one’s relatives would willing to sponsor you. Since there were no pensions or social security anymore and no government provided health care, one must have sufficient assets through one’s work, or savings or through one’s relatives to provide for one ‘s needs. If not you would be sent to the social cleansing board for final status determination.
For Aged People
Additional requirements for the age you were expected to take care of your basic needs through employment and savings and the help of relatives. If you were evicted for non-payment of rent, or judged to not have sufficient assets left to sustain your basic needs including medical care, you would be referred for final status determination.
For all people additional requirements applied.
****** deviancy, drug use, alcohol use, gambling, *** outside of marriage, homosexuality would result in immediate referral to the social cleansing board as all were banned conduct that could result in final termination. Being a member of a prohibited religious class could also be grounds for referral as would a pattern of not attending Christian services. Finally, if one had been arrested for political crimes one would be marked forever.
<h2>Sam's Rating</h2>
One had a government social rating. Sam knew that his rating was a D meaning that the government would be watching him all the time, and it would be difficult to get a job. Only the A’s and B’s were guaranteed to be on the permit list.
To be a A you had be to a true believer, had to be white, had to attend church on a regular basis, and had to be employed naturally.
To be a B same thing but you could be a B if you were a minority, or had engaged in alcohol or drug use under the old rules.
C meant that there was something wrong with your background, you were an atheist, you were a minority etc.
D mean that you were a serious threat to the regime.
E meant that you would be terminated.
F met you were terminated as it met Failure to survive, and family members of F were also labeled F as they were usually terminated at the same time.
Being associated with banned political movements, including reading banned materials could also lead one to being referred to the social cleansing board as all were grounds for either termination or criminal prosecution if under the age of 70.
The board has three choices - granted temporary status extension, referral for termination, or referral to criminal prosecution.
The termination would be carried out quickly. There would be an optional funeral at your Church, then the execution through the method of your choice - firing squad, beheading, electric chair, or gas. The default was gas where you were put in a room with up to ten other people and put to sleep.
Afterwards your body would be cremated in an electricity generating plant with the ashes turned into fertilizer products. There were no burials allowed unless one was rich enough and connected enough to request a burial exception. Most people did not qualify.
the Hearing
The hearing started. The presiding Judge, Judge Miller was a stern face white man in his 70’s and a true believer. He was sent to Las Vegas to clean it up as Las Vegas was the wild west, a hot bed of dissent, illegal drug use, illegal prostitution and illegal casinos. It was also near several political prisons so many ex cons lived there.
The Judge was the chairman of the Nevada state committee that did not exist and was a senior official in the Federal committee that did not exist that brought together government, business and church leaders to coordinate government policies and that secretly ran the Christian States of America.
Probably a score of A thought Sam.
The judge announced that he had reviewed Sam’s file and was shocked that Sam had escaped final termination. He said that the previous board had erred in simply sending him to prison. He should have been eradicated as a social evil, as a cancer that needs to be removed from the pure body politics. Sam and his ilk sickened him. Sam was a free thinker, an atheist, a mix race mongrel, married to a non-white and was therefore guilty of crimes against the white race which was a crime. The Judge was determined to see justice done.
He asked Sam a series of questions. Sam’s answers sealed his fate.
Sam, what is your occupation?
None for now.
You realize that under the law you must be working, in service, in school or in prison?
I can’t find a job due to my age, my Alzheimer’s; and my political record.
That’s irrelevant. You are just a lousy atheist *******. You deserve no sympathy. And have none from me.
Are you white?
No, I am mixed race, part native, part Asian, part black.
I see you were married to a non-white and had no children. Good for you we would not want to see more mongrel children. Such children should be eliminated at birth in my opinion and will be starting next month when we begin enforcing the racial purity laws.
What was your crime? Let’s see reading prohibited writings, keeping a journal, publishing an anti-government blog, authoring anti-government poems and stories. You served two years at hard labor?
Yes
Do you still write?
Yes, everyday but I no longer publish on line.
Good. No one would want to read that trash anyway.
Do you go to church?
No
Do you believe in God?
No, I do not believe in an imaginary man in the sky.
One more anti-religious statement from you will result in an immediate ruling of termination.
Do you drink?
If I can find it yes
Do you gamble
Yes, when I can
Do you support the Christian Republican Party and the Christian States of America?
No, I do not.
Okay, I have enough for a ruling. Sam Adams, you are hereby sentence to termination. Tomorrow morning at 7 am you will be turned into electricity and fertilizer. Take him away.
Next please.
At midnight there was a knock at the door. A black man appeared and said he was a friend and he was being smuggled to California. Sam rejoiced and went with his new friend and reached SF in the morning, escaping death for the 23rd time in his life.
the End
Poetic Nightmares
Morphing Images from a Hellish Nightmare
Note: From a real nightmare End Note
I am in a room
Drinking at a party
And smoking ****
Watching people all around me
Change into hideous creatures
Monsters from the deepest depths of hell
Everyone in the room
Has been transformed except me
The Chief of them all
Wears a Trumpian mask
Complete with orange hair
Half human half pig
His deputy
Wears the face of Putin
But his body
Half human, half horse: if
The other creatures wear masks
Many of them wear
Green Pepe the alt-right
Symbolic frog masks
And have T-shirts
Bearing alt right slogans
And **** symbols
And as they prance about
They chant alt. Right slogans
And neo-**** chants
Jews will not Replace us
And the rest of these creatures
Are hideous ugly beasts
With only a vestige of humanity left
And these monsters are engaged
In all sorts of foul evil deeds
****** violence death
All around
And non-stop
violent drug-fueled ******
As these creatures
Half human half monsters
Half male, half female creatures
Snort coke, *******, speed
Smoke **** and drink ***** shots
Scotch, bourbon and beer
The Trumpian Pig leads the charge
Starts engaging in ****** with Putin
Who chases after people
Cutting off their heads with his sword
They turn on to their fellow creatures
****** and killing each other
and eating their fellow creatures
All night long
Then they attack me
Screaming
Jews will not replace us
And I wake up
Screaming
As the sun comes up
Just another nightmare
The Endless Movie
Watching the TV coverage
Of the great government shut down
Of 2018-2019
I am reminded of a movie
As I fall asleep
Listening to the TV
Blather on and on
About what it all means
Mr. Natural pops up
And screams
"It don’t mean s….
“Dude, the endless movie
Is about to begin”!
A middle-aged white man
Down on his proverbial luck
Just been fired
Replaced by a foreign worker
Or a robot
Or just fired
Because he was no longer
Deemed useful
To the masters of the universe
If he was lucky
He'd be given a watch
And an IOU worthless pension
And the man wanders into a restaurant
Pulls out a gun
Eats his breakfast
After the official breakfast hour
Puts on a Pepe the green frog mask
Drops acid, Snorts speed
Drinks a shot of *****
And coffee smokes a joint
Snorts ******* for good measure
and smokes a cigarette
And walks outside
steals a bus at gun point
Filled with passengers
He tells them
They are hostages
And he puts on his vest
With the dead man switch
Next to the bomb
He announces
Via tweet
He is going to take the bus
To the proverbial *** of gold
Hidden deep in a cave
And when he got there
He would release the hostages
And disappear into the mine
And never be found again
And as the bus careens around the mountain
At 100 miles an hour
The dude sprouts out
Conspiracy after conspiracy theory
About Obama the Muslim communist
secret gay working with George Soros
the Jewish money people
in league with the shapeshifting lizards
and Mueller is one of them
they are all after him
because he knows the deal
And the passengers are transfixed
Half hoping, he would make it
Half hoping, he would be blown away
And as the bus careens out of control
With the wheels falling off
And the cliff looming ahead
You realize we are all doomed
Worlds Within Worlds Lost in Inner Space
A man woke up one day
Lost in inner space
Went so far down
The proverbial rabbit hole
That he did not know
Where he was
Nor what time it was
Nor when it was
As he stared out
At a bewildering world
A world lost in inner space
Deep down in his dreams
Filled with nightmarishly real
Monsters, demons and ghostly apparitions
He saw them and began running
Running running running
With the hell hounds behind him
Leading him to the edge
of the pits of hell itself
abandon all hope
ye who enter here
the sign read
above the entrance to the pit
and there was a devil standing there
armed with a clipboard
and a computer spreadsheet
Satan was the ultimate bureaucrat
Name barked the devil
Date of Birth ?
Date of Death?
Don’t know? That won’t do at all
Hmm
Car accident due to drunk driving
And you killed a child
Bad on you
But here in hell
The punishment fits the crime
And the devil laughed
Joined in by the hell hounds
And other nightmare creatures
A bell ran out
In the purple crystalline sky
And slowly the worlds receded
And he found himself alive
In his room
And vowed
That today
Was the day
He would quit drinking
Quit taking drugs
And quit chasing strange woman
And having wild libertine ***
He picked up the phone
It was Satan’s aid
Be careful what you vow
We are listening
If you fulfil your vows
You might find yourself
Escaping life in Hell
It is up to you to choose
And the man got dressed
Went to work
Thinking deep thoughts
And drove off a cliff
And back down the endless
Worlds within worlds
Satanic Torture
I find myself
In a dark room
Strapped to a bed
The light turns on
The large TV comes on
A smiling image
Of Satan fills the TV
He is dressed
In a conservative business suit
Looks like he came
Out of a corporate
board meeting
surrounded by demonic aides
who constantly shove papers
at him
He looks up from his lap top
And smiles
A deadly so insincere smile
His voice booms out
Welcome to Hell
My satanic slaves
I am Satan
Your new master
Each of you
Has been sentenced
To an eternity of torture
And the punishment
Must fit the crime
So, for you
Mr. Jake Cosmos Aller
Failed aspiring poet
And novelist
Your torture
Is to be strapped
To that bed
Unable to move
As you are filled
With the need
To **** and ****
But you cannot move
And your skin
Is crawling with bugs
And itchy
as Hell so to speak
and you are so sleepy
but you cannot sleep
the TV will play
endless repeats
Of some of the worst TV
and movie shows
ever produced
Starting with my favorite
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Featuring your favor annoying little girl
Carmetta! Singing for you forever
As you are the ultimate cake sniffer
Welcome to Hell
Rafting Towards Hell
I woke up
To find myself
Rafting down a river
I looked up
At the cliffs
Towering above
the roaring torrent
and see the dark demons
of my terrible nightmares
chasing the boat
firing flaming arrows
and I see werewolves
goblins, ghosts and monsters
running along the river bed
screaming obscenities
as they chase me
to my doom
and I see the waterfall ahead
and see my pending doom
as I rush over the edge
of reason
Micro Stories
53 word stories regarding unheeded warnings
Don’t Go Jogging in the Middle of the Night
It all started with a jog in the middle of the night. Despite my wife’s warning don’t go jogging in the middle of the night. Broke me heal in a million pieces, 14 operations ensured, mutant MDR Staff almost killed me, almost lost the leg. . should have listened to her warning.
Don’t touch this button!
Don’t touch this button the former President said. I said, what this button? And that led to the launching of nuclear weapons, going to defon three, and world war 3 with millions of people dead end of civilization moment. Should not have touched the red button.
Don’t open the door
When you find yourself running for your life chased by demons from hell and backed into a corner in a burning house filled with flames and are about to die in a million horrible ways you remembered that they warned you not to open door number three in this crazy reality TV show.
Don’t go to the theater tonight stay home with me
Mary Todd Lincoln had a vicious headache and was not in the mood to go out. The President though ignored her wishes and told her that he had to go to the theater that night to show the world everything was okay now the war was ending. Should have listened to her.
Don’t go to Dallas I have a bad feeling about the trip
Jackie was known for her moods and her premonitions. Something the President found both amusing an annoying. She told him that she a vision of death waiting for him in Dallas that day. The President dismissed her foolishness as he put it and went to Dallas to meet his fate.
true love story.
In 1974 I had the first dream. While sleeping in a boring class, I saw a beautiful Asian woman standing at me speaking a foreign language. I fell out of chair yelling who are you? I began having the same dream month after month for eight years. One day I realized she was in Korea so I went there in the Peace Corps to meet her. In 1982 I had the last dream. She said don’t worry we meet soon. That night she walked off a bus, out of the dream and into my life. We’ve been married 37 years.
Cheating Death 22 Times
Also, a true story.
I have cheated death 22 times in my life. I was born a preemie, almost died at birth, and had all the childhood illness at once. In 1979 I came down with Typhoid fever in Korea in the Peace Corps. In 1991 almost got hit by a train. In 1996-1997 had 14 operations due to a mutant drug resistant staph infection, almost died several times. In 1997 I had an acute stomach ailment that almost killed me, due to excessive antibiotic usage, if I had waited 30 minutes more would have been dead. And had dengue in 2010.
Guardian Angel Saves My Life
Another true story
In 1990, I was teaching ESL in Korea. My wife and I drove to the East Coast of Korea for a weekend away. She was in the US Army then. As we drove towards Sorak mountain, I was filled with the need to get off the road right then. I had a premonition of doom, so did my wife. We got off to drive around another park returned a few minutes later and saw a 25 car pileup. We would have been dead if we had not listened to that inner voice telling us get off now.
Medical Mystery
Another true story
Back in 1996, when I was in the hospital fighting a mutant staph infection after a disastrous jogging accident that led to 14 operations, the internal medicine doctor said that there was something else going on. He finally discovered that I had a rare parasite, a tape worm of sorts that remained inert, its only becomes active if you take steroids then it blows up like a basketball killing you instantly. Six months later I had to take steroids due to frozen shoulder syndrome, and if I had not gotten rid of it, I would have died a medical mystery.
SLA Hit List
True story
Back in 1974 my father was a local politician in Berkeley, California who was on the SLA’***** list as “an enemy of the people, a fascist insect that needed to be killed”. His crime? As President of the community college district, he began requiring IDS for students and staff to combat campus crime at the local community colleges. We had 24/7 police coverage for a while. One morning I saluted my father, “good morning fascist insect”. My father, being of Germanic stock did not like the joke as jokes are alien to the German DNA.
the End
Note: I am taking a two week trip to Vietnam and will update my blog when I return with my reflections on my trip, updated publications etc.
Cosmic Dreams and Nightmares
I don't dream dreams. I dream movies complete with action, music, food, smells everything. In this one I had a vision of a possible future. it was so vivid, almost as if I were watching the hearing take place.
Three stories
Dream Girl (true story)
General Zod (flash fiction
Sam Adams Vs. the Social Cleansing Board
Six Poems
Morphing Images from Hellish Nightmare
Endless Movie
Worlds within Worlds Lost in Hell
Rafting to Hell
Satanic Torture
Micro Stories
Don’t Go Jogging in the Middle of the Night
Don’t touch this button!
Don’t open the door
Don’t go to the theater tonight stay home with me
Don’t go to Dallas I have a bad feeling about the trip
Dream Girl
Cheating Death 100 Times
Guardian Angel
Medical Mystery
SLA Hit List
Dream Girl – A true Story – reprinted from Dreams and the Unexplainable
You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
Author Unknown
The dreams started when I was a senior at Berkeley High School in 1974. About a month before I graduated, I fell asleep in a physics class after lunch and had the first dream:
A beautiful Asian woman was standing next to me, talking in a strange language. She was stunning—the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was in her early twenties, with long black hair, and piercing black eyes. She had the look of royalty. She looked at me and then disappeared, beamed out of my dream like in Star Trek. I fell out of my chair screaming, “Who are you?” She did not answer.
About a month went by, and then I started having the dream repeatedly. Always the same pattern.
Early morning, she would stand next to me talking. I would ask who she was, and she would disappear. She was the most beautiful, alluring woman I had ever seen.
I was struck speechless every time I had the dream.
I had the dream every month during the eight years during which I went to college and served in the Peace Corps. In fact, when I joined the Peace Corps, I had to decide whether to go Korea or Thailand. The night before I had to submit my decision, I had the dream again and it made me sure that she was in Korea waiting for me.
After the Peace Corps, I still hadn’t met my dream woman. I got a job working for the U.S. Army as an instructor and stayed in Korea. I kept having the dream, until I had the very last one:
She was standing next to me, speaking to me in Korean, but I finally understood her. She said, “Don’t worry, we will be together soon.”
Why was that the last time I had the dream? Because the very next night, the girl in my dream got off the bus in front of me. She went on to the base with an acquaintance of mine, a fellow teacher, and they went to see a movie. I saw her and found the courage to speak with her.
We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet that weekend.
The next night, she was waiting for me as I entered the Army base to teach a class. She told me she was a college senior and she had something to tell me. I signed her on to the base and left her at the library to study while I taught, and then we went out for coffee after class. She told me she was madly in love with me, and that I was the man for her. I told her not to worry as I felt the same.
That weekend, we met Saturday and Sunday and hung out all day. On Sunday night, I proposed to her. It was only three days after we had met, but for me it felt like we had met eight years ago. I had been waiting all my life for her to walk out of my dreams and into my life, and here she was.
Her mother did not want her to marry a foreigner. One day, about a month after we met, she invited me to meet her parents. I brought a bottle of Jack Daniels for her father and drank the entire bottle with him. He approved of me, but her mother still had reservations. After a Buddhist priest told her my future wife and I were a perfect astrological combination, she agreed, and we planned our wedding.
The wedding was a media sensation in South Korea. My wife explained it to me years later. At the time, I was overwhelmed just by the fact that we were getting married and I didn’t fully understand how unusual this was. My wife was of the old royal clan, distant relatives to the former kings of Korea. In the clan’s history, only two people had ever married foreigners: my wife, and Rhee Syngman, who was the first President of South Korea. My father, who was a former Undersecretary of Labor, came out for the wedding, which fueled even more media interest. Our marriage defied the stereotypical Korean-foreign marriage where the women married some hapless GI just to escape poverty and immigrate to the U.S. We were the first foreign/Korean couple to get married at a Korean Army base. Over 1,000 people came to the wedding, and my father was interviewed on the morning news programs.
This all happened thirty-seven years ago, (45 years since the first dream) and I am still married to the girl in my dreams. Now in my dreams she watches over me when we are apart.
General Zod Conquers the World
SETI and the search for extraterrestrial life goes on overdrive when scientists report what appears to be radio and television broadcasts from a planet eight light years from earth, the same planet as the Vulcans came from in the Star Trek universe. The programs show a world where dinosaur-like creatures are running the world and there appears to be a civil war. Over the next six months, the world is transfixed watching the alien broadcasts which are translated in English via a supercomputer program. In the broadcast, a nuclear war has occurred. The surviving party regains absolute control and announces the formation of the Galactic Empire. General Zod is the First Emperor. They have discovered Earth as well. The aliens launch a crash project to develop interstellar travel so they can come to earth and conquer the earth.
The revelations that there is an external threat to the planet causes the United Nations to get together with the help of the United States and Russia another space powers, they put together Space defense International organization and also invigorates efforts to make the UN a real Planetary government including finally conquering climate change.
But it was too late. General Zod’s son arrives to take over the earth. He makes a broadcast saying that they were liberating Earth in the name of the Galactic Empire and that resistance would be futile.
They land at the White House and when President Trump comes out to greet them,
General Zod cuts off his head, and then cuts off the heads of all the staffers as they come out White House. After an hour of unimaginable horrors, including mass rapes, blowing up the Pentagon and the CIA, General Zod announces that he had taken over the world.
Life will continue as before as long as people behave and follow the rules they would be fine Resistance to the new empire will be met with instant death. Life in the Empire is not a democracy. They would not tolerate Freedom of speech, and Freedom of Press, and Freedom of Assembly And the freedom to oppose the State. The state is everything. As long as humans remember that they would be just fine. They took over the United States because it was the biggest country in the world. And that his forces will take over the rest of the world but in the next couple weeks. If people on earth accept the new order, their safety would be guaranteed. Companies would be taken over by Galactic Empire companies, and everybody would have to learn Galactic standard. Within one year older languages will be banned.
Sam Adams Vs. the Social Cleansing Board
the summons
Sam Adams was worried. He could not sleep. He got up at 4 am and wrote in his journal and tried to cope with the dread that was overwhelming him. He had received the summons yesterday that he was to report to the social cleansing board for a review on whether he would allow to continue to be on the automatic permit list or would be referred for final status determination. Sam was a retired Federal worker trying to live on dwindling savings.
Sam had Alzheimer’s and was rapidly depleting his life’s savings. Two years before he had been released from prison, one of millions of ex political prisoners. His crime? Authoring anti-government poems just before the beginning of the Christian States of America, right after the second civil war. Unfortunately for him and his millions of ex-prisoners, his side lost the war. He wanted to flee to the United Provinces and settle down in California but lacked money to move. And getting a job at his age, with Alzheimer’s and his political rating was proving difficult at best.
All of which added up to a 90 percent probability his last days were approaching.
Under the new rules imposed by the Christian republican party in the newly established Christian states, all citizens over the age of 18 were on the permitted list if they met all of the following criteria. He tried to think why he was being referred to the board. Perhaps it was because of the recent crackdown on social deviancy. Millions of homosexuals, transgenered people, atheists, drug users, alcoholics, and non-religious people had been rounded up and eliminated according to the rumors. Perhaps someone had fingered him as a possible deviant. He fit the stereotype, no children, known drug user, known alcohol user, suspect politically, atheist and now Alzheimer’s patient. And he was not racially pure having some black blood, some Asian blood and some Jewish blood. And he had married across the racial divide which was now illegal.
The story was that if you flipped and named names you would sometimes be spared for now, and if your info was correct, you could be rewarded. Of course, those whom you flipped were not too fortunate. That was probably the story or someone could have heard that he was an ex political prisoner, or simply that he had Alzheimer’s’.
He had no children. And he was a secret atheist and had been involved with the dissent movement and had spent five years as a political prisoner at the start of the Christian Revolution. He was determined to make a stand and denounce the whole rotten system before the board although that would probably seal his fate.
As an Alzheimer’s patient he could no longer work. His wife had died the year before while he was in prison after she had been deported to her native Korea. She left him some assets but he had little idea how to manage his finances and he was behind in his rent and had received an eviction notice which had probably triggered the visit by the social cleansing staff who recommend a final status determination. But it was just as likely he was on the list because someone flipped on him.
He also did not make it last time when they came for him at midnight. Always at midnight the story goes.
The soldiers came took him away from his wife and locked him up for two years. They deported his wife whom he heard had died shortly afterwards. He spend two years at hard labor in the dessert near Las Vegas and was released into Las Vegas.
Las Vegas was a different town now that the casinos had left town. All that was left were back office operations, and underground ***** and *** operations and underground casinos. It was a hot bed of political dissent and there was an underground railroad to California, which was not part of the Christian states. Sam had been preparing to leave which was a crime and perhaps that is why he was on the list.
The hearing would be at 10 am. He was meeting his lawyer at the hearing board but his lawyer was not too optimistic.
the Permit Criteria
The basic criteria for being on the permit list were:
For Males
Age 18 to age 70
White race
Married to a white woman with children
Must be either working, in school full time, serving in military duty, or working in prison if convicted of a crime.
Homelessness was not allowed. If unemployed and or homeless, would be referred to social cleansing department unless one had a relative who was willing to take care of your needs.
Since there were no pensions or social security anymore and no government provided health care, one must have sufficient assets through one’s work, or savings or through one’s relatives to provide for one ‘s needs. If not you would be sent to the social cleansing board for final status determination.
For Females
Same basic rules applied but if one were married, and had children one would be on the permitted list, if children are older, if spouse’s income is sufficient one would be on the list.
If single or divorced, and homeless one would also be subject to social cleansing unless one’s relatives would willing to sponsor you. Since there were no pensions or social security anymore and no government provided health care, one must have sufficient assets through one’s work, or savings or through one’s relatives to provide for one ‘s needs. If not you would be sent to the social cleansing board for final status determination.
For Aged People
Additional requirements for the age you were expected to take care of your basic needs through employment and savings and the help of relatives. If you were evicted for non-payment of rent, or judged to not have sufficient assets left to sustain your basic needs including medical care, you would be referred for final status determination.
For all people additional requirements applied.
****** deviancy, drug use, alcohol use, gambling, *** outside of marriage, homosexuality would result in immediate referral to the social cleansing board as all were banned conduct that could result in final termination. Being a member of a prohibited religious class could also be grounds for referral as would a pattern of not attending Christian services. Finally, if one had been arrested for political crimes one would be marked forever.
<h2>Sam's Rating</h2>
One had a government social rating. Sam knew that his rating was a D meaning that the government would be watching him all the time, and it would be difficult to get a job. Only the A’s and B’s were guaranteed to be on the permit list.
To be a A you had be to a true believer, had to be white, had to attend church on a regular basis, and had to be employed naturally.
To be a B same thing but you could be a B if you were a minority, or had engaged in alcohol or drug use under the old rules.
C meant that there was something wrong with your background, you were an atheist, you were a minority etc.
D mean that you were a serious threat to the regime.
E meant that you would be terminated.
F met you were terminated as it met Failure to survive, and family members of F were also labeled F as they were usually terminated at the same time.
Being associated with banned political movements, including reading banned materials could also lead one to being referred to the social cleansing board as all were grounds for either termination or criminal prosecution if under the age of 70.
The board has three choices - granted temporary status extension, referral for termination, or referral to criminal prosecution.
The termination would be carried out quickly. There would be an optional funeral at your Church, then the execution through the method of your choice - firing squad, beheading, electric chair, or gas. The default was gas where you were put in a room with up to ten other people and put to sleep.
Afterwards your body would be cremated in an electricity generating plant with the ashes turned into fertilizer products. There were no burials allowed unless one was rich enough and connected enough to request a burial exception. Most people did not qualify.
the Hearing
The hearing started. The presiding Judge, Judge Miller was a stern face white man in his 70’s and a true believer. He was sent to Las Vegas to clean it up as Las Vegas was the wild west, a hot bed of dissent, illegal drug use, illegal prostitution and illegal casinos. It was also near several political prisons so many ex cons lived there.
The Judge was the chairman of the Nevada state committee that did not exist and was a senior official in the Federal committee that did not exist that brought together government, business and church leaders to coordinate government policies and that secretly ran the Christian States of America.
Probably a score of A thought Sam.
The judge announced that he had reviewed Sam’s file and was shocked that Sam had escaped final termination. He said that the previous board had erred in simply sending him to prison. He should have been eradicated as a social evil, as a cancer that needs to be removed from the pure body politics. Sam and his ilk sickened him. Sam was a free thinker, an atheist, a mix race mongrel, married to a non-white and was therefore guilty of crimes against the white race which was a crime. The Judge was determined to see justice done.
He asked Sam a series of questions. Sam’s answers sealed his fate.
Sam, what is your occupation?
None for now.
You realize that under the law you must be working, in service, in school or in prison?
I can’t find a job due to my age, my Alzheimer’s; and my political record.
That’s irrelevant. You are just a lousy atheist *******. You deserve no sympathy. And have none from me.
Are you white?
No, I am mixed race, part native, part Asian, part black.
I see you were married to a non-white and had no children. Good for you we would not want to see more mongrel children. Such children should be eliminated at birth in my opinion and will be starting next month when we begin enforcing the racial purity laws.
What was your crime? Let’s see reading prohibited writings, keeping a journal, publishing an anti-government blog, authoring anti-government poems and stories. You served two years at hard labor?
Yes
Do you still write?
Yes, everyday but I no longer publish on line.
Good. No one would want to read that trash anyway.
Do you go to church?
No
Do you believe in God?
No, I do not believe in an imaginary man in the sky.
One more anti-religious statement from you will result in an immediate ruling of termination.
Do you drink?
If I can find it yes
Do you gamble
Yes, when I can
Do you support the Christian Republican Party and the Christian States of America?
No, I do not.
Okay, I have enough for a ruling. Sam Adams, you are hereby sentence to termination. Tomorrow morning at 7 am you will be turned into electricity and fertilizer. Take him away.
Next please.
At midnight there was a knock at the door. A black man appeared and said he was a friend and he was being smuggled to California. Sam rejoiced and went with his new friend and reached SF in the morning, escaping death for the 23rd time in his life.
the End
Poetic Nightmares
Morphing Images from a Hellish Nightmare
Note: From a real nightmare End Note
I am in a room
Drinking at a party
And smoking ****
Watching people all around me
Change into hideous creatures
Monsters from the deepest depths of hell
Everyone in the room
Has been transformed except me
The Chief of them all
Wears a Trumpian mask
Complete with orange hair
Half human half pig
His deputy
Wears the face of Putin
But his body
Half human, half horse: if
The other creatures wear masks
Many of them wear
Green Pepe the alt-right
Symbolic frog masks
And have T-shirts
Bearing alt right slogans
And **** symbols
And as they prance about
They chant alt. Right slogans
And neo-**** chants
Jews will not Replace us
And the rest of these creatures
Are hideous ugly beasts
With only a vestige of humanity left
And these monsters are engaged
In all sorts of foul evil deeds
****** violence death
All around
And non-stop
violent drug-fueled ******
As these creatures
Half human half monsters
Half male, half female creatures
Snort coke, *******, speed
Smoke **** and drink ***** shots
Scotch, bourbon and beer
The Trumpian Pig leads the charge
Starts engaging in ****** with Putin
Who chases after people
Cutting off their heads with his sword
They turn on to their fellow creatures
****** and killing each other
and eating their fellow creatures
All night long
Then they attack me
Screaming
Jews will not replace us
And I wake up
Screaming
As the sun comes up
Just another nightmare
The Endless Movie
Watching the TV coverage
Of the great government shut down
Of 2018-2019
I am reminded of a movie
As I fall asleep
Listening to the TV
Blather on and on
About what it all means
Mr. Natural pops up
And screams
"It don’t mean s….
“Dude, the endless movie
Is about to begin”!
A middle-aged white man
Down on his proverbial luck
Just been fired
Replaced by a foreign worker
Or a robot
Or just fired
Because he was no longer
Deemed useful
To the masters of the universe
If he was lucky
He'd be given a watch
And an IOU worthless pension
And the man wanders into a restaurant
Pulls out a gun
Eats his breakfast
After the official breakfast hour
Puts on a Pepe the green frog mask
Drops acid, Snorts speed
Drinks a shot of *****
And coffee smokes a joint
Snorts ******* for good measure
and smokes a cigarette
And walks outside
steals a bus at gun point
Filled with passengers
He tells them
They are hostages
And he puts on his vest
With the dead man switch
Next to the bomb
He announces
Via tweet
He is going to take the bus
To the proverbial *** of gold
Hidden deep in a cave
And when he got there
He would release the hostages
And disappear into the mine
And never be found again
And as the bus careens around the mountain
At 100 miles an hour
The dude sprouts out
Conspiracy after conspiracy theory
About Obama the Muslim communist
secret gay working with George Soros
the Jewish money people
in league with the shapeshifting lizards
and Mueller is one of them
they are all after him
because he knows the deal
And the passengers are transfixed
Half hoping, he would make it
Half hoping, he would be blown away
And as the bus careens out of control
With the wheels falling off
And the cliff looming ahead
You realize we are all doomed
Worlds Within Worlds Lost in Inner Space
A man woke up one day
Lost in inner space
Went so far down
The proverbial rabbit hole
That he did not know
Where he was
Nor what time it was
Nor when it was
As he stared out
At a bewildering world
A world lost in inner space
Deep down in his dreams
Filled with nightmarishly real
Monsters, demons and ghostly apparitions
He saw them and began running
Running running running
With the hell hounds behind him
Leading him to the edge
of the pits of hell itself
abandon all hope
ye who enter here
the sign read
above the entrance to the pit
and there was a devil standing there
armed with a clipboard
and a computer spreadsheet
Satan was the ultimate bureaucrat
Name barked the devil
Date of Birth ?
Date of Death?
Don’t know? That won’t do at all
Hmm
Car accident due to drunk driving
And you killed a child
Bad on you
But here in hell
The punishment fits the crime
And the devil laughed
Joined in by the hell hounds
And other nightmare creatures
A bell ran out
In the purple crystalline sky
And slowly the worlds receded
And he found himself alive
In his room
And vowed
That today
Was the day
He would quit drinking
Quit taking drugs
And quit chasing strange woman
And having wild libertine ***
He picked up the phone
It was Satan’s aid
Be careful what you vow
We are listening
If you fulfil your vows
You might find yourself
Escaping life in Hell
It is up to you to choose
And the man got dressed
Went to work
Thinking deep thoughts
And drove off a cliff
And back down the endless
Worlds within worlds
Satanic Torture
I find myself
In a dark room
Strapped to a bed
The light turns on
The large TV comes on
A smiling image
Of Satan fills the TV
He is dressed
In a conservative business suit
Looks like he came
Out of a corporate
board meeting
surrounded by demonic aides
who constantly shove papers
at him
He looks up from his lap top
And smiles
A deadly so insincere smile
His voice booms out
Welcome to Hell
My satanic slaves
I am Satan
Your new master
Each of you
Has been sentenced
To an eternity of torture
And the punishment
Must fit the crime
So, for you
Mr. Jake Cosmos Aller
Failed aspiring poet
And novelist
Your torture
Is to be strapped
To that bed
Unable to move
As you are filled
With the need
To **** and ****
But you cannot move
And your skin
Is crawling with bugs
And itchy
as Hell so to speak
and you are so sleepy
but you cannot sleep
the TV will play
endless repeats
Of some of the worst TV
and movie shows
ever produced
Starting with my favorite
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Featuring your favor annoying little girl
Carmetta! Singing for you forever
As you are the ultimate cake sniffer
Welcome to Hell
Rafting Towards Hell
I woke up
To find myself
Rafting down a river
I looked up
At the cliffs
Towering above
the roaring torrent
and see the dark demons
of my terrible nightmares
chasing the boat
firing flaming arrows
and I see werewolves
goblins, ghosts and monsters
running along the river bed
screaming obscenities
as they chase me
to my doom
and I see the waterfall ahead
and see my pending doom
as I rush over the edge
of reason
Micro Stories
53 word stories regarding unheeded warnings
Don’t Go Jogging in the Middle of the Night
It all started with a jog in the middle of the night. Despite my wife’s warning don’t go jogging in the middle of the night. Broke me heal in a million pieces, 14 operations ensured, mutant MDR Staff almost killed me, almost lost the leg. . should have listened to her warning.
Don’t touch this button!
Don’t touch this button the former President said. I said, what this button? And that led to the launching of nuclear weapons, going to defon three, and world war 3 with millions of people dead end of civilization moment. Should not have touched the red button.
Don’t open the door
When you find yourself running for your life chased by demons from hell and backed into a corner in a burning house filled with flames and are about to die in a million horrible ways you remembered that they warned you not to open door number three in this crazy reality TV show.
Don’t go to the theater tonight stay home with me
Mary Todd Lincoln had a vicious headache and was not in the mood to go out. The President though ignored her wishes and told her that he had to go to the theater that night to show the world everything was okay now the war was ending. Should have listened to her.
Don’t go to Dallas I have a bad feeling about the trip
Jackie was known for her moods and her premonitions. Something the President found both amusing an annoying. She told him that she a vision of death waiting for him in Dallas that day. The President dismissed her foolishness as he put it and went to Dallas to meet his fate.
true love story.
In 1974 I had the first dream. While sleeping in a boring class, I saw a beautiful Asian woman standing at me speaking a foreign language. I fell out of chair yelling who are you? I began having the same dream month after month for eight years. One day I realized she was in Korea so I went there in the Peace Corps to meet her. In 1982 I had the last dream. She said don’t worry we meet soon. That night she walked off a bus, out of the dream and into my life. We’ve been married 37 years.
Cheating Death 22 Times
Also, a true story.
I have cheated death 22 times in my life. I was born a preemie, almost died at birth, and had all the childhood illness at once. In 1979 I came down with Typhoid fever in Korea in the Peace Corps. In 1991 almost got hit by a train. In 1996-1997 had 14 operations due to a mutant drug resistant staph infection, almost died several times. In 1997 I had an acute stomach ailment that almost killed me, due to excessive antibiotic usage, if I had waited 30 minutes more would have been dead. And had dengue in 2010.
Guardian Angel Saves My Life
Another true story
In 1990, I was teaching ESL in Korea. My wife and I drove to the East Coast of Korea for a weekend away. She was in the US Army then. As we drove towards Sorak mountain, I was filled with the need to get off the road right then. I had a premonition of doom, so did my wife. We got off to drive around another park returned a few minutes later and saw a 25 car pileup. We would have been dead if we had not listened to that inner voice telling us get off now.
Medical Mystery
Another true story
Back in 1996, when I was in the hospital fighting a mutant staph infection after a disastrous jogging accident that led to 14 operations, the internal medicine doctor said that there was something else going on. He finally discovered that I had a rare parasite, a tape worm of sorts that remained inert, its only becomes active if you take steroids then it blows up like a basketball killing you instantly. Six months later I had to take steroids due to frozen shoulder syndrome, and if I had not gotten rid of it, I would have died a medical mystery.
SLA Hit List
True story
Back in 1974 my father was a local politician in Berkeley, California who was on the SLA’***** list as “an enemy of the people, a fascist insect that needed to be killed”. His crime? As President of the community college district, he began requiring IDS for students and staff to combat campus crime at the local community colleges. We had 24/7 police coverage for a while. One morning I saluted my father, “good morning fascist insect”. My father, being of Germanic stock did not like the joke as jokes are alien to the German DNA.
the End
based on dreams and nightmares
wordvango Jan 2017
sent the IRS an IOU
wordvango
Jan 2017
I sent a leg UPS to
my mom
she needed one
she been all gimpy
for twenty years now
sent my brother
my *******
my dead dad
a hallejuah
my son a missive via
twitter
he aint responded,
my ex her alimony
check written
on rubber ,
a used one,
called my girl
she was busy again-
she aint got a job but
sure stays busy-
my dealer ,
I sent a Christmas card
birthday card
called him on our anniversary,
he was my best man
at my wedding,
we borrowed his
Porsche
for our honeymoon,
hope he don't know what we did
with his gear shift,
I sent the IRS
an IOU
again.
my mom
she needed one
she been all gimpy
for twenty years now
sent my brother
my *******
my dead dad
a hallejuah
my son a missive via
he aint responded,
my ex her alimony
check written
on rubber ,
a used one,
called my girl
she was busy again-
she aint got a job but
sure stays busy-
my dealer ,
I sent a Christmas card
birthday card
called him on our anniversary,
he was my best man
at my wedding,
we borrowed his
Porsche
for our honeymoon,
hope he don't know what we did
with his gear shift,
I sent the IRS
an IOU
again.