warning: ****** assault, domestic violence

Before:
Daddy yells at momma.
He’s upset that after she made me,
she’s too tired to be with him.

I step into the kitchen
where my pieces of DNA were fighting.
I had just started going to school,
and I was too young to realize:

kids really are helpless
in situations like these.
He shoves momma’s clothes off
so quickly;

I was paralyzed.
I couldn’t move.
I didn’t know
what was going on.

My momma screams in retaliation,
“You *******! She’s right there!”
I’ll never forget the cruel glint in his eyes.
“She won’t remember.”


Then:
As a thirteen-year-old,
I was braced for war.
Momma told me:

“Remember the pain
I went through?
Your father…
Make him pay!”

You’re right,
momma.
I know what you went through.
I’m sorry I am still part of him.

Empty bottles litter the floor
just like the pictures of bodies
in my history textbook.
I stand from amongst them,

glaring at him
as he snores on the couch.
At the time, I didn’t understand why
dad would pass out so quickly sometimes.

Carefully,
I step over the bottles,
making my way over to the sleeping beast.
I’m scared he’ll wake up.

Ah! Just like in my favorite books,
the villain’s neck is wide open!
I reach my hand out,
clutching my pretend dagger—

I **** him!
With elation, I suddenly feel
the curse that tied me to him
leave.

The steady rise and fall of his stomach
brings my spirits back to reality.
Disgust twists across my face,
and I deliver a punch to his beer belly.

He sputters,
standing on his feet in a rage.
“You—
You’ll never understand what I went through!”

My instinct is to run and hide,
but I instead stand proudly,
puffing out my chest.
“I wish you were never my dad!”

I smile to myself,
giddy in hopes that
momma would stop crying
and be proud of me.

He looks hurt by it.
I’m happy!
He never comforted us!
I throw out a few curse words to try to scare him.

That only makes him angry.
“Get over ‘ere,” he says through gritted teeth.
He grabs me by the waist of my pants.
My momma is worth whatever he does to me!

After:
Preparing to graduate from college
with high honors
and a position at my dream job,
I should be happy.

Yet I can't help but realize
it has been a decade since I’ve spoken to my dad.
Mom is with a new man.
He touches me in ways dad never did.

If I was thirteen,
I’d find the ten year anniversary as a reason to celebrate.
“That much closer to removing his curse!”
I would think.

I’m even more disgusted by my mom
spending all of her time with her boyfriend
than I ever did when
dad brought women over.

If the curse is supposed to be disappearing, then
why do I feel just as empty
as I did
before?

"A" crowned my head with a crown like
twigs while "A" was seated on the Throne.
Notice how Baha'u'llah reverberates that it is a different
throne, yet in essence the same One.
Fire like a rainbow.
Notice how a Prophet would gulp when another Prophet is
"mentioned".
Notice how a Prophet does not need to "believe" in else
except God.
"C" is same.
If I am a Prophet without a voice from God, please
don't let me speak.
All the Prophets have transparent beauty like
"C".
Above the City of Immortality is the Valley of
the Manifestations.  Where the Sun of Reality
is home and all the denizens are refreshed
and find God again from whence they have
left.  Nothing but God lies above this Valley
and the Presence of the Beloved is aglow
....in every limb.
The Presence is enlivening and heavy
in vitality.
"I hate you, I love, I hate that I love you",
echoes to hearts not attune to the Transcendent One.
The Presence has a unique energy that allows
Them to change the universe of lower natures.
All stresses dissipate away.
Those Eyes that see all of me.
Energy as if from another world,
as if always awakening from bed.
It is sitting in the Manifestation's Tent.
It is feeling Their skin become mine own skin.
Light so warm that it is cool.
Names have no place here,
only Spirit - the Transcendent.
I forget myself and
instead caught up in "A".
The fullness of the Manifestations will soon, soon
manifest in all of us.
24 karat Golden DNA.

I AM here
But what I thought was me is fading
which can be odd at times, to say the least

I AM here
and still living in the shading
of an old design, that's not yet released

I AM here
The many rhythms changing
As the tired identity continues obsolete

Farewell my friend
the dissolution will come to end
Now we are free
As you open up to thee

Acquired form appears ambiguous  
with true biology slightly contiguous
layered together in amalgamation
Antiquated DNA disfiguration

The patterns are broken
dynamic expression
beyond attachment
to any creation
I AM that---
I AM.

It’s Hard Not To Be Optimistic: An Updated Sonnet to Science
by Michael R. Burch

“DNA has cured deadly diseases and allowed
labs to create animals with fantastic new
features.” ― U.S. News & World Report

It’s hard not to be optimistic
when things are so wondrously futuristic:
when DNA, our new Louie Pasteur,
can effect an autonomous, miraculous cure,
while labs churn out fluorescent monkeys
who, with infinite typewriters, might soon outdo USN&WR’s flunkeys.

It’s hard not to be optimistic
when the world is so delightfully pluralistic:
when Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive,
and Hawking says time can run backwards. We thrive,
befuddled drones, on someone else’s regurgitated nectar,
while our cheers drown out poet-alarmists who might Hector

the Achilles heel of pure science (common sense)
and reporters who tap out supersillyous nonsense.

NOTE: I am a fan of both real science and science fiction, and I like to think I can tell the difference, at least between the two extremes. I feel confident that Schrödinger didn’t think the cat in his famous experiment was both dead and alive. Rather, he was pointing out that we can’t know until we open the box, scratchings and smell aside. While traveling backwards in time is great for science fiction, it seems extremely doubtful as a practical application. And as for DNA curing deadly diseases ... well, it must have created them, so perhaps don’t give it too much credit!

Submitted to U.S. News & World Report

Dear Editor,

While I’m usually a fan of your magazine, as a writer I must take to task the Frankensteinian logic of the excerpt I cited, and I challenge you to publish my “letter” as proof that poets do have a function in the third millennium, even if it is only to suggest that paid writers should not create such outlandish, freakish horrors of the English language.

Somewhat irked, but still a fan,
Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: science, fiction, quantum, physics, Hawking, Schrodinger, cat, DNA, infinite, monkeys, typewriters, Shakespeare, lab, animals, new, features

I want to be tongue tied with you,
Not the way you’d think.
Not stumbling over words we could only dream of how to pronounce,
Not stuttering over the phrase ‘I love you’,
Not spitting out each other’s names every time we reach a high.

I want to be in knots with you,
Tongues twisted into each other,
I want to drool with you.

I want every word to come out in mumbles,
I don’t want anyone to ever understand us.
(Then again, they never did.)

I want to feel disgusted with ourselves,
I want to taste your last meal,
And I don’t care what it was.

I want to inhale your exhale,
I want to tangle uvulas together.

Sick, isn’t it?
Revoltingly simple.

I want our teeth to clash,
I wouldn’t even complain if we chipped one.
(The government can pay for our fillings.)

I want to feel your every taste bud tasting mine.
I want to do a dna test with your spit,
Only to find out that we were past life lovers in each other’s bodies.

I want to scare everyone who dares to look our way,
We can mumble and groan like zombies.
We can grumble and moan like newlyweds.

I want to feel spit dripping down our chins,
I want to look stupid with you.

We can be all knotty,
Just slip yours into mine.

(Tongues, I mean.)

Led between worlds
from where we once came
Lines of separation in our DNA
Multiple choice from limited modes
Strings are attached as you interact
with who we will match
Theoretical simulation code
Life becomes death and onto the next
All we leave is this game

for Thomas Raine Crowe

...These nights bring dreams of Cherokee shamans
whose names are bright verbs and impacted dark nouns,
whose memories are indictments of my pallid flesh...
and I hear, as from a great distance,
the cries tortured from their guileless lips, proclaiming
the nature of my mutation.

NOTE: My “mutation” is that my family appears to contain English, Scottish, German and Cherokee blood, meaning that my ancestors were probably at war with each other. Did my English ancestors force my Cherokee ancestors to walk the Trail of Tears?

I have recently created these new translations of Native American poems, proverbs and sayings ...

What is life?
The flash of a firefly.
The breath of a winter buffalo.
The shadow scooting across the grass that vanishes with sunset.
—Blackfoot saying, translation by Michael R. Burch

Speak less thunder, wield more lightning. — Apache proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

The more we wonder, the more we understand. — Arapaho proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Adults talk, children whine. — Blackfoot proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Don’t be afraid to cry: it will lessen your sorrow. — Hopi proverb

One foot in the boat, one foot in the canoe, and you end up in the river. — Tuscarora proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Our enemy's weakness increases our strength. — Cherokee proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

We will be remembered tomorrow by the tracks we leave today. — Dakota proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

No sound's as eloquent as a rattlesnake's tail. — Navajo saying, translation by Michael R. Burch

The heart is our first teacher. — Cheyenne proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Dreams beget success. — Maricopa proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Knowledge interprets the past, wisdom foresees the future. — Lumbee proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

The troublemaker's way is thorny. — Umpqua proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch