"Oh yes, I went over to Edmonstoun the other day and saw Johnny, mooning around as usual! He will never make his way."
Letter of George Keats, 18--


Night falls; the great jars glow against the dark,
Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling snake,
Writhing eternally in smoky gyres,
Great ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn
Within them. So the Eastern fisherman
Saw the swart genie rise when the lead seal,
Scribbled with charms, was lifted from the jar;
And -- well, how went the tale? Like this, like this? . . .

No herbage broke the barren flats of land,
No winds dared loiter within smiling trees,
Nor were there any brooks on either hand,
Only the dry, bright sand,
Naked and golden, lay before the seas.

One boat toiled noiselessly along the deep,
The thirsty ripples dying silently
Upon its track. Far out the brown nets sweep,
And night begins to creep
Across the intolerable mirror of the sea.

Twice the nets rise, a-trail with sea-plants brown,
Distorted shells, and rocks green-mossed with slime,
Nought else. The fisher, sick at heart, kneels down;
"Prayer may appease God's frown,"
He thinks, then, kneeling, casts for the third time.

And lo! an earthen jar, bound round with brass,
Lies tangled in the cordage of his net.
About the bright waves gleam like shattered glass,
And where the sea's rim was
The sun dips, flat and red, about to set.

The prow grates on the beach. The fisherman
Stoops, tearing at the cords that bind the seal.
Shall pearls roll out, lustrous and white and wan?
Lapis? carnelian?
Unheard-of stones that make the sick mind reel

With wonder of their beauty? Rubies, then?
Green emeralds, glittering like the eyes of beasts?
Poisonous opals, good to madden men?
Gold bezants, ten and ten?
Hard, regal diamonds, like kingly feasts?

He tugged; the seal gave way. A little smoke
Curled like a feather in the darkening sky.
A blinding gush of fire burst, flamed, and broke.
A voice like a wind spoke.
Armored with light, and turbaned terribly,

A genie tramped the round earth underfoot;
His head sought out the stars, his cupped right hand
Made half the sky one darkness. He was mute.
The sun, a ripened fruit,
Drooped lower. Scarlet eddied o'er the sand.

The genie spoke: "O miserable one!
Thy prize awaits thee; come, and hug it close!
A noble crown thy draggled nets have won
For this that thou hast done.
Blessed are fools! A gift remains for those!"

His hand sought out his sword, and lightnings flared
Across the sky in one great bloom of fire.
Poised like a toppling mountain, it hung bared;
Suns that were jewels glared
Along its hilt. The air burnt like a pyre.

Once more the genie spoke: "Something I owe
To thee, thou fool, thou fool. Come, canst thou sing?
Yea? Sing then; if thy song be brave, then go
Free and released -- or no!
Find first some task, some overmastering thing
I cannot do, and find it speedily,
For if thou dost not thou shalt surely die!"

The sword whirled back. The fisherman uprose,
And if at first his voice was weak with fear
And his limbs trembled, it was but a doze,
And at the high song's close
He stood up straight. His voice rang loud and clear.


The Song.

Last night the quays were lighted;
Cressets of smoking pine
Glared o'er the roaring mariners
That drink the yellow wine.

Their song rolled to the rafters,
It struck the high stars pale,
Such worth was in their discourse,
Such wonder in their tale.

Blue borage filled the clinking cups,
The murky night grew wan,
Till one rose, crowned with laurel-leaves,
That was an outland man.

"Come, let us drink to war!" said he,
"The torch of the sacked town!
The swan's-bath and the wolf-ships,
And Harald of renown!

"Yea, while the milk was on his lips,
Before the day was born,
He took the Almayne Kaiser's head
To be his drinking-horn!

"Yea, while the down was on his chin,
Or yet his beard was grown,
He broke the gates of Micklegarth,
And stole the lion-throne!

"Drink to Harald, king of the world,
Lord of the tongue and the troth!
To the bellowing horns of Ostfriesland,
And the trumpets of the Goth!"

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
The drink-horns crashed and rang,
And all their talk was a clangor of war,
As swords together sang!

But dimly, through the deep night,
Where stars like flowers shone,
A passionate shape came gliding --
I saw one thing alone.

I only saw my young love
Shining against the dark,
The whiteness of her raiment,
The head that bent to hark.

I only saw my young love,
Like flowers in the sun --
Her hands like waxen petals,
Where yawning poppies run.

I only felt there, chrysmal,
Against my cheek her breath,
Though all the winds were baying,
And the sky bright with Death.

Red sparks whirled up the chimney,
A hungry flaught of flame,
And a lean man from Greece arose;
Thrasyllos was his name.

"I praise all noble wines!" he cried,
"Green robes of tissue fine,
Peacocks and apes and ivory,
And Homer's sea-loud line,

"Statues and rings and carven gems,
And the wise crawling sea;
But most of all the crowns of kings,
The rule they wield thereby!

"Power, fired power, blank and bright!
A fit hilt for the hand!
The one good sword for a freeman,
While yet the cold stars stand!"

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
The air was thick with wine.
I only knew her deep eyes,
And felt her hand in mine.

Softly as quiet water,
One finger touched my cheek;
Her face like gracious moonlight --
I might not move nor speak.

I only saw that beauty,
I only felt that form
There, in the silken darkness --
God wot my heart was warm!

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
Another chief began;
His slit lips showed him for a ***;
He was an evil man.

"Sing to the joys of women!" he yelled,
"The hot delicious tents,
The soft couch, and the white limbs;
The air a steam of scents!"

His eyes gleamed, and he wet his lips,
The rafters shook with cheers,
As he sang of woman, who is man's slave
For all unhonored years.

"Whether the wanton laughs amain,
With one white shoulder bare,
Or in a sacked room you unbind
Some crouching maiden's hair;

"This is the only good for man,
Like spices of the South --
To see the glimmering body laid
As pasture to his mouth!

"To leave no lees within the cup,
To see and take and rend;
To lap a girl's limbs up like wine,
And laugh, knowing the end!"

Only, like low, still breathing,
I heard one voice, one word;
And hot speech poured upon my lips,
As my hands held a sword.

"Fools, thrice fools of lust!" I cried,
"Your eyes are blind to see
Eternal beauty, moving far,
More glorious than horns of war!
But though my eyes were one blind scar,
That sight is shown to me!

"You nuzzle at the ivory side,
You clasp the golden head;
Fools, fools, who chatter and sing,
You have taken the sign of a terrible thing,
You have drunk down God with your beeswing,
And broken the saints for bread!

"For God moves darkly,
In silence and in storm;
But in the body of woman
He shows one burning form.

"For God moves blindly,
In darkness and in dread;
But in the body of woman
He raises up the dead.

"Gracile and straight as birches,
Swift as the questing birds,
They fill true-lovers' drink-horns up,
Who speak not, having no words.

"Love is not delicate toying,
A slim and shimmering mesh;
It is two souls wrenched into one,
Two bodies made one flesh.

"Lust is a sprightly servant,
Gallant where wines are poured;
Love is a bitter master,
Love is an iron lord.

"Satin ease of the body,
Fattened sloth of the hands,
These and their like he will not send,
Only immortal fires to rend --
And the world's end is your journey's end,
And your stream chokes in the sands.

"Pleached calms shall not await you,
Peace you shall never find;
Nought but the living moorland
Scourged naked by the wind.

"Nought but the living moorland,
And your love's hand in yours;
The strength more sure than surety,
The mercy that endures.

"Then, though they give you to be burned,
And slay you like a stoat,
You have found the world's heart in the turn of a cheek,
Heaven in the lift of a throat.

"Although they break you on the wheel,
That stood so straight in the sun,
Behind you the trumpets split the sky,
Where the lost and furious fight goes by --
And God, our God, will have victory
When the red day is done!"

Their mirth rolled to the rafters,
They bellowed lechery;
Light as a drifting feather
My love slipped from my knee.

Within, the lights were yellow
In drowsy rooms and warm;
Without, the stabbing lightning
Shattered across the storm.

Within, the great logs crackled,
The drink-horns emptied soon;
Without, the black cloaks of the clouds
Strangled the waning moon.

My love crossed o'er the threshold --
God! but the night was murk!
I set myself against the cold,
And left them to their work.

Their shouts rolled to the rafters;
A bitterer way was mine,
And I left them in the tavern,
Drinking the yellow wine!

The last faint echoes rang along the plains,
Died, and were gone. The genie spoke: "Thy song
Serves well enough -- but yet thy task remains;
Many and rending pains
Shall torture him who dares delay too long!"

His brown face hardened to a leaden mask.
A bitter brine crusted the fisher's cheek --
"Almighty God, one thing alone I ask,
Show me a task, a task!"
The hard cup of the sky shone, gemmed and bleak.

"O love, whom I have sought by devious ways;
O hidden beauty, naked as a star;
You whose bright hair has burned across my days,
Making them lamps of praise;
O dawn-wind, breathing of Arabia!

"You have I served. Now fire has parched the vine,
And Death is on the singers and the song.
No longer are there lips to cling to mine,
And the heart wearies of wine,
And I am sick, for my desire is long.

"O love, soft-moving, delicate and tender!
In her gold house the pipe calls querulously,
They cloud with thin green silks her body slender,
They talk to her and tend her;
Come, piteous, gentle love, and set me free!"

He ceased -- and, slowly rising o'er the deep,
A faint song chimed, grew clearer, till at last
A golden horn of light began to creep
Where the dumb ripples sweep,
Making the sea one splendor where it passed.

A golden boat! The bright oars rested soon,
And the prow met the sand. The purple veils
Misting the cabin fell. Fair as the moon
When the morning comes too soon,
And all the air is silver in the dales,

A gold-robed princess stepped upon the beach.
The fisher knelt and kissed her garment's hem,
And then her lips, and strove at last for speech.
The waters lapped the reach.
"Here thy strength breaks, thy might is nought to stem!"

He cried at last. Speech shook him like a flame:
"Yea, though thou plucked the stars from out the sky,
Each lovely one would be a withered shame --
Each thou couldst find or name --
To this fire-hearted beauty!" Wearily

The genie heard. A slow smile came like dawn
Over his face. "Thy task is done!" he said.
A whirlwind roared, smoke shattered, he was gone;
And, like a sudden horn,
The moon shone clear, no longer smoked and red.

They passed into the boat. The gold oars beat
Loudly, then fainter, fainter, till at last
Only the quiet waters barely moved
Along the whispering sand -- till all the vast
Expanse of sea began to shake with heat,
And morning brought soft airs, by sailors loved.

And after? . . . Well . . .
The shop-bell clangs! Who comes?
Quinine -- I pour the little bitter grains
Out upon blue, glazed squares of paper. So.
And all the dusk I shall sit here alone,
With many powers in my hands -- ah, see
How the blurred labels run on the old jars!
***** -- and a cruel and sleepy scent,
The harsh taste of white poppies; India --
The writhing woods a-crawl with monstrous life,
Save where the deodars are set like spears,
And a calm pool is mirrored ebony;
***** -- brown and warm and slender-breasted
She rises, shaking off the cool black water,
And twisting up her hair, that ripples down,
A torrent of black water, to her feet;
How the drops sparkle in the moonlight! Once
I made a rhyme about it, singing softly:

Over Damascus every star
Keeps his unchanging course and cold,
The dark weighs like an iron bar,
The intense and pallid night is old,
Dim the moon's scimitar.

Still the lamps blaze within those halls,
Where poppies heap the marble vats
For girls to tread; the thick air palls;
And shadows hang like evil bats
About the scented walls.

The girls are many, and they sing;
Their white feet fall like flakes of snow,
Making a ceaseless murmuring --
Whispers of love, dead long ago,
And dear, forgotten Spring.

One alone sings not. Tiredly
She sees the white blooms crushed, and smells
The heavy scent. They chatter: "See!
White Zira thinks of nothing else
But the morn's jollity --

"Then Haroun takes her!" But she dreams,
Unhearing, of a certain field
Of poppies, cut by many streams,
Like lines across a round Turk shield,
Where now the hot sun gleams.

The field whereon they walked that day,
And splendor filled her body up,
And his; and then the trampled clay,
And slow smoke climbing the sky's cup
From where the village lay.

And after -- much ache of the wrists,
Where the cords irked her -- till she came,
The price of many amethysts,
Hither. And now the ultimate shame
Blew trumpet in the lists.

And so she trod the poppies there,
Remembering other poppies, too,
And did not seem to see or care.
Without, the first gray drops of dew
Sweetened the trembling air.

She trod the poppies. Hours passed
Until she slept at length -- and Time
Dragged his slow sickle. When at last
She woke, the moon shone, bright as rime,
And night's tide rolled on fast.

She moaned once, knowing everything;
Then, bitterer than death, she found
The soft handmaidens, in a ring,
Come to anoint her, all around,
That she might please the king.

***** -- and the odor dies away,
Leaving the air yet heavy -- cassia -- myrrh --
Bitter and splendid. See, the poisons come,
Trooping in squat green vials, blazoned red
With grinning skulls: strychnine, a pallid dust
Of tiny grains, like bones ground fine; and next
The muddy green of arsenic, all livid,
Likest the face of one long dead -- they creep
Along the dusty shelf like deadly beetles,
Whose fangs are carved with runnels, that the blood
May run down easily to the blind mouth
That snaps and gapes; and high above them there,
My master's pride, a cobwebbed, yellow ***
Of honey from Mount Hybla. Do the bees
Still moan among the low sweet purple clover,
Endlessly many? Still in deep-hushed woods,
When the incredible silver of the moon
Comes like a living wind through sleep-bowed branches,
Still steal dark shapes from the enchanted glens,
Which yet are purple with high dreams, and still
Fronting that quiet and eternal shield
Which is much more than Peace, does there still stand
One sharp black shadow -- and the short, smooth horns
Are clear against that disk?
O great Diana!
I, I have praised thee, yet I do not know
What moves my mind so strangely, save that once
I lay all night upon a thymy hill,
And watched the slow clouds pass like heaped-up foam
Across blue marble, till at last no speck
Blotted the clear expanse, and the full moon
Rose in much light, and all night long I saw
Her ordered progress, till, in midmost heaven,
There came a terrible silence, and the mice
Crept to their holes, the crickets did not chirp,
All the small night-sounds stopped -- and clear pure light
Rippled like silk over the universe,
Most cold and bleak; and yet my heart beat fast,
Waiting until the stillness broke. I know not
For what I waited -- something very great --
I dared not look up to the sky for fear
A brittle crackling should clash suddenly
Against the quiet, and a black line creep
Across the sky, and widen like a mouth,
Until the broken heavens streamed apart,
Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires,
Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God.
I lay there, a black blot upon a shield
Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held
Until I staggered up and cried aloud,
And then it seemed that something far too great
For knowledge, and illimitable as God,
Rent th

My mother she had children five and four are dead and gone;
While I, least worthy to survive, persist in living on.
She looks at me, I must confess, sometimes with spite and bitterness.

My mother is three-score and ten, while I am forty-three,
You don't know how it hurts me when we go somewhere to tea,
And people tell her on the sly we look like sisters, she and I.

It hurts to see her secret glee; but most, because it's true.
Sometimes I think she thinks that she looks younger of the two.
Oh as I gently take her arm, how I would love to do her harm!

For ever since I cam from school she put it in my head
I was a weakling and a fool, a "born old maid" she said.
"You'll always stay at home," sighed she, "and keep your Mother company."

Oh pity is a bitter brew; I've drunk it to the lees;
For there is little else to do but do my best to please:
My life has been so little worth I curse the hour she gave me birth.

I curse the hour she gave me breath, who never wished me wife;
My happiest day will be the death of her who gave me life;
I hate her for the life she gave: I hope to dance upon her grave.

She wearing roses in her hat; I wince to hear her say:
"Poor Alice this, poor Alice that," she drains my joy away.
It seems to brace her up that she can pity, pity, pity me.

You'll see us walking in the street, with careful step and slow;
And people often say: "How sweet!" as arm in arm we go.
Like chums we never are apart - yet oh the hatred in my heart!

My chest is weak, and I might be (O God!) the first to go.
For her what triumph that would be - she thinks of it, I know.
To outlive all her kith and kin - how she would glow beneath her skin!

She says she will not make her Will, until she takes to bed;
She little thinks if thoughts could ****, to-morrow she'd be dead. . . .

"Please come to breakfast, Mother dear; Your coffee will be cold I fear."

Too far away, oh love, I know,  
To save me from this haunted road,  
Whose lofty roses break and blow  
On a night-sky bent with a load  
  
Of lights: each solitary rose,          
Each arc-lamp golden does expose  
Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows  
Night blenched with a thousand snows.  
  
Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,  
White lilac; shows discoloured night        
Dripping with all the golden lees  
Laburnum gives back to light.  
  
And shows the red of hawthorn set  
On high to the purple heaven of night,  
Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,        
Blood shed in the noiseless fight.  
  
Of life for love and love for life,  
Of hunger for a little food,  
Of kissing, lost for want of a wife  
Long ago, long ago wooed.
   .   .   .   .   .   .        
Too far away you are, my love,  
To steady my brain in this phantom show  
That passes the nightly road above  
And returns again below.  
  
The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees        
  Has poised on each of its ledges  
An ***** small girl looking down at me;  
White-night-gowned little chits I see,  
  And they peep at me over the edges  
Of the leaves as though they would leap, should I call        
  Them down to my arms;  
"But, child, you're too small for me, too small  
  Your little charms."  
  
White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,  
  Some other will thresh you out!          
And I see leaning from the shades  
A lilac like a lady there, who braids  
  Her white mantilla about  
Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight  
    Of a man's face,          
Gracefully sighing through the white  
    Flowery mantilla of lace.  
  
And another lilac in purple veiled  
  Discreetly, all recklessly calls  
In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed  
Her forth from the night: my strength has failed  
  In her voice, my weak heart falls:  
Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering  
    Her draperies down,  
As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering        
    White, stand naked of gown.
   .   .   .   .   .   .  
The pageant of flowery trees above  
  The street pale-passionate goes,  
And back again down the pavement, Love  
  In a lesser pageant flows.          
  
Two and two are the folk that walk,  
  They pass in a half embrace  
Of linked bodies, and they talk  
  With dark face leaning to face.  
  
Come then, my love, come as you will          
  Along this haunted road,  
Be whom you will, my darling, I shall  
  Keep with you the troth I trowed.

Si éste intento de poema tuviese un nombre, debería ser el tuyo, pero por cobardía dejaré el anonimato. Después de todo...Siempre fuimos fanáticos del misterio.

Habían pasado tantos días. Tantas horas, tantos inviernos. Inviernos fríos que quemaban como infiernos.
Incendios. Incendios de nieve, supongo.

Nos vimos ese día luego de tanto tiempo. Tanto deseo acumulado ya nos estaba haciendo daño. Ja... ni siquiera nos dimos un abrazo, saltamos directo a los besos. Tengo que decirte; mis latidos estaban muy acelerados.

Lancé mis dados. No me importó el presente o los presentes que en las ventanas estaban asomados.

Y me mirabas a los ojos, y en los tuyos veía que eres mi principal demonio carnal. Pero a la final, si Dios existe sabe que tú no quieres ser ningún ángel.

Nos besamos en ese banco como si nos quisiéramos chupar el alma... Querida, tus besos sabían más exquisitos de lo usual a causa de la ***** barata. Y me arrebatabas el aliento.Y tus senos me me observaban detrás de tu escote; o quizás yo los observaba a ellos, pero no nos importaba.

Estabas tan errática. Tan radical que me era difícil seguirte el paso.

Ibas lanzando ***** sobre el piso y dulces gemidos a mis oídos. No te mentiré, me sentía cohibido. Renuncié a mi actitud bohemia y despreocupada de vaquero y me sentí cohibido. Pero lo que me crecía en el pantalón era muy real como para haberlo fingido. Sabes lo difícil que se me hace ignorar mis animales instintos.

Y no queríamos despedirnos. De irracionalidad pasamos a tecnicismos. Al: "No te vayas, quédate un rato más. Te haré café para que la ***** te deje de afectar". Y después los besos eran besos de tiernos adolescentes que se profesan amor eterno. Amor eterno que nunca fue correcto al momento.

Es triste como acabo todo, ¿no, querida? Es triste que ahora me odies y me hayas sacado de tu vida. Pero si lees esto... por favor, recuérdame.

Recuérdame tan imperfecto como soy.
Recuérdame en tu escote; bajando mis manos por tu espalda y llegando a tus nalgas.
Recuérdame escuchando esa canción que es mi canción favorita, y que escuchas solo por esa razón.
Como sea que quieras, pero recuérdame.

Yo siempre te recuerdo. Porque fuiste, eres y serás la autodestrucción que aún necesito.

Gen. Lees invasion of the North written by himself—

    In eighteen sixty three, with pomp,
      and mighty swell,
    Me and Jeff’s Confederacy, went
      forth to sack Phil-del,
    The Yankees the got arter us, and
      giv us particular hell,
    And we skedaddled back again,
      And didn’t sack Phil-del.

Hits ^ Misses
In this telling will recount close calls of different ones and some guilt and though most have raised your
Children now the children’s children your admiration doubled the worries real. Our class just had the
class reunion well we did it seems a test run three of us one we hadn’t seen in thirty years met up at
Decatur ******* Barrel close to six hours later we stumbled out we had a lot to talk about. Now for the
Next session like an old mountain men Rendezvous were adding a lot more Monroe, Jefferson, St. and
One pine street rep in fact where the first story happened in lees orchard the emblem between the titles
Is significant now any one can play paint ball but let me show how Jefferson played two Lakers and a
Denton one almost didn’t come out alive we wore the standard neighborhood issue rebel outfits heavy
Coats extra rags for padding and a head band pulled down as low as possible for our only eye protection
And the rule no head shots BB guns fully loaded let the game commence it was a bit terrifying sight
Three scarecrows slowly advancing looking for a target that’s when the real terror when one was marked
The problem I was carrying a toy bow but the arrow was mounted with a hunting tip it was blue and
Looked like a razor blade but thicker but I’m sure you could shave with it sharp gleaming silver along the
Edge for a weak it had been shot into sheds soft trees but over in the orchard it just bounced off of the
Hard apple trees and it looked like the road sign showing a straight but curvy road ahead so with those
Facts and the only fact that made it even try to be a real bow it had a hand grip that thickened it right in
The middle in all the under growth Jerry walked out in the open walking away from me so mathematics
Distance speed his steps mine halted just like the race with the train at a dead run you still was doing a
Whole lot of figuring you don’t learn that in class so I raised the bow when I let it go it was a move in
Archery where you’re just laying it down to get to the target with his dads leather bomber jacket on with
That thick padding and those rags and the arrow just bouncing off the trees by now no problem well he
Took the last step he didn’t know it but that step was across death’s threshold and he made it to
Continued life because I hit him right where I aimed in the back a lot of padding but no body fat instead
Of the arrow innocently hitting his jacket and bouncing off and dropping to the ground there was a
Thunk and a scream of pain and terror it wasn’t cupid in the woods Geri it was stupid I ran up he was getting
The coat off arrow still attached just the tip pierced his skin it didn’t feel like a bug bite believe me as I
Said ever thing factored in and the greatest divine protection it wasn’t a heart shot but if I hadn’t given
Him the last step it would have passed more than half way through destroying vital organs. He was ok but
Retribution was swift and instant I beat it out of there like a rabbit but the no head shot rule was out
Both of them bounced multiple B Bees off the side and back of my head I remember the sounds and
Feelings they gave and my thoughts were blood is thicker than water I told you I know how to run.

Now my turn we were down in Bill’s yard this time we were upgraded we had a thirty pound pull fiber
Glass bow from archery class headed by Mrs. Summers the old country girl teacher remember her
Paddle and she loved to let it sing its favorite song sting ***** sting so any way the pain of those years
Have faded we didn’t know it but we were about to make our own song I’m stuck in you. The stage set
Everyone in place when you shoot a bow in the yard you’re going to come across this problem the arrows
Will slide into the ground right at dirt level and then sew themselves up completely with grass as you
Look down something like looking for night crawlers except its day no flashlight and it doesn’t involve
Worm *** education so the fishing just involves finding the arrow this means is preferably done without
One of the shooters down field with his head down looking for said arrow but what a thrill and your
Friend Bill has done just that shot another one to help find the first one well you look up and he is out in
The street doing a mime act flailing his hands jumping up and down his mouth is moving but nothing is
Coming out I might be a little slow on the up take as they say but I got it death was on the wing I was its
intended victim what could I do if I ran right I could run right into it left was the same possibility dive
On the ground get an arrow right below your head in the neck doing what it does with the ground I
Already heard the devil way those guys **** gators in the Everglade’s by ramming a wire down there
Spine While still alive I didn’t want that experience or the other show where the guy said the worst way
To **** is with a bow not only the arrow head but the shaft creates trauma to the nerves and I couldn’t
jump straight up in the air no one wants to have their legs spread apart at a time like this so I did the
Only thing left I followed Bill’s bird dance routine turned sideways to make less of a target and then
Started bobbing my head up and down as I held it sideways looking for the biggest shaft I would get in
Life the more I looked nothing except bill became more agitated then twenty feet straight out in front of
Me there it was how curious and weird where was the beautiful yellow shaft and the two orange
Feathers with the green guide feather yes I remember everything just like the shoot out in the orchard
When people become intense everything is different those Laker boys normally weren’t that good of
Shots and I was mighty interested in this particular arrow and it didn’t glide the way it looks from the
Shooter it was wobbling and only the front was visible and it was black you don’t have to worry an
Animal will never see anything this wasn’t chicken this time Still life was being played for and I won so
When the arrow got close enough believe me I never took my eye off of it I gave it the disdain of the
matador I just bent from the waist back out of the way and let it stick harmlessly behind me in the
Ground well there is more hits and misses but they are more about guns and cars and I’m at twelve
Hundred and forty one words already so keep an eye on the children it’s a dangerous world.

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

    This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

    There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me ---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads --- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Knipoog, wink-oog
Loop verby
Hart kyk weg
Om die invloed te vermy

Raak an my hand
Vat mis, raak my siel
Raak ek verlief?
Wat het my besiel?

Knipoog , winkoog
Is dit vir my?
Nee , dis vir haar...
Jy kyk my verby!!

Lok uit suspisie
Gee my die hoop;
Hoeveel ander het
Hul siel aan jou verkoop?

Bruin oog, blink oog
Blink jy vir my?
Lees weer jou rympies
Om my hart te kry!!

Maak gou liefste
Lewe flits verby,
Lees jy jou rympies:
Vir haar...
Of vir my!?

Lady Winter

I.
When surly Winter sighs, her icy breath
Makes adults think of coming death,
Makes children think of falling snow,
Ice skates and sleds and away they go....

II.
Alone among her Sisters, Winter holds such power
To stop the World, to drift in Time, if only for her hour.
She puts the trees and fields to sleep,
Then covers lakes and land 'neath sheets,
And though she tucks them into bed,
Their sleeping form is of the dead.

III.
This Lady White whose frigid face
Turns from the sun with chilly grace
Has for herself a single duty:
The world to rest in icy beauty.
In the North, where'er she goes,
She dresses lands with icy snows.
In gowns of ermine stand the trees
White trains of down lie at their lees.
She sets the plain with crystal lakes,
And sugars hills with frosted flakes.
Where ever she in beauty goes,
The icy Queen her magic sows.

IV.
Strange sister of four Seasons,
Her face, at first, seems set in Death,
But we who walk out on her icy grounds,
Traverse a frozen pond or wander rounds
Deep into her forests fast asleep, know well,
We who stop to listen and to look can tell,
Life's certitude awaits the end of chilly Winter's icy fling.
(Congregation: "Even so come quickly, Lady Spring!")

Come, my darling, let us dance
To the moon that beckons us
To dissolve our love in trance
Heedless of the hideous
Heat & hate of Sirius-
Shun his baneful brilliance!

Let us dance beneath the palm
Moving in the moonlight, frond
Wooing frond above the calm
Of the ocean diamond
Sparkling to the sky beyond
The enchantment of our psalm.

Let us dance, my mirror of
Perfect passion won to peace,
Let us dance, my treasure trove,
On the marble terraces
Carved in pallid embroeideries
For the vestal veil of Love.

Heaven awakes to encompass us,
Hell awakes its jubilance
In our hearts mysterious
Marriage of the azure expanse,
With the scarlet brilliance
Of the Moon with Sirius.

Velvet swatches our lissome limbs
Languid lapped by sky & sea
Soul through sense & spirit swims
Through the pregnant porphyry
Dome of lapiz-lazuli:-
Heart of silence, hush our hymns.

Come my darling; let us dance
Through the golden galaxies
Rhythmic swell of circumstance
Beaming passion’s argosies:
Ecstacy entwined with ease,
Terrene joy transcending trance!

Thou my scarlet concubine
Draining heart’s blood to the lees
To empurple those divine
Lips with living luxuries
Life importunate to appease
Drought insatiable of wine!

Tunis in the tremendous trance
Rests from day’s incestuous
Traffic with the radiance
Of her sire-& over us
Gleams the intoxicating glance
Of the Moon & Sirius.

Take the ardour of my impearled
Essence that my shoulders seek
To intensify the curled
Candour of the eyes oblique,
Eyes that see the seraphic sleek
Lust bewitch the wanton world.

Come, my love, my dove, & pour
From thy cup the serpent wine
Brimmed & breathless -secret store
Of my crimson concubine
Surfeit spirit in the shrine-
Devil -Goddess -****** -*****.

Afric sands ensorcel us,
Afric seas & skies entrance
Velvet, lewd & luminous
Night surveys our soul askance!
Come my love, & let us dance
To the Moon and Sirius!

Black trees against an orange sky,
Trees that the wind shook terribly,
Like a harsh spume along the road,
Quavering up like withered arms,
Writhing like streams, like twisted charms
Of hot lead flung in snow. Below
The iron ice stung like a goad,
Slashing the torn shoes from my feet,
And all the air was bitter sleet.

And all the land was cramped with snow,
Steel-strong and fierce and glimmering wan,
Like pale plains of obsidian.
-- And yet I strove -- and I was fire
And ice -- and fire and ice were one
In one vast hunger of desire.
A dim desire, of pleasant places,
And lush fields in the summer sun,
And logs aflame, and walls, and faces,
-- And wine, and old ambrosial talk,
A golden ball in fountains dancing,
And unforgotten hands. (Ah, God,
I trod them down where I have trod,
And they remain, and they remain,
Etched in unutterable pain,
Loved lips and faces now apart,
That once were closer than my heart --
In agony, in agony,
And horribly a part of me. . . .
For Lethe is for no man set,
And in Hell may no man forget.)

And there were flowers, and jugs, bright-glancing,
And old Italian swords -- and looks,
A moment's glance of fire, of fire,
Spiring, leaping, flaming higher,
Into the intense, the cloudless blue,
Until two souls were one, and flame,
And very flesh, and yet the same!
As if all springs were crushed anew
Into one globed drop of dew!
But for the most I thought of heat,
Desiring greatly. . . . Hot white sand
The lazy body lies at rest in,
Or sun-dried, scented grass to nest in,
And fires, innumerable fires,
Great ****** hurling golden gyres
Of sparks far up, and the red heart
In sea-coals, crashing as they part
To tiny flares, and kindling snapping,
Bunched sticks that burst their string and wrapping
And fall like jackstraws; green and blue
The evil flames of driftwood too,
And heavy, sullen lumps of coke
With still, fierce heat and ugly smoke. . . .
. . . And then the vision of his face,
And theirs, all theirs, came like a sword,
Thrice, to the heart -- and as I fell
I thought I saw a light before.

I woke. My hands were blue and sore,
Torn on the ice. I scarcely felt
The frozen sleet begin to melt
Upon my face as I breathed deeper,
But lay there warmly, like a sleeper
Who shifts his arm once, and moans low,
And then sinks back to night. Slow, slow,
And still as Death, came Sleep and Death
And looked at me with quiet breath.
Unbending figures, black and stark
Against the intense deeps of the dark.
Tall and like trees. Like sweet and fire
Rest crept and crept along my veins,
Gently. And there were no more pains. . . .

Was it not better so to lie?
The fight was done. Even gods tire
Of fighting. . . . My way was the wrong.
Now I should drift and drift along
To endless quiet, golden peace . . .
And let the tortured body cease.

And then a light winked like an eye.
. . . And very many miles away
A girl stood at a warm, lit door,
Holding a lamp. Ray upon ray
It cloaked the snow with perfect light.
And where she was there was no night
Nor could be, ever. God is sure,
And in his hands are things secure.
It is not given me to trace
The lovely laughter of that face,
Like a clear brook most full of light,
Or olives swaying on a height,
So silver they have wings, almost;
Like a great word once known and lost
And meaning all things. Nor her voice
A happy sound where larks rejoice,
Her body, that great loveliness,
The tender fashion of her dress,
I may not paint them.
These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!

She stood there, and at once I knew
The bitter thing that I must do.
There could be no surrender now;
Though Sleep and Death were whispering low.
My way was wrong. So. Would it mend
If I shrank back before the end?
And sank to death and cowardice?
No, the last lees must be drained up,
Base wine from an ignoble cup;
(Yet not so base as sleek content
When I had shrunk from punishment)
The wretched body strain anew!
Life was a storm to wander through.
I took the wrong way. Good and well,
At least my feet sought out not Hell!
Though night were one consuming flame
I must go on for my base aim,
And so, perhaps, make evil grow
To something clean by agony . . .
And reach that light upon the snow . . .
And touch her dress at last . . .
So, so,
I crawled. I could not speak or see
Save dimly. The ice glared like fire,
A long bright Hell of choking cold,
And each vein was a tautened wire,
Throbbing with torture -- and I crawled.
My hands were wounds.
So I attained
The second Hell. The snow was stained
I thought, and shook my head at it
How red it was! Black tree-roots clutched
And tore -- and soon the snow was smutched
Anew; and I lurched babbling on,
And then fell down to rest a bit,
And came upon another Hell . . .
Loose stones that ice made terrible,
That rolled and gashed men as they fell.
I stumbled, slipped . . . and all was gone
That I had gained. Once more I lay
Before the long bright Hell of ice.
And still the light was far away.
There was red mist before my eyes
Or I could tell you how I went
Across the swaying firmament,
A glittering torture of cold stars,
And how I fought in Titan wars . . .
And died . . . and lived again upon
The rack . . . and how the horses strain
When their red task is nearly done. . . .

I only know that there was Pain,
Infinite and eternal Pain.
And that I fell -- and rose again.

So she was walking in the road.
And I stood upright like a man,
Once, and fell blind, and heard her cry . . .
And then there came long agony.
There was no pain when I awoke,
No pain at all. Rest, like a goad,
Spurred my eyes open -- and light broke
Upon them like a million swords:
And she was there. There are no words.

Heaven is for a moment's span.
And ever.
So I spoke and said,
"My honor stands up unbetrayed,
And I have seen you. Dear . . ."
Sharp pain
Closed like a cloak. . . .
I moaned and died.

Here, even here, these things remain.
I shall draw nearer to her side.

Oh dear and laughing, lost to me,
Hidden in grey Eternity,
I shall attain, with burning feet,
To you and to the mercy-seat!
The ages crumble down like dust,
Dark roses, deviously ******
And scattered in sweet wine -- but I,
I shall lift up to you my cry,
And kiss your wet lips presently
Beneath the ever-living Tree.

This in my heart I keep for goad!
Somewhere, in Heaven she walks that road.
Somewhere . . . in Heaven . . . she walks . . . that . . . road. . . .

want my fyn porselein is nou skerwe op die vloer
als wat goed is in die lewe;
saam met die suur melk uitgemoer
al my heuningtee en moerkoffie staan nietig in my kas
, ek hunker na n glasie brandewyn
om die herrinneringe mee weg te was.

Want Vader al val 'n duisend aan my sy
en tien duisend hier langs my
vlieg Eros se pyle net die heeltyd verby.
Ek is moeg vir alleen wees
moeg vir bang wees
vir koue voete
koue hande en
'n hart wat altyd koud sal wees.

waars die liefde en genade
waarvan ons in ******
en die Bybel lees.

Waars my stukkie hemel.
Waars my engelkoor.
Is dit ook tussen my suur melk...
of het ek dit deur bottervingers verloor?

as i drink the sadness
of the stars
gulp it down
to the lees
i wonder
what's a greater agony
going to bed with the crushing
burden of your own existence
or
the deafening echo of the universe
saying that you don't matter

Un giorno zeppo -a - blocco pieno di matrimoni di Erich McVey è una buona giornata nei nostri libri .Il suo lavoro è arte .pura e semplice .Da Londra a New York e ora Southern California .stiamo approfondendo una vicenda che mescola la ariosa .bontà scoperta di mangiare all'aperto con fiori organici di Stacey Fitts e la vera bellezza della vecchia architettura spagnola di La Villa San Juan Capistrano .Tuffati nelle immagini di Erich .poi dare un'occhiata al film realizzato dalla moglie di talento .Amy McVey sotto .

Si prega di aggiornare il tuo browserShare questa splendida galleria ColorsSeasonsFallSettingsHistoric VenueStylesAl Fresco

Da Sposa.Steven e mi è piaciuto molto l'idea di avere una sensazione organica naturale nel cuore antico di architettura California spagnola .La villa in San Juan Capistrano ( una città che ha una missione spagnola dal 1776 ) si adattano perfettamente l'immagine .Dal momento che il locale aveva tante bellezze naturali .( alberi .pietre.legno) ci wasnè ètanto che abiti da sera lunghi abbiamo bisogno di fare per far risplendere locale.La nostra visione finito per essere una sensazione di fresco.pulito e organico con tavoli in legno naturale e lenzuola di tela .

Ci sono una quantità illimitata di fai da te che una coppia può fare per il loro matrimonio .Noi didnè èvogliamo spendere troppo tempo su numerosi progettiècosì abbiamo fatto un paio di piccoli oggetti che hanno avuto pochissimo tempo



.
Le prime voci erano mano stenciled / cuscini dipinti .Abbiamo comprato alcuni grandi cuscini e le coperte in un materiale di tela di lino .Abbiamo poi stampato su varie frasi ( Mr. \u0026 Mrs. .10.12.13 .Amor che significa amore in spagnolo) in uno dei nostri font preferitièBombshell Pro .Questo è stato poi rintracciato sulla carta di cera che viene tagliato con un coltello X - acto .stirato sul cuscino e poi dipinto .Per un tocco in più .il signor cuscino aveva un farfallino messo su di esso e la signora aveva un fiore .

Il secondo reca alcuni dei nostri articoli di carta .Il mio computer marito esperto è in abiti da sera lunghi grado di creare carte di nome .i numeri di tavola .menu e tag coperta che hanno abbinato la nostra suite invito.Tutti gli articoli di carta stampata ha contribuito a mantenere bassi i costi dal momento che didnè èavere il nostro calligrafo loro fare ( 130 + articoli possono essere costosi ) .

Uno dei nostri elementi preferiti del matrimonio erano i fiori.Dato che c'era un sacco di bellezza naturale presso la sede.ci stavaè èbisogno di fare troppo per fiori .Abbiamo finito con verde fresco con i classici fiori bianchi e avorio .Rami di ulivo sono stati collocati sui tavoli come questi legami in stile California spagnola .

Un altro elemento preferito era tutti i pezzi di calligrafia che sono state diffuse in tutto il locale .Avevamo una bellissima Piantina .segni bar .guestbook .Thank You banner.legno segni signore e la signora presidente.e un segno di benvenuto .Ogni pezzo è stato completamente personalizzato per i nostri gustièanche fino alle allori dei font e foglie di olivo .Questi elementi sono quelli che terremo per sempre .Infatti.il nostro bar segno (che ha ciascuno dei nostri consigli cocktail firma ) viene visualizzato nella nostra cucina !Consigli

per le altre coppie : due cose .Primo : Alla fine della giornata .il giorno delle nozze è su di voi e la vostra sarà presto coniugeèuna celebrazione del vostro viaggio insieme attraverso la vita .Dopo la giornata è finita .tutti sono felici e le piccole cose donè èmateria .

Secondo: E ' estremamente importante scegliere un fotografo che siete entrambi a proprio agio.Durante il vostro matrimonio .questo è quello che siete ( probabilmente) trascorrere più tempo con .Poiché questo è un giorno molto nervoso per molti .sanno esattamente cosa fare per contribuire a calmare i nervi .Per noi .Erich McVey e Amy McVey erano marito e moglie team perfetto per noi .Ci siamo conosciuti su Skype ( come sono basate in Oregon) e sapevamo in pochi minuti che erano la nostra squadra .Dopo averli incontrati giù a Santa Barbara per la nostra sessione di fidanzamento solo solidificato che eravamo in ottime mani .

momento più memorabile : Eravamo seduti al nostro tavolo innamorato abiti da sposa stile impero e aveva la vista perfetta di tutti i nostri ospiti di mangiare.ridere e semplicemente divertirsi .Per vedere tutto quello che abbiamo immaginato veniamo insieme così perfettamente e guardare tutto l'amore e il flusso di felicità tutto intorno a noi è stata un'esperienza magica

Fotografia : Erich McVey | Fotografia: . Amy McVey | Planner: Michelle dalla villa di San Juan Capistrano |fiorista : Stacey Fitts | Abito da sposa: Victoria Nicole | Dolci : Jocelyn Jung con I Am The Caker | cancelleria : Alimentazione | Scarpe : Christian Louboutin | Gioielli : Pigment A San Diego | Rosticcerie : Iva Lees Catering | Hair \u0026 Makeup : 10.11 .Trucco | Calligraphy : Mon Voir ( Jenna Rainey ) | Scarpe sposo : Ted Baker | Sposi Abbigliamento: Hugo Boss | Nastro Su Profumo : Frou Frou Chic | Wedding Venue : Villa San Juan CapistranoErich McVey fotografia è un membro del nostro Little Black Book .Scopri come i membri sono scelti visitando la nostra pagina delle FAQ .Erich McVey Fotografia VIEW
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Hier onder die afdak staan ons nou
Sjuijt! Bly stil! Gouwsie gaan ons in hou.

Vir ‘n **** praat Mnr. Smit nou,
So ‘n langtam, papbek manier van woorde kou

Lees ‘n versie,
Gluur vir Stoute Daan,
Begin toe bid,
Maar wat gaan nou aan?

My hartjie pyn, nie fisies seer..
Dis verlange wat my hart so skeur.
Met oë toe en ore oop
Klink Smitie net sos Oupa Hendrik,
Terug van die dood.

******* at tickling the ivories,
at inducing the jet buttons
to chortle, say, in a concerto ;
but I do strum and flirt
with those amazing royal,
88 unrepentant loyal
keys for Jupiter and Saturn,
for Mars and Neptune,
making a blank bland tune
for extraterrestrial beings for fun.

On the cosmic moors
the moon's whirling feet
cease for my discordance.
What a slurred entrance
by F in D major!

Only a novice--an amateur.
I'm no magnificent pianist,
O majestic Mercury.

Summon the stars the search
to lead for a supreme virtuoso,
one of  no incongruent ingenuity
like this dilettante--a pseudo
music polymath, counsels Thebe.

A Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach?

Any of the greats scored above, as well
as geniuses like David and Handel.

Impressario fly! Flee thou away
and go get a classic maven.
Otherwise sleep there forever at Erebus,
never dream of waking up in Eden.

Circuitous world stops: strings break off
at the Earth's axis--
the Sun's panels pause

and darkness' movement begins
its own obscure notes to improvise:

apace demented melody
is released,-- bathos of symphony:
tinny wine of concord
settles on the lees of discord.

Asteroids hooting some ***** calls
when into the grand chrysolite chamber--
in her tailor-made blistering gown--
strolls in the coruscating Venus
in the sturdy arm of jaundiced Uranus,
garbed in his glistening stomacher.

Like a ball, all eyes are bouncing
hither and thither, up and down,

googling and ogling,
once more at them leering,

gaping at the irreplaceable paintings of
da Vinci, Picasso, and Van Gogh
cavorting  upon the weightless walls

to the romantic performance of Strauss
in the palace orchestral of Bacchus.

Inner not outer, without gnash of teeth
  Or weeping, save quiet sobs of some who pray
  And feel the Everlasting Arms beneath,--
Blackness of darkness this, but not for aye;
  Darkness that even in gathering fleeteth fast,
  Blackness of blackest darkness close to day.
Lord Jesus, through Thy darkened pillar cast,
  Thy gracious eyes all-seeing cast on me
  Until this tyranny be overpast.
Me, Lord, remember who remember Thee,
  And cleave to Thee, and see Thee without sight,
  And choose Thee still in dire extremity,
And in this darkness worship Thee my Light,
  And Thee my Life adore in shadow of death,
  Thee loved by day, and still beloved by night.
It is the Voice of my Beloved that saith:
  "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life, I go
  Whither that soul knows well that followeth"--

O Lord, I follow, little as I know;
  At this eleventh hour I rise and take
  My life into my hand, and follow so,
With tears and heart-misgivings and heart-ache;
  Thy feeblest follower, yet Thy follower
  Indomitable for Thine only sake.
To-night I gird my will afresh, and stir
  My strength, and brace my heart to do and dare,
  Marvelling: Will to-morrow wake the whirr
Of the great rending wheel, or from his lair
  Startle the jubilant lion in his rage,
  Or clench the headsman's hand within my hair,
Or kindle fire to speed my pilgrimage,
  Chariot of fire and horses of sheer fire
  Whirling me home to heaven by one fierce stage?
Thy Will I will, I Thy desire desire;
  Let not the waters close above my head,
  Uphold me that I sink not in this mire:
For flesh and blood are frail and sore afraid;
  And young I am, unsatisfied and young,
  With memories, hopes, with cravings all unfed,
My song half sung, its sweetest notes unsung,
  All plans cut short, all possibilities,
  Because my cord of life is soon unstrung.
Was I a careless woman set at ease
  That this so bitter cup is brimmed for me?

  Had mine own vintage settled on the lees?
A word, a puff of smoke, would set me free;
  A word, a puff of smoke, over and gone:...
  Howbeit, whom have I, Lord, in heaven but Thee?
Yea, only Thee my choice is fixed upon
  In heaven or earth, eternity or time:--
  Lord, hold me fast, Lord, leave me not alone,
Thy silly heartless dove that sees the lime
  Yet almost flutters to the tempting bough:
  Cover me, hide me, pluck me from this crime.
A word, a puff of smoke, would save me now:...
  But who, my God, would save me in the day
  Of Thy fierce anger? only Saviour Thou.
Preoccupy my heart, and turn away
  And cover up mine eyes from frantic fear,
  And stop mine ears lest I be driven astray:
For one stands ever dinning in mine ear
  How my gray Father withers in the blight
  Of love for me, who cruel am and dear;
And how my Mother through this lingering night
  Until the day, sits tearless in her woe,
  Loathing for love of me the happy light
Which brings to pass a concourse and a show
  To glut the hungry faces merciless,
The thousand faces swaying to and fro,
  Feasting on me unveiled in helplessness

  Alone,--yet not alone: Lord, stand by me
  As once by lonely Paul in his distress.
As blossoms to the sun I turn to Thee;
  Thy dove turns to her window, think no scorn;
  As one dove to an ark on shoreless sea,
To Thee I turn mine eyes, my heart forlorn;
  Put forth Thy scarred right Hand, kind Lord, take hold
  Of me Thine all-forsaken dove who mourn:
For Thou hast loved me since the days of old,
  And I love Thee Whom loving I will love
  Through life's short fever-fits of heat and cold;
Thy Name will I extol and sing thereof,
  Will flee for refuge to Thy Blessed Name.
  Lord, look upon me from thy bliss above:
Look down on me, who shrink from all the shame
  And pangs and desolation of my death,
  Wrenched piecemeal or devoured or set on flame,
While all the world around me holds its breath
  With eyes glued on me for a gazing-stock,
  Pitiless eyes, while no man pitieth.
The floods are risen, I stagger in their shock,
  My heart reels and is faint, I fail, I faint:
  My God, set Thou me up upon the rock,
Thou Who didst long ago Thyself acquaint
  With death, our death; Thou Who didst long ago

  Pour forth Thy soul for sinner and for saint.
Bear me in mind, whom no one else will know;
  Thou Whom Thy friends forsook, take Thou my part,
  Of all forsaken in mine overthrow;
Carry me in Thy *****, in Thy heart,
  Carry me out of darkness into light,
  To-morrow make me see Thee as Thou art.
Lover and friend Thou hidest from my sight:--
  Alas, alas, mine earthly love, alas,
  For whom I thought to don the garments white
And white wreath of a bride, this rugged pass
  Hath utterly divorced me from thy care;
  Yea, I am to thee as a shattered glass
Worthless, with no more beauty lodging there,
  Abhorred, lest I involve thee in my doom:
  For sweet are sunshine and this upper air,
And life and youth are sweet, and give us room
  For all most sweetest sweetnesses we taste:
  Dear, what hast thou in common with a tomb?
I bow my head in silence, I make haste
  Alone, I make haste out into the dark,
  My life and youth and hope all run to waste.
Is this my body cold and stiff and stark,
  Ashes made ashes, earth becoming earth,
  Is this a prize for man to make his mark?

Am I, that very I who laughed in mirth
  A while ago, a little, little while,
  Yet all the while a-dying since my birth?
Now am I tired, too tired to strive or smile;
  I sit alone, my mouth is in the dust:
  Look Thou upon me, Lord, for I am vile.
In Thee is all my hope, is all my trust,
  On Thee I centre all my self that dies,
  And self that dies not with its mortal crust,
But sleeps and wakes, and in the end will rise
  With hymns and hallelujahs on its lips,
  Thee loving with the love that satisfies.
As once in Thine unutterable eclipse
  The sun and moon grew dark for sympathy,
  And earth cowered quaking underneath the drips
Of Thy slow Blood priceless exceedingly,
  So now a little spare me, and show forth
  Some pity, O my God, some pity of me.
If trouble comes not from the south or north,
  But meted to us by Thy tender hand,
  Let me not in Thine eyes be nothing worth:
Behold me where in agony I stand,
  Behold me no man caring for my soul,
  And take me to Thee in the far-off land,
Shorten the race and lift me to the goal.

Have you ever heard in your mind
the sounds that silence makes
the silence that spreads like music
as in splendor a dewy morning breaks
silence that clings to a Florentine fog
as lone cyclist a cobble street snakes

the silence that hangs heavy
after a heavy down pour finally ends
or await with it for the moment
when heaven its pearly reward sends
they sound so different and surreal
like life’s ethereal myriad bends

the silence that weighty dwells
in wisps, rises from vacant eyes
the silence that fills to the brim
dole, of a beggar’s ripping sighs
silence that hangs like a sword
on fears of unsaid distant byes

silence o endless tormenting silence
you play on a piano’s dusty keys
from a chair that rocks in howling wind
on a lifeless verandah, distant sees
from a score of such like mends
wherefrom one has drunk to ones lees

it speaks no man’s earthly breath
yet heard in shattering numbness
in ache and blight so steeped
in rustle of a long gone worn dress
in raucous merry gay proceeds
or the mirth of a child’s bless

in the time of a frisky bloomy day
or gnaw of a long starry night
the lullaby of distant streaking trains
or the gondola’s reflective sight
the cavort of journeys done together
Echoes the hush of a soundless blight


original
saadat tahir
22nd July, 2k13
Islamabad.

A la Humanidad
ELENA RAMOS

Ciertamente todos buscamos lo mismo
Poder, Dinero y Fama
Ser mejor para ser escuchados por todos
Tener dinero para poder comprar a todos
Y tener fama para ser reconocidos por todos
No podemos pretender ser supremos ante civilizaciones a las cuales somos exactamente iguales
Tenemos rasgos distintos, dialectos variados pero
Al final somos iguales

Esperamos un desastre para poder unirnos
Uno en el cual tengamos miedo de morir y ser derrotados por fuerzas mayores
Talvez debamos esperar ese fenómeno que cambie a la humanidad
Algo que jamás hayan podido ver nuestros ojos
Un desastre natural que acabe con todos
Una plaga que nos destruya lentamente

En la humanidad hay mucha corrupción, hay desastres creados por nosotros
Hay guerras santas, hay asesinatos planeados
Porque?
Por poder, dinero y fama
Somos invencibles en nuestras mentes, pero que pasa si afuera de nuestra visión
Hay algo más grande que todos juntos
Una fuerza invencible, un poder sobrenatural que en cualquier momento decida destruirnos
Talvez sea suerte o sea el destino

Si decidimos separarnos a diario
Si creamos más violencia
Si hay más separación de naciones
Si hay más hambre
Más infestaciones, más personas mueren a diario
Es inevitable es un proceso natural del hombre
Pero, aceptémoslo más muertes son causadas por nosotros mismos.

Soy tan humana como todos ustedes
Es un acto de paz y un pacto de unidad
La raza humana pierde su escencia
De ser capaces de analizar y ser luz
Somos ciegos y egoístas
Un ego que saciar
Un espíritu que alimentar
A base de mentiras, engaños y sacrificios

Ser pobre o rico
Tener todo o  ser nada
Ver morir pero no actuar
Decidimos sentarnos a ver lo que pasa
Pero  porque no somos parte del espectáculo mejor?
Organizaciones a diario luchan por cambiar el mundo
Fotos de acontecimientos que impactan un rato
Después son desechos que olvidamos por lujos y mentiras


El humano se convirtió en el monstruo más grande que deberíamos temer
Esa sencillez de aceptar el fracaso
Inhumanos ante las crisis de los demás
Muertes por ganas de poder
Muertes por religión y creencias
Si crees en algo, créelo
Pero
Piensa si va en contra de ti y de tu generación
Dos bandos iguales peleando por ser más notorio
Sangre derramada para demostrar grandeza
Lujos para despilfarrar
Lugares hermosos que son destrozados
El hábitat humana dejo de ser para los humanos

Nos convertimos en cosas materialistas
Sin propósitos de vida
Luchemos para ser iguales
Sin distinción de raza, ****, religión, política...
Constantemente decimos eso
Pero realmente se cumple?
Si eres humano y lees esto
Piensa que estás haciendo en este momento
Estas cambiado para bien a tu humanidad?

Among the pale Elm trees, many things appease,
Like the glorious song of the Hummingbird.
I sit admiring the birds as I please.  

The Evening’s blue fog wheels in Elm’s mystic leaves,
Hooting owl’s decibels sing loud and absurd.
Among the pale Elm trees, many things appease.  

To feed sugars to the Bluebirds and the Bees,  
I ravaged the branches and made lemon curd.  
I sit admiring the birds as I please.  

My ****** structure is sets of flattened lees,
Defying the winds, the winds, the winds that heard.  
Among the pale Elm trees, many things appease.  

In colonnades of wavering Ulmus trees,  
I watch men’s mesh catching a baby Bluebird.  
I sit admiring the birds as I please.  

Up and come ****-tree mushrooms, all life forms seize  
To fierce, teeth-tusks of ivory, undeterred.
Among the pale Elm trees, many things appease,
I sit admiring the birds as I please.

My letsels is die sinne
My vel is die papier
Lees daaruit wat jy wil
Die wat omgee bly nog hier

My trane is die voorblad
My bloed is steeds die ink
In my skree ń monster
Wat ek nog moet verdrink

Die rowe is die punte wat
Ek soms nog skraap en skuur
My voorkop pêrel sweet
In my oë brand hell se vuur

My lemme is my penne
Die papier hier op my lyf
Elke liewe liefdes briefie-
Ń letsel, net vir jou geskryf...

Exijo que alguien me diga en donde está escrito que una mujer solo puede tener **** con una persona y si pasa de ese número automáticamente es puta. Si, este pensamiento es algo machista pero lo peor de todo es que es utilizado más en las mujeres que en los mismos hombres, me explico.

Las mujeres ven una mujer la cual se viste mostrando lo que le da la gana y rápido piensan en la palabra puta, cuando ven a otra mujer besándose con uno hoy y otro mañana piensan en que es una puta sin valores, cuando otra mujer tiene **** con más de 5 personas en dos meses lo que piensan es una puta que no se respeta. ¿Acaso creen que esta no es una actitud machista?
Mujeres que exigen igualdad entre hombres y mujeres pero critican a mujeres que se atreven a ser quienes son mientras que ellas están sentadas soplándose el culo y criticando. ¿Este pensamiento es tan poco prudente y es tan común hoy día, cual es el problema con que una persona, sea mujer u hombre, se sienta bien consigo mismo y decida tener una vida ****** plena? Son libres de hacer lo que quieran. Ellos escogen: con quien, con cuantos y en que lapso de tiempo lo hacen.

Pero como esta acusación estúpida radica más en las mujeres quiero concluir con esto. Mujer que me lees:
Si deseas vestirte con un traje corto y un escote en las tetas hazlo.
Si te gustan tres personas y tienes la oportunidad de besarlos a los tres hazlo.
Si quieres tener **** hoy con uno y mañana con tres hazlo.
Hazlo, olvídate del que dirán las personas porque seas casta, virgen y pura o puta, atrevida y coqueta hablaran de ti.

Natalia Rivera.

We were swept up onto this rocky coast
By a storm in ’93,
There were thirteen passengers and crew
And a stowaway, that’s me!
The ship was holed on the jagged rocks
And it sits still out in the bay,
We’ve never been able to fix the hole
So it looks like here we’ll stay.

It sits forlorn when the tide is low
But is covered when it’s high,
As the breakers beat on the after decks
Though the ship is never dry.
The water pours from the cabins, and
Lies deep in the forward hold,
While the rust is eating the hull away
And the cargo’s turned to mould.

We thought that we’d soon be rescued
By a ship just passing by,
But all we saw for a month or more
Was the lonely sea and the sky,
We made our camp on the beach where we
Could watch for a passing light,
And cook our fish on the signal fires,
But the trouble came at night.

The crew of seven were restless and
The passengers were few,
For only five of us men were there
And the women, only two.
One, the wife of a clergyman
The other a girl called Gail,
And she was sweet on a man called Deet
That she’d met before we sailed.

But Deet had fought with the bosun
Over the fish he said were his,
They moved away, went around the bay
To seek their Island bliss.
That left the clergyman’s wife with us
Who was praying we’d be found,
But late one night, in another fight
The clergyman was drowned.

The bosun dragged her away from us
With Froggat, Jones and Lees,
They took the struggling woman with them
Deep into the trees,
There wasn’t a thing we could do for her
So we went out to the ship,
And armed ourselves with iron bars
While we told ourselves: ‘They’ll keep!’

We moved our camp from the other crew
For the feeling there was mean,
The three the bosun had left behind
Hid out where they’d not be seen,
But then, at just about midnight we
Were hearing an eerie wail,
For down at the beach they’d murdered Deet
And dragged off the weeping Gail.

From deep in the trees we saw that Lees
Was trying to reach our spot,
His head was covered in blood, but then
He fell from a single shot,
The bosun was dragging Marie, the wife
To the open, by her hair,
Her dress was soiled and her face was spoiled
With the tears of a deep despair.

We didn’t see Froggat and Jones again,
They’d fallen to the knife,
But I had to run from the bosun’s gun
In order to stay alive,
Then under the cover of darkness we
Went after the weeping Gail,
And beneath the stars with our iron bars
We left a bloodied trail.

We caught the bosun asleep one night
And we beat him with our bars,
He didn’t have time to wake before
We dispatched him to the stars,
That left just Jeremy Leach and I
And the women that we’d saved,
For Gordon died of a fever then
And we dug his sandy grave.

It looks as if we’ll be here for good
So I’ll sign this bloodied screed,
Place it safe in a bottle then
And commit it to the seas,
We won’t fight over the women for
Marie is now with Leach,
And Gail has a tiny stowaway
As she wanders along the beach.

David Lewis Paget

Shaving a matchstick.(pointless)

The future is set at thirty seven degrees and this I have read in the lees left in the mug,
so jug me a hare Doris while Boris brings forth a new Frankenstein
let's eat,drink and ****** what's left our our time here,switch all the lights on and let us drink wine dear.
Tomorrow we'll **** Jack and Jill and wipe out those **** tales we were told,like new lamps for old and rainbows with gold at the end,
bend into the bar dear and fill me a jar dear,tonight I do not want to think,let me sink into the pit where the corners are lit with the lights from the eyes that I see,Each degree takes me one way to another day filled with death and each wish that I wished for lays here on the damp floor covered in sweat.
We get what we wish for and sometimes we get more and others don't wish at all, and all roads don't go to Rome some vanish in the distance between the here and the getting,roads like lost wishes lay sweating on the floor.
so jug me a hare Doris,I'll go and call Boris,Frankenstein's coming for tea
I want him to see that there's **** all here for me, just one
more degree on the scale.

MODERN SONNETS

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse and experimental sonnets.



Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch

There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her,
                                   and is not the same.
I revere her and enlist this sacred fire
to keep her memory’s exalted flame
unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.

On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles ...
They sleep alike—diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the “surgeons.”
                                               Sleeping, all.

Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
if accidents of coloration, gall
my heart no less.
                            Amid thick weeds and muck
there lies a rose man’s crackling lightning struck:
the only Rose I ever longed to pluck.
Soon I’ll bed there and bid the world “Good Luck.”

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, then by Voices Israel, Other Voices International, Verse Weekly, Black Medina, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Promosaik (Germany), FreeXpression (Australia), Poetry Super Highway, Inspirational Stories, Trinacria, Pennsylvania Review, Litera (UK), Yahoo Buzz, and de Volkskrant Blog (a Dutch newspaper)



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now—
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness—time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?—insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask—

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?

Published by Borderless Journal and SindhuNews (India)



Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.



The Composition of Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”—W. B. Yeats

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant, ...

sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze

that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.

Published by The Lyric and Contemporary Rhyme



Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem should be a wild, unearthly cry
against the thought of lying in the dark,
doomed―never having seen bright sparks leap high,
without a word for flame, none for the mark
an ember might emblaze on lesioned skin.

A poet is no crafty artisan―
the maker of some crock. He dreams of flame
he never touched, but―fakir’s courtesan―
must dance obedience, once called by name.
Thin wand, divine!, this world is too the same―

all watery ooze and flesh. Let fire cure
and quickly harden here what can endure.

Originally published by The Lyric

The ancient English scops were considered to be makers: for instance, in William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makiris.” But in some modern literary circles poets are considered to be fakers, with lies being as good as the truth where art is concerned. Hence, this poem puns on “fakirs” and dancing snakes.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden―
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray―

whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.
Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.

Originally published by Southwest Review



Marsh Song
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Originally published by The Lyric



The City Is a Garment
by Michael R. Burch

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,―
the city is a garment stretched so thin
her festive colors bleed into the night,
and everywhere bright seams, unraveling,

cascade their brilliant contents out like coins
on motorways and esplanades; bead cars
come tumbling down long highways; at her groin
a railtrack like a zipper flashes sparks;

her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool
and from their cleavage winking lights enlarge
and travel, slender fingers ... softly pull
themselves into the semblance of a barge.

When night becomes too chill, she softly dons
great overcoats of warmest-colored dawn.

Originally published by The Lyric



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

Published by The Chariton Review (as “The Knitter”)



in-flight convergence
by michael r. burch

serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city                  extend
over lumbering behemoths shrilly screeching displeasure;
they say
that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command

here the streetlights that flicker
and those blazing steadfast seem one
from a                distance;
           descend?
they abruptly
part                    ways,

so that nothing is one
which at times does not suddenly blend
into garish insignificance
in the familiar alleyways,
in the white neon flash
and the billboards of Convenience

and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance
as we thunder down the enlightened runways.

Originally published by The Aurorean and nominated for the Pushcart Prize



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms ... she would say
that we’d loved, but some book said we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
by yielding all my virtue to her grace.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”



Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.

Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
blown far to the lees
as fierce northern gales sever.

Come down, or your hearts will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours and spring returns never.

I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, Byron, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Keats, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Shelley, Whitman, Wordsworth, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone.



Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They ***** to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair ...
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.



To Flower
by Michael R. Burch

When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.

We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?

The agave knows best when it’s time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes

in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,

she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

Published by The Chariton Review (as “The Knitter”)



Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed―
why should such tattered artistry be banned?

I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."

Originally published by The Chariton Review



The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

I have not come for the harvest of roses―
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.

Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer―
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Love Has a Southern Flavor
by Michael R. Burch

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...

Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations’ dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ...

Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



Redolence
by Michael R. Burch

Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.

Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.

And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.

Published by The Eclectic Muse



Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch

These are the narrows of my soul—
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.

Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.

Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned

why it is named:
Mare Clausum.



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron―
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful―
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.

If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax―their circumstance
as humble as it is?―or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?

Originally published by The Eclectic Muse



Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes―the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air―
too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ...
two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other―fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.



Huntress
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire

Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep
across a crevice dropping deep
into a dark and doomed domain.
Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane.
Rain falls upon your path, and pain
pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause
and heed the oft-lamented laws
which bid you not begin again
till night returns. You wail like wind,
the sighing of a soul for sin,
and give up hunting for a heart.
Till sunset falls again, depart,
though hate and hunger urge you―"On!"
Heed, hearts, your hope―the break of dawn.

Originally published by Sonnetto Poesia



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy's a wan illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.

Originally published by The Lyric



Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets' wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:
to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,―
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs
seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun's pale tourmaline.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes―
I can almost remember―goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me
rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...

... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...

... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees ...

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...

... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” — W. B. Yeats

For all that we professed of love, we knew
this night would come, that we would bend alone
to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
an eerie presence on encrusted logs
we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.

The books that line these close, familiar shelves
loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.

I do not know the words for easy bliss
and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark,
long-unenamored pen and will it: Move.
I loved you more than words, so let words prove.

Published by Sonnet Writers, Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore) and Vallance Review (Canada)



how many Nights (i)
by michael r. burch

how many Nights we laughed to see the sun
       go
down ...
your hair a frightful, dizzy golden crown ...
your skirt up to your thighs, displaying these
and others of men’s baser fantasies ...
that little pouting flower, slightly parted,
with nothing intervening, nothing thwarted ...



how many Nights (ii)
by michael r. burch

how many Nights we laughed to see the sun
       go
down ...
because the Night was made for reckless fun.
Your golden crown,
Your skin so soft, so smooth, and lightly downed.

how many nights i wept glad tears to hold
You tight against the years.
Your eyes so bold,
Your hair spun gold,
and all the pleasures Your soft flesh foretold.

how many Nights i did not dare to dream
You were so real ...
now all that i have left here is to feel
in dreams surreal
Time is the Nightmare God before whom men kneel.

and how few Nights, i reckoned, in the end,
we were allowed to gather, less to spend.



Come!
by Michael R. Burch

Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?

When my womb has conformed to the chastity
your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,
will you finally be pleased that my *** was thus rendered
unpalatable, disengendered?

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so
have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow
with the approval of God that I ended a maid—
thanks to a *****?

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?

“Come!” won fifth place in the Writer’s Digest 2012 Rhyming Poetry Contest, out of over 9,500 overall contest entries.



This is a sonnet despite the nonstandard stanza breaks. It was inspired by Dylan Thomas's poem "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower."

There’s a Stirring and Awakening in the World
by Michael R. Burch

There’s a stirring and awakening in the world,
and even so my spirit stirs within,
imagining some Power beckoning—
the Force which through the stamen gently whirrs,
unlocking tumblers deftly, even mine.

The grape grows wild-entangled on the vine,
and here, close by, the honeysuckle shines.
And of such life, at last there comes there comes the Wine.

And so it is with spirits’ fruitful yield—
the growth comes first, Green Vagrance, then the Bloom.

The world somehow must give the spirit room
to blossom, till its light shines—wild, revealed.

And then at last the earth receives its store
of blessings, as glad hearts cry—More! More! More!

Keywords/Tags: poem, poetry, spring, stirring, awakening, spirit, power, force, grape, vine, wine, growth, bloom, blooming, blossom, blossoming



Herbsttag (“Autumn Day”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.

Published by Measure, Setu (India), The HyperTexts, 3 Penny Paintings and The Society of Classical Poets



Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.—Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl
                                              (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
                            It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
                                And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
                                     Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



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.



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.



The Forge
by Michael R. Burch

To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,

then bend this way and that, and slowly cool
at arm’s-length, something irreducible
drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool

of water so contrary just a hiss
escapes it—water instantly a mist.
It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ...

And then the driven hammer falls and falls.
The horses ***** their ears in nearby stalls.
A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles.

A sound of ancient import, with the ring
of honest labor, sings of fashioning.

Published by The Chariton Review


See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs,
and deepens on itself, as though mirth took
some comfort there, then burrowed deeply in,
outlasting winter. See how very thin
her features are—that time has made more spare,
so that each bone shows, elegant and rare.
For life remains undimmed in her grave eyes,
and courage in her still-delighted looks:
each face presented like a picture book’s.
Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes.



Flight 93
by Michael R. Burch

I held the switch in trembling fingers ... asked
why existence felt so small, so meaningless,
like a minnow squirming feebly in my grasp ...

... vibrations of huge engines thrummed my arms
as, glistening with sweat, I nudged the switch
to OFF ... I heard the klaxon’s shrill alarms

like vultures’ shriekings ... earthward, in a stall ...
we floated ... earthward ... wings outstretched, aghast
like Icarus ... as through the void we fell ...

till nothing was so beautiful, so blue ...
so vivid as that moment ... and I held
an image of your face, and dreamed I flew

into your arms ... the earth rushed up ... I knew
such comfort, in that moment, loving you.

Published by The Lyric



If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...

You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your ******* ...

Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...

Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.

Published by Romantics Quarterly



To Please The Poet
by Michael R. Burch

To please the poet, words must dance—
staccato, brisk, a two-step:
so!
Or waltz in elegance to time
of music—mild,
adagio.

To please the poet, words must chance
emotion in catharsis—
flame.
Or splash into salt seas, descend
in sheets of silver-shining
rain.

To please the poet, words must prance
and gallop, gambol, revel,
rail.
Or muse upon a moment—mute,
obscure, unsure, imperfect,
pale.

To please the poet, words must sing,
or croak, wart-tongued, imagining.

Originally published by The Lyric



The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...

Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...

“O, let down your hair!”—we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...

was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.

Published by Romantics Quarterly and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



Once

for Beth

Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name ...

Once when her ******* were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips would more wildly insist ...

Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant ...

Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed—
this impossible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.

Published by The Lyric, Writer’s Journal, Grassroots Poetry, Tucumcari Literary Journal, Unlikely Stories, Poetry Life & Times



These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone, not untouched.
And I am as they were—unsure—for the days
stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze.

Ah, faithless lover—that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart having leapt from the pinnacle of Love,
and the result of each such infatuation ...
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.



Oasis
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.



Melting
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous,
                     so bright,
                                                      so beautiful . . .
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.

Published by Borderless Journal



Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

The night is full of stars. Which still exist?
Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know.
For now I hold your fingers to my lips
and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow ...

once slow to match this reckless spark in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame ...

for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie
in dawning recognition is enough ...

enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.



All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.

[Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.]



A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the darkening autumn, how swiftly life goes—
as I fled before love ...
                                     Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.

I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the specter of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.

O, where are you now?—I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.

Published by Chrysanthemum and Tucumcari Literary Review



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.

Published by Sonnet Writers, Freshet and Sontey (Czechoslovakia)



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 good 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.

Published by The Lyric



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man’s tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men’s frozen genes convene ...
there is no answer—death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth’s “highest species”—
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.



Crunch
by Michael R. Burch

A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucous you scrounge from your nose
then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ...

You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere,
sometimes as you ****** encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan ***
and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic.

You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion
to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters:
surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information,
in order to ensure the survival of the species.

Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces;
their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium.
But your cranium
     is not nearly so adaptable.

“Crunch” is a poem about evolution and survival of the fittest which questions where human beings really are the planet earth’s most advanced life forms.



Duet (II)
by Michael R. Burch

If love is just an impulse meant to bring
two tiny hearts together, skittering
like hamsters from their Quonsets late at night
in search of lust’s productive exercise . . .

If love is the mutation of some gene
made radiant—an accident of bliss
played out by two small actors on a screen
of silver mesh, who never even kiss . . .

If love is evolution, nature’s way
of sorting out its DNA in pairs,
of matching, mating, sculpting flesh’s clay . . .
why does my wrinkled hamster climb his stairs

to set his wheel revolving, then descend
and stagger off . . . to make hers fly again?

Published by Bewildering Stories



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt ... I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.



Caveat
by Michael R. Burch

If only we were not so eloquent,
we might sing, and only sing, not to impress,
but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed.

We might inundate the earth with thankfulness
for light, although it dies, and make a song
of night descending on the earth like bliss,

with other lights beyond—not to be known—
but only to be welcomed and enjoyed,
before all worlds and stars are overthrown ...

as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face
and find it beautiful for emptiness
of all but joy. There is no thought to love

but love itself. How senseless to redress,
in darkness, such becoming nakedness . . .

Originally published by Clementine Unbound



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of wanting her himself, so much the lie
that she was meant for him—obscene illusion!—
made him seem a monarch throned like God on high,
when he was less than nothing; when to die
meant many stultifying, pained embraces.

She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces
that tied her to the earth: then she was his.
Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces
and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness—
her ghost beyond perfection—for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.

Published by Katrina Anthology, The Lyric and Trinacria



Every Man Has a Dream
by Michael R. Burch

lines composed at Elliston Square

Every man has a dream that he cannot quite touch ...
a dream of contentment, of soft, starlit rain,
of a breeze in the evening that, rising again,
reminds him of something that cannot have been,
and he calls this dream love.

And each man has a dream that he fears to let live,
for he knows: to succumb is to throw away all.
So he curses, denies it and locks it within
the cells of his heart and he calls it a sin,
this madness, this love.

But each man in his living falls prey to his dreams,
and he struggles, but so he ensures that he falls,
and he finds in the end that he cannot deny
the joy that he feels or the tears that he cries
in the darkness of night for this light he calls love.



Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch

I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
swirling together through Himalayan serene altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhaled breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness . . .

But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!

We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter there will be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.



Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch

With her small eyes, pale blue and unforgiving,
she taught me: December is not for those
unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings
who bicker for worms with dramatic throats

still pinkly exposed, ... who have yet to learn
the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour
their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned
fortress and impregnable bower

from which men must fly like improbable dreams
to become poets. They have yet to grasp that,
before they can soar starward like fanciful archaic machines,
they must first assimilate the latest technology, ... or

lose all in the sudden realization of gravity,
following Icarus’s sun-unwinged, singed trajectory.



The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever we became climbed on the thought
of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings
ten thousand miles above the breasted earth
that had vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ...

I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling
my human form about; I writhe; I writhe.
Invention is not Mastery, nor wings
Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides
and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ...

Oh, some will call the sun my doom, but Love
melts callow wax the higher atmospheres
leave brittle. I flew high: not high enough
to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers.



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
as the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some raging ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze:
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.

Published by Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and The Chained Muse



Elemental
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.

Belatedly, he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element whose scorching flame uplifts.



Premonition
by Michael R. Burch

Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each casual lover.

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their forced laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...

and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...

and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.

And we know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
carved out to stand like strange totems in sand
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...

You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking sagely above ...

Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.



Leave Taking (II)
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

I even feel the pleasure of their sting,
the stab of life. I do not think —at all—
to be renewed, as earth is every spring.
I do not hope words cluster where they fall.
I only hope one leaf, wild-spiraling,
illuminates the void, till glad hearts sing.

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



Because She Craved the Very Best
by Michael R. Burch

Because she craved the very best,
he took her East, he took her West;
he took her where there were no wars
and brought her bright bouquets of stars ...

The blush and fragrances of roses,
the hush an evening sky imposes,
moonbeams pale and garlands rare,
and golden combs to match her hair ...

A nightingale to sing all night,
white wings, to let her soul take flight ...
She stabbed him with a poisoned sting
and as he lay there dying,
she screamed, "I wanted everything!"
and started crying.



Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch

We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each face—
a carnival-like mirror. In the space
between the silver backing and the glass,
we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass
who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed
to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed
for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee
to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key.
We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung.
In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.



Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official—zenlike Art—
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile becomes mock porcelain.

Till in the end, the smile alone remains:
titanium-based alloys undestroyed
with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains
of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed

us most about the corpses rectified
to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.



www.firesermon.com
by Michael R. Burch

your gods have become e-vegetation;
your saints—pale thumbnail icons; to enlarge
their images, right-click; it isn’t hard
to populate your web-site; not to mention

cool sound effects are nice; Sound Blaster cards
can liven up dull sermons, [zing some fire];
your drives need added Zip; you must discard
your balky paternosters: ***!!! Desire!!!

these are the watchwords, catholic; you must
as Yahoo! did, employ a little lust :)
if you want great e-commerce; hire a bard
to spruce up ancient language, shed the dust

of centuries of sameness;
                                             lameness *****;
your gods grew blurred; go 3D; scale; adjust.



Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



130 Refuted
by Michael R. Burch

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red ...
— Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Seas that sparkle in the sun
without its light would have no beauty;
but the light within your eyes
is theirs alone; it owes no duty.
And that flame, not half as bright,
is meant for me, and brings delight.

Coral formed beneath the sea,
though scarlet-tendriled, cannot warm me;
while your lips, not half so red,
just touching mine, at once inflame me.
And the searing flames your lips arouse
fathomless oceans fail to douse.

Bright roses’ brief affairs, declared
when winter comes, will wither quickly.
Your cheeks, though paler when compared
with them?—more lasting, never prickly.
And your cheeks, so dear and warm,
far vaster treasures, need no thorns.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

. . . quiescent unions . . . thoughts of bliss, of hope . . .
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars . . .
like childhood’s long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions . . . slip and bra . . .

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare

to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



Hymn to an Art-o-matic Laundromat
by Michael R. Burch

after Richard Moore’s “Hymn to an Automatic Washer”

O, terrible-immaculate
ALL-cleansing godly Laundromat,
where cleanliness is next to Art
—a bright Kinkade (bought at K-Mart),
a Persian rug (made in Taiwan),
a Royal Bonn Clock (time zone Guam)—
embrace my *** in cushioned vinyl,
erase all marks: ****, vaginal,
******, inkspot, red wine, dirt.
O, sterilize her skirt, my shirt,
my skidmarked briefs, her padded bra;
suds-away in your white maw
all filth, the day’s accumulation.
Make us pure by INUNDATION.

Published by The Oldie, where it was the winner of a poetry contest



If Love Were Infinite
by Michael R. Burch

If love were infinite, how I would pity
our lives, which through long years’ exactitude
might seem a pleasant blur—one interlude
without prequel or sequel—wanly pretty,
the gentlest flame the heart might bring to bear
to tepid hearts too sure of love to flare.

If love were infinite, why would I linger
caressing your fine hair, lost in the thought
each auburn strand must shrivel with this finger,
and so in thrall to time be gently brought
to final realization: love, amazing,
must leave us ash for all our fiery blazing.

If flesh’s heat once led me straight to you,
love’s arrow’s burning mark must pierce me through.



Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.

We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.

Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals “love’s” damaged images: its dreams ...
and ******* limply, screams and screams.



Renown

for Jeremy

Words fail us when, at last,
we lie unread amid night’s parchment leaves,
life’s chapter past.

Whatever I have gained of life, I lost,
except for this bright emblem
of your smile . . .

and I would grasp
its meaning closer for a longer while . . .
but I am glad

with all my heart to be unheard,
and smile,
bound here, still strangely mortal,

instructed by wise Love not to be sad,
when to be the lesser poet
meant to be “the world’s best dad.”



Late Frost
by Michael R. Burch

The matters of the world like sighs intrude;
out of the darkness, windswept winter light
too frail to solve the puzzle of night’s terror
resolves the distant stars to salts: not white,

but gray, dissolving in the frigid darkness.
I stoke cooled flames and stand, perhaps revealed
as equally as gray, a faded hardness
too malleable with time to be annealed.

Light sprinkles through dull flakes, devoid of color;
which matters not. I did not think to find
a star like Bethlehem’s. I turn my collar
to trudge outside for cordwood. There, outlined

within the doorway’s arch, I see the tree
that holds its boughs aloft, as if to show
they harbor neither love, nor enmity,
but only stars: insignias I know—

false ornaments that flash, overt and bright,
but do not warm and do not really glow,
and yet somehow bring comfort, soft delight:
a rainbow glistens on new-fallen snow.



Over(t) Simplification
by Michael R. Burch

“Keep it simple, stupid.”

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful,
or comforting, or horrifying. Move
the reader, and the world will not reprove
the idiosyncrasies of too few lines,
too many syllables, or offbeat beats.

It only matters that she taps her feet
or that he frowns, or smiles, or grimaces,
or sits bemused—a child—as images
of worlds he’d lost come flooding back, and then . . .
they’ll cheer the poet’s insubordinate pen.

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful.



The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,

when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,

when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...

There is no dismaler time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears

beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.

Keywords/Tags: modern, sonnet, sonnets, free, verse, song, traditional, romantic, romanticism, art, artisan

Ek druk my hart onder die kussing en tel tot tien...
Honderd...
Duisend...
Maar dit bly ritmies klop
Onder my koue palms

Ek berê my asem in die verlede
Waar dit vermoedelik
buite jou bereik was
...maar ek het jou vermoeëns onderskat
En nou krioel my binneste met jou teenwoordigheid

Ek gooi my blik na die vloeibare goud van die Vrystaatse vlaktes
, maar jy het my reeds in jou fissier vasgeknoop

En nou openbaar ek my psalms vir die wereld om te lees
, maar hoop jy verstaan...
Ek hoop jy verstaan

Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.

Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
blown to the lees
as fierce northern gales sever.

Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.

NOTE: I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone. Keywords/Tags: Harold Bloom, literary, critic, criticism, elitist, elitism, ivory, tower, heights, mountain, winter, cold, frigid



Rant: The Elite
by Michael R. Burch

When I heard Harold Bloom unsurprisingly say:
Poetry is necessarily difficult. It is our elitist art ...
I felt a small suspicious thrill. After all, sweetheart,
isn’t this who we are? Aren’t we obviously better,
and certainly fairer and taller, than they are?

Though once I found Ezra Pound
perhaps a smidgen too profound,
perhaps a bit over-fond of Benito
and the advantages of fascism
to be taken ad finem, like high tea
with a pure white spot of intellectualism
and an artificial sweetener, calorie-free.

I know! I know! Politics has nothing to do with art
And it tempts us so to be elite, to stand apart ...
but somehow the word just doesn’t ring true,
echoing effetely away—the distance from me to you.

Of course, politics has nothing to do with art,
but sometimes art has everything to do with becoming elite,
with climbing the cultural ladder, with being able to meet
someone more Exalted than you, who can demonstrate how to ****
so that everyone below claims one’s odor is sweet.
You had to be there! We were falling apart
with gratitude! We saw him! We wept at his feet!
Though someone will always be far, far above you, clouding your air,
gazing down at you with a look of wondering despair.

Wandering snowflakes
seagulls flying inland
pollen blown from birches
light caught on the evergreen leaves
the houses over the lees
light under the clouds
foam patterns on the oceans waves
or in the rivers catching twigs the bubbles at the edge
the surface of the lakes serene when lying still
the cobblestones in frost and snow
the stripes in woods of trees
the bleached driftwood on the shores
the shells that oscillate in eddies
the heavens in the mist
all the whites where colour unites as one
over the moon and under the sun

Margaret Ann Waddicor 28th April 2016

The red maple tree
was a chord you set down
planted at the edge of the lawn
when I was born

you said it was
for the butterfly catcher
who will grow up
to gather up the cosmos

I disappointed
by staying low, a shrub no taller than your irises
Your granddaughter
inherited your songs instead
understands tempo
that shapeless country
of time signatures that counts ideas in seeds
She rambles across sheet music
turns that scattering
into the glitter of song

You've crossed the bridge of night
now you are lost in the stars,

You add to the Milky Way
your off-beat insights
still singing poetry
with Kurt Weil, Lenya, and Lees

your words traveling through
the heavens with Mackie Messer
who knifes the mysteries

You give it all verse
counting inspiration in the deep
your genius out there
where the moon's white mask
appears on stage each night
with requiems and prayers
giving stage directions
to the earth below.

Your ***** finally in the discussion of being an accent to beauty but who gets the cents from all that call to action
It’s not a sister who car is dashing
I’m not bashing but just like Sebastian
Constant comic relief without any green leaf, so why isn’t Franklin the one saying “Good grief”?

The same way they didn’t see robbery when they thought to elect Vivian over Celie, constantly a side note though  our words stay in the quote forever the black knight stuck at the mot, yet I can’t blame a invisible hand, cause it’s my own brothers keeper who would sell my own hand for a couple of bands, it’s framed as integration more like selected representation, still light versus dark creates a fraction that leads to more distraction influenced by our own reactions, quick to cop Italian, German, London and French designers even though they were the main colonizers but were so “woke” it’s all ok if rappers are the buyers so who’s the real lier?

Black business is labeled with asterisks cause we shop like we’re at risk, price tags look different when written by a black wrist, so ingrained that we continue to persist with a system that makes me feel we stuck in the mist, it should be king novel cowritten by Willie Lynch, real or not his words are the tapestry that still affect our reality, but to you another young black casualty,  

Black Lives Matter was removed from main stream chatter like a infection in Americas bladder, me too seems burked not the whole collection just the women in colored section, from trafficking, continued police murders that are baffling, cultural appropriation that reigns supreme so put on your little black dress with your favorite song, From cover to conclusion racial inclusion is just a westworld delusion

Ek druk my hart onder die kussing en tel tot tien...
Honderd...
Duisend...
Maar dit bly ritmies klop
Onder my koue palms

Ek berê my asem in die verlede
Waar dit vermoedelik
buite jou bereik was
...maar ek het jou vermoeëns onderskat
En nou krioel my binneste met jou teenwoordigheid

Ek gooi my blik na die vloeibare goud van die Vrystaatse vlaktes
, maar jy het my reeds in jou fissier vasgeknoop

En nou openbaar ek my psalms vir die wereld om te lees
, maar hoop jy verstaan...
Ek hoop jy verstaan

I was doing a crossword puzzle
Yesterday, to pass the time,
The clues were all about animals
Both across, and down the line,
The wife was out in the kitchen
And I’d call the harder clues,
While she’d reply with a patient sigh
As she cooked two different stews.

It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought
Some clues were quite obscure,
Though each would bring up some animal
That we should have known, for sure,
But as I scribbled across the squares
I found some didn’t fit,
I’d call, ‘Lynette, have you worked it yet?’
But she’d never heard of it.

She’d said, ‘Two heads are better than one,’
And I thought she might be right,
The names that came out too long, I thought
Must be an oversight,
But when they clashed with the downward clues
And I crumpled up my hat,
That furry purr by the fireside there
Was just a common Dat.

And things that flew in the night became
Some thing they called a Rel,
They must be horrible creatures, like
Some creature based in Hell,
But as it crossed the Ordothlicon
I knew it must be right,
For on the left was a Rerr that leapt
On a dark and stormy night.

She said that really my spelling might
Be not quite up to scratch,
The ones that I knew as Pidgins flew
The coop in quite a batch,
And honey gathering Lees in trees
Were paired with wild Gorrils,
While Madgers seemed to be burrowing
All though the distant hills.

‘I’ve never heard of these animals,’
I said, in quite a stew,
Lynette called out from the kitchen that
She didn’t know them, too,
I walked around and I locked the doors
And I set each window latch,
In case that some of them wandered in
Like Carroll’s Bandersnatch.

I’m loth to wander the streets at night
If Rogs are on the prowl,
And keep away from the Cagpies nests
And the things that say ‘Miaowl’,
It seems that Berons are on the beach
And Peagulls in the air,
Lynette said better we stay inside
Than to get Peegull in our hair.

David Lewis Paget