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Analise Quinn Jul 2013
You were hungry tonight at midnight
And woke me up out of a dead sleep
For the fifth time in a row,
But I got up and fed you,
And that’s okay,
Because that’s what Mommies do.

Today you started to walk
And thought I was crazy
Because I videoed you
And talked about how that
Big guy named Daddy,
Who’s been here since day one,
Wasn’t here to see.
And I was squealing
The whole time.
But that’s okay,
Because that’s what Mommies do.

Today you started to talk
And your first word was
“Ma-ma"
And I laughed and cried
But that’s okay,
Because that’s what Mommies do.

Then you learned how to ride a trike
And soon after that a bike.
You looked at me like I was nuts
After I said something about how
You were growing up too fast.
But that’s okay,
Because that’s what’s Mommies do.

When you are ten,
And you’re upset
Because you played kickball
And you were picked last,
I won’t tell you it’s no big deal,
Because Mommy knows just how you feel.
I’ll tell you it’s their loss,
But I know right now,
It feels like yours.
Then I’ll hug you and we’ll get icecream
And talk about how we’ve never liked kickball anyway,
And that’s okay,
Because that’s what Mommies do.

Today I told you
That’s it’s okay to be mad
And it’s okay to be sad.
But when you’re mad,
Count to ten and
When very mad one hundred,
Just like Jefferson said,
And don’t let anger
Get the best of you.
When you’re mad
And you don’t know what to do
And the mad you have makes you feel sad,
You can come sit in my lap, even when you’re twenty-two,
And we’ll try to talk it through,
Because that’s what Mommies do.

When you’re sixteen,
And you like someone
But you don’t want to,
Because it doesn’t fit the Five-year plan,
I’ll tell you how I had a Five-year plan
But I met Daddy in Year Two
And a week before Year Three,
I knew he was the one for me.
So before Year Three
Was halfway done,
Daddy and I
Had the same last name.
And by Year Five,
Daddy and I found out
Soon there would be
A little baby in our house.
I’ll tell you how sometimes your dreams change
From traveling to Greece,
To wiping tear-stained cheeks
And that’s okay,
Because that’s what Mommies do.

When you go off to college,
Or maybe to China,
Like your aunt did,
To take care
Of babies who
Don’t have mommies,
Or wind up in the army
To protect your country,
Like your uncle,
I’ll be waving goodbye
And crying
Because it feels like
Part of me is dying
But that’s okay,
Because that’s what Mommies do.
karin naude Jul 2013
Mommy wrote me a letter, a personal letter
To read on her passing, something special just for me
A last us, reminder of her last thoughts about me
Dad stole it and copied it, from my room
Without permission, how dare he!
Now when he wants to control me, he uses mommies last words
And asks did she raise you wrong?, something wring in the sentence
Should it not be did we raise you wrong?
This is how he choose to love me, with guilt filled words he stole
The letter no longer special, it was meant to be
I don’t even have mommies ashes, her sister took care of that
In the end everyone fights over pieces of her
It was not enough when she lived
They have to tare her memory to pieces
Greed the master of my family
Lord help us
am i ee Dec 2021
Stop mommies, stop daddies

I want to see the stars too,
And chase the lightening bugs like you.

Don’t **** the night,
With all of our lights.

Save it for me.
Don’t steal it with your new bought glee.

May we turn out our lights?
Maybe for just one night?

So that I can raise my eyes,
To the stars above,

And feel the magic and mystery,
The velvety black night brings,          

For now,
And for all of eternity.

Now may we turn down our lights,
And turn some off too,

So that I can grow,
Under this star filled sky

Free from  the glow,
For the rest of my life?

And my children’s
and their children’s too?
take a look at the International Dark Sky Association www.darksky.org. feel free to share this poem to raise awareness.  My heart breaks about how terrible this situation is evolving.  Fortunately I have had half a life without it being too bad... but I want everyone to be able to see the stars when they walk out their front, or back, door.  Will this be the last generation to be able to see stars?
Question Reality Apr 2015
We were all raised on lies.
Santa Claus, God, Democracy,
all known to be untrue,
in the hearts of even the most earnest
mommies and daddies,
almost certainly untrue, all of it,
as they fed us, the society of lies,
one spoonful at a time into our innocent mouths.

Every mommy and daddy learns why,
as their guilty hearts realize why truth
can’t be told to the glistening, trusting eyes
of their most precious spawn.

Eat up, my dear thing.  Maybe
you’ll find someone else to help share
your burden, maybe to love.
Live long, and watch them all die,
Watch your every labor crumble and blow away,
just in time for all your precious memories
to rot in the ground.

The heart dares not tell the truth, even to itself,
dares not invite the question no
mommy or daddy is prepared to answer:
Why?  Why did you create me in such a world?
Because I wanted someone young to fetch me things.
Because my life was empty.
Because that’s what mommies and daddies do.
Because I’ll die first, so it’s safe to love you.
Emily Jones Sep 2012
Picketed, another generation pushing for advancement in the age of reason,
Logical, radical movement
Trying for less invasive measures of medication
To take the blinders off the prejudice of non-conformity and reach the masses
A promise to ease the pain, promote healing, the overall good
Met with violence, verbal slander, from mommies and daddies afraid of a world outside their white fence,
Fearing independence, the expansion of the mind, an openness in their youth to allow radical change.

The bloated belt bent backwards, white collar replaced by hedonistic practical libertarians in pursuit of happiness for all
Sick, disgusted with the man, the one behind the podium whom allows for this animosity on a group that did everything right, legally sound
Tired of hearing the whispers across a university, the hopeful gushing’s of elated individuals bright- eyes naive
Of a system that won’t allow something this controversial into the public, afraid to lose their hold on a potential capitol
On something that should be as easy to find in a free market as Captain Crunch, Coca-Cola, and Rice Krispy Treats.

Grinding down, fluffy-green-crystal bud
Dank yellow smoke smoldering out of pipes end, seeping out of closed lips billowing out of nostrils
Dragon fire down a throat coated with a week worth of soot, and experience
Choking, coughing, laughing away the misery
The disappointment in her fellow man to refuse to even consider the validity of a proven product
Knowing that if it was anything else a miracle drug composed of fairy dust, unicorn hair and the ***** of a thousand angels; approval would have been immediate.
Whip lash.

Flick, flame, fumigating
Baking myself into a calmer state, watching with ******* grace
Twitching with the need to take action
To control this negative reaction, to slap the of face limp **** conservatives
So consumed with themselves, blind to the pain of people who have lost hope in other forms of relief
Alternative therapy shut off by a system obsessed with its war on drugs.
In response to the Arkansas movement to get legalization of marijuana on the ballot, met with conservative group protest.
JB Fuller Aug 2016
You.
The other mommies of babies
fallen from life
banged mercilessly on the pavement
of our wombs
and broken.

You
you held your baby
lifeless
but you held him.
you held her.
You took pictures.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day
your Facebook status—
you beg us to remember.

I understand this.

These little souls no one knows.
No one connected to,
no one will remember.
No one cares.

But we feel the fluttering.
We feel it in our hearts,
that desperate gaping—
and in our bellies.

You want us to know: your baby.
You, mother.
Soul vanquished.
Soul rent in two.
The weeping, the never was,
the forever is.

And so you post pictures
of the baby
you held
dead.

But we—
we are the mothers who flushed our children into toilets.

We are the mothers who tried and tried to grasp
to hold
our baby
our dead baby.

But ours was too small.

Fishing through mountains of gore
pieces
was that my baby?
is this my baby?

In silence.  Alone.  Torn with pain,
solitude, anguish, bleeding.

Grasping at something—
this might have been the baby.
Flush it down.

How?

Is this what mothers do?

You held your baby.
You ***** a memorial, maybe even a burial.
Or ashes.

We are the mothers who hold out ****** hands
in silence
and babies lost somewhere in the septic system.

Should we take a picture?
Do you want to hear our story?
On this day of infant loss remembrance,
do you want to hear how we caught
the amniotic sac
and held it up to the light
hoping
and terrified.
What if we saw the body?
What could we do?
There are no hospital or nurses in our bathroom.
No cameras.
No burials.
Only blood, blood everywhere—
and the toilet.
And the sac, if we find it—
it might burst.
And then our baby might go out with the mopwater
or lie unnoticed on the ceiling.

Somehow we lost our baby.
We can't find it.

I wish I could have held my baby,
given it a name.
But I lost it.

Weep with me, too.
Tryst Sep 2014
Beneath the surface of the earth,
Beneath the green and sodden turf,
Wendy wombat, supreme digger
Raced to make her tunnels bigger,
Pulling dirt with mighty claws
And toiling hard without a pause

Ensconced within her little pouch,
So small they had no need to crouch,
Her children slept, all warm and dry,
As mud and dirt went flying by,
Quite unaware how nature planned
To lend them all a helping hand

For wombat pouches don't get full
Of dirt and mud as mommies pull,
For mother nature in her wisdom
Looked upon her magic kingdom,
Saw the wombats under ground
And wisely turned their pouches round!
Joe Cole challenge for "Natural Creativity".

Wombats have a pouch for their young.  They also spend a lot of time digging holes, and as they push dirt backwards with their powerful front claws, it would fill any normal pouch.  So mother nature, in her infinite wisdom, reversed the pouch, putting the opening at the back.  If that isn't natural creativity, I don't know what it!

First published 17th Sept 2014, 11:15 AEST.
ConnectHook Dec 2015
Multitudes will be liberated by that recognition;
and although multitudes obtain liberation in that manner,
the number of sentient beings being great, evil karma powerful,
obscurations dense, propensities o too long standing,
the Wheel of Ignorance and Illusion becometh neither exhausted nor accelerated
.

           The Tibetan Book of the Dead
          translation:  Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup


Free Tibet your sticker tells me…
Yes, I think, perhaps I should –
and the noble thought compels me,
uninformed, half-understood.

Will their freedom help my Karma?
Upgrade my reincarnation?
(Soul who could not dare to harm a
fly… much less a Buddhist nation.)

Not to justify aggression
by the ever-brutal Commies,
let us grant no glib concession
to the Maoists – or their mommies.

Slogans echo in the void,
shining in bardos of the dead;
stopped by the light, I am annoyed
impatient for the change from red.

A bumper crop of human woe
beams forth a mandate to my brain
while red Dakinis circle slow
in Buddhist hells of karmic pain.

The eastern concepts here diverge
and bow before brutality.
They make this driver long to merge
with incorporeality.

Then I glimpse a monkish fellow
swathed in saffron, calmly seated.
His, the cloud-borne sage’s pillow;
mine the traffic; stalled, defeated.

In his gaze of stern displeasure
I perceive the orient stars
calculating man’s mismeasure
trapped, exhausted, among the cars.

Flanked by Spirits wreathed in fire
he extends an accusing hand:
Western slave of base desire:
come and  liberate my land !”

I meditate before the stop light:
am I ready for the task ?
Should I just refuse it outright
Can’t it be someone else ?  I ask…

Must I free this mountain nation
from the Buddha, demons and Reds?
Shall your sticker’s declaration
shatter the yoke and raise their heads ?

Somebody ought to free Tibet,
and heed this Himalayan cry.
Maybe we should get upset…
The red light changes. Cars pass by,

predestined for benign events
and unconcerned for persecution;
oblivious to dissidents
awaiting execution.
Carla Marie May 2013
When you got the
Whats-the-use’s
cuz ole' Scratch
done pulled off yet another coup…

Remember to remind yourself to
keep on…

When you don’t think you can…
When you feel so alone…
Dig out… from under…
cuz if we stay
down
then wrong will win…

Yes…
it is a long and dusty road...

but let us not lay prostrate
no matter how tempting
in the aftermath... and
seemingly well worn path
of insanity's destruction...

get up
Beloved…

Lift your eyes to the hills
From whence your help comes… and
Speak a word
To your self…
Encourage
Your self...
Lay hands on
Your self...
Dust your own self off… and
Keep on… keep on…
Run On!

I heard the singer say
“I think I’m gonna run on, to see what the end is gonna be… “
And that feels
mighty good to my soul… so
Let’s run on…
And see what the end is gonna be…

Take my hand
Beloved…
Let's run on
Together…

And see what the end
Is gonna be…
Renmar Sep 2014
Sitting here watching you
sleep
Wondering if your dreams are
sweet
Knowing you'll always be mommies
**baby boy
Cecil Miller Sep 2015
Long hikes and motorbikes,
Cabins, starlight, kids and tykes,
Parents, and mommies soon to be,
Gather at the greenest tree.
Spirits in ******* are unbound,
Where the silence  drowns the sound;
The victories that love has won.
We are never far when we are one.
I wrote this and posted on the same night after a peaceful day of spirirual recovery in the woods.
Diamond Johnson Jun 2014
I love how people talk about how there parents are so mean
and how they hate there fathers and mommies
Those people wont survive a day
living as me
Liam Williams Apr 2012
Knicks

Waiting at the bus stop,
Jamming to some hip hop,
Checkin’ on my wrist watch
Clock is running tick-tock

And he made his way down the block
Walking in my direction,
With his face hanging behind that faded fitted

He is the boy that never goes home
Who thinks selling dope and
having high hopes makes him grown

Late nights on street corners,
Protecting urban borders,
Claiming blocks for blood,
selling rocks for what?

He nodded at me and I smiled back
not ever ignoring the bloodstains on his shoe laces
He was a gangster

And I never understood how such a bright boy
could be such a coward
Because that’s what they are all
Cowards who hide behind colors
Blue and red tied brothers
who leave their sisters and mothers
How could you?

Whose familiar face standing beside me
As if we never shared the same last name
Cameron

For all those times that you pushed me from the doorway
Just to kiss the sunset with your piff

I prayed for your protection
I prayed that you would never forget
mommies’ and daddies’ lesson
and that my love for you will never lessen

And I prayed that a bullet will never befriend your skin, I prayed
That someday you will understand
that being a brave street soldier in the dark
still made you a coward come sunrise

And sometime I feel that you may be color blind
Because I do not understand how you see strength
in your blacks and reds
When you have blacks and blues tattooed all over you.

So tell me what side do you belong to
when your lips are synced supo....
but your eyes are swimming in cripped colored kisses
mixed with hints sdfnarega...
ajrngjeag...

They got you
now you have an appetite for revenge

too proud to bleed for the bullet
yet quick to let finger tips lit triggers
your fine arms are too short to box with God

I remember when you told me
that you favorite rapper was TuPac
and I bet you wonder if heaven has got a ghetto

but you will never know because attempting to play God
and pimping mother nature
will never get you high enough to get there

so he will just send his angels down to tell you
that it is TuPac for one more gangster

and now you are off to hell’s home, homie
where you won’t have back pocket
for your blood colored bandannas to hold on to
like umbilical cords connecting you to the wind
you will just be dead skin
lost like the next of kin
of all your other blood brothers who sin

and all your fighting for meaning nothing any more
because in hell you will no longer
have your boys willing to die for you

just demons waiting to dance with you
holding out red roses that used to be white
before they used them to clean the messes
you made when you were still alive
what are you thinking?

you coward
running from your own light
shaking hands with the darkness
as if you were never taught to recognize the sun
mommie’s son
my brother

I just wanted to make you come home
make you breakfast in the morning
and remind you how beautiful blood can be
when it is not used as paint on concrete canvases
but when it is served aeruhgiureg on kitchen tables..

and as my bus pulls up,
I rummage through my pockets for my dollar
wishing I too had a faded fitting to hide my face beneath
because I would hate for you to see me cry for you too

and as I step onto that bus and walk over to my seat
I silently pray to God
that he will forgive me for calling you a coward

because who am I to call you a coward
when I couldn’t even find the strength to tell you how I felt
couldn’t share my quick healed cuts with you
and the tears that raced down my cheeks

so fast to prove that blood is indeed thicker than water
My brother

you stayed at the bus stop as we drove away
and I don’t know if my bus wasn’t going in your direction
or if you just lost your direction
years ago in the red silk lining of papi’s coffin

but I won’t dwell
I will sleep tonight
not forget to dedicate my prayers to you.

Wake up in the morning,
get dressed and
if you find yourself missing your little sister
I will just be...

Waiting at the bus stop,
Jamming to some hip hop,
Checkin’ on my wrist watch
Clock is running tick-tock
ConnectHook Sep 2015
Loons in the vineyard –  sound the alarm !
Satan is milking his metaphors.
Such silly music portends no harm;
call home the cows and open your doors.

Brian Hugh Warner, a paleface freak
after finding his mom’s mascara
darker enlightenment did seek
and crowned himself with Baal’s tiara.

Scary drag-queen, scandalous, vain
Marilyn – the creepy thespian
rolled that fish-eye and snorted *******
like Crowley…  how pedestrian.

Flashing his glowing cataract,
he gave the mommies quite a fright.
Censorship launched; no badder act
did sail (or assail) our sinking night.

Gothic dim-wits purchased CD’s
bought the goods, pierced parts, wore black.
(Cause for certain parents’ unease:
MTV’s Antichrist on the attack).

Son of Man – or rather, Manson
Milked to the max his demonic cow;
playing Satan’s naughty grandson
showing the flustered milk-maids how.

Urban legend surrounds this fowl
(those ribs removed – like Adam’s sin!)
Is he a misunderstood night owl –
or a has-been loon in a loony bin?

Rock-stars age (well, most) like a cheap wine.
or else in the way once-ripened grapes
withering, sun-struck, off the vine
transform, with age, into wizened shapes.

No – I am wrong. They age like prunes;
plums thus pass into their glory.
Even Luciferian loons
find lakes of fire at end of story.
https://connecthook.wordpress.com/mine/various/

come on over my house

BS hunter Jan 2014
This site might be broken

The most broken people live on earth.  
******* POETRY COMPUTER aka shaqila's one.

Chasing off good poets was her goal.
Gotta hand it to the ******* she succeeded.
Not even a good poet and wont pretend to be.
I feel asleep at my desk reading boring poems in school.
I failed the test on how many stanza in a poem.
Writing about broke people makes me feel good.
It's a long *** poem so read it or not read it. Word up!
Tried using but it don't work.  

Call me white boy playing black hipster like the broken record Miley.  
I can't type twerk on my keyboard but turning all ghetto on y'all.
Lady done done all she can to shock and mess with our minds.
What she gone do next, buy a house in a black hood and live there?
That's messed up and so I'm dumb and I love attention.

I live in a big town population less than sixteen thousand.
We listed on the map as a god ****** city. Word up!
I need to be a hipster and I'm going hood on y'all.
In my hood I see houses needing fixing and painting.
Got a friend who lives in a trailer park
metal piece that goes around the bottom of his trailer
fell off and his pipes froze during that weather deep freeze.
He's renting that trailer that should be condemned
like most trailers in that park but who the **** cares?
He's got a roof over his head and he should be grateful
he ain't homeless like the rest of the trailer park dwellers.
Landlords don't give a **** they care about collecting rent.

We got men and women living on internet trolling Craigslist.
Most trolling hoping to find dates are married.
Single men and women seeking sugar daddies and mommies.
They are broken people.
I walk down streets and our old and newer malls.
Same weird *** people shop at both.
I see women yelling at kids with ****** diapers that smell bad.
One used the back of her hand to wipe a snot nose
then went back to talking and texting.
Women with babies at home meeting men they met on personals.
Good place to hide when they married or got men.
Leave the babies at home with sitters or family and find new men.
Hanging out at malls is a fake.
"Meet me at my pickup in a half hour and don't wear ******"
Read that message on a burner cell I found at the new mall.
It's a burner so it don't need to be returned.
Read the rest and she is married and has more than one lover
she met off personals.
Work it girl and keep the sugar daddies coming!
How many broken moms who should not be moms exist?
There are too many broken people who exist.
Michael R Burch Jul 2020
Dot Spotted
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a leopardess, Dot,
who indignantly answered: "I’ll not!
The gents are impressed
with the way that I’m dressed.
I wouldn’t change even one spot."



Stage Craft-y
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a dromedary
who befriended a crafty canary.
Budgie said, "You can’t sing,
but now, here’s the thing—
just think of the tunes you can carry!"



Clyde Lied!
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a mockingbird, Clyde,
who bragged of his prowess, but lied.
To his new wife he sighed,
"When again, gentle bride?"
"Nevermore!" bright-eyed Raven replied.



The Mallard
by Michael R. Burch

The mallard is a fellow
whose lips are long and yellow
with which he, honking, kisses
his *****, boisterous mistress:
my pond’s their loud bordello!



The Platypus
by Michael R. Burch

The platypus, myopic,
is ungainly, not ******.
His feet for bed
are over-webbed,
and what of his proboscis?

The platypus, though, is eager
although his means are meager.
His sight is poor;
perhaps he’ll score
with a passing duck or ******.



The Hippopotami
by Michael R. Burch

There’s no seeing eye to eye
with the awesomely huge Hippopotami:
on the bank, you’re much taller;
going under, you’re smaller
and assuredly destined to die!



Generation Gap
by Michael R. Burch

A quahog clam,
age 405,
said, “Hey, it’s great
to be alive!”

I disagreed,
not feeling nifty,
babe though I am,
just pushing fifty.

Note: A quahog clam found off the coast of Ireland is the longest-lived animal on record, at an estimated age of 405 years.



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Don’t ever hug a lobster!
by Michael R. Burch

Don’t ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street!
If you hug a lobster to your breast, you're apt to lose a ****!
If you hug a lobster lower down, it’ll snip away your privates!
If you hug a lobster higher up, it’ll leave your cheeks with wide vents!
So don’t ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street,
But run away and hope your frenzied feet are very fleet!



Where Does the Butterfly Go?
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?



Haiku

The butterfly
perfuming its wings
fans the orchid
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An ancient pond,
the frog leaps:
the silver plop and gurgle of water
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



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.



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.



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.



Dog Daze: Poems for and about Man's Best Friend

Dog Daze
by Michael R. Burch

Sweet Oz is a soulful snuggler;
he really is one of the best.
Sometimes in bed
he snuggles my head,
though he mostly just plops on my chest.

I think Oz was made to love
from the first ray of light to the dark,
but his great love for me
is exceeded (oh gee!)
by his Truly Great Passion: to Bark.



Epitaph for a Lambkin
by Michael R. Burch

for Melody, the prettiest, sweetest and fluffiest dog ever

Now that Melody has been laid to rest
Angels will know what it means to be blessed.

Amen



This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my companion such joy
he shudders with sheer delight.

Among all languageless creatures
he alone has seen through man entire—
has seen beyond what is good or bad in him
to such a depth he can lay down his life
for the sake of love alone.

Now it is he who shows me the way
through this unfathomable world throbbing with life.

When I see his deep devotion,
his offer of his whole being,
I fail to comprehend ...

How, through sheer instinct,
has he discovered whatever it is that he knows?

With his anxious piteous looks
he cannot communicate his understanding
and yet somehow has succeeded in conveying to me
out of the entire creation
the true loveworthiness of man.



My Dog Died
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My dog died;
so I buried him in the backyard garden
next to some rusted machine.

One day I'll rejoin him, over there,
but for now he's gone
with his shaggy mane, his crude manners and his cold, clammy nose,
while I, the atheist who never believed
in any heaven for human beings,
now believe in a paradise I'm unfit to enter.

Yes, I somehow now believe in a heavenly kennel
where my dog awaits my arrival
wagging his tail in furious friendship!

But I'll not indulge in sadness here:
why bewail a companion
who was never servile?

His friendship was more like that of a porcupine
preserving its prickly autonomy.

His was the friendship of a distant star
with no more intimacy than true friendship called for
and no false demonstrations:
he never clambered over me
coating my clothes with mange;
he never assaulted my knee
like dogs obsessed with ***.

But he used to gaze up at me,
giving me the attention my ego demanded,
while helping this vainglorious man
understand my concerns were none of his.

Aye, and with those bright eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd gaze up at me
contentedly;
it was a look he reserved for me alone
all his entire sweet, gentle life,
always merely there, never troubling me,
never demanding anything.

Aye, and often I envied his energetic tail
as we strode the shores of Isla Negra together,
in winter weather, wild birds swarming skyward
as my golden-maned friend leapt about,
supercharged by the sea's electric surges,
sniffing away wildly, his tail held *****,
his face suffused with the salt spray.

Joy! Joy! Joy!
As only dogs experience joy
in the shameless exuberance
of their guiltless spirits.

Thus there are no sad good-byes
for my dog who died;
we never once lied to each other.

He died, he's gone, I buried him;
that's all there is to it.



Excoriation of a Treat Slave
by Michael R. Burch

I am his Highness’s dog at Kew.
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
—Alexander Pope

We practice our fierce Yapping,
for when the treat slaves come
they’ll grant Us our desire.
(They really are that dumb!)

They’ll never catch Us napping —
our Ears pricked, keen and sharp.
When they step into Our parlor,
We’ll leap awake, and Bark.

But one is rather doltish;
he doesn’t understand
the meaning of Our savage,
imperial, wild Command.

The others are quite docile
and bow to Us on cue.
We think the dull one wrote a poem
about some Dog from Kew

who never grasped Our secret,
whose mind stayed think, and dark.
It’s a question of obedience
conveyed by a Lordly Bark.

But as for playing fetch,
well, that’s another matter.
We think the dullard’s also
as mad as any hatter

and doesn’t grasp his duty
to fling Us slobbery *****
which We’d return to him, mincingly,
here in Our royal halls.



Wickett
by Michael R. Burch

Wickett, sweet Ewok,
Wickett, old Soul,
Wicket, brave Warrior,
though no longer whole . . .

You gave us your All.
You gave us your Best.
You taught us to Love,
like all of the Blessed

Angels and Saints
of good human stock.
You barked the Great Bark.
You walked the True Walk.

Now Wickett, dear Child
and incorrigible Duffer,
we commend you to God
that you no longer suffer.

May you dash through the Stars
like the Wickett of old
and never feel hunger
and never know cold

and be reunited
with all our Good Tribe —
with Harmony and Paw-Paw
and Mary beside.

Go now with our Love
as the great Choir sings
that Wickett, our Wickett,
has at last earned his Wings!



The Resting Place
by Michael R. Burch

for Harmony

Sleep, then, child;
you were dearly loved.

Sleep, and remember
her well-loved face,

strong arms that would lift you,
soft hands that would move

with love’s infinite grace,
such tender caresses!



When autumn came early,
you could not stay.

Now, wherever you wander,
the wildflowers bloom

and love is eternal.
Her heart’s great room

is your resting place.



Await by the door
her remembered step,

her arms’ warm embraces,
that gathered you in.

Sleep, child, and remember.
Love need not regret

its moment of weakness,
for that is its strength,

And when you awaken,
she will be there,

smiling,
at the Rainbow Bridge.



Bed Head, or, the Ballad of
Beth and her Fur Babies
by Michael R. Burch

When Beth and her babies
prepare for “good night”
sweet rituals of kisses
and cuddles commence.

First Wickett, the eldest,
whose mane has grown light
with the wisdom of age
and advanced senescence
is tucked in, “just right.”

Then Mary, the mother,
is smothered with kisses
in a way that befits
such an angelic missus.

Then Melody, lambkin,
and sweet, soulful Oz
and cute, clever Xander
all clap their clipped paws
and follow sweet Beth
to their high nightly roost
where they’ll sleep on her head
(or, perhaps, her caboose).



Lady’s Favor: the Noble Ballad of Sir Dog and the Butterfly
by Michael R. Burch

Sir was such a gallant man!
When he saw his Lady cry
and beg him to send her a Butterfly,
what else could he do, but comply?

From heaven, he found a Monarch
regal and able to defy
north winds and a chilly sky;
now Sir has his wings and can fly!

When our gallant little dog Sir was unable to live any longer, my wife Beth asked him send her a sign, in the form of a butterfly, that Sir and her mother were reunited and together in heaven. It was cold weather, in the thirties. We rarely see Monarch butterflies in our area, even in the warmer months. But after Sir had been put to sleep, to spare him any further suffering, Beth found a Monarch butterfly in our back yard. It appeared to be lifeless, but she brought it inside, breathed on it, and it returned to life. The Monarch lived with us for another five days, with Beth feeding it fruit juice and Gatorade on a Scrubbie that it could crawl on like a flower. Beth is convinced that Sir sent her the message she had requested.



Solo’s Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Solo was a stray
who found a safe place to stay
with a warm and loving band,
safe at last from whatever cruel hand
made him flinch in his dreams.

Now he wanders the clear-running streams
that converge at the Rainbow’s End
and the Bridge where kind Angels attend
to all souls who are ready to ascend.

And always he looks for those
who hugged him and held him close,
who kissed him and called him dear
and gave him a home free of fear,
to welcome them to his home, here.



Oz is the Boss!
by Michael R. Burch

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because...
Because of the wonderful things he does!

He barks like a tyrant
for treats and a hydrant;
his voice far more regal
than mere greyhound or beagle;
his serfs must obey him
or his yipping will slay them!

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because...
Because of the wonderful things he does!



Xander the Joyous
by Michael R. Burch

Xander the Joyous
came here to prove:
Love can be playful!
Love can have moves!

Now Xander the Joyous
bounds around heaven,
waiting for his mommies,
one of the SEVEN ―

the Seven Great Saints
of the Great Canine Race
who evangelize Love
throughout all Time and Space.

Amen



On the Horns of a Dilemma (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn is so ***** it lofts her thus?

I need an artist or cartoonist to create an image of a male rhino lifting his prospective mate into the air during an abortive kiss. Any takers?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn deforms her esophagus?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (III)
by Michael R. Burch

A wino rhino said, “I know!
I have a horn I cannot blow!
And so,
ergo,
I’ll watch the lovely spigot flow!



The Horns of a Dilemma Solved, if not Solvent
by Michael R. Burch

A wine-addled rhino debated
the prospect of living unmated
due to the scorn
gals showed for his horn,
then lost it to poachers, sedated.

Keywords/Tags: animals, nature, dog, dogs, love, lovers, cat, cats, bird, birds, butterfly, rainbow bridge, soul, soulful, friends, best friend, mrbanim, mrbanimal
All I can remember...
Was trying not to cry
My face was hot, and my eyes felt like grapes
about to burst from my head.
Hands gripped my throat, and still,
my body, unconvinced,
was shaking for air.

I don't remember scratching as much as I remember
Trying to move my legs.
All I know is that suddenly the wall was slamming into my back,
and my eyes could only focus on
the thin red lines on his bare arms.
I was pinned to the wall by my throat,
like a butterfly...
trying to fly away...
trying to get away...
Look, how pretty.
I thought if only God would show up,
I would never catch a butterfly again,
Promise.

I remember thinking,
"Please. Please. Please. Please."
More like a mantra than a prayer.
As if I was willing him to be finished with me,
my shell;
willing him to be pleased enough to just let me sleep.
Or die.
Or live.
But I couldn't really think of anything
without the oxygen pumping my ideas through me.

I didn't even realize when I stopped struggling,
I was just suddenly still and he said,
"Can't have you passing out."
And he let go.
And God let go.
And I let go.
And I started to cry
as he threw me over his shoulder.

I could see so many beautiful spots in my eyes.
There was Red. There was Blue.
Some of them were dancing.
Fading in and out.
It was like they were twinkling.
My own beautiful endless night sky.
Van Gogh, where are you?

Then I suddenly became aware of myself;
My shorts gone, my skin bare to the coldness.
I was lying with my hands pinned between my back and the floor.
I started taking stock of myself
And tasted blood on my lips.
I suddenly thought of pennies;
lots of pennies floating in front of my eyes.
No wonder they were twinkling.

I heard more than felt
him laboring above me.
He was silent and wouldn't look at my face.
And I was aware of my eyes burning
as salt water seeped out on
a quest for the ocean.
I was going with them.
My tears.
I would be a sea captain.
Far from this.
Call me Ishmael.

But it was the most quiet I've ever cried
as if I didn't want the weeping to disturb him.

"God, please. please. please."

And I was taken back to another form
hovering above my young body,
whispering things into my ear about playing house,
and staying quiet;
"Shhh. Mommies have to be quiet."
I wanted to go back to playing with my dollhouse.
Please, let me go play with my dollhouse.

I am breathing on my own again.
I am back in the room, staring up in horror,
at a boy I thought I knew.
I was trained for this,
I was taught to be silent
from childhood.
I was shown how to react to this
so long ago;
in silence.

But I was not born for this.
I couldn't have been born for this.
I was born to give life, I was born to create,
I was born to bring hope.
I am a divine creation,
Aren't I?
I feel like I'm floating.

He is finished with me.
He lets me go.
But for some reason I don't know how to sit up anymore.
He walks out to have a cigarette.
My throat is sore,
My eyes are burning,
and I feel bruised under my skin,
all the way to the middle.
To a soft part in the center
that I suddenly see
as a tender nimbus,
floating over my chest.
Forcing me to rise
and walk again.
Up, up, and away.
© Ashley Quarterman 2010


For information on how you can help prevent and fight ****** abuse, visit: http://www.rainn.org/
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Dog Daze
by Michael R. Burch

Sweet Oz is a soulful snuggler;
he really is one of the best.
Sometimes in bed
he snuggles my head,
though mostly he plops on my chest.

I think Oz was made to love
from the first ray of light to the dark,
but his great love for me
is exceeded (oh gee!)
by his Truly Great Passion: to Bark.



Epitaph for a Lambkin
by Michael R. Burch

for Melody, the prettiest, sweetest and fluffiest dog ever

Now that Melody has been laid to rest
Angels will know what it means to be blessed.

Amen



This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/moderniz     ation by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my companion such joy
he shudders with sheer delight.

Among all languageless creatures
he alone has seen through man entire—
has seen beyond what is good or bad in him
to such a depth he can lay down his life
for the sake of love alone.

Now it is he who shows me the way
through this unfathomable world throbbing with life.

When I see his deep devotion,
his offer of his whole being,
I fail to comprehend...

How, through sheer instinct,
has he discovered whatever it is that he knows?

With his anxious piteous looks
he cannot communicate his understanding
and yet somehow has succeeded in conveying to me
out of the entire creation
the true loveworthiness of man.



My Dog Died
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My dog died;
so I buried him in the backyard garden
next to some rusted machine.

One day I'll rejoin him, over there,
but for now he's gone
with his shaggy mane, his crude manners and his cold, clammy nose,
while I, the atheist who never believed
in any heaven for human beings,
now believe in a paradise I'm unfit to enter.

Yes, I somehow now believe in a heavenly kennel
where my dog awaits my arrival
wagging his tail in furious friendship!

But I'll not indulge in sadness here:
why bewail a companion
who was never servile?

His friendship was more like that of a porcupine
preserving its prickly autonomy.

His was the friendship of a distant star
with no more intimacy than true friendship called for
and no false demonstrations:
he never clambered over me
coating my clothes with mange;
he never assaulted my knee
like dogs obsessed with ***.

But he used to gaze up at me,
giving me the attention my ego demanded,
while helping this vainglorious man
understand my concerns were none of his.

Aye, and with those bright eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd gaze up at me
contentedly;
it was a look he reserved for me alone
all his entire sweet, gentle life,
always merely there, never troubling me,
never demanding anything.

Aye, and often I envied his energetic tail
as we strode the shores of Isla Negra together,
in winter weather, wild birds swarming skyward
as my golden-maned friend leapt about,
supercharged by the sea's electric surges,
sniffing away wildly, his tail held *****,
his face suffused with the salt spray.

Joy! Joy! Joy!
As only dogs experience joy
in the shameless exuberance
of their guiltless spirits.

Thus there are no sad good-byes
for my dog who died;
we never once lied to each other.

He died, he's gone, I buried him;
that's all there is to it.



Bed Head, or, the Ballad of
Beth and her Fur Babies
by Michael R. Burch

When Beth and her babies
prepare for “good night”
sweet rituals of kisses
and cuddles commence.
First Wickett, the eldest,
whose mane has grown light
with the wisdom of age
and advanced senescence
is tucked in, “just right.”

Then Mary, the mother,
is smothered with kisses
in a way that befits
such an angelic missus.

Then Melody, lambkin,
and sweet, soulful Oz
and cute, clever Xander
all clap their clipped paws
and follow sweet Beth
to their high nightly roost
where they’ll sleep on her head
(or, perhaps, her caboose).



Excoriation of a Treat Slave
by Michael R. Burch

I am his Highness’s dog at Kew.
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
—Alexander Pope

We practice our fierce Yapping,
for when the treat slaves come
they’ll grant Us our desire.
(They really are that dumb!)

They’ll never catch Us napping —
our Ears pricked, keen and sharp.
When they step into Our parlor,
We’ll leap awake, and Bark.

But one is rather doltish;
he doesn’t understand
the meaning of Our savage,
imperial, wild Command.

The others are quite docile
and bow to Us on cue.
We think the dull one wrote a poem
about some Dog from Kew

who never grasped Our secret,
whose mind stayed think, and dark.
It’s a question of obedience
conveyed by a Lordly Bark.

But as for playing fetch,
well, that’s another matter.
We think the dullard’s also
as mad as any hatter

and doesn’t grasp his duty
to fling Us slobbery *****
which We’d return to him, mincingly,
here in Our royal halls.



Wickett
by Michael R. Burch

Wickett, sweet Ewok,
Wickett, old Soul,
Wicket, brave Warrior,
though no longer whole . . .

You gave us your All.
You gave us your Best.
You taught us to Love,
like all of the Blessed

Angels and Saints
of good human stock.
You barked the Great Bark.
You walked the True Walk.

Now Wickett, dear Child
and incorrigible Duffer,
we commend you to God
that you no longer suffer.

May you dash through the Stars
like the Wickett of old
and never feel hunger
and never know cold

and be reunited
with all our Good Tribe —
with Harmony and Paw-Paw
and Mary beside.

Go now with our Love
as the great Choir sings
that Wickett, our Wickett,
has at last earned his Wings!



The Resting Place
by Michael R. Burch

for Harmony

Sleep, then, child;
you were dearly loved.

Sleep, and remember
her well-loved face,

strong arms that would lift you,
soft hands that would move

with love’s infinite grace,
such tender caresses!

...

When autumn came early,
you could not stay.

Now, wherever you wander,
the wildflowers bloom

and love is eternal.
Her heart’s great room

is your resting place.

...

Await by the door
her remembered step,

her arms’ warm embraces,
that gathered you in.

Sleep, child, and remember.
Love need not regret

its moment of weakness,
for that is its strength,

And when you awaken,
she will be there,

smiling,
at the Rainbow Bridge.



Oz is the Boss!
by Michael R. Burch

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because...
Because of the wonderful things he does!

He barks like a tyrant
for treats and a hydrant;
his voice far more regal
than mere greyhound or beagle;
his serfs must obey him
or his yipping will slay them!

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because...
Because of the wonderful things he does!



Xander the Joyous
by Michael R. Burch

Xander the Joyous
came here to prove:
Love can be playful!
Love can have moves!

Now Xander the Joyous
bounds around heaven,
waiting for his mommies,
one of the SEVEN ―

the Seven Great Saints
of the Great Canine Race
who evangelize Love
throughout all Time and Space.

Amen



Lady’s Favor: Ye Noble Ballade of Sir Dog and the Butterfly
by Michael R. Burch

Sir was such a gallant man!
When he saw his Lady cry
and beg him to send her a Butterfly,
what else could he do, but comply?

From heaven, he found a Monarch
regal and able to defy
north winds and a chilly sky;
now Sir has his wings and can fly!

When our gallant little dog Sir was unable to live any longer, my wife Beth asked him send her a sign, in the form of a butterfly, that Sir and her mother were reunited and together in heaven. It was cold weather, in the thirties. We rarely see Monarch butterflies in our area, even in the warmer months. But after Sir had been put to sleep, to spare him any further suffering, Beth found a Monarch butterfly in our back yard. It appeared to be lifeless, but she brought it inside, breathed on it, and it returned to life. The Monarch lived with us for another five days, with Beth feeding it fruit juice and Gatorade on a Scrubbie that it could crawl over like a flower. Beth is convinced that Sir sent her the message she had requested.



Solo’s Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Solo was a stray
who found a safe place to stay
with a warm and loving band,
safe at last from whatever cruel hand
made him flinch in his dreams.

Now he wanders the clear-running streams
that converge at the Rainbow’s End
and the Bridge where kind Angels attend
to all souls who are ready to ascend.

And always he looks for those
who hugged him and held him close,
who kissed him and called him dear
and gave him a home free of fear,
to welcome them to his home, here.

Keywords: dog, dogs, canine, love, loyal, loyalty, friendship, companionship, bark, barking, soul, soulful, sweet, bossy, angel, angels, heaven, Rainbow Bridge
BS hunter Jan 2014
The most broken people live on earth.  
Not even a good poet and wont pretend to be.
I fell asleep at my desk reading boring poems in school.
I failed the test on how many stanza in a poem.
Writing about broke people makes me feel good.
It's a long *** poem so read it or not read it. Word up!*

Call me white boy playing black hipster like the broken record Miley.  
I can't type twerk on my keyboard but turning all ghetto on y'all.
Lady done done all she can to shock and mess with our minds.
What she gone do next, buy a house in a black hood and live there?
That's messed up and so I'm dumb and I love attention.

I live in a big town population less than sixteen thousand.
We listed on the map as a god ****** city. Word up!
I need to be a hipster and I'm going hood on y'all.
In my hood I see houses needing fixing and painting.
Got a friend who lives in a trailer park
metal piece that goes around the bottom of his trailer
fell off and his pipes froze during that weather deep freeze.
He's renting that trailer that should be condemned
like most trailers in that park but who the **** cares?
He's got a roof over his head and he should be grateful
he ain't homeless like the rest of the trailer park dwellers.
Landlords don't give a **** they care about collecting rent.

We got men and women living on internet trolling Craigslist.
Most trolling hoping to find dates are married.
Single men and women seeking sugar daddies and mommies.
They are broken people.
I walk down streets and our old and newer malls.
Same weird *** people shop at both.
I see women yelling at kids with ****** diapers that smell bad.
One used the back of her hand to wipe a snot nose
then went back to talking and texting.
Women with babies at home meeting men they met on personals.
Good place to hide when they married or got men.
Leave the babies at home with sitters or family and find new men.
Hanging out at malls is a fake.
"Meet me at my pickup in a half hour and don't wear ******"
Read that message on a burner cell I found at the new mall.
It's a burner so it don't need to be returned.
Read the rest and she is married and has more than one lover
she met off personals.
Work it girl and keep the sugar daddies coming!
How many broken moms who should not be moms exist?
There are too many broken people who exist.
PART I
Sam had been eagerly awaiting this move. The new house was spectacular. An old, colonial home in rural Pennsylvania, with a wraparound veranda and a bay window in what appeared to be a castle spire on the far North side. The roof was made out of red clay, pieces of it broken, yet undisturbed. The front yard was turning brown in the July sun, and the front door had a crack in it the size of Texas. But with a little elbow grease, Sam and his family were going to make this ****-hole a home.

Sam walked inside the front door and was greeted with one of those large staircases that splits into two directions at the top. There was a portrait of someone at the top of the stairs, but his face had been ripped out of the painting. Peculiar. He then walked across the squeaky floor into the kitchen where he decided to run the sink for a drink of water. Rust. The water ran brown and he was wondering what he would drink since the fridge was still in the back of the U-Haul. While the rest of his family was still unloading, curious Sam decided to tour the house, since this was the first time he’d actually been in it.
He went upstairs and hung a left. The wallpaper here was hideous. A mix of Posies and Lavender painted the walls with a yellow smoke-stained backsplash. Upstairs smelled weird. Ammonia and cigars. Classy cigars. Not a 75 cent Black & Mild you buy at the drive thru when you can’t afford a real pack of smokes. I follow the smell back to a bedroom. This bedroom was the master room. Sam opened the door that was slightly ajar, only to find the room was completely barren, short of an old timey rocking chair. Maybe the old occupants left it?
Walking about this room Sam feels a cool chill on the air. Like a September breeze gently brushing the back of your neck. Looking around he felt nothing but the empty space. No weird vibe, but not a comfortable one either. He felt like an iceberg standing in the ocean all alone, waiting for the Titanic to come along. The Titanic in this case, being something of any interest or excitement. Time to move on.
He moved out of the room, past the stairs and into another, smaller room, past the strange portrait. Once again, there was an empty, barren space where his feet hit the floor. This room had carpet. Old carpet, maybe **** from the seventies. But he really didn’t care. It just appeared as a fire hazard to him. Hardwood has always been Sams’ favorite. He wandered about this room the same as the last, feeling nothing but the coolness and how awfully the room was decorated. Obviously a childs room. The walls were covered in Zebras, leapords, tigers, and lions. There was coloring on the walls. He didn’t notice what it said until he really looked. “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE HERE” was inscribed on the wall in red Crayola marker. He binked, and rubbed his eyes. Looking up again, it was gone. How strange. I’m not imagining this, he thought to himself. I have 20/20 vision, I don’t mistake anything. Oh well. His inner monologue had ended.
After a minute of contemplation, he decided to go help the rest of his family. On his way out the door to grab a box, he was greeted by his eccentric mother. “Aren’t you excited, Sammy?!” She exclaimed as he came outside. “This house is so old. I love the history.” She said enthusiastically. She was a young mother, having Sam at the age of 19. She was a nurse. Taking care of people was her specialty, and another was not giving any regard to herself. Being 31 now, she’s having a sort of mid-life I-Need-To-Feel-Youthful-again crisis. That’s why she bought this house. She figured a new house could mean a new her, and she could live how she’d always wanted too. She was a small framed woman, about 5’3 with a petite figure and a bright red pixie cut. As she was carrying boxes of China into the kitchen to place on the counter, she had to stop and breathe in the places aroma. Inhaling deeply, she sighed “Wow, sam. This is spectacular. Don’t you think so?”

“Kinda weird.” Sam replied, making his way up the veranda steps with another box. Placing it down, he commented about the hideous wallpaper. “This place is pretty **** ugly to me.” Sam said distastefully. “Samuel Smith, watch your mouth!” Mother said. Being a single mom and not having a father figure to help raise Sam, she’d done the best she could. Always teaching him to use his manners, watch his language and chew with his mouth closed. She’s the picture perfect mom, only missing the mini-van that comes with mom-hood. “I think we’ll make it work just fine, baby.” She added as she came up to him, wrapped her hands around his cheeks and kissed his forhead. “I love you, pumpkin.” She whispered. Sam replied, wiping her hands from his face. “Mom, come on. I’m to old for that stuff now.”

She pulled away, minding her boundaries. “You’re never too old to be my baby, Sammy.” Now go wash up, I called in for take-out earlier since we don’t have a stove yet, and you know you’re not allowed to be ***** at dinner time.” Sam sighed deeply. “Ugh, fine.” He stomped his way to the bathroom to see the new shower. Everything in the bathroom was very nice, except for a crack across the mirror. He took in his surroundings as he ran the water. To his surprise, the water in the shower wasn’t burnt orange and filled with rust. It ran clear, as it should. Sam stripped down and showered, singing Motely Crue to himself while washing.

After stepping out of the shower, he went and ate dinner with his mother. He’d gotten his usual order of General Taos chicken on a bed of white rice, extra sauce. Mother ate the egg rolls and dipped them in soy sauce. She wasn’t a big fan of meat, anymore.
After a few more hours of moving and assistance from hired help, sam went to his room and laid down on his brand new mattress. Covered in plastic, he struggled to find a comfortable spot where he wouldn’t slide off. He found it in the middle, and slept.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
“What the hell?!” Sam jumped out of his bed and almost out of his ****** Doo themed pajamas. BANG! BANG! BANG! “Mom?!” he yelled. He ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, and flipped the light. He found his mother in the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors shut with all of her might. “What are you doing, mom?” Sam yelled. She turned to face him. There was something different about her, but he couldn’t quite point it out. She curled her lips into a smile and said “Go back to bed, Sammy. Mommies just having fun.”
“Um… okay. Goodnight then, I guess.” “Goodnight, Samuel” she muttered. That was NOT mothers voice. “Are you okay? You seem weird.” “Mommies fine, Samuel. Go back to bed.” He went without questioning It anymore. This had frightened Sam out of his wits. His mother doesn’t bang cabinet doors shut at 3:35 A.M, or ever, for that matter. He tried to disregard it and went to sleep again, using his pillow to drown out the banging.
I'm getting more into writing stories. I'll post the other parts soon. Might be three, might be four. Depends on how much I like where this is going.
sheeba balan kpp Jan 2015
Eucalyptus filled air
Sheets of warm and cold air
Early tasmac drinkers
Weary eyed dads
Bye bye -ing mommies
Dung splattering cows
whipped pedigree dogs
Scared insects
Proud birds
Flowers with an attitude
The pig
A hero
Swarmed stinking
Dirtiest of them all
And a early morning feast
Charming brown eyed street dogs
Question marked trees
Washed pavements
Drooling men
Betel chewing glaring women
Girls in floral blouses sweeping
Sh -sh -sh -sh -sh
Autos rrrrrr
Shock absorbing nike shoes krr krr krrr krr
A cigarette ****
A sad memory
Pushed aside
By the brush of a hand
pushed to a remote corner
Hidden
another memory
a recent one
with a scaredy cat
Which i want to share and party with
Was vivid

Ornamented ladies
lighting lamps to a dead god
Guarded by vain priests
Obesience
and giving life
for people
Lost in hope and fear
A parallel existence

Corporates blaring into phones
Fit men playing tennis
Small sturdy grass
Petite flowers
Swaying and dancing
Everlasting
Everlasting ?
Is it a will or maybe or a should be ?
early morning walks in new upcoming areas like hsr and marathahalli which were until recently villages and are now turning into small IT towns
Anthony Carrasco Feb 2016
We held each other
like breaths under water,
day old infants in their mommies arms,
and dreams we never meant to wake from.

You touched me
like I was your instrument,
a texture you were testing to buy,
and a newly used pan after cooking breakfast.

I loved you
like my favorite tv show,
warm blankets on a subzero night,
and the tattoos I designed with you in mind.

There are no amount of
     similes
I could say to express
how much I miss you,
yet here I am again
writing like an author
striving for a movie deal.
I keep my head down and my mouth shut
You speak only when spoken to , I have nothing to say
I cleared the table and head into my room I fall asleep
I hear him approach the bed
I'm so warm, my blanket is soft
His eyes are gray with a hint of green, cinnamon colored hair
I have memorized the top of his head ,every crease every hair
His face is thin, I think he is tired
He smells musty , but he always taste sweet
I hate him but I don't want him to leave
As he takes off his pants he places my hand on his man spot
I was so unsure what to do with it
  I'm getting better he is a good teacher
I roll it between my fingers it's warm and growing
It always wants a kiss my mouth is small I do my best
His hands hold my head tight it hurts
I get so confused when he makes these sounds. He sound's so angry. When he is done he leaves me for the night
I lie rubbing myself against the pillow Confused to why do I feel like this?
My heart beats so fast and I wonder if Daddy will be back?
He is a good dad we go outside and play
He has taught me how to write and read he is so proud of me
I'm special and I get special treats
I set the table where having company
I have a new dress and feel so cute
The woman of the house since mom passed away
It's  hard to remember  the rules I don't like him ,mad, my bones hurt when bruised
Don't eat until Fathers sitting down at the table that is one not to forget As we all sit down to eat, I clench my tiny hands hiding my secrets  under there
My heart goes out to all children who have suffered this abuse. Tragic and sick I did this so quick I did not edit it
Lillian Robinson Sep 2015
Toes
A Thank Offering

Praise be to the Maker of toes.
Crunchy, munchy baby toes mommies nibble.
Wiggley, wonderful baby toes,
Splendiferous, greeting the world with sunbeams toes!

Thanks to Him for kiddie toes.
Tumbling, treading, running boy toes.
Greeting the day toes, grabbing the bases toes.
Wiggle in the tub toes.

All hail for girlie toes.
Ready to be a ballerina toes.
Jumping, giggling, big girl toes.
Tip-toeing in the night, jump-in-your-bed toes.

Give praise for almost-grown toes.
Boy-toe-touching-girl-toe toes,
All tingling, thrilling toes.
I know everything! toes.

Do not withhold thanks for grown-up toes
Hurry. Carry. Do. Stop. Go. toes.
Weary, Pushing, Grasping toes.
Reaching for another under the covers toes.

Glory to the Maker for older toes.
Adept at all concepts and gadgets toes.
Slower and wiser gnarly toes.
Surrounded by little feet toes.

Pure worship for ancient toes.
Lined, yellow, and ***** toes
Awaiting a clipping by those
Who kneel in worship of timeworn toes.

All praise, thanks, and worship
To the Maker of toes;
The One to whom all glory goes,
Who fills us with the joy of toes.
In memory of John Bernard Carlson (1926-2011)
Jon Tobias May 2011
In my house there is a cupboard

Full of VHS tapes

One of them is a recording of a news broadcast

On it I stand

Hospital gowned and smiling

Clowns are there on the terrace where it was filmed

Painting our faces

They all smile

I smile

The other kids smile

None of us over 4 feet

But balding

Black eyed and missing toothed

A clown takes my hand and begins to paint

It is cold

The paint

And the Terrace

I tell her how I want to run away with her

She smiles

Maybe

On camera

You can see my back through the open gown

The bones make me look like a brontosaurus

I turn to the camera

Remembering I was told never to smile with the paint on

or it will crack

The circles under my eyes are gone

My lips are red

My cheeks are tan

I look normal

Off camera

mommies and daddies are crying

Off camera

the clowns are crying

On camera

There is a terrace full of dying children

In a hospital

And we all looked normal
I see you trying to play the badass
In a Japanese car, I would have to
Only laugh and say you ain't going far
So many ******* juveniles clamor for this and that
They only have to ask their mommies and daddies
For **** that their too lazy to do themselves

Get me this, get me that
I want this, I want that
Christmas comes and they get it
Because if they don't they'll throw a fit
A ******* disrespectful fit to their parents
No kid has any ******* respect anymore
What the **** happen to respect your elders
No, they would rather steal from them
And push them out in front of a bus

I say punish these kids
Take away everything the parents bought for them
Because they feel guilty they didn't grow up with
Much of anything. And if that doesn't work
Use the ******* belt on these ungrateful pukes
when i was a little girl
i thought my daddy hung the moon
he worked a lot
but i had the best daddy in the world

when i got a little older
i started to go to my friends' house to play
and i saw their daddies
their daddies were home every day and night
their daddies loved their mommies
their daddies had time for their little girls
but maybe
my daddy just worked a lot. . .

when i was barely a teen
my mommy died
a week later
my dad brought over a new mommy
(but daddy loved mommy)
my dad started telling me lies
(i don't think daddy lied to me..)
my dad has more time for his girlfriends than he does for me
(daddy's only girls were mommy and me)

in my last year of high school
my father left and bought a house
1,102 miles away
he still thinks he's daddy.
happy father's day to my older brothers who are better dads to me than my father is.
Jay Jul 2013
A 15 year old girl with 3 ****** partners almost up to 4
Living without essentials because her family lives poor
Feeding in addiction while her body craves more
She's growing up too fast and she's doing it alone
She says she needs the drugs because she won't make it on her own
So she lights up that blunt and snorts some of that coke
As her body sub-misses to the drug she says softly "don't tell my folks"
Deeper and deeper she sinks into her own hellish abyss
As a child she never thought life could be like this
But she also thought daddies weren't supposed to hit mommies
And little girls were supposed to just play with their dollies
Instead of hiding from step-brothers with lust in their eyes
Just to be found in her room at night, awaiting a not so pleasant surprise
Her life has been nothing but bad days with dark skies

A 15 year old girl with 4 ****** partners almost up to 5
Married to ***, pain and drugs
She makes a beautiful wife
Married to the death of love
She makes a beautiful wife
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
the i.q. (intelligence quotient) is hardly representative,
you can bishop-streak as a tourist to Giza and get
the same result... quotient etymologically speaking
is simply a quote, statistically represented -
meaning it only gathered answers from
the μ - median, mean, and meridian, also
a fond mention of mode: we all wish to sleep as peacefully
as the dead, necromancy with the pepper & salt shakers
for the fancy... stirrup hunch to giddy up,
and that makes two of us qualm bitter with
                                                    the grey matter
unexposed in chess tournaments.
i.q. (intelligence quotient) v. i.i. (intelligence inclusiveness):
that too.. statistics means a lot of autism
and many tiger mommies... preferably with surname Chang....
bright kid / always the dummies -
make that five years after the the show,
show them bullied... n'ah, you wont.
meaning the only thing included is
a pyramid and competitiveness, rather than shared
genius - which is hard to come by -
yes, the inclusiveness bit of the Rubik's cube solved
like Pavlov's tongue and the palette of a dog
given Sumerian cuisine to slobber over
when ingesting a tablespoon of cinnamon as the
other educated guess: the educated joke, universities
are famous for them being practised.
thus μ and the statistician's consonant... constant...
three tiers of synonymous bishops making up one
cardinal - intelligence is well enough quotient's worth
and the pyramid for a competitive streak of further events...
but such intelligence performed as example among
children doesn't qualify others to share the oncoming demise...
we need intelligence of an inclusive nature,
not a statistical correspondence with economists dodging
hard questions with quick investment answers...
we need people to tell the difference between
inclusiveness on the plural scaling of being a part of,
rather than an exclusiveness on the plural scaling of not being
a part of (alter: an exclusiveness on the solipsistic slave-scaling
of simply da sein - i.e. being there) -
i get the pronoun ambiguity, whenever there's no i involved
and it's purely a thing, everyone in the factory asks for the
Schindler's List - whether or not people are organic or
prosthetic(s) extending into a network of parasite or host
economy projects, and people ask those questions;
meaning? people are more likely to dismiss the idea of
a soul (an indestructible part of themselves, whether
contemporary or far fetched in terms of: ahead - Kant lives on
from the 18th century, plastic surgery will make others like you
take up the augmentation many decades later... there is always
something indestructible about you... it's called recycling
in the transference of physics, or metaphysics, the soul is like
an atom... it's indestructible... but your ego isn't... your ego
has no correlative support of the soul - your soul is an
indestructible unit, prone to gravity e.g., but your ego is prone
to the more pervasive moral force, which gravity isn't
a part of in term of monotheist glue... namely conscience...
the indestructible part of your isn't a self-conscious Jungian
jargon bit watered with control that you're aware of...
the soul, the unit of indestructibility is the unconscious bit...
which is why we continue to have actors, poets, plumbers,
bus drivers... you can't destroy the soul in the collective
unconscious sense of things... the indestructible element of
your being continues regardless of your wish to sell
out and profit or take an overly conscious case of
being aware of conning the selfish gene stipend on Wall Street...
it still bites back at your **** for showing off your yacht
rather than your Mongolian yurt.
the soul is real... not in an individualised sense of things...
the individual is completely destroyed... constantly revised
via recycling... a lot of Hinduism makes his plainer but
more mythical and less hoarse in its reality of death -
the soul is a continuum, the indestructible capacity of
preservation, preservation rather than evolution -
anti-Darwinism? the preservationists... apply poetic rhyming
to ideas and the truth is ******* boring - poetry can decipher
GRAND PLATINUM ORNATE GALAS OF STATE AFFAIRS
by looking at the suffixes... and rhyming them together
getting the toad's ******* of October Fest's burps...
it is time to learn how to write poetry outside of poetry...
it's time to write testaments, it's time to write biblical accounts
of our lives... there's not time for pretty verse...
it's at this precise moment when poetry has become too
technical in theory and mundane in practice...
use this zenith moment to read language across all genres...
and never applying it for a poetic expression...
look! the paupers are numerous! but these paupers are
octopus handy in picking your ten pockets!
to have reached the plateau of Darwinism as having to preserve...
to have reached the penultimate affair of the prone
destructibility of identity, personality, character (Thesaurus Rex's
RA! or the complete synonymous archive of ego) - meaning
that the soul was a plumber you never were given
the Saturday of the appointment, and your chronology being
that of a Ford Automobile salesman in some showroom in Peckham.
We live In an era,
Where our peers are our oppressors
And your judged as a person
By the contents of your dresser
We need to make a change now
Let's see if we can make it better
Walking through a school hall getting spat on
Cause you don't have the right jeans or ******* shirt on
These superficial glamor nazis don't know me
Looking down from there towers living on golden streets
Kids cry at night when they lay between the sheets
All they can think is "why? You don't even know me
All these kids obsessed with jays and they thread count
Looking at the outside and not what I'm about
It's sickening, they got a fashion addiction.
Living off of daddies money and mommies perscriptions
Yet they don't look in the mirror and see the cynical villain
That they turned out to be
Can't see the hypocrisy
And I'm honestly fed up
I grew up on cheap clothes but the best love
Maybe it's love those kids need a little more of
Butch Decatoria Mar 2017
Should a grown up ask a stupid question
(One already knowing its answer)
To a room full of toddlers, preschool children
Barely knowing much of the world
Yet

"How do mommies become pregnant?"

Most may keep quiet to themselves, shy pink cheeks
Embarrassed is that coloring
And those fearless and quick to be the center
Of any kind of attention may blurt out:

"When daddies kiss them our mommies!"

How beautiful is the ignorance of our youths,
Without having been shoved in the deep end
Of a pool that's become murky...

So in this case, let us adults play pretend,
Do as the children say...

If it were true, a kiss will lead to a pregnancy,
Then I will be glad as a cuttlefish,
A flamboyant under the rug of the sea...
Note: Cuttlefish reproduce with their mouths (if you know what cuttlefish look like and do.)

Such a cool word to "say" "cuttlefish".
Sunny Snow Dec 2013
Her birthday is on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party,
She love to garden and cook,
Guess you can blame that on her Italian heritage.
She has one tattoo I convinced her to get with me,
A humming bird on our right foot…
She has silver shinny hair,
And loves to scrapbook and take pictures where ever we go.

But most of all,
She’s my mother and my best friend.
She keeps all my little secrets,
And her ears are always ready to listen.
(Even when I talk them off)

Some of my happiest memories,
Are of being in her company.

Spa night’s with hair rapped up in a towel,
And nails painted, and laughs till bedtime.
Girls weekends at my apartment,
Sipping Blue Nun wine and watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

But the thing that gets me most is,
She is and always will be there
When I feel no one else is.

When I first dealt with depression and bipolar,
I was scared, and I felt alone.
But she held me through every nightmare,
And dried every single tear,
Cause that’s what mommies do best.

And believe me when I say she should get
The mother of the year award,
Cause I may be adopted,
But when people ask me who my mom is,
I say her,
Cause she deserves that title more than anyone in the universe!
For my mom's birthday I wrote this piece.
Michael R Burch Sep 2020
Heretical Poems by Michael R. Burch

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

NOTE: I came up with this epigram to express my conclusions after reading the Bible from cover to cover, ten chapters per day, at age eleven.



Saving Graces
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter
(wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter).



Multiplication, Tabled
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

“Be fruitful and multiply”—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, “WHEN!”



Wlly Nilly
for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah
by Michael R. Burch

Isn’t it silly, W
lly Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to Rage and Plunder?

For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please . . .
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!



gimME that ol’ time religion!
by michael r. burch

fiddle-dee-dum, fiddle-dee-dee,
jesus loves and understands ME!
safe in his grace, I’LL send them to hell—
the strumpet, the harlot, the wild jezebel,
the alky, the druggie, all queers short and tall!
let them drink ashes and wormwood and gall,
’cause fiddle-dee-DUMB, fiddle-dee-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee . . .
jesus loves and understands
ME!



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



Practice Makes Perfect
by Michael R. Burch

I have a talent for sleep;
it’s one of my favorite things.
Thus when I sleep, I sleep deep ...
at least till the stupid clock rings.

I frown as I squelch its loud beep,
then fling it aside to resume
my practice for when I’ll sleep deep
in a silent and undisturbed tomb.



Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.

But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.



Redefinitions
by Michael R. Burch

Faith: falling into the same old claptrap.
Religion: the ties that blind.



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur God’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur just a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).



Defenses
by Michael R. Burch

Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.

Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.



fog
by michael r. burch

ur just a bit of fluff
drifting out over the ocean,
unleashing an atom of rain,
causing a minor commotion,
for which u expect awesome GODS
to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION!
... but ur just a smidgen of mist
unlikely to be missed ...
where did u get the notion?



thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch

GODD is great;
GODD is good;
let us thank HIM
for our food.

by HIS hand
we all are fed;
give us now
our daily dead:

ah-men!

(p.s.,
most gracious
& salacious
HEAVENLY LORD,
we thank YOU in advance for
meals galore
of loverly gore:
of precious
delicious
sumptuous
scrumptious
human flesh!)



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see ...



u-turn: another way to look at religion
by michael r. burch

... u were borne orphaned from Ecstasy
into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms
dreaming of Beatification;
u'd love to make a u-turn back to Divinity, but
having misplaced ur chrysalis,
can only chant magical phrases,
like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ...



You
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though a communion between us.

For thirty years You would not open to me;
You remained closed, hard and tense,
like a clenched fist.

For thirty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways and Your distance.
Like a child dismissed,

I have watched You prey upon the hope in me,
knowing “mercy” is chance
and “heaven”—a list.



I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt.
     And I uphold the Law,
     for Grace has a Flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.

I’ve got ten thousand reasons why Hell must exist,
and you’re at the top of my fast-swelling list!
     You’re nothing like me,
     so God must agree
and slam down the Hammer with His Loving Fist!

For what are the chances that God has a plan
to save everyone: even Boy George and Wham!?
     Eternal fell torture
     in Hell’s pressure scorcher
will separate **** from Man.

I’m glad I’m redeemed, ecstatic you’re not.
Did Christ die for sinners? Perish the thought!
     The "good news" is this:
     soon My vengeance is his!,
for you’re not the lost sheep We sought.



jesus hates me, this i know
by michael r. burch

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
"little ones to him belong"
but if they use their dongs, so long!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus fleeces us, i know,
for Religion scams us so:
little ones are brainwashed to
believe god saves the Chosen Few!
    yes, jesus fleeces!
    yes, he deceases
    the bunny and the rhesus
    because he's mad at you!

jesus hates me—christ who died
so i might be crucified:
for if i use my active brain,
that will drive the "lord" insane!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
first priests tell me "look above,"
that christ's the lamb and god's the dove,
but then they sentence me to Hell
for using my big brain too well!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!



and then i was made whole
by michael r. burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all caught up
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he’s a sinner;
give up s-x, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.

In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak!,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably.



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“what rough beast...slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a streaked glass pane,
jeers jubilant,
mocking.

Brutality is shocking―
tiny orifices torn
by cruel adult lust,
the fetus unborn
tossed in a dust-
bin. The scarred skull shorn,
nails bloodied, tortured,
an old wound sutured
over, never healed.

Brutality, all its faces revealed,
is legion:
Death March, Trail of Tears, Inquisition . . .
always the same.
The Beast of the godless and of man’s “religion”
slouching toward Jerusalem:
horned, crowned, gibbering, drooling, insane.



I AM
by Michael R. Burch

I am not one of ten billion―I―
sunblackened Icarus, chary fly,
staring at God with a quizzical eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I.

I am not one life has left unsquashed―
scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched,
pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache.
I am not one life has left unsquashed.

I am not one without spots of disease,
laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees
from begging and praying and girls sighing "Please! "
I am not one without spots of disease.

I am not one of ten billion―I―
scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly
staring at God with a sedulous eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they'll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there's decent ** in jail.
Don't fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We'll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don't make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)

###

Unwhole
by Michael R. Burch

What is it that we strive to remember, to regain,
as memory deserts us,
leaving us destitute of even ourselves,
of all but pain?

How can something so essential be forgotten,
if we are more than our bodies?
How can a soul
become so unwhole?

###

Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).

###

evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

does GOD love the Tyger
while it's ripping ur lamb apart?

does GOD applaud the Bubonic Plague
while it's eating u à la carte?

does GOD admire ur intelligence
while u pray that IT has a heart?

does GOD endorse the Bible
you blue-lighted at k-mart?

###

Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche's sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.

###

Alien
by Michael R. Burch

for  a "Christian" poet

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices "speech"
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro―
far colder than Jesus's words
over the "fortunate" sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.

###

Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until its sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love's tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem's retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man's beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.

###

Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

"... so let your light shine before men..."

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but―immaculate―shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity,
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time―an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you'd convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.

###

Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I'm already below!

###

Shock and Awe
by Michael R. Burch

With megatons of "wonder, "
we make our godhead clear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The world's heart ripped asunder,
its dying pulse we hear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Strange Trinity! We ponder
this God we hold so dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The vulture and the condor
proclaim: The feast is near!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Soon He will plow us under;
the Anti-Christ is here:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

We love to hear Him thunder!
With Shock and Awe, appear!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

For God can never blunder;
we know He holds US dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

###

Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go...
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.

Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin...
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will "win."

Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through...
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.

###

What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast?

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer?

What brings them here―
pale, tearful congregations,
knowing all Hope is past,
faithfully, year upon year?

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask:

why is it God that they fear?

###

Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.

###

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.

###

Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.

###

Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be d-mned,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me―
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.

###

Tonight, Let's Remember
by Michael R. Burch

July 7,2007 (7-7-7)

Tonight, let's remember the fond ways
our fingers engendered new methods to praise
the gray at my temples, your thinning hair.
Tonight, let's remember, and let us draw near...

Tonight, let's remember, as mortals do,
how cutely we chortled when work was through,
society sated, all gods put to rest,
and you in my arms, and I at your breast...

Tonight, let's remember how daring, how free
the Madeira made us, recumbently.
Our inhibitions?―we laid them to rest.
Earth, heaven or hell―we knew we were blessed.

Tonight, let's remember the dwindling days
we've spent here together―the sun's rays
spending their power beyond somber hills.
Soon we'll rest together; there'll be no more bills.

Tonight, let's remember: we've paid all our dues,
we've suffered our sorrows, we've learned how to lose.
What's left now to take, only God can tell.
Be with me in heaven, or "bliss" will be hell!

I do not want God; I want to see you
free from all sorrow, your labor through,
a song on your tongue, a smile on your lips,
sweet, sultry and vagrant, a child at your hips,

laughing and beaming and ready to frolic
in a world free from cancer and gout and colic.
For you were courageous, and kind, and true.
There must be a heaven for someone like you.

###

I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse―a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard―a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)

###

To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim―
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?

###

Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech's brilliant slide, I gr0pe,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear―
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don't quite understand) ,
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).

###

Gethsemane in Every Breath
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, we have lost our way, and now
we have mislaid love―earth's fairest rose.
We forgot hope's song―the way it goes.
Help us reclaim their gifts, somehow.

LORD, we have wondered long and far
in search of Bethlehem's retrograde star.
Now in night's dead cold grasp, we gasp:
our lives one long-drawn rattling rasp

of misspent breath... before we drown.
LORD, help us through this spiral down
because we faint, and do not see
above or beyond despair's trajectory.

Remember that You, too, once held
imperiled life within your hands
as hope withdrew... that where You knelt
―a stranger in a stranger land―

the chalice glinted cold afar
and red with blood as hellfire.
Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember―we are as You were,

but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.

###

A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember-we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.

###

Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,
Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;
come dwell again,
happy child among men―
men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger's cool
sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,
with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love
in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land
planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe
in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.
Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright―
just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope's long-departed star!

###

Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly―
away, away...

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination―

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.

###

The Gardener's Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away."

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least...

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies...

Faint scent of roses, then―a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true? "

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call―ecstatic crew!―
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."

###

Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of "morality" around me.
Surround me,

not with law's restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.

###

Cædmon's Face
by Michael R. Burch

At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked here too, their spirits freed
―perhaps by God, perhaps by need―

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon's ember:
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.



He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike―as father unto son.

But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father's face becomes his own.



He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker's might, man's lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth

suspended under heaven's roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:

his face was Poetry's, from youth.



Post-Nashville Covenant
by Michael R. Burch

We love our God.
We love our guns.
We despise the weak.
Don’t call us Huns!

We love our kids.
We love our schools.
We love our guns.
Don’t call us fools!

We pledge ourselves
to the strong defense
of the Constitution
and our Mensch.

Once re-elected,
Trump will rule
with God and guns
and safer schools.



Wonderworks
by Michael R. Burch

History’s
mysteries
abound
& astound,
found
(profound)
the whole earth ’round,
even if mostly
underground.



uv been had
by michael r. burch

uv been had;
ur Dad’s a cad;
His priests are mad,
His pastors lying.

they only want your money, chum,
so why play dumb
and give it to ’em?
give them the boot and send them flying!



Come Spring
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Come spring we return, innocent and hopeful, to the ******,
beseeching Her to bestow
Her blessings upon us.

Pitiable sinners, we bow before Her,
nay, grovel,
as She looms above us, aglow
in Her Purity.

We know
all will change in an instant; therefore
in the morning we will call her,
an untouched maiden no more,
“*****.”

The so-called Religious Right prizes virginity in women and damns them for doing what men do. I have long been a fan of women like Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, who decided what’s good for the gander is equally good for the goose.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to "believe"?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where our kids will stick their (k)no(w)'s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud's a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



twin nuggets of ancient ****-dumb
by michael r. burch

oh, let it never once be said
that love for Gaud is dead!

wee love the way he murdered eve!
such awesome love! wee must believe!

wee love the way he sent a FLOOD
to teach wee babies to be good!

wee love the zillion births he aborted!
such awesome love cant clearly reported!

(so never mind the embryos
who died in their mommies’ drowning throes!

the unborn babes, the unborn lambs
all drowned for Gaud’s divinest plans!)

“do as I say, not as I do!”
cruel Hippo-Crit! does Jesus rue?
(if Christ were good he’d rue Gaud too.)

no! wee must love our abusive Father
and follow hymn meekly, mild lambs to the slaughter,

or he’ll burn us forever in Hiss terrible hell.
it’s so much safer to tell hymn he’s swell!

thus wee love our Gaud so loverly
hovering over us so smotherly!

wee love the TITHES his cons abscond.
wee love the Big Fish in Hiss pond.

And so wee say “whee!” to all this and that!
PS, also the earth is flat!



Why do faith, hope and love
always end up PUSH and SHOVE?
—Michael R. Burch, lines from “Christ, Jesus!”



Yet another Screed against Exist-Tension-alism
by Michael R. Burch

Life has meaning!
Please don’t deny it!
It means we’re ******.
Why cause a riot?



Evangelical Fever
by Michael R. Burch

Welcome to global warming:
temperature 109.
You believe in God, not in science,
but isn’t the weather Divine?



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I *****,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear—
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don’t quite understand),
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).



The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

Here I am, talking to myself again . . .

******* at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!

Still, I remember when . . .

planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity

worth a chuckle or two.

Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;

Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;

Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;

Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .

for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,

and they fill the world with their pale derision

of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,

reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all ******.



The King of Beasts in the Museum of the Extinct
by Michael R. Burch

The king of beasts, my child,
was terrible, and wild.

His roaring shook the earth
till the feeble cursed his birth.

And all things feared his might:
even rhinos fled, in fright.

Now here these bones attest
to what the brute did best

and the pain he caused his prey
when he hunted in his day.

For he slew them just for sport
till his own pride was cut short

with a mushrooming cloud and wild thunder;
Exhibit "B" will reveal his blunder.



God to Man, Contra Bataan
by Michael R. Burch

Earth, what-d’ya make of global warming?
Perth is endangered, the high seas storming.
Now all my creatures, from maggot to man
Know how it felt on the march to Bataan.



The Less-Than-Divine Results of My Prayers to be Saved from Televangelists
by Michael R. Burch

I’m old,
no longer bold,
just cold,
and (truth be told),
been bought and sold,
rolled
by the wolves and the lambs in the fold.

Who’s to be told
by this worn-out scold?
The complaint department is always on hold.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to "believe"?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their (k)no(w)'s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud's a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I’m already below!

“Heaven Bent” is a pun on “being bent on Heaven” and the heaven/hell thing being bent into a different version, with the dying escaping hell here on earth. That would make death “heaven” even if there is no afterlife. “This life is hell,” “upwardly mobile” and “how the hell” are also puns that can be read two ways. I wrote this poem in high school, around age 16 in 1974, but was unhappy with the third line and forgot about the poem. I stumbled upon it on on July 4, 2006 —ironically, Independence Day — and the third line occurred to me.



The beauty of the flower fades,
its petals wither to charades...
—Michael R. Burch



the U-turn poem
by michael r. burch

Life so defaulty,
Life so unfair,
why do wee prize U,
what do U care?

LORD who lets unborns
drown in a flood,
CELESTIAL ABORTIONIST,
r U sure Ur understood?



Hellion
by michael r. burch

cold as stone,
cold to the bone,
so cold inside even icebergs moan,
such is ur Gaud on hiss icy throne.

lines written for a luverly Gaud who cant be bothered to save pisspot peeple who guess wrong about which ire-ational re-ligion to believe.

“Hellion” is a pun on “he-lion” as in the “Lion of Judah” and “hell-lion.”



yet another ode to a graceless faceless Creator albeit with thoughts of possibly rescinding prior compliments
by michael r. burch

who created this graceless universe?
why praise its Creator? who could be worse?
why praise man’s Berater with obsequious verse?
job’s wife was right: he’s nobody’s nurse.



ur-Gent prayer request
by michael r. burch

where did ur Gaud originate?
in the minds of men so full of hate
they commanded moms to stone their kids,
which u believe (brains on the skids)
was “the word of Gaud”!
                                         debate?
too late & of course it’s useless:
please pray to be less clueless.

The title involves a pun, since the “ur-Gent” would be the biblical “god.”



Religion is regarded by fools as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Non-Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

The wise will never cry, “Save!”
The wise desire a quiet grave.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense/nunsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to “believe”?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their no’s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud’s a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



We Know It All
by Michael R. Burch

We rile. We gall. We know it all
because we’ve read the Bible,
which tells us genocide’s “God’s will”
along with bashing in kids’ skulls
and other forms of libel.

The earth is flat, our Book says so!
The Lord will torture our rational foe!
(We lack the compassion to tell the fiend “No!”)

God’s on his throne, the Angels are winking,
applauding our lack of critical thinking.
We’re drowning in crap. We’re stinking and sinking.

Eve once petted friendly T-Rexes!
A “witch” should be ****** for unprovable hexes!
It’s a “sin” to make love if one’s lover has exes!

Girls were enslaved and ***** by their “masters”!
Our Book is the source of so many disasters!
The earth’s overheating? Let’s burn it up faster!



Yet Another ****** Ditty
by Michael R. Burch

Here’s my ditty:
Life is ******,
Then you get old
And more’s the pity.

Truth be told,
We’re bought and sold,
Sheep in the fold
Sheared lickety-splitty.

But chin’s up,
What’s the use of crying?
We’ve a certain escape:
Welcome to dying!



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some compassionless “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.



Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and white is white
and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words?
They come to him:
the moon's illuminations,
intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now,
and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell,
and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen,
or cut off your ears,
for I Am weary.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

2.
Listen to me now: I had a Vision.
An elevated train derailed, and Fell.
It was the Church brought low, almost to Hell.
And I alone survived, who dream of Mercy:
the Heretic, who speaks behind the Veil.

3.
Listen to me now: I saw an airplane
fall from the sky. And why should I explain?
The Visions are the same. It is my Heresy
that I survive, because I sing of Mercy,
while elevated "saints" go down in flames.

4.
Listen to me now: I saw in Nashville
how those who "soar" will plummet―Fame in flames!―
and fall on those below, as if to k-ll them.
The lowly, saved, will understand their names.

5.
Listen to me now: I heard another
say, "That which died shall Resurrect and Live."
An angel with a Rose bestowing Mercy!
What can it mean, but that my Visions give
fair warning to the world that God wants Mercy.
My Heresy is that we must forgive!

6.
Listen to me now: she heard god calling―
O, who will love me, who will be my friend?
Does he want Perfect Saints, the whitewashed Purists,
who frown down on their "brothers," without end?

7.
Listen to me now: you are not perfect,
and your "wise counsel" helps no one at all:
unless it's sweetened with the sweetest Mercy,
it's pure astringent antiseptic gall.

8.
Listen to me now, and learn this lesson:
If God wants mercy, why dig at the speck
in your brother's eye, when even now the Beam,
your lack of mercy, spares, no, neither neck,
becomes the Hangman's Millstone. We're all children,
all little ones! Be patient with the fleck!

9.
Listen to me now: for the Announcer
explained that wars have given Presidents
the precedents to soon assume all Power.
Vote, citizens, or be mere residents!

10.
O, listen to me now: I saw the Warheads
stored safely underground, except for One.
A red-haired woman with a bright complexion
seduced the guard. Translucent blouse, red thong,
white bra―these were her fearsome antique weapons.

I saw the Skull and Crossbones! Heed my Song!

11.
O, listen to me now, and hear my Gospel:
three verses of such sweet simplicity!
God is Light: in Him there is no darkness.
In Christ, no condemnation: Liberty!
God want no Sacrifice, but only Mercy.
O, who could ask for sweeter Heresy?

12.
Theology? I swear that I disdain it!
If Love can be explained, why then explain it!
If Love can't be explained why, then, should God,
if God is Love? Nor hell nor cattle ****
is needed, if God's good, and God's supreme.
Ask, children, what "re-ligion" truly means:
"return to *******! " Heed the bondsman's screams!

13.
Heed, children, which Theologies you dream
when Hellish Nightmares wake you, when you Scream
for comfort, but no comforter is there.
Which Voices do you heed, which Crosses bear?
If god is light, whence do Dark Visions come
which leave the Taste of Venom on your Tongue,
with which you **** your brother for one Sin
you do not share, ten thousand underskin
like Itching Worms that Squirm and Vilely Hiss:
"Your brother's sin will keep him from god's bliss,
but You are safe because god favors You! "
If God is Love, how can this voice be true?

14.
For God is not a favorer of men.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
soul in torment Oct 2013
Oh shall we play space men today
and build a rocket Ted
we need two suits some gloves and boots
and helmets for our head

A packing crate stood tall and straight
dad's funnel placed on top
three books so thin each one a fin
and Mommies broken mop

A beanbag chair we two can share
and buttons we can push
some sandwiches and light switches
and cans of Orange crush

Some dials and springs and other things
we found in daddies shed
now that looks neat so take a seat
and start the countdown Ted

We watched the stars that once so far
where now within our grip
Count ten to one ignition on
Blast off in rocket ship

The silver moon would greet us soon
as upward we both sped
through clouds of white to black of night
just me and mister Ted

The rocket turned as thrusters burned
as we altered our course
for here you see the gravity
Had very little force

We journeyed forth toward the north
by meteor and star
as comets whizzed and pinged and fizzed
and flew both near and far

We passed the plough and saw a cow
jump clean over the moon
then stations manned prepared to land
beside a giant dune

Beneath our feet a silver sheet
of fallen stars and sand
and as we two took in the view
Ted held me by the hand

The solar breeze blew round our knees
and tickled as it passed
time now to go yes Ted I know
this day has gone so fast

seated inside we watched the tide
So slowly ebb and flow
then 10 to 1 zero and gone
we raced the mornings glow

home safe and sound we kissed the ground
and ran in for our tea
I turned to Ted and softly said
the moon just winked at me

What shall we be next time said he
cowboys or maybe kings
I do not know I whispered low
let's see what morning brings
Ellie Shelley Oct 2014
Everyone needs a super hero
But not everyone has a good one
We look up to men who us guns instead of words
And women who use their bodies to get what they think they deserve
Children start looking up to their mommies and daddies
But how are little girls and boys gonna do that gonna do that
when their daddies stay away all night and get high
And their mommies look at their phone more than them
When they can’t look up to their parents
They look up to false idols singing songs about drugs and ***
They look up to people they think care
Everyone needs a hero
Everyone needs to look up to someone
But not everyone has that

— The End —