Your rose colored glasses make everything okay

Until the shades blend
and you're seeing red again

There will always be a point
where filters deliver their ***** backwash
and you're left with the mess the elephant made
in the corner of the room
and he's rubbing your nose in it

He's rubbing your nose in it

I know I am only beer goggle beautuful
A latex layer of desensitization
to try and make our crash last longer

And you see in hues
of rising shades of deadly
Miss my blushing
so you don't realize
how uncomfortable this is making me

But you're smelling roses
Feel the thorn's *****
but miss the blood on your hands

Wonder why the roses suddenly smell so coppery

Please let us learn how to peel back the layers

Flay me like a whale
on a boat-deck-cutting-board

Pull me out of my element
and peel back my skin
while I am still begging you not to

See me for who I am
while I am at my most vulnurable

writing poetry at 2 am
when I should be sleeping

A t-shirt over a lamp shade
because I am afraid to sleep alone in the dark

The door cracked so I can hear if my father falls again

Sometimes silence scares me
Sometimes it is all I want

Right now it is so quiet
There are no filters here

Your rose colored glasses make everything okay

Everything is not okay

Flay me

See me for who I am

without any filters

Then tell me you still love me

Narcissist I


Money questions hidden in cultures
Instead of debates, we have the vultures
They will overspend whatever their budget
Destroy years hard work, their odour pungent

Often called users, epiphytes of highest order
Those that cannot earn sufficient to quarter
Or manage their own, so they use others
Spending, unfettered, is their druthers

Cannot accept responsibility for damage
Continue to feast on their host, they ravage
Hollowing out from inside, funds they suction
Weakening the structure for eventual destruction

And weakened, debates then start about savings
Too late, funds gone, too late for the cravings
Absent conversation, leaves a bad situation
Long ago, train of debate left the station

What we have now is death and decay
All caused by silence, as the vultures flay
It will not be long until they seek a new host
Just when their former home needs them most

So leave they will, to claw the next poor victim
Removing their talons of love and devotion
Moving on, leaving behind just carcasses
Warm used bodies, mark of a narcissist

Urdu Poetry: English Translations



You will never comprehend me:
I pour out my feelings; you only read the words!
―original poet unknown, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Tears are colorless―thank God!―
otherwise my pillow might betray my heart.
―original poet unknown, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Near Sainthood
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

On the subject of mystic philosophy, Ghalib,
your words might have struck us as deeply profound ...
Hell, we might have pronounced you a saint,
if only we hadn't found
you drunk
as a skunk!

There are more English translations of poems by Mirza Ghalib later on this page.



Every Once in a While
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every once in a while,
immersed in these muggy nights
when all earth’s voices seem to have fallen
into the bruised-purple silence of half-sleep,
I awaken from a wonderful dream
to see through the veil that drifts between us
that you too are companionless and wide awake.



First Rendezvous
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This story of the earth
is as old as the universe,
as old as the birth
of the first day and night.

This story of the sky
is included in the words we casually uttered,
you and I,
and yet it remains incomplete, till the end of sight.

This earth and all the scenes it contains
remain witnesses to the moment
when you first held my hand
as we watched the world unfolding, together.

This world
became the focus
for the first rendezvous
between us.



Impossible and Improbable Visions
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eyes interpret visions,
rainbow auras waver;
similar scenes appear
different to individual eyes,
as innumerable oases
coexist in one desert
or a single thought acquires
countless shapes.



I Have to Find My Lost Star
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Searching the emptiest of skies
overflowing with innumerable stars,
I have to find the one
that belongs
to me.

...

Gazing at galaxies beyond galaxies,
all glorious with evolving wonder,
I ponder her name,
finding no sign to remember.

...

Lost things, they say,
are sometimes found
in the same accumulations of dust
where they once vanished.

I have to find the lost star
that belongs to me.



Last Night
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your memory stole into my heart―
as spring sweeps uninvited into barren gardens,
as morning breezes reinvigorate dormant deserts,
as a patient suddenly feels better, for no apparent reason ...

There are more English translations of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz later on this page.



Intimacy
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I held the Sun, Stars and Moon at a distance
till the time your hands touched mine.
Now I am not a feather to be easily detached:
instruct the hurricanes and tornados to observe their limits!

There are more English translations of poems by Rahat Indori later on this page.



Strange Currents
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O Khusrow, the river of love
creates strange currents—
the one who would surface invariably drowns,
while the one who submerges, survives.

There are more English translations of poems by Amir Khusrow later on this page.



The Eager Traveler
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Even in the torture chamber, I was the lucky one;
when each lottery was over, unaccountably I had won.

And even the mightiest rivers found accessible refuge in me;
though I was called an arid desert, I turned out to be the sea.

And how sweetly I remember you—oh, my wild, delectable love!—
as the purest white blossoms bloom, on talented branches above.

And while I’m half-convinced that folks adore me in this town,
still, all the hands I kissed held knives and tried to shake me down.

You lost the battle, my coward friend, my craven enemy,
when, to victimize my lonely soul, you sent a despoiling army.

Lost in the wastelands of vast love, I was an eager traveler,
like a breeze in search of your fragrance, a vagabond explorer.

There are more English translations of poems by Ahmad Faraz later on this page.



The Condition of My Heart
by Munir Niazi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is not necessary for anyone else to get excited:
The condition of my heart is not the condition of hers.
But were we to receive any sort of good news, Munir,
How spectacular compared to earth's mundane sunsets!

There are more English translations of poems by Munir Niazi later on this page.



Failures
by Nida Fazli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I was unable to relate
the state
of my heart to her,
while she failed to infer
the nuances
of my silences.



Apni Marzi se
by Nida Fazli Shayari
translated by Mandakini Bhattacherya and Michael R. Burch

This journey was not of my making;
As the winds blow, I’m blown along ...
Time and dust are my ancient companions;
Who knows where I’m bound or belong?

There are more English translations of poems by Nida Fazli later on this page.



My Apologies, Sona
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My apologies, Sona,
if traversing my verse's terrain
in these torrential rains
inconvenienced you.

The monsoons are unseasonal here.

My poems' pitfalls are sometimes sodden.
Water often overflows these ditches.
If you stumble and fall here, you run the risk
of spraining an ankle.

My apologies, however,
if you were inconvenienced
because my dismal verse lacks light,
or because my threshold's stones
interfered as you passed.

I have often cracked toenails against them!

As for the streetlamp at the intersection,
it remains unlit ... endlessly indecisive.

If you were inconvenienced,
you have my heartfelt apologies!

There are more English translations of poems by Gulzar later on this page.



Come As You Are
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come as you are, forget appearances!
Is your hair untamable, your part uneven, your bodice unfastened? Never mind.
Come as you are, forget appearances!

Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.
If your feet glisten with dew, if your anklets slip, if your beaded necklace slides off? Never mind.
Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.

Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?
Flocks of cranes erupt from the riverbank, fitful gusts ruffle the fields, anxious cattle tremble in their stalls.
Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?

You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.
Who will care that your eyelids have not been painted with lamp-black, when your pupils are darker than thunderstorms?
You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.

Come as you are, forget appearances!
If the wreath lies unwoven, who cares? If the bracelet is unfastened, let it fall. The sky grows dark; it is late.
Come as you are, forget appearances!



Unfit Gifts
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

At sunrise, I cast my nets into the sea,
dredging up the strangest and most beautiful objects from the depths ...
some radiant like smiles, some glittering like tears, others flushed like brides’ cheeks.
When I returned, staggering under their weight, my love was relaxing in her garden, idly tearing leaves from flowers.
Hesitant, I placed all I had produced at her feet, silently awaiting her verdict.
She glanced down disdainfully, then pouted: "What are these bizarre things? I have no use for them!"
I bowed my head, humiliated, and thought:
"Truly, I did not contend for them; I did not purchase them in the marketplace; they are unfit gifts for her!"
That night I flung them, one by one, into the street, like refuse.
The next morning travelers came, picked them up and carted them off to exotic countries.



The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

On the seashores of endless worlds, earth's children converge.
The infinite sky is motionless, the restless waters boisterous.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children gather to dance with joyous cries and pirouettes.
They build sand castles and play with hollow shells.
They weave boats out of withered leaves and laughingly float them out over the vast deep.
Earth's children play gaily on the seashores of endless worlds.
They do not know, yet, how to cast nets or swim.
Divers fish for pearls and merchants sail their ships, while earth's children skip, gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They are unaware of hidden treasures, nor do they know how to cast nets, yet.
The sea surges with laughter, smiling palely on the seashore.
Death-dealing waves sing the children meaningless songs, like a mother lullabying her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with the children, smiling palely on the seashore.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children meet.
Tempests roam pathless skies, ships lie wrecked in uncharted waters, death wanders abroad, and still the children play.
On the seashores of endless worlds there is a great gathering of earth's children.



This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation 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.



Being
by Momin Khan Momin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You are so close to me
that no one else ever can be.

NOTE: There is a legend that the great Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib offered all his diwan (poetry collections) in exchange for this one sher (couplet) by Momin Khan Momin. Does the couplet mean "be as close" or "be, at all"? Does it mean "You are with me in a way that no one else can ever be?" Or does it mean that no one else can ever exist as truly as one's true love? Or does this sher contain an infinite number of elusive meanings, like love itself?



Being (II)
by Momin Khan Momin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You alone are with me when I am alone.
You are beside me when I am beside myself.
You are as close to me as everyone else is afar.
You are so close to me that no one else ever can be.



Perhaps
by Momin Khan Momin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The cohesiveness between us, you may remember or perhaps not.
Our solemn oaths of faithfulness, you may remember, or perhaps forgot.
If something happened that was not to your liking,
the shrinking away that produces silence, you may remember, or perhaps not.
Listen, the sagas of so many years, the promises you made amid time's onslaught,
which you now fail to mention, you may remember or perhaps not.
These new resentments, those often rehashed complaints,
these lighthearted and displeasing stories, you may remember, or perhaps forgot.
Some seasons ago we shared love and desire, we shared joy ...
That we once were dear friends, you may have perhaps forgot.
Now if we come together, by fate or by chance, to express old loyalties ...
Our every shared breath, all our sighs and regrets, you may remember, or perhaps not.



What Happened to Them?
by Nasir Kazmi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Those who came ashore, what happened to them?
Those who sailed away, what happened to them?

Those who were coming at dawn, when dawn never arrived ...
Those caravans en route, what happened to them?

Those I awaited each night on moonless paths,
Who were meant to light beacons, what happened to them?

Who are these strangers surrounding me now?
All my lost friends and allies, what happened to them?

Those who built these blazing buildings, what happened to them?
Those who were meant to uplift us, what happened to them?

NOTE: This poignant poem was written about the 1947 partition of India into two nations: India and Pakistan. I take the following poem to be about the aftermath of the division.



Climate Change
by Nasir Kazmi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The songs of our silenced lips are different.
The expressions of our regretful hearts are different.

In milder climes our grief was more tolerable,
But the burdens we bear now are different.

O, walkers of awareness's road, keep your watch!
The obstacles strewn on this stony path are different.

We neither fear separation, nor desire union;
The anxieties of my rebellious heart are different.

In the first leaf-fall only flowers fluttered from twigs;
This year the omens of autumn are different.

This world lacks the depth to understand my heartache;
Please endow me with melodies, for my cry is different!

One disconcerting glance bared my being;
Now in barren fields my visions are different.

No more troops, nor flags. Neither money, nor fame.
The marks of the monarchs on this land are different.

Men are not martyred for their beloveds these days.
The youths of my youth were so very different!



Nasir Kazmi Couplets

When I was a child learning to write
my first scribblings were your name.
―Nasir Kazmi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When my feet lost the path
where was your hand?
―Nasir Kazmi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everything I found is yours;
everything I lost is also yours.
―Nasir Kazmi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Memory
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, as performed by Iqbal Bano
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the wastelands of solitude, my love,
the echoes of your voice quiver,
the mirages of your lips waver.

In the deserts of alienation,
out of the expanses of distance and isolation's debris
the fragrant jasmines and roses of your presence delicately blossom.

Now from somewhere nearby,
the warmth of your breath rises,
smoldering forth an exotic perfume―gently, languorously.

Now far-off, across the distant horizon,
drop by shimmering drop,
fall the glistening dews of your beguiling glances.

With such tenderness and affection—oh my love!—
your memory has touched my heart's cheek so that it now seems
the sun of separation has set; the night of blessed union has arrived.



Speak!
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Speak, if your lips are free.
Speak, if your tongue is still your own.
While your body is still upright,
Speak if your life is still your own.



Tonight
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not strike the melancholy chord tonight! Days smoldering
with pain in the end produce only listless ashes ...
and who the hell knows what the future may bring?
Last night’s long lost, tomorrow's horizon’s a wavering mirage.
And how can we know if we’ll see another dawn?
Life is nothing, unless together we make it ring!
Tonight we are love gods! Sing!

Do not strike the melancholy chord tonight!
Don’t harp constantly on human suffering!
Stop complaining; let Fate conduct her song!
Give no thought to the future, seize now, this precious thing!
Shed no more tears for temperate seasons departed!
All sighs of the brokenhearted soon weakly dissipate ... stop dithering!
Oh, do not strike the same flat chord again! Sing!



When Autumn Came
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So it was that autumn came to flay the trees,
to strip them ****,
to rudely abase their slender dark bodies.

Fall fell in vengeance on the dying leaves,
flung them down to the floor of the forest
where anyone could trample them to mush
undeterred by their sighs of protest.

The birds that herald spring
were exiled from their songs—
the notes ripped from their sweet throats,
they plummeted to the earth below, undone
even before the hunter strung his bow.

Please, gods of May, have mercy!
Bless these disintegrating corpses
with the passion of your resurrection;
allow their veins to pulse with blood again.

Let at least one tree remain green.
Let one bird sing.



Last Night (II)
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your lost memory returned ...
as spring steals silently into barren gardens,
as cool breezes stir desert sands,
as an ailing man suddenly feels better, for no apparent reason ...

There are more English translations of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz later on this page.



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not the blossomings of songs nor the adornments of music:
I am the voice of my own heart breaking.

You toy with your long, dark curls
while I remain captive to my dark, pensive thoughts.

We congratulate ourselves that we two are different
but this weakness has burdened us both with inchoate grief.

Now you are here, and I find myself bowing—
as if sadness is a blessing, and longing a sacrament.

I am a fragment of sound rebounding;
you are the walls impounding my echoes.



The Mistake
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All your life, O Ghalib,
You kept repeating the same mistake:
Your face was *****
But you were obsessed with cleaning the mirror!



Inquiry
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The miracle of your absence
is that I found myself endlessly searching for you.



It's Only My Heart!
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It’s only my heart, not unfeeling stone,
so why be dismayed when it throbs with pain?
It was made to suffer ten thousand darts;
why let one more torment impede us?

There are more English translations of poems by Mirza Ghalib later on this page.



Couplets
by Jaun Elia
loose translations by Michael R. Burch

I am strange—so strange
that I self-destructed and don't regret it.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The wound is deep—companions, friends—embrace me!
What, did you not even bother to stay?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My nature is so strange
that today I felt relieved when you didn't arrive.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night and day I awaited myself;
now you return me to myself.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Greeting me this cordially,
have you so easily erased my memory?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your lips have provided thousands of answers;
so what is the point of complaining now?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Perhaps I haven't fallen in love with anyone,
but at least I convinced them!
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The city of mystics has become bizarre:
everyone is wary of majesty, have you heard?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Did you just say "Love is eternal"?
Is this the end of us?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You are drawing very close to me!
Have you decided to leave?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Intimacy
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I held the Sun, Stars and Moon at a distance
till the time your hands touched mine.
Now I am not a feather to be easily detached:
instruct the hurricanes and tornados to observe their limits!



The Mad Moon
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stars have a habit of showing off,
but the mad moon sojourns in darkness.



Body Language
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your body’s figures are written in cursive!
How will I read you? Hand me the book!



Insatiable
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This mighty ocean, so deep and vast!
If it sates my thirst, how long can it last?



Honor
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Achievements may fade but the name remains strong;
walls may buckle but the roof stays on.
On a pile of corpses a child stands alone
and declares that his family still lives on!



Dust in the Wind
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This is how I introduce myself to questioners:
Pick up a handful of dust, then blow ...



Dissembler
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In your eyes this, in your heart that, on your lips something else?
If this is how you are, impress someone else!



Rumor (M)ill
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I heard rumors my health was bad; still
it was prying people who made me ill.



The Vortex
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am the river whose rapids form a vortex;
You were wise to avoid my banks.



Homebound
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If people fear what they meet at every turn,
why do they ever leave the house?



Becoming One
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have become you, as you have become me;
I am your body, you my Essence.
Now no one can ever say
that you are someone else,
or that I am anything less than your Presence!



I Am a Pagan
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am a pagan disciple of love: I need no creeds.
My every vein has become taut, like a tuned wire.
I do not need the Brahman's girdle.
Leave my bedside, ignorant physician!
The only cure for love is the sight of the patient's beloved:
there is no other medicine he needs!
If our boat lacks a pilot, let there be none:
we have god in our midst: we do not fear the sea!
The people say Khusrow worships idols:
True! True! But he does not need other people's approval;
he does not need the world's.

(My translation above was informed by a translation of Dr. Hadi Hasan.)



Amir Khusrow’s elegy for his mother
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wherever you shook the dust from your feet
is my relic of paradise!



Paradise
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If there is an earthly paradise,
It's here! It's here! It's here!



Mystery
by Munir Niazi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She was a mystery:
Her lips were parched ...
but her eyes were two unfathomable oceans.



I continued delaying ...
by Munir Niazi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I continued delaying ...
the words I should speak
the promises I should keep
the one I should dial
despite her cruel denial

I continued delaying ...
the shoulder I must offer
the hand I must proffer
the untraveled lanes
we may not see again

I continued delaying ...
long strolls through the seasons
for my own selfish reasons
the remembrances of lovers
to erase thoughts of others

I continued delaying ...
to save someone dear
from eternities unclear
to make her aware
of our reality here

I continued delaying ...



Couplets
by Mir Taqi Mir
loose translations by Michael R. Burch

Sharpen the barbs of every thorn, O lunatic desert!
Perhaps another hobbler, limping by on blistered feet, follows me!
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My life is a bubble,
this world an illusion.
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Selflessness has gotten me nowhere:
I neglected myself far too long.
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I know now that I know nothing,
and it only took me a lifetime to learn!
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love's just beginning, so why do you whine?
Why not wait and watch how things unwind!
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Come!
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, let us construct night
over the monumental edifice of silence.
Come, let us clothe ourselves in the winding sheets of darkness,
where we'll ignite our bodies' incandescent wax.
As the midnight dew dances its delicate ballet,
let us not disclose the slightest whispers of our breath!
Lost in night's mists,
let us lie immersed in love's fragrance,
absorbing our bodies' musky aromas!
Let us rise like rustling spirits ...



Old Habits Die Hard
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The habit of breathing
is an odd tradition.
Why struggle so to keep on living?
The body shudders,
the eyes veil,
yet the feet somehow keep moving.
Why this journey, this restless, relentless flowing?
For how many weeks, months, years, centuries
shall we struggle to keep on living, keep on living?
Habits are such strange things, such hard things to break!



Inconclusive
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A body lies on a white bed—
dead, abandoned,
a forsaken corpse they forgot to bury.
They concluded its death was not their concern.
I hope they return and recognize me,
then bury me so I can breathe.



Wasted
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You have noticed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips ...
In whose imagination I have lost everything.



Countless
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I recounted the world's countless griefs
by recounting your image countless times.



Do Not Ask
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not ask, my love, for the love that we shared before:
You existed, I told myself, so existence shone.
For a moment the only light that I knew, alone,
was yours; worldly griefs remained dark, distant, afar.

Spring shone, as revealed in your face, but what did I know?
Beyond your bright eyes, what delights could the sad world hold?
Had I won you, cruel Fate would have ceded, no longer bold.
Yet all this was not to be, though I wished it so.

The world knows sorrows beyond love’s brief dreams betrayed,
and pleasures beyond all sweet, idle ideals of romance:
the dread dark spell of countless centuries and chance
is woven with silk and satin and gold brocade.

Bodies are sold everywhere for a pittance—it’s true!
Besmeared with dirt and bathed in bright oceans of blood,
Crawling from infested ovens, a gory cud.
My gaze returns to you: what else can I do?

Your beauty haunts me still, and will to the last.
But the world is burdened by sorrows beyond those of love,
By pleasures beyond romance.
So please do not demand a love that is over, and past.



O God!
by Qateel Shifai
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Torture my heart, O God!
If you so desire, leave me a madman, O God!

Have I asked for the moon and stars?
Enlighten my heart and give my eyes sight, O God!

We have all seen this disk called the sun,
Now give us a real dawn, O God!

Either relieve our pains here on this earth
Or make my heart granite, O God!



Hereafter
by Qateel Shifai
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since we met and parted, how can we sleep hereafter?
Lost in each others' remembrance, must we not weep hereafter?

Deluges of our tears will keep us awake all night:
Our eyelashes strung with strands of pearls, hereafter!

Thoughts of our separation will sear our grieving hearts
Unless we immerse them in the cooling moonlight, hereafter!

If the storm also deceives us, crying Qateel!,
We will scuttle our boats near forsaken shores, hereafter.



Picnic
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My friends laugh elsewhere on the beach
while I sit here, alone, counting the waves,
writing and rewriting your name in the sand ...



Confession
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your image overwhelmed my vision.
As the long nights passed, I became obsessed with your visage.
Then came the moment when I quietly placed my lips to your picture ...



Rain
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why shiver alone in the rain, maiden?
Embrace the one in whose warming love your body and mind would be drenched!
There are no rains higher than the rains of Love,
after which the bright rainbows of separation will glow with the mysteries of hues.



My Body's Moods
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I long for the day when you'll be obsessed with me,
when, forgetting the world, you'll miss me with a passion
and stop complaining about my reticence!
Then I may forget all other transactions and liabilities
to realize my world in your arms,
letting my body's moods guide me.
In that moment beyond boundaries and limitations
as we defy the conventions of veil and turban,
let's try our luck and steal a taste of the forbidden fruit!



Moon
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All of us passengers,
we share the same fate.
And yet I'm alone here on earth,
and she alone there in the sky!



Vanity
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His world is so simple, so very different from mine.
So distinct—his dreams and desires.
He speaks rarely.
This morning he wrote: "I saw some lovely flowers and thought of you."
Ha! I know my aging face is no orchid ...
but how I wish I could believe whatever he says, however momentarily!



Come
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, even with anguish, even to torture my heart;
Come, even if only to abandon me to torment again.

Come, if not for our past commerce,
Then to faithfully fulfill the ancient barbaric rituals.

Who else can recite the reasons for our separation?
Come, despite your reluctance, to continue the litanies, the ceremony.

Respect, even if only a little, the depth of my love for you;
Come, someday, to offer me consolation as well.

Too long you have deprived me of the pathos of longing;
Come again, my love, if only to make me weep.

Till now, my heart still suffers some slight expectation;
So come, ***** out even the last flickering torch of hope!



I Cannot Remember
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I once was a poet too (you gave life to my words), but now I cannot remember
Since I have forgotten you (my love!), my art too I cannot remember

Yesterday consulting my heart, I learned
that your hair, lips, mouth, I cannot remember

In the city of the intellect insanity is silence
But now your sweet, spontaneous voice, its fluidity, I cannot remember

Once I was unfamiliar with wrecking ***** and ruins
But now the cultivation of gardens, I cannot remember

Now everyone shops at the store selling arrows and quivers
But neglects his own body, the client he cannot remember

Since time has brought me to a desert of such arid forgetfulness
Even your name may perish; I cannot remember

In this narrow state of being, lacking a country,
even the abandonment of my fellow countrymen, I cannot remember



The Infidel
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ten thousand desires: each one worth dying for ...
So many fulfilled, and yet still I yearn for more!

Being in love, for me there was no difference between living and dying ...
and so I lived each dying breath watching you, my lovely Infidel, sighing                       afar.



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Life becomes even more complicated
when a man can’t think like a man ...

What irrationality makes me so dependent on her
that I rush off an hour early, then get annoyed when she's "late"?

My lover is so striking! She demands to be seen.
The mirror reflects only her image, yet still dazzles and confounds my eyes.

Love’s stings have left me the deep scar of happiness
while she hovers above me, illuminated.

She promised not to torment me, but only after I was mortally wounded.
How easily she “repents,” my lovely slayer!



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It’s time for the world to hear Ghalib again!
May these words and their shadows like doors remain open.

Tonight the watery mirror of stars appears
while night-blooming flowers gather where beauty rests.

She who knows my desire is speaking,
or at least her lips have recently moved me.

Why is grief the fundamental element of night
when blindness falls as the distant stars rise?

Tell me, how can I be happy, vast oceans from home
when mail from my beloved lies here, so recently opened?



Abstinence?
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let me get drunk in the mosque,
Or show me the place where God abstains!



Step Carefully!
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Step carefully Ghalib―this world is merciless!
Here people will "adore" you to win your respect ... or your downfall.



Bleedings
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love requires patience but lust is relentless;
what colors must my heart bleed before it expires?

There are more English translations of poems by Mirza Ghalib later on this page.



No Explanation! (I)
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Please don't ask me how deeply it hurt!
Her sun shone so bright, even the shadows were burning!



No Explanation! (II)
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Please don't ask me how it happened!
She didn't bind me, nor did I free myself.



Alone
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why are you sad that she goes on alone, Faraz?
After all, you said yourself that she was unique!



Separation
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Faraz, if it were easy to be apart,
would Angels have to separate body from soul?



Time
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What if my face has more wrinkles than yours?
I am merely well-worn by Time!



Miraji Epigrams

I'm obsessed with this thought:
does God possess mercy?
―Miraji, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, see this dance, the immaculate dance of the devadasi!
―Miraji, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Excerpts from “Going, Going ...”
by Miraji
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each unfolding vista,
each companion’s kindnesses,
every woman’s subtle sorceries,
everything that transiently lies within our power
quickly dissolves
and we are left with only a cupped flame, flickering ...
Should we call that “passion”?

The moon scrapes the horizon
and who can measure a star’s breadth?

The time allotted a life, if we calculate it,
is really only a fleeting breath ...



1.
Echoes of an ancient prophecy:
after my life has come and gone,
perhaps someone
hearing my voice drifting
on the breeze of some future spring
will chase after my songs
like dandelions.
—Miraji, translation by Michael R. Burch

2.
Echoes of an ancient prophecy:
after my life has come and gone,
perhaps someone
hearing my voice drifting
through some distant future spring
will pluck my songs
like dandelions.
—Miraji, translation by Michael R. Burch

3.
Echoes of an ancient prophecy:
when my life has come and gone,
and when I’m dead and done,
perhaps someone
hearing me sing
in a distant spring
will echo my songs
the whole world over.
—Miraji, translation by Michael R. Burch

If I understand things correctly, Miraji wrote the lines above after translating a verse by Sappho in which she said that her poems would be remembered in the future. I suspect both poets and both prophecies were correct!




Every Day and in Every Direction
by Nida Fazli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everywhere and in every direction we see innumerable people:
each man a victim of his own loneliness, reticence and silences.
From dawn to dusk men carry enormous burdens:
all preparing graves for their soon-to-be corpses.
Each day a man lives, the same day he dies.
Each new day requires the same old patience.
In every direction there are roads for him to roam,
but in every direction, men victimize men.
Every day a man dies many deaths only to resurrect from his ashes.
Each new day presents new challenges.
Life's destiny is not fixed, but a series of journeys:
thus, till his last breath, a man remains restless.



Couplets
by Nida Fazli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It was my fate to entangle and sink myself
because I am a boat and my ocean lies within.
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You were impossible to forget once you were gone:
hell, I remembered you most when I tried to forget you!
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't squander these pearls:
such baubles may ornament sleepless nights!
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The world is like a deck of cards on a gambling table:
some of us are bound to loose while others cash in.
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is a proper protocol for everything in this world:
when visiting gardens never force butterflies to vacate their flowers!
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since I lack the courage to commit suicide,
I have elected to bother people with my life a bit longer.
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Changing Seasons
by Noshi Gillani
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each changing season
reveals something
concealed by her fears:
an escape route from this island
illuminated by her tears.



Dust
by Bahadur Shah Zafar or Muztar Khairabadi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unable to light anyone's eye
or to comfort anyone's heart ...
I am nothing but a handful of dust.



Piercings
by Firaq Gorakhpuri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No one ever belonged to anyone else for a lifetime.
We cannot own another's soul.
The beauty we see and the love we feel are only illusions.
All my life I tried to save myself from the piercings of your eyes ...
But I failed and the daggers ripped right through me.



Salvation
Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Anxious and fatigued, I consider the salvation of death ...
But if there is no peace in the grave,
where can I go to be saved?



Child of the Century
by Abdellatif Laâbi (a Moroccan poet)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I’m a child of this dreary century, a child who never grew up.
Doubts that ignited my tongue singed my wings.
I learned to walk, then I unlearned progress.
I grew weary of oases and camels infatuated with ruins.
My head inclined East only to occupy the middle of the road
as I awaited the insane caravans.



Nostalgia
by Abdulla Pashew (a Kurdish poet)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How I desire the heavens!
Each solitary star lights the way to a tryst.

How I desire the sky!
Standing alone, remote, the sky is as vast as any ocean.

How I desire love's heavenly scent!
When each enticing blossom releases its essence.



Oblivion
by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi (an African poet who writes in Arabic)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Discard your pen
before you start reading;
consider the ink,
how it encompasses bleeding.

Learn from the horizon
through eyes' narrowed slits
the limitations of vision
and hands' treacherous writs.

Do not blame me,
nor indeed anyone,
if you expire before
your reading is done.



In Medias Res
by Shaad Azimabadi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When I heard the story of my life recounted,
I caught only the middle of the tale.
I remain unaware of the beginning or end.



Debt Relief
by Piyush Mishra
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We save Sundays for our loved ones ...
all other days we slave to repay debts.



Reoccurrence
by Amrita Bharati (a Hindi poet)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It was a woman's heart speaking,
that had been speaking for eons ...

It was a woman's heart silenced,
that had been silenced for centuries ...

And between them loomed a mountain
that a man or a rat gnawed at, even in times of amity ...
gnawing at the screaming voice,
at the silent tongue,
from the primeval day.



Don't Approach Me
by Arif Farhad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't approach me here by the river of time
where I flop like a fish in a net!



Intoxicants
by Amrut Ghayal (a Gujarati poet)
translation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

O, my contrary mind!
You're such a fool, afraid to drink the fruit of the vine!
But show me anything universe-designed
that doesn't intoxicate, like wine.



I’m like a commodity being priced in the market-place:
every eye ogles me like a buyer’s.
—Majrooh Sultanpuri, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If you insist, I’ll continue playing my songs,
forever piping the flute of my heart.
—Majrooh Sultanpuri, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The moon has risen once again, yet you are not here.
My heart is a blazing pyre; what do I do?
—Majrooh Sultanpuri, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Drunk on Love
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Drunk on love, I made her my God.
She quickly informed me that God belongs to no man!

Exiles
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Often we have heard of Adam's banishment from Eden,
but with far greater humiliation, I abandon your garden.

To Whom Shall I Complain?
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To whom shall I complain when I am denied Good Fortune in acceptable measure?
Dementedly, I demanded Death, but was denied even that dubious pleasure!



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You should have stayed a little longer;
you left all alone, so why not linger?

We’ll meet again, you said, some day similar to this one,
as if such days can ever recur, not vanish!

You left our house as the moon abandons night's skies,
as the evening light abandons its earlier surmise.

You hated me: a wife abnormally distant, unknown;
you left me before your children were grown.

Only fools ask why old Ghalib still clings to breath
when his fate is to live desiring death.



How strange has life become:
Our evenings drag out, yet our years keep flashing by!
―original poet unknown, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Longing
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, I’ve grown tired of human assemblies!
I long to avoid conflict! My heart craves peace!
I desperately desire the silence of a small mountainside hut!



Life Advice
by Allama Iqbāl
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This passive nature will not allow you to survive;
If you want to live, raise a storm!



Destiny
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Isn't it futile to complain about God's will,
When you are your own destiny?

Keywords/Tags: Urdu, translation, love poetry, desire, passion, longing, romance, romantic, God, heaven, mrburdu

Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall.

So--your happy suit was blasted--she the faultless, the divine;
And you liken--boyish babble--this boy-love of yours with mine.

I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past;
Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.

'Curse him!' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage?
Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age.

Jilted for a wealthier! wealthier? yet perhaps she was not wise;
I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes.

In the hall there hangs a painting--Amy's arms about my neck--
Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck.

In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown;
I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone.

Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake?
You, not you! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make.

Amy loved me, Amy fail'd me, Amy was a timid child;
But your Judith--but your worldling--she had never driven me wild.

She that holds the diamond necklace dearer than the golden ring,
She that finds a winter sunset fairer than a morn of Spring.

She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lease of life,
While she vows 'till death shall part us,' she the would-be-widow wife.

She the worldling born of worldlings--father, mother--be content,
Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent.

Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground,
Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound.

Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride;
Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died.

Yet how often I and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood,
Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood.

There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer,
Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley--there,

All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled,
Lies my Amy dead in child-birth, dead the mother, dead the child.

Dead--and sixty years ago, and dead her aged husband now--
I this old white-headed dreamer stoopt and kiss'd her marble brow.

Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate tears,
Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's dawning years.

Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.

Gone the tyrant of my youth, and mute below the chancel stones,
All his virtues--I forgive them--black in white above his bones.

Gone the comrades of my bivouac, some in fight against the foe,
Some thro' age and slow diseases, gone as all on earth will go.

Gone with whom for forty years my life in golden sequence ran,
She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,

Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly-sweet,
Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet,

Very woman of very woman, nurse of ailing body and mind,
She that link'd again the broken chain that bound me to my kind.

Here to-day was Amy with me, while I wander'd down the coast,
Near us Edith's holy shadow, smiling at the slighter ghost.

Gone our sailor son thy father, Leonard early lost at sea;
Thou alone, my boy, of Amy's kin and mine art left to me.

Gone thy tender-natured mother, wearying to be left alone,
Pining for the stronger heart that once had beat beside her own.

Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave;
Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave,

Wiser there than you, that crowning barren Death as lord of all,
Deem this over-tragic drama's closing curtain is the pall!

Beautiful was death in him, who saw the death, but kept the deck,
Saving women and their babes, and sinking with the sinking wreck,

Gone for ever! Ever? no--for since our dying race began,
Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man.

Those that in barbarian burials ****'d the slave, and slew the wife,
Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life.

Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night;
Ev'n the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white.

Truth for truth, and good for good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just--
Take the charm 'For ever' from them, and they crumble into dust.

Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.

Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace!

'Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one.
Let us hush this cry of 'Forward' till ten thousand years have gone.

Far among the vanish'd races, old Assyrian kings would flay
Captives whom they caught in battle--iron-hearted victors they.

Ages after, while in Asia, he that led the wild Moguls,
Timur built his ghastly tower of eighty thousand human skulls,

Then, and here in Edward's time, an age of noblest English names,
Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames.

Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate.

From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse:
Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse?

France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good;
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.

Hope was ever on her mountain, watching till the day begun--
Crown'd with sunlight--over darkness--from the still unrisen sun.

Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan?
'**** your enemy, for you hate him,' still, 'your enemy' was a man.

Have we sunk below them? peasants maim the helpless horse, and drive
Innocent cattle under thatch, and burn the kindlier brutes alive.

Brutes, the brutes are not your wrongers--burnt at midnight, found at morn,
Twisted hard in mortal agony with their offspring, born-unborn,

Clinging to the silent mother! Are we devils? are we men?
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again,

He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
Sisters, brothers--and the beasts--whose pains are hardly less than ours!

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.

Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.

Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?

Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal-born.'

Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat,

Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom.

Russia bursts our Indian barrier, shall we fight her? shall we yield?
Pause! before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field.

Those three hundred millions under one Imperial sceptre now,
Shall we hold them? shall we loose them? take the suffrage of the plow.

Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and you,
Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly true.

Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind,

Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar;
So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher.

Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;
Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.

Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all;
Step by step we rose to greatness,--thro' the tonguesters we may fall.

You that woo the Voices--tell them 'old experience is a fool,'
Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule.

Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place;
Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face.

Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.

Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the *****.

Authors--essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art.

Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them stare.

Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.

Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,--
Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm.

Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men;
Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again?

Only 'dust to dust' for me that sicken at your lawless din,
Dust in wholesome old-world dust before the newer world begin.

Heated am I? you--you wonder--well, it scarce becomes mine age--
Patience! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage.

Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep?
Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep?

Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray:
After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May?

After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall not see?

When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier--all for each and each for all?

All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth;
All the millions one at length with all the visions of my youth?

All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt, or deaf or blind;
Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind?

Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue--
I have seen her far away--for is not Earth as yet so young?--

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion ****'d,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then--
All her harvest all too narrow--who can fancy warless men?

Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?

Dead the new astronomy calls her. . . . On this day and at this hour,
In this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower,

Here we met, our latest meeting--Amy--sixty years ago--
She and I--the moon was falling greenish thro' a rosy glow,

Just above the gateway tower, and even where you see her now--
Here we stood and claspt each other, swore the seeming-deathless vow. . . .

Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the grass!
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the sun himself will pass.

Venus near her! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours,
Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never fading flowers.

Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things.
All good things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect kings.

Hesper--Venus--were we native to that splendour or in Mars,
We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars.

Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite,
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light?

Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair,
Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, 'Would to God that we were there'?

Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea,
Sway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me.

All the suns--are these but symbols of innumerable man,
Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan?

Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?
Well be grateful for the sounding watchword, 'Evolution' here,

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song;
Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong,

While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way,
All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.

Many an aeon moulded earth before her highest, man, was born,
Many an aeon too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn,

Earth so huge, and yet so bounded--pools of salt, and plots of land--
Shallow skin of green and azure--chains of mountain, grains of sand!

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,
Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;
Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

                                                *

Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate.
Not to-night in Locksley Hall--to-morrow--you, you come so late.

Wreck'd--your train--or all but wreck'd? a shatter'd wheel? a vicious boy!
Good, this forward, you that preach it, is it well to wish you joy?

Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?

There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet,
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street.

There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.

There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
And the crowded couch of ****** in the warrens of the poor.

Nay, your pardon, cry your 'forward,' yours are hope and youth, but I--
Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow with the cry,

Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night;
Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light.

Light the fading gleam of Even? light the glimmer of the dawn?
Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.

Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.

Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best,
Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest?

Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve,
Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.

Not the Hall to-night, my grandson! Death and Silence hold their own.
Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone.

Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire,
Kindly landlord, boon companion--youthful jealousy is a liar.

Cast the poison from your *****, oust the madness from your brain.
Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain.

Youthful! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school,
Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.

Yonder lies our young sea-village--Art and Grace are less and less:
Science grows and Beauty dwindles--roofs of slated hideousness!

There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield,
Till the peasant cow shall **** the 'Lion passant' from his field.

Poo

A simple excuse is what most need and they think
that justice is a synonym for revenge. They claim
that all they do is natural and not an act of distress.
So how can i quite this part of me that at any tipping
point someone will linch and act uncontrollably
achieving only to hurt those he or she loves.
I fear that most can not bear to lose any more and they
would give into a comfort zone, into zestless and
voiceless acts only leading to their ruin.
The world is a harsh place and there are those who
would see others suffer for their own gain, even
flay those who would try to help them.
Difficult to be stronger than our excuses but what is
worse from losing ourselves.

Oh yeah, the other day I went
to that 5-star hotel
and got a breakfast by
Bobby Flay.
Never heard of him, but the food was
pretty good.
Afterwards I went to the gym and lifted some
100lb weights.
Oh and yesterday I got a
100% on my quantum physics test.
All in all, my week was
NO BIG DEAL.

Poems about the Moon and Stars

These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)



Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret...
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once again—
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse


Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!

Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today



Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch

She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...

what do we know of love,
or duty?



Kindred
by Michael R. Burch

Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?

Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,

so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?

What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.

We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,

and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,

for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.


Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark...
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?

Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?

Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?

I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.



Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...

Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.

The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.

Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.

Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.



Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps...

How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded...

They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover's ease idly tracing flesh...

They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen...

Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda...

Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.

Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes syphilitic craters
and veiled by ghostly willows, palely looms,
while we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue—
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise—
adagio, the music she now hears,
while we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars' bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The night is dark and scary—
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother's love
and your puppy's kisses, doggonit!



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka... if I wished
upon a frozen star... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm...
yet something still not love... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove...

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. I believe this was my first attempt at blank verse.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,

I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.

The end of every man's the same
and every god's as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on

to hope when there's no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

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



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



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.

Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England). I believe I wrote the first version of "Listen" around age 17.

Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, sky, nightfall, tonight, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love

Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"

Then, when we had got down to the sea shore we drew our ship into
the water and got her mast and sails into her; we also put the sheep
on board and took our places, weeping and in great distress of mind.
Circe, that great and cunning goddess, sent us a fair wind that blew
dead aft and stayed steadily with us keeping our sails all the time
well filled; so we did whatever wanted doing to the ship’s gear and
let her go as the wind and helmsman headed her. All day long her sails
were full as she held her course over the sea, but when the sun went
down and darkness was over all the earth, we got into the deep
waters of the river Oceanus, where lie the land and city of the
Cimmerians who live enshrouded in mist and darkness which the rays
of the sun never pierce neither at his rising nor as he goes down
again out of the heavens, but the poor wretches live in one long
melancholy night. When we got there we beached the ship, took the
sheep out of her, and went along by the waters of Oceanus till we came
to the place of which Circe had told us.
  “Here Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, while I drew my
sword and dug the trench a cubit each way. I made a drink-offering
to all the dead, first with honey and milk, then with wine, and
thirdly with water, and I sprinkled white barley meal over the
whole, praying earnestly to the poor feckless ghosts, and promising
them that when I got back to Ithaca I would sacrifice a barren
heifer for them, the best I had, and would load the pyre with good
things. I also particularly promised that Teiresias should have a
black sheep to himself, the best in all my flocks. When I had prayed
sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of the two sheep and let
the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts came trooping up
from Erebus—brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil,
maids who had been crossed in love, and brave men who had been
killed in battle, with their armour still smirched with blood; they
came from every quarter and flitted round the trench with a strange
kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear. When I saw
them coming I told the men to be quick and flay the carcasses of the
two dead sheep and make burnt offerings of them, and at the same
time to repeat prayers to Hades and to Proserpine; but I sat where I
was with my sword drawn and would not let the poor feckless ghosts
come near the blood till Teiresias should have answered my questions.
  “The first ghost ‘that came was that of my comrade Elpenor, for he
had not yet been laid beneath the earth. We had left his body
unwaked and unburied in Circe’s house, for we had had too much else to
do. I was very sorry for him, and cried when I saw him: ‘Elpenor,’
said I, ‘how did you come down here into this gloom and darkness?
You have here on foot quicker than I have with my ship.’
  “‘Sir,’ he answered with a groan, ‘it was all bad luck, and my own
unspeakable drunkenness. I was lying asleep on the top of Circe’s
house, and never thought of coming down again by the great staircase
but fell right off the roof and broke my neck, so my soul down to
the house of Hades. And now I beseech you by all those whom you have
left behind you, though they are not here, by your wife, by the father
who brought you up when you were a child, and by Telemachus who is the
one hope of your house, do what I shall now ask you. I know that
when you leave this limbo you will again hold your ship for the Aeaean
island. Do not go thence leaving me unwaked and unburied behind you,
or I may bring heaven’s anger upon you; but burn me with whatever
armour I have, build a barrow for me on the sea shore, that may tell
people in days to come what a poor unlucky fellow I was, and plant
over my grave the oar I used to row with when I was yet alive and with
my messmates.’ And I said, ‘My poor fellow, I will do all that you
have asked of me.’
  “Thus, then, did we sit and hold sad talk with one another, I on the
one side of the trench with my sword held over the blood, and the
ghost of my comrade saying all this to me from the other side. Then
came the ghost of my dead mother Anticlea, daughter to Autolycus. I
had left her alive when I set out for Troy and was moved to tears when
I saw her, but even so, for all my sorrow I would not let her come
near the blood till I had asked my questions of Teiresias.
  “Then came also the ghost of Theban Teiresias, with his golden
sceptre in his hand. He knew me and said, ‘Ulysses, noble son of
Laertes, why, poor man, have you left the light of day and come down
to visit the dead in this sad place? Stand back from the trench and
withdraw your sword that I may drink of the blood and answer your
questions truly.’
  “So I drew back, and sheathed my sword, whereon when he had drank of
the blood he began with his prophecy.
  “You want to know,’ said he, ‘about your return home, but heaven
will make this hard for you. I do not think that you will escape the
eye of Neptune, who still nurses his bitter grudge against you for
having blinded his son. Still, after much suffering you may get home
if you can restrain yourself and your companions when your ship
reaches the Thrinacian island, where you will find the sheep and
cattle belonging to the sun, who sees and gives ear to everything.
If you leave these flocks unharmed and think of nothing but of getting
home, you may yet after much hardship reach Ithaca; but if you harm
them, then I forewarn you of the destruction both of your ship and
of your men. Even though you may yourself escape, you will return in
bad plight after losing all your men, [in another man’s ship, and
you will find trouble in your house, which will be overrun by
high-handed people, who are devouring your substance under the pretext
of paying court and making presents to your wife.
  “‘When you get home you will take your revenge on these suitors; and
after you have killed them by force or fraud in your own house, you
must take a well-made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a
country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even
mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and
oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain
token which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and
will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your
shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a
ram, a bull, and a boar to Neptune. Then go home and offer hecatombs
to an the gods in heaven one after the other. As for yourself, death
shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very
gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people
shall bless you. All that I have said will come true].’
  “‘This,’ I answered, ‘must be as it may please heaven, but tell me
and tell me and tell me true, I see my poor mother’s ghost close by
us; she is sitting by the blood without saying a word, and though I am
her own son she does not remember me and speak to me; tell me, Sir,
how I can make her know me.’
  “‘That,’ said he, ‘I can soon do Any ghost that you let taste of the
blood will talk with you like a reasonable being, but if you do not
let them have any blood they will go away again.’
  “On this the ghost of Teiresias went back to the house of Hades, for
his prophecyings had now been spoken, but I sat still where I was
until my mother came up and tasted the blood. Then she knew me at once
and spoke fondly to me, saying, ‘My son, how did you come down to this
abode of darkness while you are still alive? It is a hard thing for
the living to see these places, for between us and them there are
great and terrible waters, and there is Oceanus, which no man can
cross on foot, but he must have a good ship to take him. Are you all
this time trying to find your way home from Troy, and have you never
yet got back to Ithaca nor seen your wife in your own house?’
  “‘Mother,’ said I, ‘I was forced to come here to consult the ghost
of the Theban prophet Teiresias. I have never yet been near the
Achaean land nor set foot on my native country, and I have had nothing
but one long series of misfortunes from the very first day that I
set out with Agamemnon for Ilius, the land of noble steeds, to fight
the Trojans. But tell me, and tell me true, in what way did you die?
Did you have a long illness, or did heaven vouchsafe you a gentle easy
passage to eternity? Tell me also about my father, and the son whom
I left behind me; is my property still in their hands, or has some one
else got hold of it, who thinks that I shall not return to claim it?
Tell me again what my wife intends doing, and in what mind she is;
does she live with my son and guard my estate securely, or has she
made the best match she could and married again?’
  “My mother answered, ‘Your wife still remains in your house, but she
is in great distress of mind and spends her whole time in tears both
night and day. No one as yet has got possession of your fine property,
and Telemachus still holds your lands undisturbed. He has to entertain
largely, as of course he must, considering his position as a
magistrate, and how every one invites him; your father remains at
his old place in the country and never goes near the town. He has no
comfortable bed nor bedding; in the winter he sleeps on the floor in
front of the fire with the men and goes about all in rags, but in
summer, when the warm weather comes on again, he lies out in the
vineyard on a bed of vine leaves thrown anyhow upon the ground. He
grieves continually about your never having come home, and suffers
more and more as he grows older. As for my own end it was in this
wise: heaven did not take me swiftly and painlessly in my own house,
nor was I attacked by any illness such as those that generally wear
people out and **** them, but my longing to know what you were doing
and the force of my affection for you—this it was that was the
death of me.’
  “Then I tried to find some way of embracing my mother’s ghost.
Thrice I sprang towards her and tried to clasp her in my arms, but
each time she flitted from my embrace as it were a dream or phantom,
and being touched to the quick I said to her, ‘Mother, why do you
not stay still when I would embrace you? If we could throw our arms
around one another we might find sad comfort in the sharing of our
sorrows even in the house of Hades; does Proserpine want to lay a
still further load of grief upon me by mocking me with a phantom
only?’
  “‘My son,’ she answered, ‘most ill-fated of all mankind, it is not
Proserpine that is beguiling you, but all people are like this when
they are dead. The sinews no longer hold the flesh and bones together;
these perish in the fierceness of consuming fire as soon as life has
left the body, and the soul flits away as though it were a dream. Now,
however, go back to the light of day as soon as you can, and note
all these things that you may tell them to your wife hereafter.’
  “Thus did we converse, and anon Proserpine sent up the ghosts of the
wives and daughters of all the most famous men. They gathered in
crowds about the blood, and I considered how I might question them
severally. In the end I deemed that it would be best to draw the
keen blade that hung by my sturdy thigh, and keep them from all
drinking the blood at once. So they came up one after the other, and
each one as I questioned her told me her race and lineage.
  “The first I saw was Tyro. She was daughter of Salmoneus and wife of
Cretheus the son of ******. She fell in love with the river Enipeus
who is much the most beautiful river in the whole world. Once when she
was taking a walk by his side as usual, Neptune, disguised as her
lover, lay with her at the mouth of the river, and a huge blue wave
arched itself like a mountain over them to hide both woman and god,
whereon he loosed her ****** girdle and laid her in a deep slumber.
When the god had accomplished the deed of love, he took her hand in
his own and said, ‘Tyro, rejoice in all good will; the embraces of the
gods are not fruitless, and you will have fine twins about this time
twelve months. Take great care of them. I am Neptune, so now go
home, but hold your tongue and do not tell any one.’
  “Then he dived under the sea, and she in due course bore Pelias
and Neleus, who both of them served Jove with all their might.
Pelias was a great ******* of sheep and lived in Iolcus, but the other
lived in Pylos. The rest of her children were by Cretheus, namely,
Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon, who was a mighty warrior and charioteer.
  “Next to her I saw Antiope, daughter to Asopus, who could boast of
having slept in the arms of even Jove himself, and who bore him two
sons Amphion and Zethus. These founded Thebes with its seven gates,
and built a wall all round it; for strong though they were they
could not hold Thebes till they had walled it.
  “Then I saw Alcmena, the wife of Amphitryon, who also bore to Jove
indomitable Hercules; and Megara who was daughter to great King Creon,
and married the redoubtable son of Amphitryon.
  “I also saw fair Epicaste mother of king OEdipodes whose awful lot
it was to marry her own son without suspecting it. He married her
after having killed his father, but the gods proclaimed the whole
story to the world; whereon he remained king of Thebes, in great grief
for the spite the gods had borne him; but Epicaste went to the house
of the mighty jailor Hades, having hanged herself for grief, and the
avenging spirits haunted him as for an outraged mother—to his ruing
bitterly thereafter.
  “Then I saw Chloris, whom Neleus married for her beauty, having
given priceless presents for her. She was youngest daughter to Amphion
son of Iasus and king of Minyan Orchomenus, and was Queen in Pylos.
She bore Nestor, Chromius, and Periclymenus, and she also bore that
marvellously lovely woman Pero, who was wooed by all the country
round; but Neleus would only give her to him who should raid the
cattle of Iphicles from the grazing grounds of Phylace, and this was a
hard task. The only man who would undertake to raid them was a certain
excellent seer, but the will of heaven was against him, for the
rangers of the cattle caught him and put him in prison; nevertheless
when a full year had passed and the same season came round again,
Iphicles set him at liberty, after he had expounded all the oracles of
heaven. Thus, then, was the will of Jove accomplished.
  “And I saw Leda the wife of Tyndarus, who bore him two famous
sons, Castor breaker of horses, and Pollux the mighty boxer. Both
these heroes are lying under the earth, though they are still alive,
for by a special dispensation of Jove, they die and come to life
again, each one of them every other day throughout all time, and
they have the rank of gods.
  “After her I saw Iphimedeia wife of Aloeus who boasted the embrace
of Neptune. She bore two sons Otus and Ephialtes, but both were
short lived. They were the finest children that were ever born in this
world, and the best looking, Orion only excepted; for at nine years
old they were nine fathoms high, and measured nine cubits round the
chest. They threatened to make war with the gods in Olympus, and tried
to set Mount Ossa on the top of Mount Olympus, and Mount Pelion on the
top of Ossa, that they might scale heaven itself, and they would
have done it too if they had been grown up, but Apollo, son of Leto,
killed both of them, before they had got so much as a sign of hair
upon their cheeks or chin.
  “Then I saw Phaedra, and Procris, and fair Ariadne daughter of the
magician Minos, whom Theseus was carrying off from Crete to Athens,
but he did not enjoy her, for before he could do so Diana killed her
in the island of Dia on account of what Bacchus had said against her.
  “I also saw Maera and Clymene and hateful Eriphyle, who sold her own
husband for gold. But it would take me all night if I were to name
every single one of the wives and daughters of heroes whom I saw,
and it is time for me to go to bed, either on board ship with my crew,
or here. As for my escort, heaven and yourselves

in the icy swirl
          of deep-inhale
            I reach down inside
                      to darkest
       heated flesh-fabric
removing the clothing
of my soul,
feeling the layers
                slowly  undone
                      the flay
                        of my own fleece
                          the peeling
                    of my own pelt
            penetrating
                through tissue,
                     a journey to the
                          deep heart of me,
                         cut in one clean move
                         and yet, like a miracle
                  there is
             no pain
                   just magnet-connect
                     beyond the cusp
                            of words
                              that curl from our
                                             tongues
                                      rising up in
                      latticed affirmations
                    a cleansing in frost
a constant, aquamarine renewal
and there is no past
no future
      just this prism
           of crystal liquid jewels
      flowing in
gentle,
         cellular music
             straight into the strands        
                    of our veins
and I miss you
like you have gone
on the long winter hunt
my longing splayed out
like an animal skin on
                    four poles
its tendons stretched
beyond measure
yet holding fast
with a roof over my head,
                    I acknowledge
             my restlessness
I am my own
       hunter-forager,
         both searching and found,
                     gathering up bits  
               of velocity
stroking the ribbons
of passion
stoking the fires of my
              heart and hearth
protecting what is us
like a lioness
for we are overflowing
with both strength
         and tenderness
              our own bones
ingredients of the wild soup              
of our feral union
of our constant rebirth
our very dna
          weaving itself
like heartstrings
               in the rush      
of
       time

i could be an alcoholic is i simply drank...
fair enough, completely docile and
   enslaved by an addiction,
but the mere fact that i utilise this potion
for ulterior purposes says something
other than merely the fact that i drink.

we live in a world where half of the world's
believers are enforcing a monotheism,
and where half the world doesn't understand
that it has, sort of lost touch with
the prefix *mono...
                                  i can understand both
sides of the story, and both are rooted in
a globalisation agenda... a unification
that's a supposition with the already established
presupposition of: two worlds colliding
and an alien invasion akin to the meteor
and the dinosaurs, which we thankfully
reinvented with the atom bomb... ****!
i feel like that talking Gremlin in part deux
that gets to do the news anchor post...
it's a self-conscious moment within that
trans-whatever feat of realising something...
ok ok (Leo Getz), you cut your nibbly parts off
i get to wear a leather-gimp suit and talk
a load of *******, how's that?
Islam is not only practising the fledgling
model of monotheism, but given it borrowed
the omni model for a deity, it's stating that
even the Chinese need to speak Arabic:
monotheism within omni parameters translates
as omni-phonos (we all speak the same
language)... the English tug-warfare to implement
this has seen the Arabic retaliation...
my solution: poverty stricken Marx would also
had said this (not that i'm alluding to anything
economically restricted): i've got whiskey
and trance massaging my ear-drums, what the hell!
    i can only see one alternative to the current
zeitgeist distaste to Islamic monotheism / mono-phoneticism...
  the optic-phoneticism is too archaic for Europeans,
they need a lot of wheels, cartwheels and voids
to located like a feline behaviour within undisturbed
autistic kindrence: better left undisturbed
less it be found in a third ***** darting motion -
given that Islam is both a monotheistic model
            and a mono-linguistic model (linguistics:
where optics and sounds collide) you will
find the old monotheistic guardians bewildered
where they're going wrong... the fact being:
a Jew might tell you that some people haven't
integrated properly (the rebel news outlet):
it really doesn't matter what language you speak
at home, as long as you speak the correct language
at a supermarket... to actually force people to speak
the native language at home is ******* tiresome...
this is the next generation of migrants,
the generation prior had parents completely discarding
their native tongue, so that they might propel their
children to higher positions in society,
well applause to them, but that's like a polite way
of saying: ethnic cleansing...
    now, there's another generation of children who's
parents didn't dictate such rules for the simple
   dislike of feeling awkward... the children that dictated:
we're keeping this language, just in case.
       of course my cognitive realm has built a spider-web
of ease in the acquired tongue: that's my soul
on pixel paper... but my body? i'll speak English
when i encounter and English person...
you flay the ******* donkey, i'm not going to bother.
truly this technique will not provide you
a zoo of cultural diversity with rap and the next
thing coming... but within the work ethic of:
work ennobles... you also won't get
                     terrorist attacks... so that's all Le Chatelier's
principle right there, in front of you.
     it's the part that suggests that i can only be
fully integrated into a society once i do a Michael
Jackson on my tongue, and basically bleach my
roots and call all tree roots leech-chwasty /
weeds. you'd think that bilingualism would benefit
society... apparently it doesn't when society tries
to look pretty on the outside: and termite infested
in terms of possessing a soul: hence the sometimes
odd materialism that suggests you shouldn't buy
a book for $60.            
  which is what relates this piece to answer the current
militant monotheism with its stance on pursuing
a mono-phoneticism: mono-lingua.
             for the old monotheisms to wake up,
they have to embrace bilingualism... i'm not talking
the exceptions of polymaths,
i'm talking the Benelux & Scandinavian practices...
if you people from those proud nations of post-imperialistic
glory remain in their indolence to learn something,
they'll attract bothersome flies of Islam...
   these monotheistic elders of Christianity and Judaism
can't simply waved a star of david or the crucifix about
at primitive natives of north / south america:
i actually cringe at white New Zealanders dancing
the hakka with their tribal tattoos... i, cringe.
     these "monotheisms" can only retain a moral "superiority"
by establishing a bilingualism -
     because isn't that what the whole point of the trinity
is? that the third "person" of the trinity cannot be
personified, but is rather collectivised?
                     that the existence of the Paraclete
would dissolve any chance of a Christian community?
         i already said once: the notion of the Paraclete
is as diabolical as what has already passed,
    the anti             and diffused in the existence of antimatter.
that really was a Greek touch to the whole story,
starting with the atomists.
        these ancient monotheisms have already being
polytheistic within the groundwork of polyphony,
a Bulgarian says something, an Egyptian Coptic
copies him, an Anglican says something else,
                        a Spanish cardinal nods at something else...
so i could say that Christianity is a "polytheism"
due to the fact of the polyphonic nature of the message...
Islam on the other hand is mono on the side of theology
and mono on the side of phoneticism...
                   Christianity as a monotheism is
mono on the side of theology, but poly on the side of
phoneticism... hence the vacuum of power...
but as already stated: the Benelux and Scandinavian
model of a well established bilingualism
                       has made former colonial nations seem
like neanderthals... which they are... all the more funny
to still proceed to popularise a 19th century theory...
no wonder the turmoil and bewilderment;
they simply haven't evolved: and they talk of evolution
like it was uniformed around their belly-button
gravity of pulling the entire world to look at their ****.

Poem 6 edited
I know and understand the cynicism of most on this topic, but I can assure you that I have not invented any of this, so treat my poem with the seriousness it deserves.

It is a tale of forgotten events.

Things I'd pushed away from my mind as a child.

Things I did not believe we're real.

The dark.

The uncanny.

The Unknown.

I'll begin...

The Evil Tree.

To get to the gravestone we had to pass an old tree
One with a terrible history
A tale that ended, evilly

We walked through the dark woods toward the evil tree.
The mist hung the way it does normally,
but in an evil way.

The trees around the evil tree leaned away fearfully
Or some of them leaned towards the tree,
but less toward than they'd normally be
If it weren't an evil tree

The evilness of the evil tree
was so great that it hid it cleverly
By looking just like every other tree
But evil

Its roots were evil roots
Taking evil nutrients
That looked like other nutrients,
But evil

The evil nutrients fed the evil trunk
Like an evil woody chunk
Filled with standard sappy gunk
But evil

The evil gunk was in the branches too
The branches were evil through and through
They were deepest, darkest evil brown
With evil moss up and down
Swaying in an evil way
Like other branches day to day,
But evil

The branches followed on to the evil twigs
Twigs thinly evil; branches evilly big
Growing out ShArP AnD POINTY!
Like skinny arms, evilly jointy!!
But at the ends of these twigs...

Unlike ordinary twigs...

Were leaves,

BUT EVIL LEAVES!!!!!
Evil leaves!
EvIL lEaVEs!!!
Everywhere were evil leaves!
Some of them high in the trees!
Some of them were on the floor
And on the graves I saw yet more!
Evil green
And brown and red!
Many of them just lay down DEAD!

And if that were not enough...

I walked toward this evil tree
Unaware how evil a tree could be
As I bravely gained upon this pillar
I saw a hungry caterpillar
It was crawling in the normal way
Like caterpillars do every day

Slowly, it crawled
Creeping
Twisted and contorting its body
Edging ever closer
Toward me

I innocently reached down to pick him up

And that's when I noticed

The bite marks

In the leaf

An evil leaf!!

Time seemed to slow right down
I noticed too late, the evil brown!
I saw its evil greeny hue
And it's evil hairy back
Looking like other caterpillar do,
that don't give you a heart attack
Tick and tock
The time passed by
I saw the evil monsters eye
Raised upon an evil stalk
Wondering if he could scream or talk
What would he say?!

He'd say...

I'm an evil caterpillar
I will maim and devour these leaves
Not just the evil, the innocent too
Their life will be a tasty filler
And as their branchy mother greaves
She can watch me as I chew, chew, chew
Just like other caterpillars do
But evil!

And then I'll grow an evil cuccoon
One with plenty of evil room
And hang high in the evil branches
Where nobody would take their chances

Outside, it's still and eerie calm
Inside I start to dis embalm
Myself
I flay my skin
And then begin
To change
Evilly!!

And after many evil days
You think you've lost my evil ways
Until I break
I'm born anew
My evil body grew and grew
The most hideously evil things
A pair of pretty butterfly wings!
BUT EVIL!!!!!

And as I had this evil thought
I realised that I was caught!!
The caterpillar crawled on to my hand
But ...
strange enough I felt just grand!
There was not heat nor evil sting
Just this tiny little thing
I realised he wasn't evil
Less evil than a common weevil
I lifted high, held him aloft
When suddenly he fell back off!

I looked down on him, like a God
Lifted my foot and then I trod!

I now know what happened you see
He passed his evil on to meeeeeeeeee!!!!!!
Mwahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Do you remember when I laid in bed with you and cried
because telling you about me hurt to do?
            But I wanted to tell you - because you deserved to know, because maybe I thought you would share yourself too, because maybe I thought packing you into my old wounds
            would finally heal them right.
And all that truth made me shake and the dark bedroom made me wild-eyed but
               your heart beating through my palm pushed me forward a step,
        a step of a step, and pretty soon I was falling for you.

        And I remember when you stood over me, revealing your truth about me.
And all that truth made me cry and the morning light hurt my eyes
        and you split my ribs and my lungs poured out at my knees
which were bruising from begging.
        But I couldn’t find you in your darkened eyes or your bellowing voice
as it gutted me and braided my veins in a knot…
          Some things I try to forget.

I dream of you and I imagine your face, your touch, the way you walk and
          hold my hand and we smile and you laugh and
I have you.
But sometimes the black comes down from the nightsky
          and seeps into my sleep
to darken your eyes and harden your grasp,
           just like that you flay me open to spill my tears and
I’m losing you.


          When I wake you are there, reaching toward me in the dark.

The bruises on my knees will fade.

You crucified me, with your fanatical insanity,
Using religion as an excuse to persecute cruelly.
Words can cut deep, like knives flaying skin…
Now it is your turn to suffer, so we shall begin!

You anger me, evil human so filled with hate,
Believing yourself so entitled to judge my kind!
Saying I am going to hell because I love deep,
One who shares my gender as well as my heart!
For you, evil human, it is already far too late…
Your soul is forfeit, your spirit I shall now bind.
With darkest sorcery, devils your soul shall keep!
By the power unseen, you will be broken apart.
How dare you mock me, and so provoke wrath,
Until I long to see your head mounted on a pike…
Whilst wolves nibble at your entrails in red bath!
It is not I you need fear, nor I who shall strike.

Demons will haunt your sleep, of your making.
Torments, shall punish you, leaving you mad…
Until: your flayed limbs lie trembling and quaking,
For you have angered me, angered me so bad!
You say I am going to Hell? I am Hell incarnate.
Behold your vile death knell! Let is swell, fiend,
For though I be a devil in your eyes, my true fate,
Is a brighter thing, than any you could ever glean!

You tie yourself with your own veins torn free…
Thinking yourself better than my generation was.
We did not start world wars that killed innocents,
My only sin was that I said the words ‘blessed be’.
Yet you despise all I am, without thought’s pause,
But it is you, who shall sing the bitterest laments…
Evil human, evil bigot, evil mortal whom I despise!
I am your better; I am superior beyond your hope.
You are beneath my contempt; I am the Queen…
And such sweet suffering Hell shall for you devise!
Whilst around your neck is tied the mighty rope…
You will be lowered into darkness, to so scream.

In the end, you will bow to me in heated chains…
Until your shrieks rise like music, to amuse gods.
Whilst I sit in judgment over your countless pains,
As your inner demons poke you with hot prods….
In the tender places, so that you know my agony,
The hell that comes from being treated much less:
Less than human, though I am more can’t you see!
Your demons will drink your blood in gory mess.

Upon a cross, shaped like an X, you will suffer…
No sleep will be permitted you, no sweet dreams.
You will be broken as you broke me, foul thing…
And no reprieve is mine to, your vileness, so offer.
I am the Queen; you will know the truth of Her…
Your every fear will flow from you in vast streams,
And for every time I cried, you will feel that sting,
Your weeping will so harden into a jeweled coffer.
Nothing of you will be left intact, no sanity whole,
And in Hell there is no death, only eternal horror!
Your torture was never my wish, never my goal…
But you wanted this, and so let demons so confer,

The totality of your misery back unto you: creature.
Your evil makes you reek, and it makes me sick!
I am your better, for I am not childish but mature,
Never stooping as low as you, to ignite the wick…
The flame of war to provoke, as you dared wake!
You woke the Dragon, and now you must so pay.
I will lay not a finger upon you; the evils you make,
You will know in Hell, for you must die, one day.

And thence: be bound eternally by your inner ills!
You judged me, hated me, abused me, and spat.
But one day you will kneel before my dark throne,
Fettered by the weight of your unrepentant evils:
And behold my true face, where your fears sat…
Whilst your fears flay you: to your weakest bone.
You saw me as less than human, you sick beast!
Mocked me, for being bisexual and transgender.
You called yourself, a believer in a loving God?
But I am your better; on you, crows shall feast…
Whilst my love, and I, shall always be together!
Keep hating me: keep calling me freakishly odd.

You mock the Queen of Hell, the bright Angel…
But, I was a child, when you first hurt my spirit!
What gave you the right to tell me I was wicked?
You never had the power to judge me so harsh.
But all things change, things ebb and then swell,
Like a primordial ocean, and how you will fear it!
It is not I who condemns you; you made this bed.

You crucified me, with your fanatical insanity,
Using religion as an excuse to persecute cruelly.
Words can cut deep, like knives flaying skin…
Now it is your turn to suffer, so we shall begin!

I drew the second third line
A first fourth one is on deck
Knew I inked them finely fine
Still, I go check and recheck

Marvelously filleted corners
Cleave an unsettling sound
Put compass back on paper
Just to make sure it's round

Anxiety was bound to happen
To the fifth first line I go back
Again, I sharpen and sharpen
But I give up, made it all black

Perfection is not my liberty
But a numb skin I wish to flay
Half of my mind seeks symmetry
Yet the other  half  
                                 is    in
                                          disarray

A makeshift camp of hardy souls,
the air is cold but we are free
and hold to our common causes.
Little is said. There's much quiet thought.

The crackling fire makes it all
real, fans our fellowship of feelings,
casting shadows of mysterious
creatures . The flames flay our faces red.

Limbs stiffen, ache, but only eyes move
for fear of breaking our charmed circle.
Minds are moving fast over unknown
futures, over people from the past.

how long to live through the next thought
to have a brief encounter with time
an impossible time of intolerable anguish
where embarking upon a sentence
is a violent wrench from perceived notions
of reality, one that causes nerves
to flay upon my body with weal's of words
where vatic poetry is wrought in trembling rages
spilling, dripping upon the traumatised
parchment that is my pages
in de-congealing interrelated drops of image
that crack the pavements
in a visual vibrancy of taut creative tension
where these words keep their own company
and speak in interrogative tongues
causing a fragmentation of earthquake fissures
to radiate across my mind in a cataclysm
of universal poison that quiets and dissolves stability
and asks, no demands of me, what can you see?

I’ve always loved music. As a little girl, I could spend hours going through peoples CD collections, sampling them with my little battery-operated CD player. If you showed me a stack, rack or box of CDs, I was in heaven.

When I was 8 (2011), I got my first iPod for Christmas, an iPod Touch with 32GB of memory! The sticker said it was from Santa, but ‘Step’ got a package in the mail from Apple three weeks earlier, so I knew who it was really from. Upon opening it, I rushed upstairs to my older brother’s computer, plugged it in, carefully copied the username and password for the family iTunes account (from a wrinkled post-it note), and the world was never the same.

It never occurred to me that my parents could see all of my playlists and that they were automatically downloaded to their devices - like my break-up playlist, inspired by Antoine, my French-boy fifth grade crush. It didn’t work out because he didn’t have an email account and our recess times didn’t line up, but my playlist helped me through it.

I could burn playlists to CDs and exchange them with friends - or gift them to middle school boys who I hoped to amaze with my awesome musical tastes. There’s an art to the playlist that involves controlling pace and mood - every playlist was both a gift and a seduction.

Today we have Spotify with its unlimited streaming of every song ever made - on demand. Exchanging playlists, these days, is as easy as pressing "Share" and typing the first few letters of a friend’s or lover's username.

Like most of my girlfriends, I consider myself a playlist queen and as I continue to work this career path I’ve chosen, regardless of what's weighing me down, I know I can turn to my playlists to push me through. The band ‘The Narcissist Cookbook ’ assures me that my shocking honesty is fun with ‘Broken People.’ ‘K. Flay’ allows me to dance-out my rage with ‘Blood in the cut’ and ‘New Move’ motivates me to keep-at-it with ‘When did we stop.’

I’ve countless Spotify playlists: one for waking up, one for writing papers, one for doing problem sets, others for walking to class, doing the laundry, for nostalgic reflection, and for embracing the astounding depth of human pain.

Of course, as time passes, I find new favorite songs and older playlists are replaced with updated ones; but thanks to the archival nature of Spotify playlist collections, all my old lists remain intact. I’ve never deleted one. Search my archives and you’d see playlists from my freshie year, when I was new here, feeling insecure and alone, or from my sophomore year when I first fell in love.

This piece is a playlist love story, about how music reflects our identities and allows us to share ourselves through the vibes, melodies and beats that move us. I think playlists have a lot in common with poetry, which uses words, phrases, metaphors and imagery for similar purposes.

toothless junkies
        rifle through trinkets
             hearts leaking tar
           onto the bus’s gummed out floor
hoodied heads bow
             begging for a break
    or a stake in the heart
        or a steak
          half burnt trees flay   flash by      pray         for one less day
                 dogs chase
           the beat up clunker                                        yellow
        gnashing blindly
         at the machinery
         screaming dust
              in the world’s
                 face
         I hate Mondays



4/19/11

Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day,
with the moon―a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied―
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?

The sea was not salt the first tide...
but grew bitter, bitter―man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing―forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.

The sea was not salt the first tide...
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.
The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.
The sea was not salt the first tide...
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.

"The Divide" is essentially a formal villanelle despite the non-formal line breaks.



Villanelle: Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable―our love―and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that "love" has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

"Ordinary Love" was the winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest. It was originally published by Romantics Quarterly and nominated by the journal for the Pushcart Prize. It is missing a tercet but seemed complete enough without it.―MRB



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.



Because Her Heart is Tender (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Because her heart is tender
there is hope some God might mend her, …
some small hope Fates might relent.

Because her heart is tender
mighty Angels, come defend her!
Even the Devil might repent.

Because her heart is tender
Jacob’s Ladder should descend here,
the heavens open, saints assent.

Because her heart is tender
why does the cruel world rend her?
Fix the world, or let it end here!



Villanelle: Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-******.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-******,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-******,
we first proved we had lives of our own).



Double Trouble
by Michael R. Burch

The villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re on the bubble
of beginning to see double.

It’s like you’re on the Hubble
when the lens begins to wobble:
the villanelle is trouble.

It’s like you’re Barney Rubble
scratching itchy beer-stained stubble
because you’re seeing double.

Then your lines begin to gobble
up the good rhymes, and you hobble.
The villanelle is trouble,

just like getting sloshed in the pub’ll
begin to make you babble
because you’re seeing double.

Because the form is flubbable
and is really not that loveable,
the villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re seeing double.



Villanelle Sequence: Clandestine But Gentle
by Michael R. Burch

Variations on the villanelle. A play in four acts. The heroine wears a trench coat and her every action drips nonchalance. The “hero” is pallid, nerdish and nervous. But more than anything, he is palpably desperate with longing. Props are optional, but a streetlamp, a glowing cigarette and lots of eerie shadows should suffice.

I.

Clandestine but gentle, wrapped in night,
she eavesdropped on morose codes of my heart.
She was the secret agent of delight.

The blue spurt of her match, our signal light,
announced her presence in the shadowed court:
clandestine but gentle, cloaked in night.

Her cigarette was waved, a casual sleight,
to bid me “Come!” or tell me to depart.
She was the secret agent of delight,

like Ingrid Bergman in a trench coat, white
as death, and yet more fair and pale (but short
with me, whenever I grew wan with fright!).

II.

Clandestine but gentle, veiled in night,
she was the secret agent of delight;
she coaxed the tumblers in some cryptic rite

to make me spill my spirit.
Lovely ****!
Clandestine but gentle, veiled in night

―she waited till my tongue, untied, sang bright
but damning strange confessions in the dark...

III.

She was the secret agent of delight;
so I became her paramour. Tonight
I await her in my exile, worlds apart...

IV.

For clandestine but gentle, wrapped in night,
she is the secret agent of delight.



Villanelle: Hang Together, or Separately
by Michael R. Burch

“The first shall be last, and the last first.”

Be careful whom you don’t befriend
When hyenas mark their prey:
The odds will get even in the end.

Some “deplorables” may yet ascend
And since all dogs must have their day,
Be careful whom you don’t befriend.

When pallid elitists condescend
What does the Good Book say?
The odds will get even in the end.

Since the LORD advised us to attend
To each other along the way,
Be careful whom you don’t befriend.

But He was deserted. Friends, comprehend!
Though revilers mock and flay,
The odds will get even in the end.

Now infidels have loot to spend:
As ****** as Judas’s that day.
Be careful whom you don’t befriend:
The odds will get even in the end.

NOTE: This poem portrays a certain worldview. The poet does not share it and suspects from reading the gospels that the “real” Jesus would have sided with the infidel refugees, not Trump and his ilk.



Villanelle: The Sad Refrain
by Michael R. Burch

O, let us not repeat the sad refrain
that Christ is cruel because some innocent dies.
No, pain is good, for character comes from pain!

There’d be no growth without the hammering rain
that tests each petal’s worth. Omnipotent skies
peal, “Let us not repeat the sad refrain,

but separate burnt chaff from bountiful grain.
According to God’s plan, the weakling dies
and pain is good, for character comes from pain!

A God who’s perfect cannot bear the blame
of flawed creations, just because one dies!
So let us not repeat the sad refrain

or think to shame or stain His awesome name!
Let lightning strike the devious source of lies
that pain is bad, for character comes from pain!
Oh, let us not repeat the sad refrain!



Villanelles by Michael R. Burch

The modern formal villanelle is a poetic form with a double refrain, although in early incarnations it was simply a pastoral poem with a refrain. The villanelle is related other poetic forms with refrains, such as the rondel, the roundel and the rondeau.



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day,
with the moon―a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied―
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?

The sea was not salt the first tide...
but grew bitter, bitter―man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing―forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.

The sea was not salt the first tide...
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.
The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.
The sea was not salt the first tide...
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.


'The Divide' is essentially a formal villanelle despite the non-formal line breaks.



Villanelle: Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable―our love―and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
'I love you, ' in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
'I love you, ' in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that 'love' has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
'I love you, ' in the ordinary way.

'Ordinary Love' was the winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest. It was originally published by Romantics Quarterly and nominated by the journal for the Pushcart Prize. It is missing a tercet but seemed complete enough without it.―MRB



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: 'Never Forget, '
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: 'Never Forget, '
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: 'NEVER FORGET, '
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: 'NEVER FORGET'
because her heart is tender with regret.



Villanelle: Because Her Heart is Tender (II)    
by Michael R. Burch

Because her heart is tender
there is hope some God might mend her, …
some small hope Fates might relent.

Because her heart is tender
mighty Angels, come defend her!
Even the Devil might repent.

Because her heart is tender
Jacob's Ladder should descend here,
the heavens open, saints assent.

Because her heart is tender
why does the cruel world rend her?
Fix the world, or let it end here!



Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.

Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.

And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.

That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.

And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.

No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.




Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch

I'm not looking for someone to save.
A gal has to do what a gal has to do:
I'm looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

How many highways to hell must I pave
with intentions imagined, not true?
I'm not looking for someone to save.

Fools praise compassion while weaklings rave,
but a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I'm looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Some praise the Lord but the Devil's my fave
because he has led me to you!
I'm not looking for someone to save.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave,
a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I'm looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Every day without meds becomes a close shave
and the razor keeps tempting me too.
I'm not looking for someone to save:
I'm looking for a man with one foot in the grave.



Villanelle: An Ode to the Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

This is how the Universe works:
The rich must have their perks.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.

Did T-Rexes have souls?
The poor must live on doles.
This is how the Universe works.

The rich must have their dirks
to poke serfs full of holes.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.

The despot laughs and lurks
while the Tyger slaughters foals.
This is how the Universe works.

What are the despots' goals?
The poor must mind, not shirk.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.

Trump and Putin praise the kirks
while the cowed mind ancient scrolls.
This is how the Universe works.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.



Ars Brevis
by Michael R. Burch

Better not to live, than live too long:
this is my theme, my purpose and desire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.

My will to live was never all that strong.
Eternal life? Find some poor fool to hire!
Better not to live, than live too long.

Granny ******* or a flosslike thong?
The latter rock, the former feed the fire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.

Let briefs be brief: the short can do no wrong,
since David slew Goliath, who stood higher.
Better not to live, than live too long.

A long recital gets a sudden gong.
Quick death’s preferred to drowning in the mire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.

A wee bikini or a long sarong?
French Riviera or some dull old Shire?
Better not to live, than live too long:
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.



The vanilla-nelle
by Michael R. Burch

The vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write
In a chocolate world where purity is slight,
When every rhyming word must rhyme with white!

As sure as night is day and day is night,
And walruses write songs, such is my plight:
The vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write.

I’m running out of rhymes and it’s a fright
because the end’s not nearly (yet) in sight,
When every rhyming word must rhyme with white!

It’s tougher when the poet’s not too bright
And strains his brain, which only turns up “blight.”
Yes, the vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write.

I strive to seem aloof and recondite
while avoiding ancient words like “knyghte” and “flyte”
But every rhyming word must rhyme with white!

I think I’ve failed: I’m down to “zinnwaldite.”
I fear my Muse is torturing me, for spite!
For the vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write
When every rhyming word must rhyme with white!
I may have accidentally invented a new poetic form, the “trinelle” or “triplenelle.”



Why I Left the Right
by Michael R. Burch

I was a Reagan Republican in my youth but quickly “left” the GOP when I grokked its inherent racism, intolerance and retreat into the Dark Ages.

I fell in with the troops, but it didn’t last long:
I’m not one to march to a klanging gong.
“Right is wrong” became my song.

I’m not one to march to a klanging gong
with parrots all singing the same strange song.
I fell in with the bloops, but it didn’t last long.

These parrots all singing the same strange song
with no discernment at all between right and wrong?
“Right is wrong” became my song.

With no discernment between right and wrong,
the **** marched on in a white-robed throng.
I fell in with the rubes, but it didn’t last long.

The **** marched on in a white-robed throng,
enraged by the sight of boys in sarongs.
“Right is wrong” became my song.

Enraged by the sight of boys in sarongs
and girls with butch hairdos, the clan klanged its gongs.
I fell in with the dupes, but it didn’t last long.
“Right is wrong” became my song.



What happened to the songs of yesterdays?
by Michael R. Burch

Is poetry mere turning of a phrase?
Has prose become its height and depth and sum?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?

Does prose leave all nine Muses vexed and glum,
with fingers stuck in ears, till hearing’s numbed?
Is poetry mere turning of a phrase?

Should we cut loose, drink, guzzle jugs of ***,
write prose nonstop, till Hell or Kingdom Come?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?

Are there no beats to which tense thumbs might thrum?
Did we outsmart ourselves and end up dumb?
Is poetry mere turning of a phrase?

How did a feast become this measly crumb,
such noble princes end up in a slum?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?

I’m running out of rhymes! Please be a chum
and tell me if some Muse might spank my ***
for choosing rhyme above the painted phrase?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?



Trump’s Retribution Resolution
by Michael R. Burch

My New Year’s resolution?
I require your money and votes,
for you are my retribution.

May I offer you dark-skinned scapegoats
and bigger and deeper moats
as part of my sweet resolution?

Please consider a YUGE contribution,
a mountain of lovely C-notes,
for you are my retribution.

Revenge is our only solution,
since my critics are weasels and stoats.
Come, second my sweet resolution!

The New Year’s no time for dilution
of the anger of victimized GOATs,
when you are my retribution.

Forget the ****** Constitution!
To dictators “ideals” are footnotes.
My New Year’s resolution?
You are my retribution.



Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux are poetic forms with refrains that are related to the Villanelle.



Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.



Rondel: Rejection
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has been cast.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign,―
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain.

Alas, that Nature in your face compassed
Such beauty, that no man may hope attain
To mercy, though he perish from the pain;
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.



Rondel: Escape
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.

He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will answer just as I mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean.

Love strikes me from his roster, short and flat,
And he is struck from my books, just as clean,
Forevermore; there is no other mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.



Rondel: Your Smiling Mouth
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/moderniz  ation Michael R. Burch

Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains,
Your hands so smooth, each finger straight and plain,
Your little feet―please, what more can I say?

It is my fetish when you’re far away
To muse on these and thus to soothe my pain―
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains.

So would I beg you, if I only may,
To see such sights as I before have seen,
Because my fetish pleases me. Obscene?
I’ll be obsessed until my dying day
By your sweet smiling mouth and eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains!



Oft in My Thought
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/moderniz  ation Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet thought's been wrested from me, clear,
Since death, alas, has sealed her under clay
And robbed the world of all that's precious here―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

For me to keep my manner and my thought
Acceptable, as suits my age's hour?
While proving that I never once forgot
Her worth? It tests my power!
I serve her now with masses and with prayer;
For it would be a shame for me to stray
Far from my faith, when my time's drawing near―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

Now earthly profits fail, since all is lost
And the cost of everything became so dear;
Therefore, O Lord, who rules the higher host,
Take my good deeds, as many as there are,
And crown her, Lord, above in your bright sphere,
As heaven's truest maid! And may I say:
Most good, most fair, most likely to bring cheer―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

When I praise her, or hear her praises raised,
I recall how recently she brought me pleasure;
Then my heart floods like an overflowing bay
And makes me wish to dress for my own bier―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.



If
by Michael R. Burch

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.



Recursion
by Michael R. Burch

In a dream I saw boys lying
under banners gaily flying
and I heard their mothers sighing
from some dark distant shore.

For I saw their sons essaying
into fields―gleeful, braying―
their bright armaments displaying;
such manly oaths they swore!

From their playfields, boys returning
full of honor’s white-hot burning
and desire’s restless yearning
sired new kids for the corps.

In a dream I saw boys dying
under banners gaily lying
and I heard their mothers crying
from some dark distant shore.



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!



This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything comes to naught.



Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch

... qui laetificat juventutem meam...
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
... requiescat in pace...
May she rest in peace.
... amen...
Amen.



How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast,
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



Fowles in the Frith
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fowls in the forest,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!



I am of Ireland
anonymous Medieval Irish lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am of Ireland,
and of the holy realm of Ireland.
Gentlefolk, I pray thee:
for the sake of saintly charity,
come dance with me
in Ireland!



Whan the turuf is thy tour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
shall be sullen worms’ to note.
What help to you, then,
was all your worldly hope?

2.
When the turf is your tower
and the grave is your bower,
your pale white throat and skin
worm-eaten from within...
what hope of my help then?


Ech day me comëth tydinges thre
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each day I’m plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my soul:
First, that I must somehow exit this fen.
Second, that I cannot know when.
And yet it’s the third that torments me so,
Because I don't know where the hell I will go!



Ich have y-don al myn youth
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have done it all my youth:
Often, often, and often!
I have loved long and yearned zealously...
And oh what grief it has brought me!



I Sing of a Maiden
anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless.
The King of all Kings
For her son she chose.
He came also as still
To his mother's breast
As April dew
Falling on the grass.
He came also as still
To his mother's bower
As April dew
Falling on the flower.
He came also as still
To where his mother lay
As April dew
Falling on the spray.
Mother and maiden?
Never one, but she!
Well may such a lady
God's mother be!



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret...
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once again―
how rare.



Enigma
by Michael R. Burch

O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light
and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night,
or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior...

Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?

Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love,
this, our reclamation;

fallen wren,
you must strive to fly
though your heart is shaken;

weary pilgrim,
you must not give up
though your feet are aching;

lonely child,
lie here still in my arms;
you must soon be waking.



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh...

our soft cries, like regret,

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase...

now that I have forgotten her face.



The Quickening
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I never meant to love you
when I held you in my arms
promising you sagely
wise, noncommittal charms.

And I never meant to need you
when I touched your tender lips
with kisses that intrigued my own:
such kisses I had never known,
nor a heartbeat in my fingertips!



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake

O little yellow flower
like a star...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!



Published as the collection "Villanelles"

Keywords/Tags: villanelle, refrain, repetition, chorus, rhyme, sea, tide, moon, heart, love, rondel, roundel, rondeau, poetic form, poetics, poetic expression, Chaucer, Orleans, love, art, beauty, mercy, merciless, words, heart, hearts, pity, pride, prison, mrbvill, mrbrondel

In an apartment on 53rd street
A fire is burning
Out of a keyhole &
Into a cigarette.

Smoke comes in walls
& is heavier than rocks
& it takes an artist
To hate oneself.

Moon-faced Serbians sipped
Drain-O from sandals
While red-lipped nomads
Gazed & sharpened their blades.

A fat lady walks in &
Before she can say
“Burger & fries”
There are spears in her ears.

The body is dragged to the
River by sheepish failures, but
The boxer knew what was afoot &
Had removed all the water from the river.

But no-one cared because a riot had
Started in the streets
“Flay the feminazis,” they chanted
“Pour molten oil on the devout,” they screamed.

& all the flat-eyed artists
& all the drag-queen mobsters
Danced around the fire like evolution
& an ape got in the middle of it.

His fingertips calloused
His elbows like spears
His eyes w/ more blood
Than white.

Richard Nixon or
A Richard Nixon costume
Entered stage right w/
Boxing gloves & cocktails.

They would throw children
Across the fire
& artists on the other side would be
Waiting w/ nets & knives.

But then tear gas came
& they cried & their
Tears were like the eyes that
Glinted at them.

Out of a keyhole &
Into a cigarette.

Always remember;

Those who dwell

In stone houses

Should not throw glass.

It'll cut your feet,

You'll bleed on the cheese.

But again, Blood Cheese

Is a delicacy among us normal ones.

-

Now I have somethin'

A little somethin'

A cynic feelin'

And quite revealin'

About me stance,

And about me dance,

And skippin' the days' rope,

With the entrails of a dope,

Perhaps not that last,

That's far too passed,

Casual conversin'

And time's birds be chirppin'

So you'll sit and wonder,

Of things and blunder.

-

Ya think you're free but lemme

Speak of that bein' ill advised;

Ya sit there shocked

At a world provoked,

Well this is my world, revised.

-

They tried to match an army equivalent to mine,

They tried, they tried,

Admirable and amiable,

I hate when masses gather against me.

Their intestines and other assorted guts

Adorned my dining table and sweetroll plates.

-

The Greymarch couldn't have happened at an odder time,

Inconvenience is madness rhyme,

Therefore I purchased a hero of suspicious sanity,

Unfortunately though, he turned to depravity.

Me servant stood and told him what,

To do and there and when and such,

Sheoth has seen some better days,

Although it hasn't yet seen worsened days...

-

Brilliance of Pelagius himself,

That awful Breton ****** himself,.

Although the conversin' was enthrallin'

To say the least,

To rise up once and flay the beast,

Me Wabbajack corrected all the physicality.

-

Doin' the best on behalf of a master,

But not doin' the most he could endeavor,

It don't befront what he could affront,

The contradictions

Of his existence

Were at the very least concernin'.

-

Correct me if I'm wrong,

But I wouldn't advise it.

A hero could always do better,

Always,

Unless he couldn't,

Unless he dies. then another

To replace em'

These things tend to happen when

The entanglements come along.

-

Whether it be better to

Affront under certain weather,

Has nether to be seen on this endeavor,

But forever will be never unseen,

And clever.

-

Forgive them with revenge, for

It has yet to be determined in

Their extermination for the wrath of

Passed sensation, pray blocks their

Affiliation to Jyggalag and affirmation

Of recreation in Order, and abomination.

-

Hear me with your mortal deaf ears,

Pray tell, how have you got lizards and not gizzards?

It seems undauntin' that you may have hauntin'

Dreams of His return but not of the others?

-

You must wait on your own cheese,

For cheese be earned not given,

Unless given after earned,

But earned is the important part.

-

You're livin' in a glorious world of hellish rules,

The damnable expectation of sanity come freedom,

Though, I am the freest bein' who I be,

Demented Mania be the only way to go,

The only road,

Unless there be another in the way,

For if you know where you're goin',

There's no point in goin'.

Ethnic Raging in my face
Everywhere I care to look
Coptic Christians, brown and white
Scream intolerance, forsook.
Jew and anti Jew defile
All good laws of rationale,
In raw voraciousness of hate,
In howling shred of faith’s morale.
Blessed are the just for they
Enshrine their plaque of rich noblesque,
Blessed are the weak of will
Who deeply sip  from traitor’s breast.
And blessed are the strong who hold
At bay the laws of God’s restraint,
In tandem with the rich who cower,
White, behind their armoured gate.

Ethnic raging everywhere
I watch it through the children’s eyes,
Led to purge the coloured flesh,
To flay a difference ‘till it dies.


Marshalg
Recoiling from it all.
Auckland NZ
11 October 2011

I am back
to that blank space
to that black hole
eating me whole
like crawling flame
to my paper soul
Who is it to blame?
Still I'm running in shame
away from my shadow
of filth and rot
Even my skin
have scorned itself
but to flay my being
is not enough
Have I forgotten how to love?
And if my body is to live
but the soul is dead,
Will I ever forgive myself?



-Dying Star, Margaret Austin Go

o, good lord of the streets
where a phantasmagoric sensurround

banishes the scream of youth –

a carburetor snarl taken
   as unction of name. was it

your name that you whispered to my ear,
   him dearth in the quietus.

first to go is grace,
  what soon follows is bravery. a makeshift moon
of course, hanging by the earlobe of

her; I’ve been wanting to bite to break skin
   her truly frightened symmetry
of a  storm which is an  onus of  pain -

o, good lord
     help me weave way later
     when I’m down on my contrabass.
Scout Albano tonight’s a dark
   expanse of    regret

resonating a deep and hollow throb.
    women on flay, cigars in mouths chucked
like busy streets on a noontime sun, the soot clambers
   the billboards and their frozen, extant smiles

      wring out the poison and drain:
    we have no imposed god, an announcement to ear
  shot into the flay of the bone that persistently
      aches - like some unreal drumming of squalors.
            
         we are ruined with echoes of many names that haunt us
  with their gaping mouths
              in   frightful  angles,    but

when we’re drunk, Marc,
   this will all be over.

time to go flay my temple under hospital lights like a bound pig          time to spread my desire wide for them to lick their lips over chronic pelvic bleeding & gory, citrus insides          shove it in me baby, tell me where it hurts, tell me that im dying

Love, faith and forgiveness principal are in
Christian school. Torrid anger thou must flay
While it's still displaying on the eastern tray
Ere its set on the *** laude of thy sterling
Prize. The other meek cheek of thine turn--
Though tough--to him that seek thy burn.

Gladly go not one but twain miles with
Him that bid thee. Distribute cheerfully
To widows cream bread and wine; the needy
And orphans--whether you're rolling in it--
Never neglect, and make no open show
Of thy charity: its trumpet do not blow.


Make mammon thy master nay. Believe
The Bible though you cannot It fathom
Out--the Spirit thy heart will guide. Kingdom
Eternal chiefly pursue; to goodness cleave.
Both parents and priests honour, and men
In authority obey. Keep the Lord's pen.

Fast and pray, playing not to the gallery.
In heaven's safe thy treasure store, where
Robbers and rust have no access nor share.
For worldly wants, soul, never you worry--
Jehovah-Jireh above knows thy very need,
Who gives in season due to the sower seed.

Salt and light on earth be. Thy righteousness
The Pharisees' must exceed. All differences
Reconciled, lest thy balance draws offence
By heaven's audit. Loincloth of faithfulness
Wrap. At a lady be weary to leer, and thy
***** bridle. To God thy heart wholly tie.

The log in thine own eyes first remove
Afore thy brother's speck you see. Grudge
Not but ask, seek and knock. Don't judge.
Such measure from others expect to them give--
Golden rule. Strive to enter in at the narrow
Gate: the rough, rugged road to the end follow.

One of  Edna's "randyhornbag" collection of erotica.

i am a ******* *****
   and that's not a metaphor
it's the total ******* truth
   i'm a ******* forsooth
it's what i do for work
   i'll **** or **** or ****
off any man or beast
   i don't care in the least
young boys old men fat freaks
   i get them all most weeks
i'll have any kind of ***
   cash only and no cheques

i suppose you think it's funny
   to **** fat men for money
to have countless alien *****
   often stinking like old socks
shoved up my pretty *****
   kept artificially juicy
to make the fools imagine
   i'm oozing jissom for them
it's not the best of jobs
   ******* total strangers' knobs
pretending to like vile men
   when if i could i'd flay them

i rarely **** for pleasure
   i no longer have the measure
of love and tender feeling
   of kisses phlegm congealing
my private sexlife's twisted
   i love being thrashed and ******
i crave darkest degradation
   masochistic *******
so if you think it's funny
   ******* men for money
let me be quite blunt
   if you think so you're a ****

I write so my demons don't consume me
with a pen in my hand they flow through me
i turn my demons into ink so fluidly
that all they can even begin to speak is smoothly
my demons think they've got me beat
but with my text i break their teeth
disarm my demons with my metaphors
i slit their throats with my pen and they fall bleeding to the floor
flay them open with my similes
like wounds cut open to release disease
and spread their skin like butterfly wings
and with precision and delivery
pin them here for you to see

see
my demons flow through me like ink through a pen
so i pick up their cage and i confine them
put the cap back on and snap it into place
i might look calm but there are demons beneath this face

Somewhere in the past
you were deeply affected within your interaction
with one of my accounts.  I don't know who you are
(who the person is that is leaving tangible fingerprints
on the keyboard of this account I am speaking to)..
I can only guess,
but I am fairly sure that my guess is accurate,
     so I will keep all of that to myself,
so that you can freely and without fear of being found out,
go back with me to that place inside of yourself  that felt so well
met and seen back then.

In turn, no more *******, devaluing of love
the way that you do so often at close range.

If you pull that horrendously harmful **** again,
I will pull away again, but this time.. never come back.
That being said, I will not leave you hanging,
(or do my best to not to)  
if you bring  towards me  the need within you..
that through your memory,

you so well believe that I can satisfy
(and you already know that I am not talking about the ******).


You feel the deep, internal response--
from deep within that body of yours,  
when love warmly touches  
previously untouched places within you

And you spin them out publicly right in the midst of our
closeness of interaction (which I think is really cool),
just please don't flay me for showing my humanity
by responding back to you sexually.
I will keep that side to myself,  if that is what it takes
to keep you from throwing me under the bus, yet again.
The ****** (within the closeness of warm, loving connection) --
((even in the world of support..))
that very sensuality so perfectly parallels..  
through physical, tangibly-felt metaphor..
all that there is also within the Realms
when it comes to the spiritual.

Healing of that which has become broken by the fallen
******-up version of love this world brings--
that type of healing and restoration back into wholeness
is what all relational closeness is meant to bring,  and stand for.
You want something that you deeply believe that I have,  
yet somewhere..   maybe in another life..
I must have hurt you deeply,
or you wouldn't be sending  all these finger-puppet forays
my way.

Come and get what you want and need,
and if you believe I am shorting you your rightful blessing  
by missing it..   or simply just being generically stupid,
then instead of flaying me publicly,  
privately come to me  in boldness,
   and shake it out of me--
that which is rightfully yours-- my healing-response.

and do it brazenly,  with a fierce, yet open and vulnerable heart
the way that you have shown in your poems. Maybe in time
you will find out all on your own  
that what you thought was hurtful from me,  was felt
out of perception,  rather than what was actual.
If I really did do something,  tell me what it is
so that I can own up to it and tell you that I am sorry
for ******* everything up that way..
if, in fact.. it was something I really did.

I will only talk to you  from here (my M Vogel account)
so that you can rise and fall
concerning what things you need most from me,  
solely

by the responsibility of you,
and of me.

You already know that I am Paul.
You can call me that,  or M Vogel,
or stupidface..
or any of my other account names if you want,
but get inside of here with me what it is that you came for.

If it is something that I am able to give or be a part of..
then know it will become yours  in time.
  You have the ability..
    even though being spoken to this way
    both wildly turns you on
    and completely scares you shitless
    (and probably both at the same time)
you have  proven,  through your posted words  
that you are actually able to be a part of   and do,
what has for so long  felt so horribly distant from you,
   and so horrendously impossible for you to attain.
You have earned every single part of this very rightful place
that you now have in here with me.

Please don't stupidly **** it up the way that you so well
and so often do.
You are brilliant, girl. We both know that.
Stupid things are possible because your world has had learn
to be so incredibly indirect in order to survive.
What has saved you up until now,  out there..
will destroy everything for you,   in here.
But you are human, and rendering old things   dead
may be too much to ask for.. so I will tell you now--

that even  if within your broken, PTSD-filter--
you make a mess of the closeness--  at close range..
then with poetry, find your way back into my heart--
by speaking solely from yours  as you have.
**** me over too insincerely and callously  without remorse,
and you yourself will have stolen  you--  directly from
that of the deepest of places within my own heart.

Your call, kid..
You are not a little 14 year old  clad in combat boots anymore.
Yours is a living, breathing heart--
left withering  within the dry desert of indirectness
that you have  been forced up until now  to live in.

Every single day the sun comes up, anew. Those words mean
everything to you for a reason.
Through love and accountability,  breathe life in to them.

That is how you will make them real.

A coffin came my way,
They said, therein you lay;

I could believe them nay,
Until they said they could flay;

Wild I went,
I could not vent;

The expression remaining,
Before it started draining;

I was no longer composed,
I had to be dosed;

You were ethereal,
This had to be surreal;

No enmity could matter,
When everything had shattered;

You had been battered,
When you had me flattered;

I can not apologise,
You have been baptized;

I seek not your forgiveness,
I need not your liveness;

For you’ll always be,
Right here, in my heart;

I woke up, to find you gone,
For EVER in your zone..

I need not repent,
For I have your scent;

Your memories alive,
Shall always thrive;

You were one of a kind,
Never out of your mind;

It is not cowardice,
For it requires courage;

It shall not be despised,
For it was your suffrage..

if you want to know how it sounds... well a former girlfriend of mine had siblings younger than her, two boys and a girl... i started smoking when i was 21... after years of adamant protest against smoking, i remember times when smoking cigarettes was still legal in england in pubs and clubs, i'd come home after a night out and aired my clothes because of the stink... now i'm a steam-engine myself... goes like: puff puff choo choo! aged rock stars are the funniest people around, post-hedonism and they're all dieticians and healthy-life experts... anyway, if you're wondering how it sounds: a former girlfriend of mine siblings used to imitate jokingly the baritone of my voice... a darth vader sort of gimmick... now add the cigarette thick phlegm lining my larynx... you get the picture.*

i can attest with bukowski the problem of writing
into excess, there's a certain melancholy
surrounding writing prolifically,
all your best poems are lost,
well, "lost", in that there's so much
clutter, and esp. if you don't
keep personal copies, but shove
them all into a public domain
without a care, you don't have a chance
to rekindle reading some of
the poems you really enjoyed, or would
like to re-enjoy, i.e. re-read after you
re-read most of them to do the editorial
bits of revising a spelling mistake
or a faulty grammatical sequencing,
and then akin to nietzsche, who was taught
the laws of grammar like the laws of
physics (throw something up, it falls),
i was never taught grammar, my education
in language was based upon the method
that: if you can speak and write coherently,
you don't need the grammatical arithmetic
drilled into you - the principle of a good
education i guess: get a feel for it, mess around
with it, become a pioneering chemist or something;
and never, ever, write poetry conscious of
technique and identifiers like metaphors,
that's for the critics to spot, with their scalpels
of rhyme:

bay (a)
say (a)
bottom (b)
***** (b)
                         flay (a)
sanctity (c)
evidently (c)
                        common (b)               etc.

but still the melancholy, i sometimes wish i
could reread some of the poems i wrote,
but since i didn't keep any to myself, i don't
have any copies for myself, none stored in a darkened
place like a drawer, stacked pieces of paper or something,
and in an age of constant cyber warfare with
everyone hacking everyone, not keeping copies for
yourself seems rather mad, i'd hardly say it's daring,
i once lost a whole stash of poetry because
i simply asked a girl where she was from to get
a feel for her poetry, she reported me to the site's
administrators, and without a chance to explain
got erased, a little holocaust of never actually existing,
not as big a holocaust of what darwinism is doing
to us reaching far back into prehistory and the platonic
theory of forms of that mirror: man | monkey -
well, honestly, no, not from a theological point of
argumentation, the aesthetics aren't working on this one,
maybe that's why once the naked form of man
adorned by painters has become a pornographic jest
of mandible parts - and why does western society
sincerely make a fetish out of ****? horrid scenario...
anyway... it's mad that i don't keep any of the poems
for myself, i just throw them all into the public domain
because i feel they can be safe there,
and perhaps it's because i love the actual work of writing
poetry, more the love of the work than the end product,
even though i'd like to relive some of these poems
in my head, re-read them and see their optical correlations
leaving the blank plateau without hill or groove or
canyon... but then there's that sadness of some of
these poems becoming orphans... it's almost like they
don't know who bore them.

An acolyte of White Chapel, I walk the streets at night,

I strut the dark to feed my lust, my mildly selfish plight.

Don’t mistake me for insane, my demonic thoughts are clear,

Come to me my little *****, I show you why I’m revered.

-

I walk behind, step by step,

As I stalk my little coquette

she leaves the brothel, all dressed up,

Awaiting young gentleman to sup,

I’ve chosen this one for my knife,

It calmly grins to end her life.

-

Her caller leaves with no tip to spare,

Her saddened face hidden by her hair,

I follow her back until an alley,

The hatred then shall take my lead.

-

Twenty feet there from the door,

I felt her heart drop to the floor,

As I choked the breath out of her lungs,

I saw the sadness from being so close to home.

-

Upon my shoulder, I take her back

To the venue of my attack

I sneak through the darkest paths,

Until my home, we reach at last.

-

And at this part in my confession

I warn of the graphic, due to depression.

-

Upon my medical table she lay,

My scalpel awaits the ****** flay,

A little anesthetic, here and there,

Keeps her awake but still and fair.

-

She cannot scream but her eyes do widen

Though to be fair, my form does frighten,

When I lay my other instruments out,

Of leaving alive, I see her doubt.

-

“To business then my dear, my dear.”

Out of one eye, I spy a tear.

-

Because of paralysis I need no restraints,

She remains still, her heart remains faint,

I start with the kneecaps, just in case,

She breaks free of the spell, so I needn’t chase.

-

I place them upon my “excess” table

And then her legs I begin to cradle,

I take then every one of her toes,

And place them in a neat little row.

-

I take my time stemming the blood,

So death doesn’t come misunderstood,

Also that she may not pass out,

She remains conscious and without clout.

-

“My Sweet,

I cherish the sorrow I see in you eyes,

I enshrine the abhorrence of love I’ve revised,

acrimonious am I, animosity guides me,

I’ll **** everything you’ve ever believed.”

-

I move up onto her thighs,

Upon the blade, the sanguine does shine,

I split each side to sew again,

Except the muscle taken from within.

-

I stitch her fingers there together,

I rip out the nails to put on a tether,

Her arms have no concern to me,

Lest I graze an artery.

-

And  my favourite, the chest cavity,

I’ll make it a shrine to my depravity

Now is the point where time is a factor,

As I do this, she will die faster.

-

I hammer away with the sternum-splitter,

It cracks and cracks, her heart does flutter,

I eagle the ribcage as she stares in horror,

The sound of my laughter begins to adore her.

-

Her organs gaze up at me in fright,

I begin extracting in delight,

She looks up, looks for her God,

But he is absent, he is a fraud.

-

I witness the beating grow faster,

She is in shock, this could be disaster,

A little more solution for the pain,

But just enough so that she remains.

-

I slowly take a needle and puncture the left lung

Her other grows violent when its marriage is undone,

I extract her spleen and then,

Her heart does pump, her blood thickens.

-

Involuntary muscles in her lips tighten,

I barely catch it with her lips stitched in,

Her eyes, how they wonder everywhere,

Searching for some thing somewhere.

-

I see in them, she questions me,

‘Why have you forsaken me?’

Darling, I think that is not the question

I did this of my own suggestion,

-

You may ask why I left her womanhood alone,

Her ******* and ***** no violence shown,

To that, I answer you now and simply,

Frivolous things such as *** do not concern me.

-

You may ask why and where she may be found,

But you won’t find her, though don’t let that cloud

Your idea of me or what lies inside,

Don’t worry however, I allowed her to die,

After I had taken her precious heart,

She likely could’ve lived half a minute to start,

But at about second “fifteen”,

I cut her throat ever so gently,

She gurgled so quietly, ever somber,

I’m sure she would’ve thanked me regardless,

But in the end I don’t feel I’ve robbed a father,

After all, what father has a ***** of a daughter?

-

You will never catch me, I have no motive,

Other than sport, and a mind supported,

With thoughts of these wretched street walkers,

May they all be mindful they’ve gained a stalker,

Perhaps one day you may of me learn,

A clean city and plain interest, is all I yearn.