Paris has traditionally been the city where inter­national designers – from Australia and England to Beirut and Japan – opt to unveil their collections. However, Karen Ruimy, who is behind the Kalmar label, chose the runways of Milan Fashion Week for her debut showcase in September.

The Morocco-born, London- based designer hosted an intimate al fresco event in a private palazzo to launch her holiday line of fine cotton and silk jumpsuits, breezy kaftans, long skirts, playsuits and off-the-shoulder tops in tropical prints.

Ruimy had a career in finance before moving into the arts – she owns a museum of photography in Marrakech – and has become increasingly involved in fashion and beauty, thanks to her personal interest in holistic therapies.

These are clothes, she explains, that marry luxury and wellness, and are the things she would wear when she wants quality time by herself. The fact that they are made in Italy, convinced her that Milan was the right place for her debut – where she showed alongside the likes of Gucci, Prada, Verscae and Marni.

On fashion calendars, Milan has conventionally been the place where the runways confirm the trends and themes hinted at ­earlier, in New York and London. However, this season, the Italian designers did not speak with one voice, making Milan Fashion Week all the more refreshing for it.

Often, there might be an era or style of design that dominates the runways during a particular season, but for spring/summer 2017 in Milan, there was a standout showing of techno sportswear and techno fabrics employed in updated classics such as coats and box-pleat skirts, or with references to north African and Native American themes.

The Italian designers sent looks that would appeal to everyone, from the haute bohemian and athletic woman, to the cool sophisticate and the art crowd, as well as – as in the case of Moschino – to the iPhone generation.

Only three seasons ago, Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele was lauded for his complicated maximalist styling. Yet in Milan, Gucci channelled a dreamlike vibe with Victoriana, denim, athletic apparel and oversized accessories, thrown together in delightful chaos, making it difficult to predict the direction Michele is taking Gucci in.

Currently he seems to be in a holding pattern, hovering at once over 1940s Hollywood glamour, 1970s flared pantsuits, and ruffled party dresses from the 1980s, in a cacophony of ­colours and fabrics.

The feeling of joyous madness continued at Dolce & Gabbana, where street dancers emerged from the audience to start the party in the designers’ tropical-themed show. The clothes used some of their familiar tropes, such as military jackets, corseted black-lace dresses miniskirts. New, however, were the baggy tapering trousers redolent of jodhpurs, and the lavish and detailed embellishment the designers used to sell their story.

Wanderlust dominated the moodboards at Roberto Cavalli – rich patterns, embroidery and patchworks inspired by Native Americans – and Etro with its ­tribal themes on kaftans, duster coats and Berber-style capes.

Giorgio Armani, Agnona Tod’s, Bottega Veneta and Salvatore Ferragamo – with its stylish twisted leather dresses and crisp athletic sportswear designed by newcomer Fulvio Rigoni – all answered the call of women who want stylish but undemanding clothes.

Marni would appeal to the art world for its graceful, pioneering ideas. The label’s finely pleated dresses displayed a life of their own, and its micro-printed dresses were gathered, folded and distorted to walk the line between stylish and quirky.

In contrast, the sportswear at MaxMara and Donatella Versace targeted the dynamic generation of athletic women, with sleek leggings, belted jackets, power suits and anoraks. Versace has made it clear that she thinks this is the only way forward. She may be right, but there’s always room for the myriad styles displayed at Milan Fashion Week in all our wardrobes.

It was feathers with everything at Prada. Silk pyjamas, boldly coloured and mixed checks, cardigans and wrap skirts with Velcro fasteners show Miuccia Prada reinventing the classics. Most glamorous was the series of evening dresses and pyjamas with jewelled embroidery and feathers, worn with kitten heels that married sporty straps with heaps of crystals. Prada’s must-have bag of the season is a bold clutch with a long strap fastener, that comes in a multitude of geometric and daisy patterns.

Versace

Over the past three seasons, Donatella Versace has been carving out a new image for her brand – a shift from the luxe glam of red carpets and superyachts, although the inhabitants of that world will be sure to buy into the new Versace vibe. Donatella’s girls are both glamorous and empowered. The sporty look is tough, urban and energetic, judging by the billowing ultra-thin high-tech nylon parkas and blousons, stirrup trousers and dresses (the shapes of which are manipulated by drawstrings). Dresses, skirts and tops are spliced at angles and studded together. Swishy pleated dresses and silky slit skirts gave energy when in movement, and were as soft as the look got.

Bottega Veneta

Model Gigi Hadid and veteran actress Lauren Hutton walked arm in arm down the Bottega Veneta runway, illustrating the breadth of the Italian maison in Tomas Maier’s hands. This was a double celebration of the Bottega’s 50th ­anniversary and Maier’s 15th as its creative director. Menswear and womenswear were combined, and the focus was on easy, elegant clothes in luxurious materials, such as ostrich, crocodile and lamb skin for coats; easy knits and cotton dresses worn with antique-style silver jewellery; and wedge heels. Fifteen handbag styles debuted along with 15 from the archive.

Fendi

Silvia Venturini’s new Kan handbag was a star turn at Milan. The stud-lock bag dotted with candy-coloured studs, rosette embroidery and floral ribbons couldn’t help but charm every woman in the audience. It was the perfect joyful accessory for Karl Lagerfeld’s feminine vintage romp through the wardrobe of Marie Antoinette, with sugary colours, bows, big apron skirts and crisp white embroidery juxtaposed with sporty footballer-stripe tops – effectively updating a historical look.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

We will walk through the Cherry blossoms
in Japan, hand in hand, meandering through
the falling petals.  Our winding path
will weave through the countryside  with
no goal in sight.  We will stop in front of a
particularly beautiful tree, whose branches
are just beginning to look naked.

I will look at you, brush a stray blossom
from your hair...and whisper

           Aishiteru
               .                                                                ­                   
                   .                                                                ­                
                     .   .                                                                ­            
                               .                                                                ­          
                                     .                                                                ­        
                             We trek the Arctic circle and witness
                             the absolute beauty of the Aurora Borealis.                       
                             We're be bundled tightly in our parkas,                                     
                    ­         but we are still be able to feel eachother's                                   
                  ­           warmth.  We laugh as we throw snowballs.
                             We lie in the snow and make angels.                                          
               ­              Well...they'll start out as angels, but in the                                 
                            ­ end, they'll just look like snow that two people                          
                             have just rolled around in.                                                  
           ­                                                                 ­                      
                                              We can't help it.  As we embrace,                             
                           ­                   I whisper
                                                     Negligevapse                                                    
­                                                         .                                          
                     ­                                     .                           ­             
                                                          .     ­                                   
                                                         .                                          
                     ­                                   .                             ­             
                                                     .                                            
                   ­                              .                                                  
             ­                              .                                                        
       ­                                                                 ­                          
         We stroll the beaches of Hawaii, refreshing ocean                                    
         breezes cool us.  I picked you a flower,
         which you now wear in your hair.  Your cinnamon                               
         brown skin offsets your beautiful white smile.                                       
         We run through the breaking waves, our feet                                                
         leaving ephemeral indentations that are as                                             
         fleeting as our cares.  We fall over into                                                     
       ­  the surf and let the ocean wash over us.                                                     
        ­                                                                 ­                         
              I kiss your nose and tell you                                                          
   ­                   Aloha wau ia oi                                                               ­             
                              .                    ­                                                
                ­                  .                                      In China, we race eachother along   
                                     .                               .   the Great Wall to see who can get 
                                        .                   ­        .    to the end first.  We both end up   
                                           .                     .       dragging eachother across the         
                                             .               .           finish line...which happens to be      
                                                 .   .   .               a few hundred feet away.          
                                                 ­                        The locals shake their                
                                           ­                              heads disaprovingly, as we stifle      
                                                    ­                     a giggle.  I lean in and remind you  
                                                           ­                                       
                         ­                                                   Wo ai ni..                    
                                                             .  .                      .            
                         ­                                 .       .                     .          
                                                       .            .                   .          
                                                     .               .                 .            
                                                   .                  .   .   .   .  .            
                                                 .                                                
               ­                In Soviet Russia, girl kiss you                                              
               ­                and I gladly let her, for she                                               
              ­                 and I have had one too many shots                                 
                          ­     of *****.  Our faces are rosy and                                       
                      ­         we lean into each other as our feet                                     
                       ­        make hard noises on the cobblestone                                       
              ­                 streets.  Saint Basil's Cathedral                                          
             ­                  looms over us, as our lips dance                                           
                ­               a familiar dance.                                                           ­       
                                                                ­                                  
                              ­            Ya tebya liubliu                                                        
 ­                                                .                                                
                                                 .                                                
            .  .  .  .                          .               ­                                   
         .             .                      .                                         ­           
       .                .                   .                                                      
      .                    .  .  .  .  .  .                                                 ­       
    .                                                           ­                                   
We gaze at the Taj Mahal, a building                                                         ­   
built for a man's true love. I would                                                            ­      
build you a city.  we take in the                                                              ­          
mighty majesty of Everest.  I tell                                                             ­                
you I'd climb it for you.  You tell                                                             ­              
me to stop being silly, and say
you'd get bored waiting for me.
I give you a back rub instead.                                            

  Hum Tumhe Pyar Karte hae 
                                                            ­             We travel the dutch  countryside
                                              ­                            and kick off our wooden shoes to
                   .                                          ­            watch the tulips blooming.
                       .                                            .     I dedicate an entire field to you.
                          .                                 ­    .         You blush.
                              .                           ­   .         we fall asleep in front of a windmill,
                                 .     .                  .          watching the shapes of the clouds pass
                                         .      .      .             over us. I whisper in your ear
                                                             ­                                                                 ­      
                                                                ­       Ik hou van jou
                                                             ­             .                        
                                                                ­         .                          
                                     ­                                  .                            
                                   ­                                  .                              
                                 ­                                  .                                
                               ­                                  .                                  
                             ­            .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .                                           ­ 
    France has never been as beautiful as                                                               ­   
    it is now that you're here.  We skirt                                                            ­         
    the cities and explore the countryside,                                                     ­           
    Endless fields and clear skies bring                                                            ­     
    out our inner children, and spend the day
    romping and rolling until our clothes                                                          ­  
    are stained and our muscles ache.  I                                                         ­             
    lay beside you, panting.  In between                                                          ­       
    breaths, I manage to impart                                                           ­                
                                                ­                                                            
    ­                                                                 ­                                       
               Je t'aime                                                           ­                                 
                   .                                                                ­                        
                    .                                           ­                                             
                   ­   .                                                             ­                         
                        .              ­                                                                 ­     
                          .  .  .    .    .       .          .                                                    
                                                                ­                                            
                    ­                                            We explore Roman ruins and concoct      
                                                   ­             our own love story had we been born      
                                                      ­          in the Ancient city.  I would have        
                                                    ­            been a mighty General, who saved      
                                                     ­           you from a terrible dicator.  You            
                                       ­                         tell me to stop quoting Gladiator.       
                                               ­                 We share a kiss under the shadow           
                                               ­                 of the colleseum.  I brush your         
                                                   ­             hair from your face...                       
                                  ­                                                                 ­       
                                                         ­                  Ti Amo                              
                                                                ­               .                          
                                                                ­                                          
                      ­                                                        .        ­                    
                                            ­                                                              
  ­                                                                 ­        .                              
                                                                ­                                          
                      ­                                                                 ­                   
                                             ­                           .                                  
  ­                                                                 ­                                       
                         ­                                                                 ­                
                                                ­                    .                                      
     ­                                                                 ­                                    
                            ­                           You smile and reply                                   
                        ­                                                                 ­                 
                                               ­             I love you, too

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"

I know they're out there somewhere
Watching, cringing, when they see those
who don't know just what to pick out
When they go out in their clothes
I cannot list the culprits
And we all know fashion crime
Like, pants that show the *** crack
We see this all the time
It used to be a faux pas
When one made a clothes mistake
But now you see them daily
With every look you take
With all the shows on tv
Showing people how to dress
Why do they go out looking
Like such a rotten, bleeding mess?
Stripes and spots and solids
Wearing braces AND a belt
Wearing parkas in hot weather
You'd think that they would melt
Socks worn with one's sandals
And those pants around the knees
I mean, someone, help these people
someone help them please
We need some clothes policing
Maybe a hot line they could phone
Maybe send the cops a photo
Before they choose to leave their home
There are people wearing spandex
People who aren't really thin
think of squeezing ten pounds of sausage
In a five pound sausage skin
And makeup...yes, the makeup
Someone needs to teach them how
to apply it, in moderation
We need some clothes policing now!
There are rules and there are guidelines
But common sense should reign supreme
It looks like these poor people
got dressed while in a dream
We need fashion policing
So we can all walk, showing class
Instead of being like these morons
Who wear big jeans, and show their ***!!!

After the rain, came the heavy snow.
Falling with silent thuds through the trees,
the bush and below.
Muffled crunches of boot ensconced children
zipping up parkas against flakes by the million.
Stillness in my heart slipping through the broken parts,
dripping to the snow in colors of blue and vermillion.
The quiet flakes gently holding my confusion and loneliness.
Caressing my cheeks as a mother would to her child crying
in whispered tearfulness
A painful summer ambled slowly away leaving a far fairer autumn
but as winter and her snows knocked at my door, the mountain beckoned, and I lost him.

“Cold snowflakes upon my arm

the winter shine peeking through a crack in the blinds

a breeze of ice engulfing the room through a window left ajar

a land covered in a shiny white blanket.”

Winter has come. Cue the thick padded coats and the parkas of every color of the rainbow! Behold the sleds and skis and the beautiful Siberian huskies who pull them. Await the closing of schools and the temperature drops, keeping people in and making children everywhere euphoric as ever. The time has come for skating upon rivers of ice, and joyous dinners in warm wooly sweaters as families gather around to indulge in the tastiest of food. Fireplaces shall again be lit in all households of old, and stockings hung up early in preparation for Christmas. Happy smiles all around, engaging in snowball fights and the building of snowmen.

Ah but winter is as winter does. As numbers reach the negatives, heaters are turned up to the warmest possible, insulating the beings in a home and using electricity. What about those without a home? Those who are confined to the streets of the city, waiting for the cold to eat their bodies up and leave them in a state of rigidity? They are left to waste. Left to succumb to the bitterness of winter, with no sustenance whatsoever or any form of water to soothe their burning throats. The cold will conceal them in a cover of white death, a prison of snow. And in the early mornings of every winter-filled day, a machine is sent out to collect the bodies of those who have been imprisoned by the winter. The one operating the machine weeps silent tears for these ice prisoners before bringing their poor souls elsewhere.

Winter is two-faced, and she is both beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night.

(lunarlullubies)

it begins crisper than november,
still, chilly, ice blue sky,
then warm, then cold, then crazy frigid,
wind cat-yowling,
and on the windows,
frost feathers that do not melt all day.

the solstice sun creeps warily
across the south horizon,
glancing brilliant off frost-sheathed trees,
so cold the very air is frozen--
sparkling ice crystals float rainbow colored
like dizziness before my eyes.

Christmas eve starts grey and windy--
rain at two and snow at three--
the huge flakes my mom called "horsebirds".
And just at sunset, a patch of blue,
a sky tunnel for those tiny reindeer.

Christmas morning, four together,
first time in years we all are here:
Best-Beloved, sad eyed lady,
   maker of donuts and hi-test coffee,
      sings a bit, weeps, smiles;
the Exile returns, hoodied, shy smiling,
   coffee in hands, and heart full of plans;
and Carborundum Starshine bursts in the door,
   in corduroy & goofy hat,
     Paul Bunyan beard & glitter cheeks;
and  i
   am here.
Talk and cookies, hugs and pictures,
   Merry merry, the peace-pipe passed,
      carols on the radio,
the scents of spruce and tangerines.

the "week between" a roller coaster,
t-shirts one day, parkas the next,
wind that moans like Marley's ghost,
and snow tornados  on the road.

new year's eve and big soft snowflakes,
sparkling lights and laughing shouts--
on the street, drunken kisses and auld lang syne--

but not for me, i listen only;
there's work tomorrow, quick to bed,
a brief flight,
   all-night jazz    
     and sleep.

time tomorrow to begin again.

(1-1-14)

Poems about Things that Break

These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old habits, our hearts, and sometimes Love itself.



Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.



Dark-bosomed clouds
pregnant with heavy thunder ...
the water breaks
―Michael R. Burch



As grief reaches its breaking point
someone snaps a nearby branch.
―Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Lightning
shatters the darkness―
the night heron's shriek
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.
―Sappho, fragment 130, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



My heart is unsteady as a rocking boat;
besieged by such longing I weaken with age
and come close to breaking.
―Otomo no Sakanoue no Iratsume, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My era’s obscuring mirror  
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.            
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.



Mirror Images
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us ...

tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief ...

ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered ...

and if you were to ask her,
she might say―
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,

and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.

Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Modern War Poems



Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you―
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

not as you are now,
but as you were then―

eternally present
and Sovereign.



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

Not the blossomings of song 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 black, 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.



Bubble
by Michael R. Burch

.................Love
..........fragile elusive
.......if held too closely
....cannot.........withstand
..the inter..................ruption
of its.............................. bright
..unmalleable.............tension
....and breaks disintegrates
......at the............touch of
.........an undiscerning
..................hand.

I believe this is my only shape/shaped/concrete poem.



Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, on the first anniversary of 9-11

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 damp 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.

Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine and Other Voices International



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: "Frail things must break!"
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

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

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



Mate Check
by Michael R. Burch

Love is an ache hearts willingly secure
then break the bank to cure.



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

Published by The Lyric, Black Medina, The Eclectic Muse, Kritya (India), Shabestaneh (Iran), Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Captivating Poetry (Anthology), Strange Road, Freshet, Shot Glass Journal, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Famous Poets and Poems, Sonnetto Poesia, Poetry Life & Times



Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior―
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...

a diode of amethyst―wild, electric;
its sequined cavity―parted, revealing.

Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.

Each spire inward―a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails―fractured light,

the heart ice breaking.

Published by Poet Lore, Poetry Magazine and the Net Poetry and Art Competition



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

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

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



Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as if she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.

Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia and Lone Stars



The Ruins of Balaclava
by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, barren Crimean land, these dreary shades
of castles―once your indisputable pride―
are now where ghostly owls and lizards hide
as blackguards arm themselves for nightly raids.

Carved into marble, regal boasts were made!
Brave words on burnished armor, gilt-applied!
Now shattered splendors long since cast aside
beside the dead here also brokenly laid.

The Greeks erected shimmering marble here.
The Romans drove wild Mongol hordes to flight.
The Mussulman prayed eastward, day and night.

Now owls and dark-winged vultures watch and leer
as strange black banners, flapping overhead,
mark where the past piles high its nameless dead.



Once 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



Eras Poetica II
by Michael R. Burch

“... poetry makes nothing happen ...”―W. H. Auden

Poetry is the art of words: beautiful words.
So that we who are destitute of all other beauties exist
in worlds of our own making; where, if we persist,
the unicorns gather in phantomlike herds,
whinnying to see us; where dark flocks of birds,
hooting, screeching and cawing, all madly insist:
“We too are wild migrants lost in this pale mist
which strangeness allows us, which beauty affords!”

We stormproof our windows with duct tape and boards.
We stockpile provisions. We cull the small list
of possessions worth keeping. Our listless lips, kissed,
mouth pointless enigmas. Time’s bare pantry hoards
dust motes of past grandeurs. Yet here Mars’s sword
lies shattered on the anvil of the enduring Word.



The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



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!



Having Touched You (The Boy in the Bubble)
by Michael R. Burch

What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.

And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west,
another remained

suspended in memory
like a flower
in crystal

so that eternity
is but an hour
and fall

is no longer a season
but a state
of mind.

I have no reason
to wait;
the wind

does not pause
for remembrance
or regret

because
there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget...

Forget that we were very happy
for a day.
That day was my lifetime.

Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine,

the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root
and I grew.

Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife,
and yet I can bear it,
having touched you.

I wrote this poem as a teenager after watching "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" with John Travolta playing a young man with a defective immune system who risks death for a chance at love.



Published as the collection "Poems about Things that Break"

Keywords/Tags: break, breaking, breakings, shatter, shattered, shattering, delicate, fragility, fragment, touch, cruelty, brutality, abuse, stress, love, pain, relationships, society, mrbreak, mrbbreak

we're tip tip tipping
tap tap tapping out a rhythm for our breath
sweet ladles laden lady leaden candles
sticks candlesticks
lime sweet ricky baby
rolling rolling heavy cajoling
you want to know you want to know
greens orange peach and parkas
time with only embers
smelling sweet of sand glass green
lightning what a pretty king

I.
Your mother sits hunched over the oak table,
hair tight up in a bun and
shawl wrapped over her shoulders and
wrinkles give a dignified, sure-looking appearance
to a face that shows steady, steady
weathering of any and everything life
could throw at her.  You place down
a mug, two mugs of something
and you seat yourself down across
from her, tidying your long skirt, and

you take a sip.  The steam rises
past your unlined face and disappears
in front of the thicker-at-the-bottom single-pane window
set between the wall-logs.
Outside is white:
white trees,
white ground,
white grill,
white porch.
She sighs and sips the mug,
a heavy, old-style clay mug that’s
been in the house for you don’t know how long.  She sighs and
looks out the window and
sighs again.  You frown a frown of concern,

lips turned down and eyes doe-like,
cocking your head and
reaching out your arm and
patting her on the shoulder, as she
slumps down farther, face almost
in the mug.  Steam would fog up her imaginary glasses.
The shawl droops forward
and a corner dips into the mug;
so you pinch it between
your thumb and index finger,
and you gently lift it out, dripping.  She sighs and
slowly takes a sip from the mug
again.  You stand and walk

out of the room, gone for a minute,
as your mother doesn’t move,
as your mother makes no move;
she sits and sighs and slumps and sips,
once or twice,
before you return,
tidying your long skirt and
sliding forward the chair and
moving your lips, mumbling something,
sympathies, something comforting,
as your mother stares blankly
at your ******* and makes no reply.
Your face makes that frown,
and you sip again and
get back up,

walk around the table,
the heavy oak table,
and take her by the shoulders,
gently, so gently, and lift,
gently, so gently.  She stands slowly,
shuffling away with you, out of the room,
leaving the still steaming empty
clay mugs on the table.

II.
The snow-covered pyramid of lumber
and the stone-built heavy
chimney exhaling smoke bring back
the memories of winter—
reminder that yes, (yes,) it is winter, that
winter is here with the snow and
the cold and everything that that entails—
runny noses and cold nose-tips and shivering,
heavy parkas and furry hoods,
no birds and empty
tree-limbs.  The only heat
the heat of the fireplace,
roaring fire of formerly snow-covered logs from out back,
trekked in with heavy brown boots,
crunch crunch though the crisp
upper layer of snow, hot cider
or chocolate or tea or coffee
that (if it doesn’t burn your tongue)
warms you up inside out, warm fuzzy
feeling in the tummy, toes warmed
by thick wool socks.  Childhood
makes for a good winter,
sliding down hills on metal trash lids,
dodging trees before hitting the bottom and
plunging into a snowbank, laughing and
getting back up to go again.
But now your job is to shovel,
is not to have fun,
is to take care of business,
to shovel and to make food/drinks for others,
with the bleak grey sky overhead
through the empty birdless tree limbs.  And to ensure
that the house does not burn down
from the fireplace fire—
things have changed.

III.
When the morning comes,
when day breaks, and you are still here,
you look up at the sky
and fall on your knees, thankful
to have passed through this night.

When the morning comes,
with its cold grey sky,
blanketing the stars of the night,
when the chill wind blows
and the sun gives no warmth.

When the morning comes,
and the demons of the night have gone
and have made their peace,
and have retreated once more,
when you are thankful to be alive.

When the morning comes,
when the world is again astir
and comes to consciousness
with faint stale smells of beer and cheap liquor,
as people rouse themselves
from alcoholic post-****** stupors.

When the morning comes,
and the day-animals are again awake
and the night-animals are again asleep,
break of day and the sound of the
south-vanished birds is not heard,
yet echoes remain in the ear.

When the morning comes,
and the coffee machines whir and click and drip drop,
when the steam rises
into the nostrils and the near-boiling
too hot black coffee down the throat,
when the eyes finally open.

When the morning comes,
when the car won’t start for the cold in the engine,
when the windshield is blind for the frost.

When the morning comes,
when all the sordid images
of the night before
appear in the face of the one beside.

When the morning comes,
and you pop your pills
just to make it through the day
and you pack your briefcase
and you walk
and it’s still cold,
when you exhale vapor.

When the morning comes,
when the alarm sounds,
when the snooze resets,
when the alarm sounds.

IV.
You stare into the woods,
perched on your chair on the porch
and I think that there is not much there,
that there are only the small animals
and the dead trees and the crickets
and I think, I think you’re wrong.

Keep your chin up
is the call,
but I don’t think I can—I don’t think you should.
I think it is bad,
I think sticking your neck out or up exposes it to harm;
sometimes it is better,
I think, to hunker down and acknowledge

that everything is wrong,
that everything is broken.  You, horse lover, [Horselover, Horse lover, horselover]
you must endure, you must be
the redwood in the gale,
the sandbag in the hurricane,
the rock in the stream,
the brick house in the wolf.

The jockey buries his head into the horse’s neck,
and you, horselover,
you must stare stoically;
you must not be moved.

That is what they tell us,
we who go through hell and back,
we who journey to rescue Eurydice and to bring her back.  But sometimes,
I think that it is silly,
that it is fruitless,
when what do we bring back but a shade, a spectre,

an abomination, a dæmon,
hideous monstrosity of a deformity of a memory,
eager to vanish in a pillar of salt.  It is said to you,
horselover, to never give up—
but if I never give up,
if I never stop,
then where does it end?
Something ends—there is a giving up,
if you do not exhaust your spirit,
this universe,

this world, will do so.  A thousand million galaxies collide,
a brilliant cosmic dancephony,
until they tire
and grow bored,
and in ten thousand million more years
they cease,
and they slow,

as they spread too far to interact,
friends hampered by the long distances,
lovers who no longer call daily,
who no longer think constantly of each other.
One day, in a hundred thousand million years,
it will be far too cold
to dance or to sing,
and that one day, I think that
you will give up,
that we will give up.

V.
You sit at the oak table,
and you sigh as the horses break out,
out, out, gone.  And you will not chase them,
and I will not seek to bring them back
with lyre-playing.
The horses will run free and unbridled;
you, horse lover, to love something,
set it free, set them free, set the horses to roam across the grass-plains,
set your beautiful passions to free-romp.  I will miss them,
I will miss the horses, and
you will as much as I.  Their long manes
flowing in the breeze.  But you must let go,
but we must let go—
I think that we are in rats’ alley,
and I think that it is time.

I walked by the playground. The little kids- reminiscent of little versions of me- were bundled in puffy parkas, scarves, gloves and hats tied under their chins so tight that their chubby cheeks poured over the bow. They can barely lift their arms. They stumble and wobble, rolling around the playground, up the pyramids and down the slides. The crisp air of a warm winter engulfs them as they think about their new friends, and how they enjoy playing tag on the playground. The kids, they’ve been there forever it seems.  

Couples walk dogs. Women with curly black hair frizzing out of wrapped striped scarves, with glasses, with wrinkles. Men walking slowly behind, undistinguished, unremarkable, but peaceful nonetheless. The grey of the city pours into the park, a timeless grey filling corners that are easy to mistake as empty. Filling the cracks in the old cement all along the paths between playgrounds. Buildings stand right on the edge reminding you of where you are. Marking the minutes left you have in a playland. Soon you’ll hit the bustling streets where coats, scarves, mittens, socks mix with people walking so fast down the sidewalk in a cocktail of cold, pain, business and ambition. Sometimes cheeks flush as new lovers hold hands. Children laugh and tickle one another. But more often than not, everyone drinks the cocktail and keeps going- destinations unknown but going nonetheless.

When you’re alone you drink the cocktail, and think that you’re the only one. It makes you tell yourself to keep going, that you’ll go far. You pick some imaginary destination and push yourself towards it with all your might. Just like parents push the little bundles of pink and blue sitting on the swings at the playground.

Someday, maybe you’ll bump into someone- who will help you remember that you aren’t the only one. You aren’t the only one drinking the cocktail. And you’ll feel like maybe you can walk together, bundled now not only in your coats, but in each other. In the warmth of someone else, and the softness of their embrace.

But all too soon, one of you will trip- holding each other – one person holding on too tight, or another tripping over shoes. It’s inevitable.

There’s a bench. A bench at the intersection of three paths, one that is incredibly hard to revisit, but one that doesn’t move. It’s hard to find- at that intersection. It’s under a bridge, behind a museum, covered in shrubbery, and overcome by passersby. Under the bridge there’s a man who plays his flute. It echoes though, offering a trail of crumbs to find this place.

Appetites are arbitrary, almost subjective. Growing up, my appetite was like any other kid’s: chips, chocolate milk, maybe an apple or two. My mother was a single mom who worked two jobs, so more often than not, my dinners consisted of a McDonald’s happy meal. What my insatiable hunger lacked was in sports. I had always been more interested in chocolate muffins than playing soccer or soft ball. This may have been supported by my heart condition, but in reality, I knew I just hated sports. So, in turn, most of my time was spent on the couch watching cartoons and eating my bore away.  Eventually, my lifestyle caught up with me, and at the tender age of nine, while in the midst of my cardiac surgery, I had doctors and nurses telling me that I was fat, heavy, obese, and just too big for my age.
​For a long time, these statements did not curb my appetite, they actually reinforced it. Food was the only constant comfort for me, and so I would indulge in almost anything and everything, mostly to the point of sickness. I would binge and binge and binge until I didn’t feel bad anymore, until I felt like my mother liked me, until I felt some of the self-hatred go away. My mother observed my weight gain, and introduced me to a nutritionist in an attempt to understand and maybe find a balance of my caloric intake. But, that was the thing about my eating disorder, it was never in the grey, never faded or opaque. Even in my astrology, I was born as an all-or-nothing soul. For me, it was always black or white; binging until the point of physical sickness, or eating so little that I myself became brittle and grey
​My freshman year of High School was when the starvation really set in. I had finally gotten my first boyfriend, a frail boy who was about 125 lbs smaller than me. My appetite dwindled and faded as did my sanity. I had been in the hospital for suicidal ideation and attempts, and as I dealt and weeded through all of the twists and turns of my mind, I had finally decided that being fat was not going to be my life. Of course, as a recovering self-harmer, my mind thought the only way to fix this was to stop eating all together. But, to be completely honest, it didn’t start out as a bad thing. I tried to just reduce my calorie intake just a bit and maybe go for a jog once in a while, I tried to be smart about it. But my polarized personality quickly took over, and before I knew it I was counting not only calories, but breaths.
​At the point where I had lost almost half my original body weight, I had also lost my appetite for food, friends, family, even living. The hunger I was consumed by could only be satiated by the poignant shadows of my cheek bones, by the dips and valleys of my ribs, through the feeling of leather skin stretched taut over brittle bone. I wanted to be small, I needed to be weightless. But the only ******* tongue would implore for was the taste of stomach acid kissing my lips. The only sustenance my stomach would have was the crisp air of cigarettes and coke zero. The only thing my mind would give me was a quiet attack and endless assaults on my psyche.
​I used my friends and family as a tool to substantiate my fatal way of life. Because of my lifelong struggle with my weight, the photos depicting my weight loss progress were bombarded with comments congratulating me on how great I looked, on how proud of me they were. But what they didn’t know was that they were patting me on the back for not eating for days and days; they were complimenting me on how my sinewy fingers would crawl down my throat and take the little nourishment I had given myself from my stomach; what they didn’t know was that they were happily watching me slowly **** myself.
I knew I wasn’t okay, I knew I was just waiting for rock bottom; I knew I was a dead girl walking. At this point my joints would groan and weep when I walked, and my stomach practically rejected anything I’d give it. I had learned to deal with the hunger pains, and I learned how to hide the scars on my body that my relapsing mind would leave. I was a ghost trapped in a bag of dry, cracking skin beside a pile of fragile, toothpick bones. I believed that I was to die sooner or later, and that that would be it, the pain would be over. But I guess the universe had a different plan for my time on earth.  
It was cold outside, and I had layered myself in cardigans and jackets and parkas. I was walking home from school, to burn a few extra calories that my mind deemed to be immediately terminated. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe twenty minutes if I didn’t stop. Just as I reached the open field, about ten minutes away from my house, it began to snow. My eyes darted up,  too fast for my feeble mind to process, and everything went fuzzy. I knew this meant I was going to pass out, so I hurried home. My feet were able to carry me to the sidewalk before my house steps. But before I could even reach the front door, everything was suddenly black, my eyes rolled back, and my knees fell from underneath me.
My eyes fluttered open as I felt a sharp pain under my head. I look around and see that I have a light layer of snow covering most of my body. I saw that there was blood seeping through my white coat, and that my legs were numb. As I sat up, I realized that I had hit my head, and that there was blood on the ground. My fingers prodded the chunk of skull that was throbbing, and thankfully only found a small little wound. Finally, my legs woke up and I was able to hobble inside, but not without covering up the mess I had made.
When I got inside, I peeled off the layers of cloth to tend to the bruises and scrapes on my arms. What I didn’t expect was the multitude of red lines across my bony wrists, all varying of size, age, and severity.
This was my rock bottom.
I hadn’t even remembered doing it to myself. I did not recall taking that razor from its secret home and running it across my skin. My mind could not pull up the images of red-dotted paper towels and carefully placed band-aids, and this is what scared me the most. The fact that I had been living in such a fog to the point where I could not even remember my own self-mutilation pierced itself to my core, and I began to cry. I cried for myself, I cried for my mother, I cried for my life, because this disease had taken all of those away from me. It dug its way into my brain and fed upon the very core of my being, not giving a **** on the consequences my soul would suffer. It tore out my lungs and veins and flesh, and most importantly my heart. My eating disorder turned me into a vessel. My eating disorder held me captive in my own body for years with the only solace being coke zero and granola bars. My eating disorder took everything away from me, and I willingly allowed it.
​The only appetite I’ve ever had was the desire to be impeccable. I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to be good enough. I wanted to be wanted. But, what I learned was that bones cannot keep you warm in the bitter cold, that the skin I drew so tight over my hollow heart would not hold me together in a tiny little bow, and would eventually break. Finally, the appetite to live was greater than my appetite to die. I learned not to just live but to thrive, and accepted my body with all of its curves and slopes, and even still remembered the sharp corners and valleys that were left behind. Not only did my appetite return to me, but I returned to me, and I am so hungry.

none more than I,
surprised and wary,
that my all-my-life
urbanized body,
be so unnaturally well attuned
to a slight degree
temperature modification

I,
proud city dweller,
born and bred,
urban dust,
the sandblast used
to erode and etch-a-sketch
my body's skin pores hollows,
by definition, pride and myth,
a tough skin necessified
to survive where
plants cannot

the chill of fall,
and the follow up of
it's 'whiteout' afterwards,
faintly dimly but
remarkably present,
unmistakably different
from the chilling moisture
forming on the ice bucketed bottle
of dinner's colden, golden,
waiting white Sancerre

the lowest, coldest single note
any viola can exhale,
I,
hear coming from Itzhak Perlman's
so close, Shelter Island retreat,
a foghorn warning
clearly felt, smelling its deep fried heard mournful warning,
tonal hum, swelling from the outside in,
not despite, but to pointedly spite
the surrounding humidity condensation of August
on the air cooled window panes

the very same humidity
that makes humans
curse the blessing of sweating,
registering slews of
no-one-cares complaints to
no-ones-listening people,
about the drying out everywhere
wet dampness of the end of the
simmering season

a sliver, a musk,
a prophet's portent,
so subtly well entrenched,
secretly by nature sent,
a realtime single line of code,
message that winter is indeed coming,
but not to the Seven Kingdoms,
but to the Czar's literary summer palace

I,
the sole prosecution witness,
to winter's germination
as the evening cools,
testifying about the acorn droppings
felt beneath flip flops,
like hurtful peas
beneath a princess's ten deep mattresses,
reminders of too soon time to be mourned
as gone, gone, gone
the summer,
the peak of the foliage, the zenith, the crest
of this old and very peculiar man

but one?

how can this be,
one **** degree
of Fahrenheit
leads directly to
sniffles and endless
gesundheists?

one **** degree,
separates the operatic arias,
the shower sing-a-long songs of his summer soul's
contented tented revival,
which now, in these sultry days of  August,
he sings, so swell,
practiced with an artistic style of
summer lazy's 'doing nothing'
so, so well

soon to suffer the mysteries of
the longest day
of wintery night,
where silent snow falling,
beautifies but makes the man
put down his pen and
reread his summer poetry

tonite,
we fine and dine
dressed in summer attire,
sock-less, coolest linen with cotton blended,
only ******, good natured,
political discussions allowed,
some daring souls,
bare their left shoulders,
more tan skin out than in,
while others defend
the natural human right
of man to wear in tandem,
white socks and ugly cargo shorts

all the fabrics, all the friends,
crinkling wrinkling upon the tannins
of sweet brown sugar of caramelized skin

some wearing bright pastels
clean new white T's,
so eye brightening-whiting-delighting,
that they are legally required,
and illegal to wear anytime else,
except for this one abbreviated quarter
of the best days of his life

smell the snow,
hearing  the boots and parkas,
making tramping noises upon snow cleared paths
swimming unhappily across
slushy street corners, almost mountain pass impassable
all these molecules, wafting in the coolness
of the August shore breezes ,
fedex'd  up from the polar south winds
of wintertime Argentina

all of these hints,
present and accounted for
in the atmosphere,
but of them,
I,
do not speak
not out loudly anyway

why,
to be lost beneath,
under the munching noises of summer corn
summer fruits, tongue exploding,
clinking of happy glasses,
toasts of "what a great summer eve!"
the wisdom of silence loudly asserts

for who am I to
rob us the deceit,
the human natural conceit,
that the future is the identity of our
permanent press present

that the unpracticed pleasures
of lapping up breezes,
the genteel salted aroma of
heated sweated forehead beads and sea water,
the cocktail odors of barbecue sauce,
fishing boat's diesel, Campari,
root beer floats,
strawberry shortcake's speaking of its peaking,
little children laughing with carousel joy at
running unshod and free upon bunnies and frogs,
all words and thoughts somehow miracle rhyming with...
forever

soon to end in the
disenchantment of reruns on
a flickering black and white tv night,
once again, no longer obsolete,
unlike the man

the eyes glisten from held back tears,
all come to give me hugs, thinking
the old man, in his white apron is
joyous simply happy or simply,
grill smoke got in his eyes

but that one **** degree...

The Harvest of Life Exchanging Itself

     “May I help you?” – More busy in my voice than hurried. A woman points to a quart of peaches she's been studying.  “Sure of herself.” I had been thinking,  “She won't buy anything else.”
Such delicate fruit—one at a time they must be placed in the brown paper bags. I've gotten quick at it.  Then the Standard: “Couple of those are pretty hard yet; Leave 'em out overnight in that bag, and they'll be ready to eat... Anything else?”

     “No nothing more,” small shake of her head.

     Late afternoon at The Farmer's Night Market in Scranton-- the intense bustle of of the early day over –  with its frenzy of bills and change and bags; a new line of faces every sixty seconds, waiting to be waited on.  Questions, peering, turning the fruit to see if one side's as good as the other, and it always is as the Michaels sell only premium fruit at their stand, where I've been “City Help” for two years.

     “No, we won't have cider till after Labor Day when the Miltons come in.”  Funny, I'm starting to sound like a farmer – even know the apples by their different tastes, appearances, and order of ripeness.  There are summer apples, fall, and the winter keepers; and a smaller, rather homely variety, MacCowans, are the best for eating.  I like Cortlands myself.  They remind me of making pies with my mother – the smell of dough and apple skins – the little scavengers waiting for the cores

     The customers have thinned now, scurrying like loaded pack mules – off to their trunks and station wagons.  I can even read their minds!  They're planning dinners, canning pickles!  Roasting corn for cook-outs, planning novel ways to prepare the bounty.  I know these things.  I've been a customer for twenty years from mid-July till Thanksgiving.

     Wiping my sweaty forearms on my jeans, I try to get rid of the prickly-itch of peach fuzz – small price to pay for the afternoons's sweetness.  Then leaning back against some crates, I watch the edges of the canvas shelters flap – storm later?  This place, I was thinking, not much changed from the markets a hundred years ago-- the gathering of life to exchange itself.  We city folk – dependent, fume breathers and asphalt beaters.  Machine-like, silly with wealth or lack; paying, playing, dining out – driving our bad-*** cars toward some goal – never enough – just to wait for old age on the steps of “check day”  Not that farmers don't have their desperate years.  Weather can't be trusted, and there's always the hosts of gnawers, crawlers, and rotters – the unexpected that comes with living things whether cows or turnips.

     I've seen it here: life exchanging itself.  The early yellows and greens of lettuce, squash, beans, and berries; ripening to August corn, tomatoes, and feathery bunches of dill.  Then descent with cooler days to pears and apples, corn, and squash. Late September brings the Indian corn and pumpkins, cider, bushels of potatoes, frosted concord grapes, and zany gourds.

     With the return of Standard Time, come the bare bulbs that light the stands of produce.  At Ruth's the sign reads: “Order Your Capon Here.”  There are hams and roasts and sausage for stuffing.  The winter apples – “Stock up NOW!”  Ideas for holiday decorations; recipes exchanged.  Bushels and bushels for the canners!  And, one farmer sells those branches, heavy with scarlet winter berries for the city doors...  “We close the Wednesday before Thanksgiving”  I always buy those berries.

Good-byes are brisk and sweet – cold breath steams the air.  City and country marking their seasons –  their lives by the market.  The warm greetings of July, “So good to see you again!”
...Marking their lives.  Our children grow so much between the markets.  Generations exchange.  This co-op started eighty years ago, 1939.  For so long, it was the last and only, farmer-owned, open-air market in Pennsylvania.  

     Generations born; some pass or retire in the winter.  Nancy never seems any older than her smile.

     The vegetables always look the same – they're not.  They are the children of last year's veggies.  I suppose if I were to come here for the first time, I would think everything hereå has always been this way.  And, perhaps, I wouldn't be so wrong.  It really didn't seem so different or so long ago in late October when I first watched the farmers huddled around kerosene heaters in parkas, rubbing their hands together, drinking soup and coffee to warm them – stamping a little – pulling off their gloves, reluctant to handle the freezing change.

     “Can I help ya?”
     “Yes... Where's the best place to store potatoes for the winter?...I'll take that one...Yeah, You got it!”

     Dust rose from the spuds, tumbling from the basket to paper bag, and I propped them in my red wagon on one side of my infant daughter.  She was bundled in a plaid wool blanket and wedged between the corn and apples.  Her cheeks were pink with cold in the midst of orange, red and yellow – the colors of life exchanging itself.

Dapple gray harbour
…humpbacks in breach!
a brown ruffed grouse
with apricot cheeks!

Pileated peckers
in caramel trees
the swirling fall mist
and cold gusty breeze

Bonfires and embers
in harvest-moon skies
the cider house rules
and baled-hay rides

Warm roasted chestnuts
and cozy fall stews
scarecrows and pumpkins
those dark autumn blues!

Parkas and sweaters
in cinnamon shades
a hot mulled wine
in the cornfield maze

Pine cones and acorns
on a brisk fall morn
frosty cold breath
and flannels well worn

Ghosts and goblins
…ole hallows eve!
the landscape covered
in dry golden leaves

A grateful Thanksgiving
with family and song
daylight (un)savings
where shadows grow long!

The north wind whispers
harvest complete
stack up the woodpile
winter’s in reach!

Storm clouds are brewing
the foliage flies
let’s spark up the franklin
and scurry inside!

Pull up a blanket
call in the cat
...it's a perfect time
for a fireside chat!

4/14/2023
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l8njruxa73yee9b0jzmhd/The-Ultimate-Unabridged-Guide-to-Esoteric-Working-English-2.docx?­rlkey=kunoar7ghpfkb7fjk5xkdgx95&st=i84ornny&dl=0

JERBOA NEKTON SYNAPHEA BRIMBORIONS SCOWLING AT FRIGHTED PARASELENES OF THE DARKEST DIMMEST SATURNINE JANSKY OF JANITRICES ENDOWED WITH THE NOMOGENY OF FUTURE NOMENCLATORS THAT SWERVE WITH NOTAPHILY BECAUSE OF  NOTITIA ATTEMPT THEIR GALLANT  NICCOLIC GAMBOLS AND SPRAUNCY SPECULAR RETROMORPHOSIS OF PHUGOID VISAGISTS URANOPLASTY ELECTS TO THE OBSOLAGNIUM OF DIESTRUS AMONG HEAVENLY AUDIENCES ENRICHING THE HEGUMENES OF EARTH WITH THE WIDDERSHANCY AGAINST WIDGEONS BECAUSE THE WAPENSHAW SCAMMONY OF STEPNEYS OF STEMSON REGARD THE ZALKENGUR OF GAINSAY IN RENGALL COMEUPPANCE ARE MASTERATE MATACHINS DANCING WITH TERPSICHOREAN CACOETHES BECAUSE OF CALUMETS OF CORTEGE BLANDISHMENTS EXCEL AT TRANSFORMATIVE REVALORIZATION RATHER THAN REGELATION BY CLEPSYDRA HONORS CERACEOUS TROPISMS IN THE VINSKY OF SHIBBOLETH THAT A KAPSTONE PAPER SOCIETY GRIDLOCKED BY THROTTLEBOTTOMS OF MELOPEPON MENSURATION IN RIVETED AUDISM FOR THE COMPLEX TRUTINATION OF THE CERBERIC WILL OF DEMASSIFICATION IN THE CNICNODES OF CTETOLOGY THAT EMPOWER NASONS WITH NASUTE INDOLENCE IMPUDENT ONLY UPON TAMBURITZAS OF TANGORECEPTORS AMONG THE FLOCKS OF MEN BECAUSE THEY FEAR THE NORSELS OF NEMBUTSU THAT ANOINTED ESBATS WITH A PEDIGREE OF CHICANERY AROUND THE MORSES OF VARSAL HEGEMONY OF WHELKY BEATEN BY WALLETEERS SPARING IN TIMES OF FAMINE THE STRAIN IN TIMES OF DESICCATED THIRST IN THE GEOSCOPY OF THE DELIVERANCE OF PYCNOSTYLE PYRETOLOGY TO BECOME FREESTANDING CETACEAN CAMBERS THAT AVOID THE CAIMANS LIKE THEIR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT TO ESTABLISH A VESTIGIAL VENTANA UPON THE VARDLES OF ALL FINESSE IN “CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT”MIKE BOSSY BOSE THAT SPURTLED OFTEN IN THE FAMIGERATION OF WRIKPOND RINKOMANIA SUCH THAT RUBEFACTION IN TRITANOPIA OR MULIEBRITY IN PROTANOPIA MIGHT STORGE THE SALMAGUNDI OF THE BORTS OF THE SARSENET SOCIETY OF COMPOSURE REGALING COMFORTS THAT “THE CREATURE WALKS”PRANCES WITH A DILATORY CALCULUS IN BALEFIRE SUCH THAT THE BOWDLERIZATION OF POTAMOLOGY FOR SQUARSON REGARD IN ABRAXAS SYNERGY FORESEEN BY VENTRAD CHIRKS OF ANTI-HEROS BECOMING VENDETTA VIGILANTES OF THE BRONTEUM OF PLUTOMANIA SUCH THAT NEGOTIOSITY BECOMES A TRIFLE OF THE CLORENCE OF CEPHALIGATION NEWLY INVENTED INTO STREAMLINED TIMMYNOGGIES THE WASTRELS AND WASE OF BARNSTORM THAT UPON THE SERENADE OF LINCOLNS LAST STROLLS OF PURPRESTURE IN THE INCONVENIENCE OF PRE-GALVANIZATION FOR THE DURAMEN TO TRICOTEE WASSAILING THE FORTUNES OF WELDS OF WELLAWAY WANGS AND KENSPECKEL SATURATION OF FLUMINOUS FOGRAM FILEMOTS IN CASEFIED CORDWAINERS THAT AFFIX THEIR STEPWISE CLIMB INTO IMPARLANCE IMPAVID BECAUSE OF THE KLENDUSIC SURVIVAL OF THE VEES AND MOULIN ROUGE GLACIOLOGY OF ARCTICIANS SURMOUNT A SPECULATIVE SPATTEE THAT IS LOUDLY WAILING AND BEMOANING THE ANTIPODES OBLATED IN THEIR OWN NACREOUS NAGORS OF NEMBUTSU CAVERNOUS IN THEIR CHUCKWALLA ACCLAIM OF THIGMOTAXIS FOR MIGNONS OF CHIRAPSIA SPARRING AGAINST THE UPSTART PRESBYTERY CUT AWAY AND RESECTIONED ENDLESSLY IN THE MARAUD OF BENIGHTED KNIGHTS SURVEYING THE EMPTY EXPANSE OF QUIDCUNX OF COLORATION SOLVING THE EQUIPOISE OF STOCKINETTE SUCH THAT  RADICALISM BY BLESBOKS IS STERNLY REPRIMANDED BY THE STERNWAY OF EQUESTRIAN SYNCOPATION UPON BEBLUBBERED ATRABILIARY ABAXIAL CONUNDRUMS THE SALVATION OF THE FEW AND THE FAMISH OF THE POISON IVY SOCIETIES OF COGNOSCENTI RHIZOGENIC TO ALL SURDS AND SURDOMUTE SURQUEDRIES SUCH THAT BLAZING CONFLAGRATION OF BONHOMIE BONFIRES ALWAYS ENTITLES THE WHIFFETS AND WHIPSTAFF OF THE WAPENTAKE OF THE REJOINDER GENERATION TO EXALT AND EXCEL DESPITE PRIMORDIAL IGNOMINIES ESTABLISHED BY EMOTIVISM BECAUSE THE EISOPTROMANIA OF ONE IS THE PANOPTICON TO MANY A SECRET TROVE AND MORE VIKING MARAUDERS OF THE DISTANT APOSTIL TO APOSTLESHIP DEFINING THE SOTERIOLOGY OF MAGNANIMITY BARMCLOTHS OF BARMASTERS IN THE OLD BRIQUET ARRANGEMENT OF HOLOCRYPTIC HOLTS BECOMES STRIGINE ONLY IN LAMBENT ALPENGLOW TWILLS OF BOREALIS TEMPER AND THE PHLEGMATIC HUMOR OF THE TEDIUM OF THE PRETECHNOLOGICAL ARGALI OF MASTERWORKS BY MOUNTENANCE ALONE SCURFY IN THE HALLSWALLOP OF “PRINCE OF JERUSALEM”CELLARERS IN THE MAMMOCK OF DEPREDATION SWERVING FROM INCOHERENCE IN DRIVEL TO THE LIVELIHOOD OF THE SAINTS UPON THEIR MORTAL METENSOMATOSIS BECAUSE OF MALABATHRUM ATTEMPTS TO BECOME INVICTIVE IN FUTURE SCENARIO FOR WILDING ALBENTURE THAT DISCOVERS ALL WOOLFELL MALAPERT QUANDARIES OF JAWHOLE AND JATO SUCH THAT STREAMLINED MILITARIES IMBREVIATED CENOTES OF CENTROBARIC COBALTIFEROUS COMBUVIROUS CHERNOZEMS OF THE ARTICULATE FRINGES OF THE EXTRAMUNDANE SHALLOPED UPON THE EARTH AND JOGGLING WITH EACH SEISMIC SVEDBERG ROLLICKING THE ROIL OF ROORBACKS OF ROARING 20S VERDURE MIGHT THE SCAPPLE OF SOVENANCE AND THE VEILLEUSES THAT DEPEND ON WHEATENS OF MUGIENCE BASED ON SQUAMATION AND WAINAGE FROM WANIGANS THAT THE NEXILITY OF FUTURE GROMATIC PRECISION ALIGNS THE SYZYGY OF GALLANT GAMESMANSHIP FOR PLACKIQUES OF THE PLECKIGGER TO ASSUME A SUBERIC VALUE IN THE VAULT OF NOSTALGIA THAT ENTOMBS TO MANY AUDISMS OF IAMATOLOGY FOR IATRALIPTIC ASCERTAINED CERTAINTIES OF SOCKDOLAGER TO SUBSUME A TYRANNY OF CUCULINE AND CUNICULOUS SWARF SPAWNED UPON THE ARENEIDAN ARENOIDS THAT SURVIVE AMONG THE LAST REGNANT HUMANISM RECENSED ON BRACHYDACTYLOUS REVANCHE TO THE ELLIPSOIDS OF TURBINATED BUT TUBIFACIENT PIRACY OF CONTEMPORARY REVELATIONS UPON THE ENGROSSED BOX OFFICE SOCIETIES THAT SCAFFOLD TO THE PINNACLE THE ABRAXAS OF ALBATROSS TRUSTS OF JALOUSIES OF CAMBERS BELONGING TO THE HIGHER ORDERS OF HISTORICAL REFINEMENT BECAUSE OF THEIR FLAIRS IGNOVIMOUS UPON THE PAST IN MASTERY OF BUSHWHACKER FUTURISM THAT BEAMS WITH BARNSTORM AND STEAM ENGINES THE WAY FOR CALVERS EVEN WHEN CALVOUS TO MOUNT EMOLUMENT AND PILOT AGAINST PILATES OF OUR MODERN AGE IN THEIR LASSITUDE AND LACHRYMOSE LAODICEAN AGATHISMS SUCH THAT ENDANGERED GLEBES ORBITING THE HYPAETHRAL GLANCE AND LEER OF LEARY TRAMONTANE WHERRETS OF RASPY TEARS BEMOANING THE SQUINTIFEGOS THAT BELEAGUER THEMSELVES ON “BLUEPRINTS OF THE BLACK MARKET” “24K MAGIC”SOCIETIES THAT SIMPER AMONG THE REST AS SUPREME PROMACHOS ENTILTING THE FUTURE TO WOBBLE IN SYNCOPATION WITH HETEROCHRONY ITSELF SUCH AS AITCHBONES AND THE CORDWAINER ADVOWSONS WHO UNDERSTAND THE THERMODYNAMICS OF RACIAL STRIFE MUST HEAL OUR DIVISIONS TO RECLAIM THE LAND OF DEPREDATED JAMDANIS SUCH THAT YELEKS OF YARAKS BECOME THE HABITUES OF EVERY CAVERNILOQUY OWNED BY EVERY STANJANT MUSEUM OF ATHENAEUM IN SUPEREROGATORY FRUITION. SEMAPHORES OF ACCOLENT ABATJOUR ANOINT THE MASONS OF OUR TIME THROUGH SUBLIME CURRENCY SUGGESTIONS THAT REIFY THE HYPOSTASIS AGAINST HYPOCRISY BECAUSE TOO MANY WIDGEONS ARE DELUDED BY THE HENOTHEISM OF MISGUIDED BAHUVHRIS OF SECULAR BEDIZENED DENIZENS OF GINNELS AMONG RUDENTURE GIMCRACKS SUCH THAT STARVELING IGNOMINY BECOMES THE STEEPEST CLAMBER IN DILATORY ANFRACTUOUSNESS BLATTERNOPHONES OF BACILISUM SUPINE IN INTERREGNUM THE OBROGATION OF THE VESTIGIAL PROMONTORY OF MARTINGALE BECAUSE OF PROFOUND JASPERATED DESPERATION AMONG JARVEYING WORLDS ORCHESTRATED BY PRIMIPARAS OF SIMULTAGNOSIA SUCH THAT SCENOGRAPHY OF DYSCHROA OFTEN SUBSUME THE BRUNT OF THE WORK OF CONSCIENTIOUS ATTEMPTS TO REFORM THE COLLEGIAL ESTEEM OF GRADGRIND STATOLITHS THAT AFFLICT THE FEWER LIMACINE CATAPLEXIES RATHER THAN CEMENTUM BURROWED INTO HYPOGEIODY’S BLINDEST INSTINCTS INFORMED BY HEAPSTEADS OF STAMMERING STANNARIES SUCH THAT THE CEILOMETERS OF CELSITUDE BECOME AN ARTIFACT NOT MERELY OF OUR HUBRIS BUT OUR TOTEMIC CONCERN FOR SUBALTERN MEGALOGRAPHY THAT CAESARAPROPRISM SLELLUMS IN MODERATION OF MODALISM AROUND KINGS AND QUEENS OF THE “NO SLEEP UNTIL BROOKLYN”SECRECY BECAUSE THE WORLD IS ONLY YOURS WHEN THE BORDARS OF BARKENTINE TITRATING AN ATTEMPERED SOCIETAL TRIAGE TO SWAPE WITH MAJORITARIAN HUES A COBBLED CONTRAPLEX SOLUTION TO THE ACCIDIA RATHER THAN EUPRAXIA AMONG THE ARRIVISTES OF VIRILITY CONSOLED AND CAJOLED BY A COMPROMISE OF PATRIARCHY TO THE ECCLESIASTICAL RENEWAL OF MULIEBRITY TO STOP SLEEK MAXIMALISM IN THE LAXISM OF PERVERSE LOVE AND ASKEW COCARDENS THAT BELONG TO THE REALM OF VENTRALABRAL AMNESIA SUCH THAT THEY STOPE AROUND RHEOTAXIS TO STERNWAY THE CABOOSE OF EVERY CUCULINE MALFUNCTION PRICKLY ON TRIBULOID DIETS OF JAUNDICE SUCH THAT EVENTUAL REPARTEE SEGUES WITH ZALKENGUR OF AGRIOZIATRY THAT FORESEES THE POTENTIAL OF ABAXIAL NAZES AND NAVES TO RAMPART THE NYALAS INTO INDEMNITY BECAUSE OF JINGOISM GONE ASTRAY AND A “VIEW ASKEW”PARODY OF SELF-IMPORTANT RIGORS TO DROWN IN A NOYADE NEVER ABAFT ENOUGH TO SURVIVE THE THROTTLED THREMMATOLOGY OF TOFTS BECOMING SUMPTERS OF SUNBITTERN REGALIA WHICH CAMPAIGN A SYBOTIC LABARUM OF ANNEALED SWANK AND REGIMENTED METAPHORS OF BYWORD ARISTOCRACY MANAGED OFTEN WITH  OVERHAILED FORCE BY NEOPHRONS WHO MISCAST EVERY VILLAINY IN AN ATTEMPT TO SQUELCH INTO SILENCE THE CORYPHAEUS OF CIVILIZED REFORMS IN A SOCIETY BUILT ON SPHACELATED BEAUTY AND RAPACIOUS BOODLE. THE ARGALIS OF GALLIVANTED FREEBOOTERS OF STRICT CABOTAGE IN THE VENOCLYSIS TO THEIR TITRATED ADDICTION TO THE NEW YORK TIMES AFFECT ON MAN LIVE INEVITABLY IN THE SCRUTINY OF PALLOR SUCH THAT ESCAPING THIXOTROPY BY MIGNONS OF NOTAPHILY SUSTAINED BY “HOT TUB TIME MACHINE”RIGORS OF ENTHUSIASM NEVER CURBED BY THE CURGLAFF OF NESCIENT IGNAVIA IN PARVANIMITY SUCH THAT THEIR GENIUS JOCKO BOYAUS OF JOLTERHEADS SQUIRMING IN PISCIFAUNA MIGHT THAT SPAR AGAINST SPARTANISM ITSELF—A PARCHMENT OF THE MOST DELIBERATE WIDGEON SUBVERSION OF PROTANOPIA BECAUSE OF AN INVETERATE TRUST IN BRAINTRUST ALLEGORIES CAVORTING WITH BLUSHING INFAMIES SUCH THAT IMPUDENT GAIN BLAINS THE BLUNGE OF OPERATIVE FULGURANT RATOMORPHISM BECOMING A COSTERMONGER SALVATION OF A TERMINAL TERMINUS BUSBOATING A BUMICKY BADIGEON OF MAGICAL TAGHAIRM THAT ANOINTS DEGREES OF PRESTIGE FOR AN AUTOBAHN STREAMLINE RATHER THAN A MUDDIED ROAD OF ROARING 20S FINIFUGAL CALCIFUGE CALCARIFEROUS CARNALITY INDOLENT UPON RICHES AND INCUMBENT UPON COCARDEN SUCH THAT THE SLAYING TITANS HYDRAHEADED IN FORESIGHT OF THE MACHIAVELLIAN PLOTS BY NECROTYPES AGAINST NECROLOGUES BUT OK WITH THE LYCEUM OF MORTIFEROUS MORTMAINS TO BROOK STREAMLINED REPUGNANCE MIGHT EVENTUALLY ALABASTER IVORY TOWER VERDURE OF THE BOSCHVELDT CHARGE THE PROPER CHIMINAGE FOR CHIMNEYS OF THE WHIMPER OF THE MASCARON IN THE FETED “ARMY OF ME”DENTICLES AND FORSOOTH THE GAINSAY OF TITANISM OF DWIZZENED BRUTALITY MIGHT SUCCOR THEIR WAY TOWARDS SUSSULTATORY FORESIGHT FLICKERING IN ALPENGLOW VORAGINOUS VISAGISTS OF VRAISEMBLANCE IN THE VUGS OF SAXIFRAGOUS CONTUMELY AND CONTUMACY MET WITH THE DIRIGISME OF LACKADAY RIMOSE STEPNEYS ON THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN RATHER THAN THE HIGHWAY TO HELL. WE RAPIDLY PERUSE EVERY TRIBUNE OF BERLINE COMPLICITY IN THE MACARISM OF MACROBIAN LONGEVITY OF PROSPEROUS STREAKS OF BUOYANT TRICOTEES THAT WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER THE SCORIAS OF IMAGINATIVE GLANCES AT FUTURE VIEWERSHIP OF TRICHOSIS IN DURATIVE FORMATION PROMINENT AMONG  DURAMEN STRICKLES THAT SWERVE FROM SWARTH AND RENEW THE PLEDGE TO REMAIN “PEOPLE OF THE BOOK”LASSOING “RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARC”CARRACKS TO THE ENTHUSIASTIC PASTORAULING PURPRESTURE OF INSOUCIANCE THAT GALLOPS FROM PRECIPICE TO APOGEE AND BACK AGAIN IN RETROGRADE LIMELIGHT BLARING BLATTERNOPHONES OF THE “PANOPTICON OF THE MASTER CLOCK”BECAUSE NEMBUTSU BOWS BEFORE GOD AND MAN THAT IS SLIPSHOD IN ITS DIRIGISME IN BERGAMASK CULVERTAGE OF ICEBLINKS OF VERGLAS THAT MEMORIALIZE THE PLIGHT OF THE PRESENT AND THE REMORSE OF THE PAST TO THE INEVITABILITY OF FLASHBANG FUTURISM SUCH THAT SAXHORNS COULD NEVER MORE STRONGLY EXHORT A UNIFIED DEMARCHE RATHER THAN A TILTED TWILL OF TWADDLED HOLOCRYPTIC METEMPIRICAL PLEONASMS THAT REITERATE THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY ALL TO THE GLORY OF THE SAINTS AND ANGELS OF THE HEGUMENE AND THE ROODS THAT RUDELY INTERRUPTED OUR STARLIT DAYDREAM BELIEVING MAZUT AND THE SADDER MAZOPATHIA OF RECKLINGS OF TURTLEBACK SLOWLY BURNING AWAY THEIR FLAMBEAUS OF DELUSION INTO THE PARALYSIS OF GINGLYMUS AMONG THE SYNAPHEA STELLIONS THAT ARE STANDPIPES TOWARDS ALL HUMAN LIBERATION BECAUSE OF NACREOUS CABRILLA SUCH THAT NEVER TOLD BARCAROLES OF THE CAUDLE OF COSSETED CATHEDRA THAT CATHEAD CLOTURE SEEKS TO FINALLY ABRIDGE THE SUFFRAGE OF SUFFERING CONSPUED MINORITIES IN THEIR PLEDGE OF PATRIOTIC ENRICHMENT OF A TRICKLE DOWN SYSTEM OF FATIDICAL FASHIONS NOW IN THE HEYDAY OF  THEIR TRANSPARENCY TO ANOINT THE MESCULONIES THAT WERE STALWART THICKETS OF PRISTINE ASYLUM AND SILENTIUM SUCH THAT THE FEWER WERE INFORMED OF THE GREATER TRAVESTY OF HISTORICAL DEFECTS TOO SUPERNAL AND SUPERLATIVE TO EVER EVADE BY TIME’S HONEST DESIGN. THE STRATEGY OF THROTTLEBOTTOMED WAPENTAKE IN ILKENGOR WITH ILLAQUEATION THAT CANNULAR HEISTS OF CANQUE THAT NOTARIZE THE NOTAPHILY OF NOTITIA IN NICCOLIC DEMUR SUCH THAT NIDAMENTAL CARDIOGNOST BARRULETS OF SIRENS OF BRASH QUISQUILOUS LANDFILLS OF TOXIC NUCLEARITY AGAINST NUCLEOTIDES OF NEPIONIC OIKONISUS BECAUSE IN INCONVENIENT THRESHES OF IMMERGENCE WE SLAKE ONLY THE APPETITES OF INSATIABLE MEN BROWBEATING THEIR JOGGLED SVEDBERGS MIGHT THEY ENCOUNTER THE DUTIFUL AGGIORNAMENTO NOT OF RICHES OF MATERIAL EMOLUMENT BY THE CONTRITE AND PENITENT HEART OF ACCOLENT NOTORIETY BECOMING LIP BALM FOR FAMISHED FAME SPARKLING WITH FIREWORKS WIDELY HARROWING AND TRIED BY THE CRUCIBLES OF TAGHAIRM GOETICS FOR THE BAEDEKERS OF THE TIMEPIECES. GODS GREATEST SWITH IN MAGNANIMITY FOR PRICKLY BLACKGUARD BLEMISHED BY TOADY PEOPLE WHO WORSHIP STARFISH URCHINS OF TEN FOOT PARKAS AND SOUTH PARK LITURGIES MIGHT EVENTUALLY THEIR SQUARSON CONSCIENCE OWING ALL TO SALVATION NOT OF RICHES BUT OF CARDIOGNOST MAINSAIL SUBINTELLIGENTUR REVELATIONS THAT SQUAWK ON EVERY CROWDED BARRISTER OF THE STREETS SUCH THAT THE FANFARONADE BECOMES THE ANSWER TO ALL UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF SYNCLASTIC BORDARS OF SINECURE PAYING FEALTY TO PASTIMES BECOMING GHAWAZIS AND RIGORS BECOMING FLUENT IN THE EASY DREARY DAYS OF ZEITGEIST OF GELOGENIC CACKLING CREVASSES ON AN EVEREST PATHWAY OF PROMISELAND TITANS AND EMERGING IMPERIAL REGARDS BECAUSE THE “TEACHERS”SOCIETY THAT “OVERTHROWS ALL THE PIRATES”FROM “FALLING POISON IVY”BECOMES THE TALISMAN TO REJUVENATE THE CORTEGES OF BELIEF IN THE MOST SUPREME GOD RATHER THAN THE MOST ESTEEMED MAMMON BECAUSE WE DENOUNCE WIDGEONS AND WE ELEVATE THE CAUSES OF GAMMERSTANGS EVERYWHERE THAT ARE CONTECKED WITH STRIDULATION OF STADIOMETERS BECAUSE THE WANIGANS OF WANGS OF SHANTUNG OF WONDERWORK PRODIGIES OF BINTURONG FAME SUCH THAT THE IDEOGENY OF HISTORY BELONGS TO CETACEAN KNIGHTS WORKING TOGETHER WITH SPRINGBOKS AGAINST MURENGERS OF SPRINGHARES TO FORM AN ABDERVINE MERIT BUILT ON TRIAGE AND POKERISH CHARADE ALWAYS CONSCIENTIOUS OF NIDOR RATHER THAN NIDIFUGOUS SCRAWLS OF INTEMERATION THAT PANDER ENDLESSLY IN PROVINCIAL WASES OF THE TRACASSERIE OF STERILE PROVIDENCE RATHER THAN AUSTERE VENERATION FOR THE MIRACULOUS SECUNDINE GROWTH OF REVENANT  SPIRITS EVICTED FROM THE LAND OF THE DEAD SUCH THAT THE ANACAMPSEROTES OF LIFE MIGHT ENDOW THEM AGAIN AGAINST PENURY AND POVERTY THE RICHES OF HEAVEN RENOWNED BY URANOPLASTY RATHER THAN SUCCEDANEUM OF SCAMPERING ATTEMPTS BY VARDLES AND VARDO OF PROXENETES WHO TEAM WITH ICICLES FOR ICEBLINKS SUCH THAT SUTLERS THAT MOBILIZE LIBERATION WILL ALWAYS BE DENOUNCED FOR THEIR TEMERITY DESPITE ISOGENS OF VALOR FOR ISOKERAUNIC SQUEAMISH MASCONS BECAUSE GEOCARPY IS A CONSUMERIST SPORT OF HOBNOBBING AT MALLS WHICH SATIATE THEIR EVERY REGARD AND SINK SLOWLY INTO THE ABYSS OF HOLOBENTHIC CONVERSIONS BECAUSE THE TREACLE OF THE SECULAR IS A FLAGRANT MISTAKE. WE MUST ENLIST THE MORAL RIGORS OF LITURGY TO ENHANCE THE AGGIORNAMENTO OF THE HOLIEST OF CHURCHES AND THE MOST BENEFICENT MOSQUES AND THE MOST INVETERATE SYNAGOGUES THAT WE MIGHT OBEY DIVINE PREROGATIVES SYLLABATIM ENUMERATED BY THE ORIGINAL “KING OF KINGS”WHO LEAD A PEACEFUL EFFORT TO PROSELYTIZE THE WORLD TO A WORLD OF NEIGHBORLY WELCOME RATHER THAN AUSTERE NEGLECT AND DERELICT BOWERIES NIVELLATED BEYOND THE REACH OF STANDPIPES BECAUSE GOD IS AN AUTHOR OF WISDOM THAT IS CONSCIENTIOUS OF THE WISEACRES TOLD IN THE TOMES THAT ALWAYS VOUCHSAFE PROMACHOS CORYPHAEUS SUCH THAT DELIMITED DEMARCATIONS OF THE NOVANTIQUE FALL UNDER THE DIVINE CULTIVATION RATHER THAN A RITCHIE RICH OBSESSION ONLY WITH THE VANGUARD ANARCHY OF ALLODIC SUPREMACY IN WHEREAGAINST FICTIONS.WHEN WE LOOK AT GIOVANNI PICO MIRANDOLA’S ORATION OF THE DIGNITY OF MAN WE FIND THE CULPABLE VENDETTA OF VIGILANTES AND THE TEDIUM OF THE PRIMIPARAS THAT WITH BEBLUBBERED AND LACHRYMOSE SATURNINE FEARS OF FETED AGIOTAGE OR DISAGIO IN ALTERNATION AROUND SIMULTAGNOSIA FORMED BY THE HETEROCHRONY OF PRECISE RUMORS REFINED BY THE VIRTUOSITY OF THE WORLDS BEST NEMBUTSU DESIGNED FOR A HEAVENLY KINGDOM OF THE PERDURABLE WE MUST FORSAKE OUR PISMIRISM AND OUR PILPULS OF THE APIKOROS IDOL WORSHIPPERS THAT FOUND ARTWORK TO BE THE EMBODIMENT OF GOD RATHER THAN THE COMMANDMENT AGAINST GRAVEN IMAGES THAT WE MIGHT RETHINK THE PAST AS A CONVENTICLE OF BABLYONIAN IDEALS THAT RESURRECTED ROMAN HEDONISMS AND RECAPITULATED GREEK IMAGINATIONS SUCH THAT NOW WE CAN DEFEAT THE PNYX AND RENEW THE RENAISSANCE CREATED BY PLUTOMANIA IN COMPETITION WITH THE INSUBORDINATION OF COGWHEEL CODSWALLOP OF WHEELHOUSE BELLARMINE MIGHT WE ALWAYS REGARD THIS ZEITGEIST AS THE PROMINENT THICKET AT THE EDGE OF THE PROMENADE THAT MOBILIZES THE CENTURIONS OF ALL MAJOR CENTURIES OF REVERENCE AND OBEISANCE TO BE SEQUESTRATED FROM THE REMAINDER OF TIME SUCH THAT EVENTUALLY THE ACCOLENT WEALTH OF THE ACCOSTED NEVER BECOMES A PRISMATIC PISMIRISM THAT NEGLECTS THE PISCIFAUNA. WE MUST DEVOTE OUR RICHES TO THE TRUE RELIGION OF THE ORPHAN AND THE WIDOW AND WITH RENOWN CELEBRATE ALL OF OUR NEIGHBORS WITH A FRIENDLY CAMARADERIE RATHER THAN A DISTANT UMBRIL OF SACROSANCT CLEPSYDRAS BLEEDING THE PARCHMENT OF ITS INK THAT  THE BAHUVHRI OF NEW WORLD WISDOM MIGHT BE THE CONCLAMATION OF A BEAMING CITY UPON A HILL BUILT TO LAST SO THAT EVENTUALLY THE CRYPTADIA OF GLIB PARLANCE AND PAR FOUR ELEMENTS OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOLASTICATE MIGHT WE REFORM THROUGH STRIDULATION AND PETITION THE GLORY OF ALL THE LORDS THAT GRACED THE PROVENANCE OF EARTH THAT ORBIT AROUND THE HEGUMENES THAT GUARD THE TREASURES OF WOOLFELL AND WOOLPACK OF WOOLDS OF WOONERF SUCH THAT SARANGOUSTY PROFITEERS AT THE EDGES OF REVOLUTE AND FRAYED SCHMEGGEGY MIGHT BE DEFEATED BY THE SONDAGE OF THE SEDERUNT AND AVIZANDUM OF THE REGAL PROPRIETOR BRACKISHLY CONVENING THE TAMARAW OF A COUP RATHER THAN A CODDLED HENPECK MOONLIGHT DRIVE HEAVEN THAT IS SO BLINKERED WITH PRESTIGE IT FORGETS THE CALIPACE OF ITS OWN MORAL ENDURANCE IN THE CHILIARCHY OF WORDBOUND WINDCHEATERS THAT BOOMERANG AROUND CENTRIPETAL CYNOSURE SIGNIFICAT AND ECLAT SUCH THAT THE LIONIZED MUSEUMS OF MOSES NEVER FALL FALLOW WITH TURGID DISREGARD IN AN ERA OF PINACOTHECA BECAUSE WE OWE IT ALL TO THE STEWARDSHIP OF ARCEATED OCREATED WILLOWISH MARTINGALES MIGHT THEY BY GIRDLED BY THE FESTOON OF NEVER A LUKEWARM REGARD FOR ANTEBELLUM SUMPTERS OF DIVINE DESTINY. GOD BELONGS CENTRAL TO OUR CONSIDERATIONS AND HE EXHORTS ALL TOWARDS PUSHFUL AMBITION RESIGNED TO THE FACT THAT PAST ATROCITY IS THE PROGENITOR OF PRESENT FELICITY BUT EVEN IN STREAKY CITIES BENIGHTED BY WROX AND THE WROTH OF RAMPAGING VEILLEUSES AND THEIR RAGGED CULVERTAGE MIGHT WE CALVER OUR WAY INTO GROWTH RATHER THAN SUBSIDE LIKE LIMACINE COWARDS INTO THE BUSHWHACKING BYRE OF BUSHWAS THAT ONLY SURVIVE SCRUTINY IN THE GNOTOBIOLOGY OF DENIAL AND THE GEITONOGAMY OF SACRILEGE BECAUSE OF THE SACRIFICES THE PLAGUES OF FAMINE ARRESTING THE PHAROAHS OF ILLUMINATION IN GINGLYMUS MIGHT THEY ARRAY THEMSELVES VANGUARD IN VENTRAD HOPES TO COUNTERMAND THE EVIL UNDERBELLY AND YEDDA OF JOUGS THAT ENTRAP JORDANS BECAUSE THEIR SPOKESHAVEN ECONOMETRIC SCALES RATHER THAN FINIFUGAL FRIGHTS OF RHADAMANTHINE ESBAT OLMS OF SACRIFICE BECOME THE BEAM OF THE BEATIFICATION OF THE WORLD UNDER GODS MAJESTIC MANDATES. AMEN

Once 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. Keywords/Tags: blank verse, winter, December, snow, white, ghosts, parka, frozen, star, warm, warmth, tenderness, glove, ice

Postcards and letters
T-shirts and sweaters
Passports and Parkas
Mobiles and chargers
Two tennis rackets
Blue Rizla packets
A new sheep-skin jacket
I lost it all
All through my life there have been
Many rare and precious things
I have tried to call mine
But I just cannot seem
To keep hold of anything
For more than a short time
Possessions of a sentimental kind
They were mine, now they're not
Gym-kits and trainers
Asthma inhalers
Silk-cuts and Bennies
Ten-packs and twenties
C-class narcotics
Antibiotics
The holes in my pockets
I lost it all
All that I'd like is to know
Just where do those lost things go?
When they slip from my hands
Then one night in a dream
I passed through a sheepskin screen
To a green, pleasant land
I found them all piled up into the sky
And I cried tears of joy


The Divine Comedy
https://youtu.be/LRYObCtDriA

You can feel your hands
when they're numb and
that sounds plum loco
which is something I know
a lot about.

People in Parkas and duffle coats,  woolly hats and the man in the corner taking notes, it's all
a bit surreal

I still feel my hands even though it's chilly
and I'm wondering will he
ever stop writing?

He might in
a day or two
If the weather changes
and the skies turn blue.

Rehearsal?
that's what this could he
a try out for the 'City'
or it could be the real deal,

I can still feel
my hands.