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Daredevil by Michael R. Burch There are days that I believe (and nights that I deny) love is not mutilation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There are tightropes leaps bereave— taut wires strumming high brief songs, infatuations. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were cannon shots’ soirees, hearts barricaded, wise . . . and then . . . annihilation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were nights our hearts conceived untruths reborn as sighs. To dream was our consolation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were acrobatic leaves that tumbled down to lie at our feet, bright trepidations. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were hearts carved into trees— tall stakes where you and I left childhood’s salt libations . . . Daredevil, dry your eyes. Where once you scraped your knees; love later bruised your thighs. Death numbs all, our sedation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. Keywords/Tags: Daredevil, love, mutilation, tightrope, high, wire, acrobatic, tumble, bruised, fall, sedation, death, mrbdare, mrbch Passionate One by Michael R. Burch for Beth Love of my life, light of my morning― arise, brightly dawning, for you are my sun. Give me of heaven both manna and leaven― desirous Presence, Passionate One. My wife Beth has been a Daredevil for Love, sometimes engaging in high-wire acts that defied gravity. At times her acrobatic moves resulted in tumbles, falls, and bruises, but she never stopped loving her family and friends. Thus, the first two poems are related, although the woman in the first poem is imaginary. In My House by Michael R. Burch When you were in my house you were not free― in chains bound. Manifest Destiny? I was wrong; my plantation burned to the ground. I was wrong. This is my song, this is my plea: I was wrong. When you are in my house, now, I am not free. I feel the song hurling itself back at me. We were wrong. This is my history. I feel my tongue stilting accordingly. We were wrong; brother, forgive me. Published by Black Medina. This is poem about a different kind of high-wire act, a different kind of tension, and a different kind of fall, bruising and mutilation. At the time I wrote this poem, I had hired two fine young black men as programmers and they had keys to my house, where I was the minority on work days. Less Heroic Couplets: ****** Most Fowl! by Michael R. Burch ****** most foul!” cried the mouse to the owl. “Friend, I’m no sinner; you’re merely my dinner!” the wise owl replied as the tasty snack died. Originally published by Lighten Up Online and in Potcake Chapbook #7. In an attempt to demonstrate that not all couplets are heroic, I have created a series of poems called “Less Heroic Couplets.” I believe even poets should abide by truth-in-advertising laws! Mice are acrobatic little daredevils. ― MRB Leaf Fall by Michael R. Burch Whatever winds encountered soon resolved to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall. In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each dry leaf into its place and built a high, soft bastion against earth's gravitron― a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright impediment to fling ourselves upon. And nothing in our laughter as we fell into those leaves was like the autumn's cry of also falling. Nothing meant to die could be so bright as we, so colorful― clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again. Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea. This is a poem about yet another kind of fall and the kind of bruising that increases with advancing age. Herbsttag ("Autumn Day" or "Fall Day") by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go. Lay your long shadows over the sundials and over the meadows, let the free winds blow. Command the late fruits to fatten and shine; O, grant them another Mediterranean hour! Urge them to completion, and with power convey final sweetness to the heavy wine. Who has no house now, never will build one. Who's alone now, shall continue alone; he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends, and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down, restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend. Originally published by Measure. This is one of my favorite Rilke poems, about the feelings of loneliness a fall day can inspire. To the boy Elis by Georg Trakl translation by Michael R. Burch Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest, it announces your downfall. Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness. Your brow sweats blood recalling ancient myths and dark interpretations of birds' flight. Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls; the ripe purple grapes hang suspended as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness. A thornbush crackles; where now are your moonlike eyes? How long, oh Elis, have you been dead? A monk dips waxed fingers into your body's hyacinth; Our silence is a black abyss from which sometimes a docile animal emerges slowly lowering its heavy lids. A black dew drips from your temples: the lost gold of vanished stars. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem. I Loved You by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin translation by Michael R. Burch I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ... perhaps for a while such emotions may remain. But please don’t let my feelings trouble you; I do not wish to cause you further pain. I loved you ... thus the hopelessness I knew ... The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain resulted in two hearts so wholly true the gods might grant us leave to love again. Wulf and Eadwacer ancient Anglo-Saxon/Old English poem, circa 960 AD loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch My clan's curs pursue him like crippled game; they'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack. It is otherwise with us. Wulf's on one island; we're on another. His island's a fortress, fastened by fens. Here, bloodthirsty curs howl for carnage. They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack. It is otherwise with us. My heart pursued Wulf like a panting hound, but whenever it rained—how I wept! — the boldest cur grasped me in its paws: good feelings for him, but for me loathsome! Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you has made me sick; your seldom-comings have left me famished, deprived of real meat. Have you heard, Eadwacer? Watchdog! A wolf has borne our wretched whelp to the woods! One can easily sever what never was one: our song together. Hymn for Fallen Soldiers by Michael R. Burch Sound the awesome cannons. Pin medals to each breast. Attention, honor guard! Give them a hero’s rest. Recite their names to the heavens Till the stars acknowledge their kin. Then let the land they defended Gather them in again. When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem. Attilâ İlhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, translator, novelist, screenwriter, editor, journalist, essayist, reviewer, socialist and intellectual. Ben Sana Mecburum: “You are indispensable” by Attila Ilhan translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch You are indispensable; how can you not know that you’re like nails riveting my brain? I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions. You are indispensable; how can you not know that I burn within, at the thought of you? Trees prepare themselves for autumn; can this city be our lost Istanbul? Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness as the street lights flicker and the streets reek with rain. You are indispensable, and yet you are absent ... Love sometimes seems akin to terror: a man tires suddenly at nightfall, of living enslaved to the razor at his neck. Sometimes he wrings his hands, expunging other lives from his existence. Sometimes whichever door he knocks echoes back only heartache. A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih ... a song about some Friday long ago. I stop to listen from a vacant corner, longing to bring you an untouched sky, but time disintegrates in my hands. Whatever I do, wherever I go, you are indispensable, and yet you are absent ... Are you the blue child of June? Ah, no one knows you―no one knows! Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters ... Perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy? Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain that leaves you blind, beset, broken, with wind-disheveled hair? Whenever I think of life seated at the wolves’ table, shameless, yet without soiling our hands ... Yes, whenever I think of life, I begin with your name, defying the silence, and your secret tides surge within me making this voyage inevitable. You are indispensable; how can you not know? Fragments by Attila Ilhan loose English translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch ** The night is a cloudy-feathered owl, its quills like fine-spun glass. It gazes out the window, perched on my right shoulder, its wings outspread and huge. If the encroaching darkness seems devastating at first glance, the sovereign of everything, its reach infinite ... Still somewhere within a kernel of light glows secretly creating an enlightened forest of dialectics. ** In September’s waning days one thinks wanly of the arrival of fall like a ship appearing on the horizon with untrimmed, tattered sails; for some unfathomable reason fall is the time to consider one’s own demise― the body smothered by yellowed leaves like a corpse rotting in a ghoulish photograph ... ** Bitter words crack like whips snapping across prison yards ... Then there are words like pomegranate trees in bloom, words like the sun igniting the sea beyond mountainous horizons, flashing like mysterious knives ... Such words are the burning roses of an infinite imagination; they are born and they die with the flutterings of butterflies; we carry those words in our hearts like pregnant shotguns until the day we expire, martyred for the words we were prepared to die for ... ** What I wrote and what you understood? Curious and curiouser! escape! by michael r. burch to live among the daffodil folk . . . slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . . suddenly pop out the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . . minuscule as alice, shout yippee-yi-yee! in wee exultant glee to be leaving behind the LARGE THREE-DENALI GARAGE. Escape!! by Michael R. Burch You are too beautiful, too innocent, too inherently lovely to merely reflect the sun’s splendor ... too full of irresistible candor to remain silent, too delicately fawnlike for a world so violent ... Come, my beautiful Bambi and I will protect you ... but of course you have already been lured away by the dew-laden roses ... Dream of Infinity by Michael R. Burch Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair? Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach, then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach? Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage? Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too, have dreamed of infinity... windswept and blue. This poem was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses. I was paid a whopping $10, my first cash payment. It was subsequently published by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Poetry Life & Times, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse. 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. Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge Ann Rutledge was apparently Abraham Lincoln’s first love interest. Unfortunately, she was engaged to another man when they met, then died with typhoid fever at age 22. According to a friend, Isaac Cogdal, when asked if he had loved her, Lincoln replied: “It is true―true indeed, I did. I loved the woman dearly and soundly: She was a handsome girl―would have made a good, loving wife … I did honestly and truly love the girl and think often, often of her now.” Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge by Michael R. Burch Winter was not easy, nor would the spring return. I knew you by your absence, as men are wont to burn with strange indwelling fire― such longings you inspire! But winter was not easy, nor would the sun relent from sculpting ****** images and how could I repent? I left quaint offerings in the snow, more maiden than I care to know. Ann Rutledge’s Irregular Quilt by Michael R. Burch based on “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie I. Her fingers “plied the needle” with “unusual swiftness and art” till Abe knelt down beside her: then her demoralized heart set Eros’s dart a-quiver; thus a crazy quilt emerged: strange stitches all a-kilter, all patterns lost. (Her host kept her vicarious laughter barely submerged.) II. Years later she’d show off the quilt with its uncertain stitches as evidence love undermines men’s plans and unevens women’s strictures (and a plethora of scriptures.) III. But O the sacred tenderness Ann’s reckless stitch contains and all the world’s felicities: rich cloth, for love’s fine gains, for sweethearts’ tremulous fingers and their bright, uncertain vows and all love’s blithe, erratic hopes (like now’s). IV. Years later on a pilgrimage, by tenderness obsessed, Dale Carnegie, drawn to her grave, found weeds in her place of rest and mowed them back, revealing the spot of Lincoln’s joy and grief (and his hope and his disbelief). V. Yes, such is the tenderness of love, and such are its disappointments. Love is a book of rhapsodic poems. Love is an grab bag of ointments. Love is the finger poised, the smile, the Question ― perhaps ― and the Answer? Love is the pain of betrayal, the two left feet of the dancer. VI. There were ladies of ill repute in his past. Or so he thought. Was it true? And yet he loved them, Ann (sweet Ann!), as tenderly as he loved you. Keywords/Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, history, president, love, lover, mistress, paramour, romance, romantic, quilt, Dale Carnegie Shattered by Vera Pavlova loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch I shattered your heart; now I limp through the shards barefoot. Warming Her Pearls by Michael R. Burch for Beth Warming her pearls, her ******* gleam like constellations. Her belly is a bit rotund... she might have stepped out of a Rubens. Published by Erosha, The Eclectic Muse, Muse Apprentice Guild, Nisqually Delta Review, Erbacce, Poetry Life & Times and Brief Poems Squall by Michael R. Burch There, in that sunny arbor, in the aureate light filtering through the waxy leaves of a stunted banana tree, I felt the sudden monsoon of your wrath, the clattery implosions and copper-bright bursts of the bottoms of pots and pans. I saw your swollen goddess’s belly wobble and heave in pregnant indignation, turned tail, and ran. Published by Chrysanthemum, Poetry Super Highway, Barbitos and Poetry Life & Times Villanelle: Hangovers by Michael R. Burch We forget that, before we were born, our parents had “lives” of their own, ran drunk in the streets, or half-stoned. Yes, our parents had lives of their own until we were born; then, undone, they were buying their parents gravestones and finding gray hairs of their own (because we were born lacking some of their curious habits, but soon would certainly get them). Half-stoned, we watched them dig graves of their own. Their lives would be over too soon for their curious habits to bloom in us (though our children were born nine months from that night on the town when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-stoned, we first proved we had lives of our own). NOTE: The Natchez Trace is the Nashville bar where I met my future wife Beth. We invented a game called "twister pool" which involved billiards, drinking and a fair bit of physical contortion ... At the Natchez Trace by Michael R. Burch for Beth I. Solitude surrounds me though nearby laughter sounds; around me mingle men who think to drink their demons down, in rounds. Beside me stands a woman, a stanza in the song that plays so low and fluting and bids me sing along. Beside me stands a woman whose eyes reveal her soul, whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown, whose hips and ******* are full. Beside me stands a woman who scarcely knows my name; but I would have her know my heart if only I knew where to start. II. Not every man is as he seems; not all are prone to poems and dreams. Not every man would take the time to meter out his heart in rhyme. But I am not as other men— my heart is sentenced to this pen. III. Men speak of their "ambition" but they only know its name . . . I never say the word aloud, but I have felt the Flame. IV. Now, standing here, I do not dare to let her know that I might care; I never learned the lines to use; I never worked the wolves' bold ruse. But if she looks my way again, perhaps I will, if only then. V. How can a man have come so far in searching after every star, and yet today, though years away, look back upon the winding way, and see himself as he was then, a child of eight or nine or ten, and not know more? VI. My life is not empty; I have my desire . . . I write in a moment that few man can know, when my nerves are on fire and my heart does not tire though it pounds at my breast— wrenching blow after blow. VII. And in all I attempted, I also succeeded; few men have more talent to do what I do. But in one respect, I stand now defeated; In love I could never make magic come true. VIII. If I had been born to be handsome and charming, then love might have come to me easily as well. But if had that been, then would I have written? If not, I'd remain; **** that demon to hell! IX. Beside me stands a woman, but others look her way and in their eyes are eagerness . . . for passion and a wild caress? But who am I to say? Beside me stands a woman; she conjures up the night and wraps itself around her till others flit about her like moths drawn to firelight. X. And I, myself, am just as they, wondering when the light might fade, yet knowing should it not dim soon that I might fall and be consumed. XI. I write from despair in the silence of morning for want of a prayer and the need of the mourning. And loneliness grips my heart like a vise; my anguish is harsher and colder than ice. But poetry can bring my heart healing and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling. And so I must write till at last sleep has called me and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me. XII. Beside me stands a woman, a mystery to me. I long to hold her in my arms; I also long to flee. Beside me stands a woman; how many has she known more handsome, charming, chic, alarming? I hope I never know. Beside me stands a woman; how many has she known who ever wrote her such a poem? I know not even one. Keywords/Tags: Natchez, Trace, love, relationship, relationships, pool, billiards, rhyme, hope, pain, painful, solitude, drink, drinking, enigma, angel, stranger, ambiguity, woman Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad) by Michael R. Burch He did not think of love of Her at all frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads (nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small at last to be invisible. He smiled (the fables erred so curiously), and thought bemusedly of being reconciled to human flesh, because his heart was not incapable of love, but, being cursed a second time, could only love a toad’s . . . and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . . and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted, his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted. Haunted by Michael R. Burch Now I am here and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren. I am withering and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear. Go, if you will, for the ache in my heart is its hollowness and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness; there is nothing to fill. Take what you can; I have nothing left. And when you are gone, I will be bereft, the husk of a man. Or stay here awhile. My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams. Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems when you smile. Published by Romantics Quarterly Have I been too long at the fair? by Michael R. Burch Have I been too long at the fair? The summer has faded, the leaves have turned brown; the Ferris wheel teeters ... not up, yet not down. Have I been too long at the fair? This is one of my earliest poems, written around age 15 when we were living with my grandfather in his house on Chilton Street, within walking distance of the Nashville fairgrounds. I remember walking to the fairgrounds, stopping at a Dairy Queen along the way, and swimming at a public pool. But I believe the Ferris wheel only operated during the state fair. So my “educated guess” is that this poem was written during the 1973 state fair, or shortly thereafter. I remember watching people hanging suspended in mid-air, waiting for carnies to deposit them safely on terra firma again. Her Preference by Michael R. Burch Not for her the pale incandescence of dreams, the warm glow of imagination, the hushed whispers of possibility, or frail, blossoming hope. No, she prefers the anguish and screams of bitter condemnation, the hissing of hostility, damnation's rope. hey pete by Michael R. Burch for Pete Rose hey pete, it's baseball season and the sun ascends the sky, encouraging a schoolboy's dreams of winter whizzing by; go out, go out and catch it, put it in a jar, set it on a shelf and then you'll be a Superstar. When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar." Nevermore! by Michael R. Burch Nevermore! O, nevermore shall the haunts of the sea― the swollen tide pools and the dark, deserted shore― mark her passing again. And the salivating sea shall never kiss her lips nor caress her ******* and hips as she dreamt it did before, once, lost within the uproar. The waves will never **** her, nor take her at their leisure; the sea gulls shall not have her, nor could she give them pleasure ... She sleeps forevermore. She sleeps forevermore, a ****** save to me and her other lover, who lurks now, safely covered by the restless, surging sea. And, yes, they sleep together, but never in that way! For the sea has stripped and shorn the one I once adored, and washed her flesh away. He does not stroke her honey hair, for she is bald, bald to the bone! And how it fills my heart with glee to hear them sometimes cursing me out of the depths of the demon sea ... their skeletal love―impossibility! This is one of my Poe-like creations, written around age 19. I think the poem has an interesting ending, since the male skeleton is missing an important "member." Day, and Night by Michael R. Burch The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters; her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms. And 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; and 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. Flight by Michael R. Burch It is the nature of loveliness to vanish as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness seek transcendence ... Originally published by Hibiscus (India) in-flight convergence by michael r. burch serene, almost angelic, the lights of the city                  extend over lumbering behemoths shrilly screeching displeasure; they say that nothing is certain, that nothing man dreams or ordains long endures his command here the streetlights that flicker and those blazing steadfast seem one from a                distance;            descend? they abruptly part                    ways, so that nothing is one which at times does not suddenly blend into garish insignificance in the familiar alleyways, in the white neon flash and the billboards of Convenience and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance as we thunder down the enlightened runways. Originally published by The Aurorean and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, then published by Grassroots Poetry, Unlikely Stories, Bewildering Stories, Scarlet Leaf Review, Famous Poets & Poems and Inspirational Stories 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. Chit Chat: in the Poetry Chat Room WHY SHULD I LERN TO SPELL? HELL, NO ONE REEDS WHAT I SAY ANYWAY!!! :( Sing for the cool night, whispers of constellations. Sing for the supple grass, the tall grass, gently whispering. Sing of infinities, multitudes, of all that lies beyond us now, whispers begetting whispers. And i am glad to also whisper . . . I WUS HURT IN LUV I’M DYIN’ FER TH’ TEARS I BEEN A-CRYIN’!!! i abide beyond serenities and realms of grace, above love’s misdirected earth, i lift my face. i am beyond finding now . . . I WAS IN, LOVE, AND HE ******* ME!!! THE **** TOTALLY!!! i loved her once, before, when i was mortal too, and sometimes i would listen and distinctly hear her laughter from the juniper, but did not go . . . I JUST DON’T GET POETRY, SOMETIMES. IT’S OKAY, I GUESS. I REALLY DON’T READ THAT MUCH AT ALL, I MUST CONFESS!!! ;-) Travail, inherent to all flesh, i do not know, nor how to feel, although i sing them nighttimes still: the bitter woes, that do not heal . . . POETRY IS BORING!!! SEE, IT ***** I’M SNORING!!! ZZZZZZZ!!! The words like breath, i find them here, among the fragrant juniper, and conifers amid the snow, old loves imagined long ago . . . WHY DON’T YOU LIKE MY PERFICKT WORDS YOU USELESS UN-AMERIC’N TURDS?!!! What use is love, to me, or Thou? O Words, my awe, to fly so smooth above the anguished hearts of men to heights unknown, Thy bare remove . . . Keywords/Tags: Poetry, writing, chit, chat room, forum, website, social media, workshop, mortal, mortality, grass, multitudes, Walt Whitman, love, awe, serenity, serenities, grace, heights, Parnassus, art, spelling, grammar Renee Vivien Translations Renee Vivien was a British lesbian and cross-dresser who wrote poems primarily in French. Song by Renée Vivien loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch When the moon weeps, illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful, my memories creep back to you, wrapped in flightless wings. It's getting late; soon we will sleep (your eyes already half closed) steeped in the shimmering air. O, the agony of burning roses: your forehead discloses a heavy despondency, though your hair floats lightly ... In the night sky the stars burn whitely as the Goddess nightly resurrects flowers that fear the sun and die before dawn ... Undine by Renée Vivien loose translation/interpretation by Kim Cherub (an alias of Michael R. Burch) Your laughter startles, your caresses rake. Your cold kisses love the evil they do. Your eyes―blue lotuses drifting on a lake. Lilies are less pallid than your face. You move like water parting. Your hair falls in rootlike tangles. Your words like treacherous rapids rise. Your arms, flexible as reeds, strangle, Choking me like tubular river reeds. I shiver in their enlacing embrace. Drowning without an illuminating moon, I vanish without a trace, lost in a nightly swoon. Veronica Franco translations Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was a Venetian courtesan who wrote literary-quality poetry and prose. Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (I) by Veronica Franco loose translation by Michael R. Burch "I resolved to make a virtue of my desire." My rewards will be commensurate with your gifts if only you give me the one that lifts me laughing... And though it costs you nothing, still it is of immense value to me. Your reward will be not just to fly but to soar, so high that your joys vastly exceed your desires. And my beauty, to which your heart aspires and which you never tire of praising, I will employ for the raising of your spirits. Then, lying sweetly at your side, I will shower you with all the delights of a bride, which I have more expertly learned. Then you who so fervently burned will at last rest, fully content, fallen even more deeply in love, spent at my comfortable ***** When I am in bed with a man I blossom, becoming completely free with the man who loves and enjoys me. Here is a second, more formal version of the same poem, translated into rhymed couplets... Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (II) by Veronica Franco loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch "I resolved to make a virtue of my desire." My rewards will match your gifts If you give me the one that lifts Me, laughing. If it comes free, Still, it is of immense value to me. Your reward will be—not just to fly, But to soar—so incredibly high That your joys eclipse your desires (As my beauty, to which your heart aspires And which you never tire of praising, I employ for your spirit's raising) . Afterwards, lying docile at your side, I will grant you all the delights of a bride, Which I have more expertly learned. Then you, who so fervently burned, Will at last rest, fully content, Fallen even more deeply in love, spent At my comfortable ***** When I am in bed with a man I blossom, Becoming completely free With the man who freely enjoys me. Franco published two books: "Terze rime" (a collection of poems)and "Lettere familiari a diversi" (a collection of letters and poems). She also collected the works of other writers into anthologies and founded a charity for courtesans and their children. And she was an early champion of women's rights, one of the first ardent, outspoken feminists that we know by name today. For example... Capitolo 24 by Veronica Franco loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch (written by Franco to a man who had insulted a woman) Please try to see with sensible eyes how grotesque it is for you to insult and abuse women! Our unfortunate *** is always subject to such unjust treatment, because we are dominated, denied true freedom! And certainly we are not at fault because, while not as robust as men, we have equal hearts, minds and intellects. Nor does virtue originate in power, but in the vigor of the heart, mind and soul: the sources of understanding; and I am certain that in these regards women lack nothing, but, rather, have demonstrated superiority to men. If you think us "inferior" to yourself, perhaps it's because, being wise, we outdo you in modesty. And if you want to know the truth, the wisest person is the most patient; she squares herself with reason and with virtue; while the madman thunders insolence. The stone the wise man withdraws from the well was flung there by a fool... Life was not a bed of roses for Venetian courtesans. Although they enjoyed the good graces of their wealthy patrons, religious leaders and commoners saw them as symbols of vice. Once during a plague, Franco was banished from Venice as if her "sins" had helped cause it. When she returned in 1577, she faced the Inquisition and charges of "witchcraft." She defended herself in court and won her freedom, but lost all her material possessions. Eventually, Domenico Venier, her major patron, died in 1582 and left her with no support. Her tax declaration of that same year stated that she was living in a section of the city where many destitute prostitutes ended their lives. She may have died in poverty at the age of forty-five. Hollywood produced a movie based on her life: "Dangerous Beauty." When I bed a man who—I sense—truly loves and enjoys me, I become so sweet and so delicious that the pleasure I bring him surpasses all delight, till the tight knot of love, however slight it may have seemed before, is raveled to the core. —Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch We danced a youthful jig through that fair city— Venice, our paradise, so pompous and pretty. We lived for love, for primal lust and beauty; to please ourselves became our only duty. Floating there in a fog between heaven and earth, We grew drunk on excesses and wild mirth. We thought ourselves immortal poets then, Our glory endorsed by God's illustrious pen. But paradise, we learned, is fraught with error, and sooner or later love succumbs to terror. —Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch In response to a friend urging Veronica Franco to help her daughter become a courtesan, Franco warns her that the profession can be devastating: "Even if Fortune were only benign and favorable to you in this endeavor, this life is such that in any case it would always be wretched. It is such an unhappy thing, and so contrary to human nature, to subject one's body and activity to such slavery that one is frightened just by the thought of it: to let oneself be prey to many, running the risk of being stripped, robbed, killed, so that one day can take away from you what you have earned with many men in a long time, with so many other dangers of injury and horrible contagious disease: to eat with someone else's mouth, to sleep with someone else's eyes, to move according to someone else's whim, running always toward the inevitable shipwreck of one's faculties and life. Can there be greater misery than this? ... Believe me, among all the misfortunes that can befall a human being in the world, this life is the worst." I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience.—"Dangerous Beauty" I wish it were not considered a sin to have liked ******* Women have yet to realize the cowardice that presides. And if they should ever decide to fight the shallow, I would be the first, setting an example for them to follow. —Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Yahya Kemal Beyatli translations Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) was a Turkish poet, editor, columnist and historian, as well as a politician and diplomat. Born born Ahmet Âgâh, he wrote under the pen names Agâh Kemal, Esrar, Mehmet Agâh, and Süleyman Sadi. He served as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, Portugal and Pakistan. Sessiz Gemi (“Silent Ship”) by Yahya Kemal Beyatli loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch for the refugees The time to weigh anchor has come; a ship departing harbor slips quietly out into the unknown, cruising noiselessly, its occupants already ghosts. No flourished handkerchiefs acknowledge their departure; the landlocked mourners stand nurturing their grief, scanning the bleak horizon, their eyes blurring... Poor souls! Desperate hearts! But this is hardly the last ship departing! There is always more pain to unload in this sorrowful life! The hesitations of lovers and their belovèds are futile, for they cannot know where the vanished are bound. Many hopes must be quenched by the distant waves, since years must pass, and no one returns from this journey. Full Moon by Yahya Kemal Beyatli loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch You are so lovely the full moon just might delight in your rising, as curious and bright, to vanquish night. But what can a mortal man do, dear, but hope? I’ll ponder your mysteries and (hmmmm) try to cope. We both know you have every right to say no. The Music of the Snow by Yahya Kemal Beyatli loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch This melody of a night lasting longer than a thousand years! This music of the snow supposed to last for thousand years! Sorrowful as the prayers of a secluded monastery, It rises from a choir of a hundred voices! As the organ’s harmonies resound profoundly, I share the sufferings of Slavic grief. Then my mind drifts far from this city, this era, To the old records of Tanburi Cemil Bey. Now I’m suddenly overjoyed as once again I hear, With the ears of my heart, the purest sounds of Istanbul! Thoughts of the snow and darkness depart me; I keep them at bay all night with my dreams! Translator’s notes: “Slavic grief” because Beyatli wrote this poem while in Warsaw, serving as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, in 1927. Tanburi Cemil Bey was a Turkish composer. Keywords/Tags: Beyatli, Agah, Kemal, Esrar, Turkish, translation, Turkey, silent, ship, anchor, harbor, ghosts, grief, Istanbul, moon, music, snow Lines for My Ascension by Michael R. Burch I. If I should die, there will come a Doom, and the sky will darken to the deepest Gloom. But if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. II. If I should die, let no mortal say, “Here was a man, with feet of clay, or a timid sparrow God’s hand let fall.” But watch the sky darken to an eerie pall and know that my Spirit, unvanquished, broods, and cares naught for graves, prayers, coffins, or roods. And if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. III. If I should die, let no man adore his incompetent Maker: Zeus, Jehovah, or Thor. Think of Me as One who never died― the unvanquished Immortal with the unriven side. And if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. IV. And if I should “die,” though the clouds grow dark as fierce lightnings rend this bleak asteroid, stark ... If you look above, you will see a bright Sign― the sun with the moon in its arms, Divine. So divine, if you can, my bright meaning, and know― my Spirit is mine. I will go where I go. And if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. Published as the collection "Daredevil"
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Apr 3, 2020
Apr 3, 2020 at 1:05 AM UTC
Daredevil
Daredevil by Michael R. Burch There are days that I believe (and nights that I deny) love is not mutilation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There are tightropes leaps bereave— taut wires strumming high brief songs, infatuations. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were cannon shots’ soirees, hearts barricaded, wise . . . and then . . . annihilation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were nights our hearts conceived untruths reborn as sighs. To dream was our consolation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were acrobatic leaves that tumbled down to lie at our feet, bright trepidations. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were hearts carved into trees— tall stakes where you and I left childhood’s salt libations . . . Daredevil, dry your eyes. Where once you scraped your knees; love later bruised your thighs. Death numbs all, our sedation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. Keywords/Tags: Daredevil, love, mutilation, tightrope, high, wire, acrobatic, tumble, bruised, fall, sedation, death, mrbdare, mrbch Passionate One by Michael R. Burch for Beth Love of my life, light of my morning― arise, brightly dawning, for you are my sun. Give me of heaven both manna and leaven― desirous Presence, Passionate One. My wife Beth has been a Daredevil for Love, sometimes engaging in high-wire acts that defied gravity. At times her acrobatic moves resulted in tumbles, falls, and bruises, but she never stopped loving her family and friends. Thus, the first two poems are related, although the woman in the first poem is imaginary. In My House by Michael R. Burch When you were in my house you were not free― in chains bound. Manifest Destiny? I was wrong; my plantation burned to the ground. I was wrong. This is my song, this is my plea: I was wrong. When you are in my house, now, I am not free. I feel the song hurling itself back at me. We were wrong. This is my history. I feel my tongue stilting accordingly. We were wrong; brother, forgive me. Published by Black Medina. This is poem about a different kind of high-wire act, a different kind of tension, and a different kind of fall, bruising and mutilation. At the time I wrote this poem, I had hired two fine young black men as programmers and they had keys to my house, where I was the minority on work days. Less Heroic Couplets: ****** Most Fowl! by Michael R. Burch ****** most foul!” cried the mouse to the owl. “Friend, I’m no sinner; you’re merely my dinner!” the wise owl replied as the tasty snack died. Originally published by Lighten Up Online and in Potcake Chapbook #7. In an attempt to demonstrate that not all couplets are heroic, I have created a series of poems called “Less Heroic Couplets.” I believe even poets should abide by truth-in-advertising laws! Mice are acrobatic little daredevils. ― MRB Leaf Fall by Michael R. Burch Whatever winds encountered soon resolved to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall. In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each dry leaf into its place and built a high, soft bastion against earth's gravitron― a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright impediment to fling ourselves upon. And nothing in our laughter as we fell into those leaves was like the autumn's cry of also falling. Nothing meant to die could be so bright as we, so colorful― clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again. Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea. This is a poem about yet another kind of fall and the kind of bruising that increases with advancing age. Herbsttag ("Autumn Day" or "Fall Day") by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go. Lay your long shadows over the sundials and over the meadows, let the free winds blow. Command the late fruits to fatten and shine; O, grant them another Mediterranean hour! Urge them to completion, and with power convey final sweetness to the heavy wine. Who has no house now, never will build one. Who's alone now, shall continue alone; he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends, and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down, restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend. Originally published by Measure. This is one of my favorite Rilke poems, about the feelings of loneliness a fall day can inspire. To the boy Elis by Georg Trakl translation by Michael R. Burch Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest, it announces your downfall. Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness. Your brow sweats blood recalling ancient myths and dark interpretations of birds' flight. Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls; the ripe purple grapes hang suspended as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness. A thornbush crackles; where now are your moonlike eyes? How long, oh Elis, have you been dead? A monk dips waxed fingers into your body's hyacinth; Our silence is a black abyss from which sometimes a docile animal emerges slowly lowering its heavy lids. A black dew drips from your temples: the lost gold of vanished stars. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem. I Loved You by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin translation by Michael R. Burch I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ... perhaps for a while such emotions may remain. But please don’t let my feelings trouble you; I do not wish to cause you further pain. I loved you ... thus the hopelessness I knew ... The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain resulted in two hearts so wholly true the gods might grant us leave to love again. Wulf and Eadwacer ancient Anglo-Saxon/Old English poem, circa 960 AD loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch My clan's curs pursue him like crippled game; they'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack. It is otherwise with us. Wulf's on one island; we're on another. His island's a fortress, fastened by fens. Here, bloodthirsty curs howl for carnage. They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack. It is otherwise with us. My heart pursued Wulf like a panting hound, but whenever it rained—how I wept! — the boldest cur grasped me in its paws: good feelings for him, but for me loathsome! Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you has made me sick; your seldom-comings have left me famished, deprived of real meat. Have you heard, Eadwacer? Watchdog! A wolf has borne our wretched whelp to the woods! One can easily sever what never was one: our song together. Hymn for Fallen Soldiers by Michael R. Burch Sound the awesome cannons. Pin medals to each breast. Attention, honor guard! Give them a hero’s rest. Recite their names to the heavens Till the stars acknowledge their kin. Then let the land they defended Gather them in again. When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem. Attilâ İlhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, translator, novelist, screenwriter, editor, journalist, essayist, reviewer, socialist and intellectual. Ben Sana Mecburum: “You are indispensable” by Attila Ilhan translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch You are indispensable; how can you not know that you’re like nails riveting my brain? I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions. You are indispensable; how can you not know that I burn within, at the thought of you? Trees prepare themselves for autumn; can this city be our lost Istanbul? Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness as the street lights flicker and the streets reek with rain. You are indispensable, and yet you are absent ... Love sometimes seems akin to terror: a man tires suddenly at nightfall, of living enslaved to the razor at his neck. Sometimes he wrings his hands, expunging other lives from his existence. Sometimes whichever door he knocks echoes back only heartache. A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih ... a song about some Friday long ago. I stop to listen from a vacant corner, longing to bring you an untouched sky, but time disintegrates in my hands. Whatever I do, wherever I go, you are indispensable, and yet you are absent ... Are you the blue child of June? Ah, no one knows you―no one knows! Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters ... Perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy? Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain that leaves you blind, beset, broken, with wind-disheveled hair? Whenever I think of life seated at the wolves’ table, shameless, yet without soiling our hands ... Yes, whenever I think of life, I begin with your name, defying the silence, and your secret tides surge within me making this voyage inevitable. You are indispensable; how can you not know? Fragments by Attila Ilhan loose English translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch ** The night is a cloudy-feathered owl, its quills like fine-spun glass. It gazes out the window, perched on my right shoulder, its wings outspread and huge. If the encroaching darkness seems devastating at first glance, the sovereign of everything, its reach infinite ... Still somewhere within a kernel of light glows secretly creating an enlightened forest of dialectics. ** In September’s waning days one thinks wanly of the arrival of fall like a ship appearing on the horizon with untrimmed, tattered sails; for some unfathomable reason fall is the time to consider one’s own demise― the body smothered by yellowed leaves like a corpse rotting in a ghoulish photograph ... ** Bitter words crack like whips snapping across prison yards ... Then there are words like pomegranate trees in bloom, words like the sun igniting the sea beyond mountainous horizons, flashing like mysterious knives ... Such words are the burning roses of an infinite imagination; they are born and they die with the flutterings of butterflies; we carry those words in our hearts like pregnant shotguns until the day we expire, martyred for the words we were prepared to die for ... ** What I wrote and what you understood? Curious and curiouser! escape! by michael r. burch to live among the daffodil folk . . . slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . . suddenly pop out the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . . minuscule as alice, shout yippee-yi-yee! in wee exultant glee to be leaving behind the LARGE THREE-DENALI GARAGE. Escape!! by Michael R. Burch You are too beautiful, too innocent, too inherently lovely to merely reflect the sun’s splendor ... too full of irresistible candor to remain silent, too delicately fawnlike for a world so violent ... Come, my beautiful Bambi and I will protect you ... but of course you have already been lured away by the dew-laden roses ... Dream of Infinity by Michael R. Burch Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair? Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach, then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach? Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage? Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too, have dreamed of infinity... windswept and blue. This poem was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses. I was paid a whopping $10, my first cash payment. It was subsequently published by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Poetry Life & Times, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse. 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. Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge Ann Rutledge was apparently Abraham Lincoln’s first love interest. Unfortunately, she was engaged to another man when they met, then died with typhoid fever at age 22. According to a friend, Isaac Cogdal, when asked if he had loved her, Lincoln replied: “It is true―true indeed, I did. I loved the woman dearly and soundly: She was a handsome girl―would have made a good, loving wife … I did honestly and truly love the girl and think often, often of her now.” Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge by Michael R. Burch Winter was not easy, nor would the spring return. I knew you by your absence, as men are wont to burn with strange indwelling fire― such longings you inspire! But winter was not easy, nor would the sun relent from sculpting ****** images and how could I repent? I left quaint offerings in the snow, more maiden than I care to know. Ann Rutledge’s Irregular Quilt by Michael R. Burch based on “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie I. Her fingers “plied the needle” with “unusual swiftness and art” till Abe knelt down beside her: then her demoralized heart set Eros’s dart a-quiver; thus a crazy quilt emerged: strange stitches all a-kilter, all patterns lost. (Her host kept her vicarious laughter barely submerged.) II. Years later she’d show off the quilt with its uncertain stitches as evidence love undermines men’s plans and unevens women’s strictures (and a plethora of scriptures.) III. But O the sacred tenderness Ann’s reckless stitch contains and all the world’s felicities: rich cloth, for love’s fine gains, for sweethearts’ tremulous fingers and their bright, uncertain vows and all love’s blithe, erratic hopes (like now’s). IV. Years later on a pilgrimage, by tenderness obsessed, Dale Carnegie, drawn to her grave, found weeds in her place of rest and mowed them back, revealing the spot of Lincoln’s joy and grief (and his hope and his disbelief). V. Yes, such is the tenderness of love, and such are its disappointments. Love is a book of rhapsodic poems. Love is an grab bag of ointments. Love is the finger poised, the smile, the Question ― perhaps ― and the Answer? Love is the pain of betrayal, the two left feet of the dancer. VI. There were ladies of ill repute in his past. Or so he thought. Was it true? And yet he loved them, Ann (sweet Ann!), as tenderly as he loved you. Keywords/Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, history, president, love, lover, mistress, paramour, romance, romantic, quilt, Dale Carnegie Shattered by Vera Pavlova loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch I shattered your heart; now I limp through the shards barefoot. Warming Her Pearls by Michael R. Burch for Beth Warming her pearls, her ******* gleam like constellations. Her belly is a bit rotund... she might have stepped out of a Rubens. Published by Erosha, The Eclectic Muse, Muse Apprentice Guild, Nisqually Delta Review, Erbacce, Poetry Life & Times and Brief Poems Squall by Michael R. Burch There, in that sunny arbor, in the aureate light filtering through the waxy leaves of a stunted banana tree, I felt the sudden monsoon of your wrath, the clattery implosions and copper-bright bursts of the bottoms of pots and pans. I saw your swollen goddess’s belly wobble and heave in pregnant indignation, turned tail, and ran. Published by Chrysanthemum, Poetry Super Highway, Barbitos and Poetry Life & Times Villanelle: Hangovers by Michael R. Burch We forget that, before we were born, our parents had “lives” of their own, ran drunk in the streets, or half-stoned. Yes, our parents had lives of their own until we were born; then, undone, they were buying their parents gravestones and finding gray hairs of their own (because we were born lacking some of their curious habits, but soon would certainly get them). Half-stoned, we watched them dig graves of their own. Their lives would be over too soon for their curious habits to bloom in us (though our children were born nine months from that night on the town when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-stoned, we first proved we had lives of our own). NOTE: The Natchez Trace is the Nashville bar where I met my future wife Beth. We invented a game called "twister pool" which involved billiards, drinking and a fair bit of physical contortion ... At the Natchez Trace by Michael R. Burch for Beth I. Solitude surrounds me though nearby laughter sounds; around me mingle men who think to drink their demons down, in rounds. Beside me stands a woman, a stanza in the song that plays so low and fluting and bids me sing along. Beside me stands a woman whose eyes reveal her soul, whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown, whose hips and ******* are full. Beside me stands a woman who scarcely knows my name; but I would have her know my heart if only I knew where to start. II. Not every man is as he seems; not all are prone to poems and dreams. Not every man would take the time to meter out his heart in rhyme. But I am not as other men— my heart is sentenced to this pen. III. Men speak of their "ambition" but they only know its name . . . I never say the word aloud, but I have felt the Flame. IV. Now, standing here, I do not dare to let her know that I might care; I never learned the lines to use; I never worked the wolves' bold ruse. But if she looks my way again, perhaps I will, if only then. V. How can a man have come so far in searching after every star, and yet today, though years away, look back upon the winding way, and see himself as he was then, a child of eight or nine or ten, and not know more? VI. My life is not empty; I have my desire . . . I write in a moment that few man can know, when my nerves are on fire and my heart does not tire though it pounds at my breast— wrenching blow after blow. VII. And in all I attempted, I also succeeded; few men have more talent to do what I do. But in one respect, I stand now defeated; In love I could never make magic come true. VIII. If I had been born to be handsome and charming, then love might have come to me easily as well. But if had that been, then would I have written? If not, I'd remain; **** that demon to hell! IX. Beside me stands a woman, but others look her way and in their eyes are eagerness . . . for passion and a wild caress? But who am I to say? Beside me stands a woman; she conjures up the night and wraps itself around her till others flit about her like moths drawn to firelight. X. And I, myself, am just as they, wondering when the light might fade, yet knowing should it not dim soon that I might fall and be consumed. XI. I write from despair in the silence of morning for want of a prayer and the need of the mourning. And loneliness grips my heart like a vise; my anguish is harsher and colder than ice. But poetry can bring my heart healing and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling. And so I must write till at last sleep has called me and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me. XII. Beside me stands a woman, a mystery to me. I long to hold her in my arms; I also long to flee. Beside me stands a woman; how many has she known more handsome, charming, chic, alarming? I hope I never know. Beside me stands a woman; how many has she known who ever wrote her such a poem? I know not even one. Keywords/Tags: Natchez, Trace, love, relationship, relationships, pool, billiards, rhyme, hope, pain, painful, solitude, drink, drinking, enigma, angel, stranger, ambiguity, woman Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad) by Michael R. Burch He did not think of love of Her at all frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads (nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small at last to be invisible. He smiled (the fables erred so curiously), and thought bemusedly of being reconciled to human flesh, because his heart was not incapable of love, but, being cursed a second time, could only love a toad’s . . . and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . . and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted, his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted. Haunted by Michael R. Burch Now I am here and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren. I am withering and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear. Go, if you will, for the ache in my heart is its hollowness and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness; there is nothing to fill. Take what you can; I have nothing left. And when you are gone, I will be bereft, the husk of a man. Or stay here awhile. My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams. Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems when you smile. Published by Romantics Quarterly Have I been too long at the fair? by Michael R. Burch Have I been too long at the fair? The summer has faded, the leaves have turned brown; the Ferris wheel teeters ... not up, yet not down. Have I been too long at the fair? This is one of my earliest poems, written around age 15 when we were living with my grandfather in his house on Chilton Street, within walking distance of the Nashville fairgrounds. I remember walking to the fairgrounds, stopping at a Dairy Queen along the way, and swimming at a public pool. But I believe the Ferris wheel only operated during the state fair. So my “educated guess” is that this poem was written during the 1973 state fair, or shortly thereafter. I remember watching people hanging suspended in mid-air, waiting for carnies to deposit them safely on terra firma again. Her Preference by Michael R. Burch Not for her the pale incandescence of dreams, the warm glow of imagination, the hushed whispers of possibility, or frail, blossoming hope. No, she prefers the anguish and screams of bitter condemnation, the hissing of hostility, damnation's rope. hey pete by Michael R. Burch for Pete Rose hey pete, it's baseball season and the sun ascends the sky, encouraging a schoolboy's dreams of winter whizzing by; go out, go out and catch it, put it in a jar, set it on a shelf and then you'll be a Superstar. When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar." Nevermore! by Michael R. Burch Nevermore! O, nevermore shall the haunts of the sea― the swollen tide pools and the dark, deserted shore― mark her passing again. And the salivating sea shall never kiss her lips nor caress her ******* and hips as she dreamt it did before, once, lost within the uproar. The waves will never **** her, nor take her at their leisure; the sea gulls shall not have her, nor could she give them pleasure ... She sleeps forevermore. She sleeps forevermore, a ****** save to me and her other lover, who lurks now, safely covered by the restless, surging sea. And, yes, they sleep together, but never in that way! For the sea has stripped and shorn the one I once adored, and washed her flesh away. He does not stroke her honey hair, for she is bald, bald to the bone! And how it fills my heart with glee to hear them sometimes cursing me out of the depths of the demon sea ... their skeletal love―impossibility! This is one of my Poe-like creations, written around age 19. I think the poem has an interesting ending, since the male skeleton is missing an important "member." Day, and Night by Michael R. Burch The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters; her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms. And 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; and 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. Flight by Michael R. Burch It is the nature of loveliness to vanish as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness seek transcendence ... Originally published by Hibiscus (India) in-flight convergence by michael r. burch serene, almost angelic, the lights of the city                  extend over lumbering behemoths shrilly screeching displeasure; they say that nothing is certain, that nothing man dreams or ordains long endures his command here the streetlights that flicker and those blazing steadfast seem one from a                distance;            descend? they abruptly part                    ways, so that nothing is one which at times does not suddenly blend into garish insignificance in the familiar alleyways, in the white neon flash and the billboards of Convenience and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance as we thunder down the enlightened runways. Originally published by The Aurorean and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, then published by Grassroots Poetry, Unlikely Stories, Bewildering Stories, Scarlet Leaf Review, Famous Poets & Poems and Inspirational Stories 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. Chit Chat: in the Poetry Chat Room WHY SHULD I LERN TO SPELL? HELL, NO ONE REEDS WHAT I SAY ANYWAY!!! :( Sing for the cool night, whispers of constellations. Sing for the supple grass, the tall grass, gently whispering. Sing of infinities, multitudes, of all that lies beyond us now, whispers begetting whispers. And i am glad to also whisper . . . I WUS HURT IN LUV I’M DYIN’ FER TH’ TEARS I BEEN A-CRYIN’!!! i abide beyond serenities and realms of grace, above love’s misdirected earth, i lift my face. i am beyond finding now . . . I WAS IN, LOVE, AND HE ******* ME!!! THE **** TOTALLY!!! i loved her once, before, when i was mortal too, and sometimes i would listen and distinctly hear her laughter from the juniper, but did not go . . . I JUST DON’T GET POETRY, SOMETIMES. IT’S OKAY, I GUESS. I REALLY DON’T READ THAT MUCH AT ALL, I MUST CONFESS!!! ;-) Travail, inherent to all flesh, i do not know, nor how to feel, although i sing them nighttimes still: the bitter woes, that do not heal . . . POETRY IS BORING!!! SEE, IT ***** I’M SNORING!!! ZZZZZZZ!!! The words like breath, i find them here, among the fragrant juniper, and conifers amid the snow, old loves imagined long ago . . . WHY DON’T YOU LIKE MY PERFICKT WORDS YOU USELESS UN-AMERIC’N TURDS?!!! What use is love, to me, or Thou? O Words, my awe, to fly so smooth above the anguished hearts of men to heights unknown, Thy bare remove . . . Keywords/Tags: Poetry, writing, chit, chat room, forum, website, social media, workshop, mortal, mortality, grass, multitudes, Walt Whitman, love, awe, serenity, serenities, grace, heights, Parnassus, art, spelling, grammar Renee Vivien Translations Renee Vivien was a British lesbian and cross-dresser who wrote poems primarily in French. Song by Renée Vivien loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch When the moon weeps, illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful, my memories creep back to you, wrapped in flightless wings. It's getting late; soon we will sleep (your eyes already half closed) steeped in the shimmering air. O, the agony of burning roses: your forehead discloses a heavy despondency, though your hair floats lightly ... In the night sky the stars burn whitely as the Goddess nightly resurrects flowers that fear the sun and die before dawn ... Undine by Renée Vivien loose translation/interpretation by Kim Cherub (an alias of Michael R. Burch) Your laughter startles, your caresses rake. Your cold kisses love the evil they do. Your eyes―blue lotuses drifting on a lake. Lilies are less pallid than your face. You move like water parting. Your hair falls in rootlike tangles. Your words like treacherous rapids rise. Your arms, flexible as reeds, strangle, Choking me like tubular river reeds. I shiver in their enlacing embrace. Drowning without an illuminating moon, I vanish without a trace, lost in a nightly swoon. Veronica Franco translations Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was a Venetian courtesan who wrote literary-quality poetry and prose. Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (I) by Veronica Franco loose translation by Michael R. Burch "I resolved to make a virtue of my desire." My rewards will be commensurate with your gifts if only you give me the one that lifts me laughing... And though it costs you nothing, still it is of immense value to me. Your reward will be not just to fly but to soar, so high that your joys vastly exceed your desires. And my beauty, to which your heart aspires and which you never tire of praising, I will employ for the raising of your spirits. Then, lying sweetly at your side, I will shower you with all the delights of a bride, which I have more expertly learned. Then you who so fervently burned will at last rest, fully content, fallen even more deeply in love, spent at my comfortable ***** When I am in bed with a man I blossom, becoming completely free with the man who loves and enjoys me. Here is a second, more formal version of the same poem, translated into rhymed couplets... Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (II) by Veronica Franco loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch "I resolved to make a virtue of my desire." My rewards will match your gifts If you give me the one that lifts Me, laughing. If it comes free, Still, it is of immense value to me. Your reward will be—not just to fly, But to soar—so incredibly high That your joys eclipse your desires (As my beauty, to which your heart aspires And which you never tire of praising, I employ for your spirit's raising) . Afterwards, lying docile at your side, I will grant you all the delights of a bride, Which I have more expertly learned. Then you, who so fervently burned, Will at last rest, fully content, Fallen even more deeply in love, spent At my comfortable ***** When I am in bed with a man I blossom, Becoming completely free With the man who freely enjoys me. Franco published two books: "Terze rime" (a collection of poems)and "Lettere familiari a diversi" (a collection of letters and poems). She also collected the works of other writers into anthologies and founded a charity for courtesans and their children. And she was an early champion of women's rights, one of the first ardent, outspoken feminists that we know by name today. For example... Capitolo 24 by Veronica Franco loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch (written by Franco to a man who had insulted a woman) Please try to see with sensible eyes how grotesque it is for you to insult and abuse women! Our unfortunate *** is always subject to such unjust treatment, because we are dominated, denied true freedom! And certainly we are not at fault because, while not as robust as men, we have equal hearts, minds and intellects. Nor does virtue originate in power, but in the vigor of the heart, mind and soul: the sources of understanding; and I am certain that in these regards women lack nothing, but, rather, have demonstrated superiority to men. If you think us "inferior" to yourself, perhaps it's because, being wise, we outdo you in modesty. And if you want to know the truth, the wisest person is the most patient; she squares herself with reason and with virtue; while the madman thunders insolence. The stone the wise man withdraws from the well was flung there by a fool... Life was not a bed of roses for Venetian courtesans. Although they enjoyed the good graces of their wealthy patrons, religious leaders and commoners saw them as symbols of vice. Once during a plague, Franco was banished from Venice as if her "sins" had helped cause it. When she returned in 1577, she faced the Inquisition and charges of "witchcraft." She defended herself in court and won her freedom, but lost all her material possessions. Eventually, Domenico Venier, her major patron, died in 1582 and left her with no support. Her tax declaration of that same year stated that she was living in a section of the city where many destitute prostitutes ended their lives. She may have died in poverty at the age of forty-five. Hollywood produced a movie based on her life: "Dangerous Beauty." When I bed a man who—I sense—truly loves and enjoys me, I become so sweet and so delicious that the pleasure I bring him surpasses all delight, till the tight knot of love, however slight it may have seemed before, is raveled to the core. —Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch We danced a youthful jig through that fair city— Venice, our paradise, so pompous and pretty. We lived for love, for primal lust and beauty; to please ourselves became our only duty. Floating there in a fog between heaven and earth, We grew drunk on excesses and wild mirth. We thought ourselves immortal poets then, Our glory endorsed by God's illustrious pen. But paradise, we learned, is fraught with error, and sooner or later love succumbs to terror. —Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch In response to a friend urging Veronica Franco to help her daughter become a courtesan, Franco warns her that the profession can be devastating: "Even if Fortune were only benign and favorable to you in this endeavor, this life is such that in any case it would always be wretched. It is such an unhappy thing, and so contrary to human nature, to subject one's body and activity to such slavery that one is frightened just by the thought of it: to let oneself be prey to many, running the risk of being stripped, robbed, killed, so that one day can take away from you what you have earned with many men in a long time, with so many other dangers of injury and horrible contagious disease: to eat with someone else's mouth, to sleep with someone else's eyes, to move according to someone else's whim, running always toward the inevitable shipwreck of one's faculties and life. Can there be greater misery than this? ... Believe me, among all the misfortunes that can befall a human being in the world, this life is the worst." I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience.—"Dangerous Beauty" I wish it were not considered a sin to have liked ******* Women have yet to realize the cowardice that presides. And if they should ever decide to fight the shallow, I would be the first, setting an example for them to follow. —Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Yahya Kemal Beyatli translations Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) was a Turkish poet, editor, columnist and historian, as well as a politician and diplomat. Born born Ahmet Âgâh, he wrote under the pen names Agâh Kemal, Esrar, Mehmet Agâh, and Süleyman Sadi. He served as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, Portugal and Pakistan. Sessiz Gemi (“Silent Ship”) by Yahya Kemal Beyatli loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch for the refugees The time to weigh anchor has come; a ship departing harbor slips quietly out into the unknown, cruising noiselessly, its occupants already ghosts. No flourished handkerchiefs acknowledge their departure; the landlocked mourners stand nurturing their grief, scanning the bleak horizon, their eyes blurring... Poor souls! Desperate hearts! But this is hardly the last ship departing! There is always more pain to unload in this sorrowful life! The hesitations of lovers and their belovèds are futile, for they cannot know where the vanished are bound. Many hopes must be quenched by the distant waves, since years must pass, and no one returns from this journey. Full Moon by Yahya Kemal Beyatli loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch You are so lovely the full moon just might delight in your rising, as curious and bright, to vanquish night. But what can a mortal man do, dear, but hope? I’ll ponder your mysteries and (hmmmm) try to cope. We both know you have every right to say no. The Music of the Snow by Yahya Kemal Beyatli loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch This melody of a night lasting longer than a thousand years! This music of the snow supposed to last for thousand years! Sorrowful as the prayers of a secluded monastery, It rises from a choir of a hundred voices! As the organ’s harmonies resound profoundly, I share the sufferings of Slavic grief. Then my mind drifts far from this city, this era, To the old records of Tanburi Cemil Bey. Now I’m suddenly overjoyed as once again I hear, With the ears of my heart, the purest sounds of Istanbul! Thoughts of the snow and darkness depart me; I keep them at bay all night with my dreams! Translator’s notes: “Slavic grief” because Beyatli wrote this poem while in Warsaw, serving as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, in 1927. Tanburi Cemil Bey was a Turkish composer. Keywords/Tags: Beyatli, Agah, Kemal, Esrar, Turkish, translation, Turkey, silent, ship, anchor, harbor, ghosts, grief, Istanbul, moon, music, snow Lines for My Ascension by Michael R. Burch I. If I should die, there will come a Doom, and the sky will darken to the deepest Gloom. But if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. II. If I should die, let no mortal say, “Here was a man, with feet of clay, or a timid sparrow God’s hand let fall.” But watch the sky darken to an eerie pall and know that my Spirit, unvanquished, broods, and cares naught for graves, prayers, coffins, or roods. And if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. III. If I should die, let no man adore his incompetent Maker: Zeus, Jehovah, or Thor. Think of Me as One who never died― the unvanquished Immortal with the unriven side. And if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. IV. And if I should “die,” though the clouds grow dark as fierce lightnings rend this bleak asteroid, stark ... If you look above, you will see a bright Sign― the sun with the moon in its arms, Divine. So divine, if you can, my bright meaning, and know― my Spirit is mine. I will go where I go. And if my body should not be found, never think of me in the cold ground. Published as the collection "Daredevil"
#daredevil#love#mutilation#tightrope#high#wire#acrobatic#tumble#bruised#fall
Written by
michael-r-burch
62/M/Nashville, Tennessee
Apr 3, 2020
Apr 3, 2020 at 1:05 AM UTC
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