After the Deluge

These are poems about floods, being lost at sea, and other calamities... After the Deluge by Michael R. Burch She was kinder than light to an up-reaching flower and sweeter than rain to the bees in their bower where anemones blush at the affections they shower, and love’s shocking power. She shocked me to life, but soon left me to wither. I was listless without her, nor could I be with her. I fell under the spell of her absence’s power. in that calamitous hour. Like blithe showers that fled repealing spring’s sweetness; like suns’ warming rays sped away, with such fleetness ... she has taken my heart— alas, our completeness! I now wilt in pale beams of her occult remembrance. I almost lost my wife Beth during the Great Nashville Flood when she took ill while out of town for a funeral and I was trapped as our house's hill became an island. Adrift by Michael R. Burch I helplessly loved you although I was lost in the veils of your eyes, grown blind to the cost of my ignorant folly —your unreadable rune— as leashed tides obey an indecipherable moon. Mare Clausum by Michael R. Burch These are the narrows of my soul— dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams. And these uncharted islands bleakly home wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams. Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs. For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know that vessel lists, and night brings no relief. Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost; then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust. This sea is not for sailors, but the damned who lingered long past morning, till they learned why it is named: Mare Clausum. Sandy Hook Call to Love by Michael R. Burch Our hearts are broken today for our children's small bodies lie broken; let us gather them up, as we may, that the truth of our Love may be spoken; then, when we have put them away to nevermore dream or be woken, let us think of the living, and pray for true Love, not some miserable token, to command us, for strength to obey. War is Obsolete by Michael R. Burch War is obsolete; even the strange machinery of dread weeps for the child in the street who cannot lift her head to reprimand the Man who failed to countermand her soft defeat. But war is obsolete; even the cold robotic drone that flies far overhead has sense enough to moan and shudder at her plight (only men bereft of Light with hearts indurate stone embrace war’s Siberian night). For war is obsolete; man’s tribal “gods,” long dead, have fled his awakening sight while the true Sun, overhead, has pity on her plight. O sweet, precipitate Light! — embrace her, reject the night that leaves gentle fledglings dead. For each brute ancestor lies with his totems and his “gods” in the slavehold of premature night that awaited him in his tomb; while Love, the ancestral womb, still longs to give birth to the Light. So which child shall we murder tonight, or which Ares condemn to the gloom? Momentum! Momentum! by Michael R. Burch for the neo-Cons Crossing the Rubicon, we come! Momentum! Momentum! Furious hooves! The Gauls we have slaughtered, no man disapproves. War’s hawks shrieking-strident, white doves stricken dumb. Coo us no cooings of pale-breasted peace! Momentum! Momentum! Imperious hooves! The blood of barbarians brightens our greaves. Pompey’s head in a basket? We slumber at ease. Seduce us again, great Bellona, dark queen! Momentum! Momentum! Curious hooves Now pound out strange questions, but what can they mean As the great stallions rear and their riders careen? Published by Bewildering Stories Bellona was the Roman goddess of war. The name "Bellona" derives from the Latin word for "war" (bellum), and is linguistically related to the English word "belligerent" (literally, "war-waging"). In earlier times she was called Duellona, that name being derived from a more ancient word for "battle" relating to our “duel.” Nuclear Winter: Solo Restart by Michael R. Burch Out of the ashes a flower emerges and trembling bright sunshine bathes its scorched stem, but how will this flower endure for an hour the rigors of winter eternal and grim without men? Transplant by Michael R. Burch You float, unearthly angel, clad in flesh as strange to us who briefly knew your flame as laughter to disease. And yet you laugh. Behind your smile, the sun forfeits its claim to earth, and floats forever now the same— light captured at its moment of least height. You laugh here always, welcoming the night, and, just a photograph, still you can claim bright rapture: like an angel, not of flesh— but something more, made less. Your humanness this moment of release becomes a name and something else—a radiance, a strange brief presence near our hearts. How can we stand and chain you here to this nocturnal land of burgeoning gray shadows? Fly, begone. I give you back your soul, forfeit all claim to radiance, and welcome grief’s dark night that crushes all the laughter from us. Light in someone Else’s hand, and sing at ease some song of brightsome mirth through dawn-lit trees to welcome morning’s sun. O daughter! these are eyes too weak for laughter; for love’s sight, I welcome darkness, overcome with light. Remembering Not to Call by Michael R. Burch a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch The hardest thing of all, after telling her everything, is remembering not to call. Now the phone hanging on the wall will never announce her ring: the hardest thing of all for children, however tall. And the hardest thing this spring will be remembering not to call the one who was everything. That the songbirds will nevermore sing is the hardest thing of all for those who once listened, in thrall, and welcomed the message they bring, since they won’t remember to call. And the hardest thing this fall will be a number with no one to ring. No, the hardest thing of all is remembering not to call. Enigma for Beth O, terrible angel, bright lover and avenger, full of whimsical light and vile anger; wild stranger, seeking the solace of night, or the danger; pale foreigner, alien to man, or savior. Who are you, seeking consolation and passion in the same breath, screaming for pleasure, bereft of all articles of faith, finding life harsher than death? Grieving angel, giving more than taking, how lucky the man who has found in your love, this—our reclamation; fallen wren, you must strive to fly though your heart is shaken; weary pilgrim, you must not give up though your feet are aching; lonely child, lie here still in my arms; you must soon be waking. Love is her Belief and her Commandment by Michael R. Burch for Beth Love is her belief and her commandment; in restless dreams at night, she dreams of Love; and Love is her desire and her purpose; and everywhere she goes, she sings of Love. There is a tomb in Palestine: for others the chance to stake their claims (the Chosen Ones), but in her eyes, it’s Love’s most hallowed chancel where Love was resurrected, where one comes in wondering awe to dream of resurrection to blissful realms, where Love reigns over all with tenderness, with infinite affection. While some may mock her faith, still others wonder because they see the rare state of her soul, and there are rumors: when she prays the heavens illume more brightly, as if saints concur who keep a constant vigil over her. And once she prayed beside a dying woman: the heavens opened and the angels came in the form of long-departed friends and loved ones, to comfort and encourage. I believe not in her God, but always in her Love. Sailing to My Grandfather by Michael R. Burch for George Edwin Hurt Sr. This distance between us —this vast sea of remembrance— is no hindrance, no enemy. I see you out of the shining mists of memory. Events and chance and circumstance are sands on the shore of your legacy. I find you now in fits and bursts of breezes time has blown to me, while waves, immense, now skirt and glance against the bow unceasingly. I feel the sea's salt spray—light fists, her mists and vapors mocking me. From ignorance to reverence, your words were sextant stars to me. Bright stars are strewn in silver gusts back, back toward infinity. From innocence to senescence, now you are mine increasingly. Note: Under the Sextant’s Stars is a painting by Bernini. The Harvest of Roses by Michael R. Burch for Harvey Stanbrough I have not come for the harvest of roses— the poets' mad visions, their railing at rhyme ... for I have discerned what their writing discloses: weak words wanting meaning, beat torsioning time. Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer— images weak, too forced not to fail; gathered by poets who worship their luster, they shimmer, impendent, resplendently pale. Published by The Raintown Review, Mindful of Poetry and FireBug 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? Uncanny 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? 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. Pale Though Her Eyes by Michael R. Burch Pale though her eyes, her lips are scarlet from drinking our blood, this child, this harlot; born of the night and her heart, of darkness; evil incarnate, to dance so reckless; dreaming of blood, her fangs—white—baring; revealing her lust, and her eyes, pale, staring . . . Vampires by Michael R. Burch Vampires are such fragile creatures; we fear the dark, but the light destroys them . . . sunlight, or a stake, or a cross—such common things. Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings, we heed his voice. Centuries have taught us: in shadows danger lurks for those who stray, and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs. He has no choice. We are his prey, plump and fragrant, and if we pray to avoid him, he prays to find us, prays to some despotic hooded God whose benediction is the humid blood he lusts to taste. She is brighter than dawn by Michael R. Burch for Beth There’s a light about her like the moon through a mist: a bright incandescence with which she is blessed and my heart to her light like the tide now is pulled . . . she is fair, O, and bright like the moon silver-veiled. There’s a fire within her like the sun’s leaping forth to lap up the darkness of night from earth's hearth and my eyes to her flame like the sphingid’s are drawn till my heart is consumed. She is brighter than dawn. The sphingid gets its name from the legendary Sphinx and is commonly called the sphinx moth. The Sky Was Turning Blue by Michael R. Burch for Vicky Yesterday I saw you as the snow flurries died, spent winds becalmed. When I saw your solemn face alone in the crowd, I felt my heart, so long embalmed, begin to beat aloud. Was it another winter, another day like this? Was it so long ago? Where you the rose-cheeked girl who slapped my face, then stole a kiss? Was the sky this gray with snow, my heart so all a-whirl? How is it in one moment it was twenty years ago, lost worlds remade anew? When your eyes met mine, I knew you felt it too, as though we heard the robin's song and the sky was turning blue. Tillage by Michael R. Burch What stirs within me is no great welling straining to flood forth, but an emptiness waiting to be filled. I am not an orchard ready to be harvested, but a field rough and barren waiting to be tilled. Shadows by Michael R. Burch Alone again as evening falls, I join gaunt shadows and we crawl up and down my room's dark walls. Up and down and up and down, against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns— we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown. We drown in shadows starker still, shadows of the somber hills, shadows of sad selves we spill, tumbling, to the ground below. There, caked in grimy, clinging snow, we flutter feebly, moaning low for days dreamed once an age ago when we weren't shadows, but were men . . . when we were men, or almost so. Distances (II) by Michael R. Burch There is a small cleanness about her, as though 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. In My House by Michael R. Burch I was once the only caucasian in the software company I founded. I had two fine young black programmers working for me, and they both had keys to my house. This poem looks back to the dark days of slavery and the Civil War it produced. 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 911 Carousel by Michael R. Burch “And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why the reeling azure fixture of the sky grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.” They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize, and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud. The voice of terror thunders from a cloud that darkens over children adult-wise, far less inclined to error, when a step in any wrong direction is to fall a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call, their voices plangent, honking to be shot . . . Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide, as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride. R.I.P. by Michael R. Burch When I am lain to rest and my soul is no longer intact, but dissolving, like a sunset diminishing to the west, ... and when at last before His throne my past is put to test and the demons and the Beast await to feast on any morsel downward cast, while the vapors of impermanence cling, smelling of damask ... then let me go, and do not weep if I am left to sleep, to sleep and never dream, or dream, perhaps, only a little longer and more deep. Published by Romantics Quarterly and The Chained Muse. This is an early poem from my “Romantic Period” that was written in my late teens. iou by michael r. burch i might have said it but i didn’t u might have noticed but u wouldn’t we might have been us but we couldn’t u might respond but probably shouldn’t Delicacy by Michael R. Burch for my mother, Christine Ena Burch, and all good mothers Your love is as delicate as a butterfly cleaning its wings, as soft as the predicate the hummingbird sings to itself, gently murmuring— “Fly! Fly! Fly!” Your love is the string soaring kites untie. chrysalis by michael r. burch these are the days of doom u seldom leave ur room u live in perpetual gloom yet also the days of hope how to cope? u pray and u grope toward self illumination ... becoming an angel (pure love) and yet You must love Your Self Love Is Not Love by Michael R. Burch for Beth Love is not love that never looked within itself and questioned all, curled up like a zygote in a ball, throbbed, sobbed and shook. (Or went on a binge at a nearby mall, then would not cook.) Love is not love that never winced, then smiled, convinced that soar’s the prerequisite of fall. When all its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed, where does Love find the wherewithal to try again, endeavor, when all that it knows is: O, because! The One and Only by Michael R. Burch for Beth If anyone ever loved me, It was you. If anyone ever cared beyond mere things declared; if anyone ever knew ... My darling, it was you. If anyone ever touched my beating heart as it flew, it was you, and only you. 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. Hiroshima Child by Nazim Hikmet loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch I come to beg at every door, but who can hear my phantom tread? I knock and yet remain unseen, for I am dead, for I am dead. I’m only seven, though I died in Hiroshima so long ago. I’m seven now, as I was then, for how can phantom children grow? White incandescence charred my hair; my eyes grew dim, then I was blind; my fragile bones became fine ash; my ash was scattered by the wind. Today I need no fruit, no rice; I crave no sweets, nor even bread. I beg for nothing for myself, for I am dead, for I am dead. All that I beg of you is peace: You fight today! You fight today! Peace, so earth’s living children may live and grow and laugh and play. faith(less) by michael r. burch for the “Chosen Few” Those who believed and Those who misled lie together at last in the same narrow bed and if god loved Them more for Their strange lack of doubt, he kept it well hidden till he snuffed Them out. ah-men! 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. This is a poem I wrote around age 16-18, during my “cummings period.” Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player as a boy; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather ironic commentary on the term “superstar.” 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? An Illusion by Michael R. Burch The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold when I awoke. She came to me with the sound of falling leaves and the scent of new-mown grass; I held out my arms to her and she passed into oblivion ... This is one of my early poems, written around age 16 and published in my high school literary journal, the Lantern, and by Borderless Journal (Singapore). Huntress by Michael R. Burch after Baudelaire Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep across a crevice dropping deep into a dark and doomed domain. Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane. Rain falls upon your path, and pain pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause and heed the oft-lamented laws which bid you not begin again till night returns. You wail like wind, the sighing of a soul for sin, and give up hunting for a heart. Till sunset falls again, depart, though hate and hunger urge you—On! Heed, hearts, your hope—the break of dawn. Men at Sixty by Michael R. Burch after Donald Justice’s “Men at Forty” Learn to gently close doors to rooms you can never re-enter. Rest against the stair rail as the solid steps buck and buckle like ships’ decks. Rediscover in mirrors your father’s face once warm with the mystery of lather, now electrically plucked. All the More Human, for Eve Pandora by Michael R. Burch a lullaby for the first human Clone God provide the soul, and let her sleep be natural as ours, unplagued by dreams of being someone else, lost in the deep wild swells of grieving all that human means . . . and do not let her come to doubt herself— that she is as we are, so much alike in frailty, in the books that line the shelf that tell us who we are—a rickety dike against the flood of doubt—that we are more than cells and chance, that love, perhaps, exists because of someone else who would endure such pain because some part of her persists in us, and calls us blesséd by her bed, become a saint at last, in whose frail arms we see ourselves—the gray won out of red, the ash of blonde—till love is safe from harm and all that human means is that we live in doubt, and die in doubt, and only love the more because together we must strive against an end we loathe and fear. What of?— we cannot say, imagining the Night as some weird darkened structure caving in to cold enormous pressure. Lacking sight, we lie unbreathing, thinking breath a sin . . . and that is to be human. You are us— true mortal, child of doubt, hopeful and curious. Belfry by Michael R. Burch There are things we surrender to the attic gloom: they haunt us at night with shrill, querulous voices. There are choices we made yet did not pursue, behind windows we shuttered then failed to remember. There are canisters sealed that we cannot reopen, and others long broken that nothing can heal. There are things we conceal that our anger dismembered, gray leathery faces the rafters reveal. 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, PoetryMagazine.com, Penumbra, Poet’s Haven and the Net Poetry and Art Competition The Locker by Michael R. Burch All the dull hollow clamor has died and what was contained, removed, reproved adulation or sentiment, left with the pungent darkness as remembered as the sudden light. Ironic Vacation by Michael R. Burch Salzburg. Seeing Mozart’s baby grand piano. Standing in the presence of sheer incalculable genius. Grabbing my childish pen to write a poem & challenge the Immortals. Next stop, the catacombs! Sun Poem by Michael R. Burch I have suffused myself in poetry as a lizard basks, soaking up sun, scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light he understands—when it comes, it comes. A flood of light leaches down to his bones, his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright. Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling; here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead. Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling, simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed, his tongue flicking rhythms, the sun—throbbing, spilling. The Last Enchantment by Michael R. Burch Oh, Lancelot, my noble friend, how time has thinned your ragged mane and pinched your features; still you seem though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged. Your sword hand is, as ever, ready, although the time for swords has passed. Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady meeting mine ... you must not ask. The time is not, nor ever shall be, for Merlyn’s words were only words; and now his last enchantment wanes, and we must put aside our swords ... Less Heroic Couplets: Unsmiley Simile, or, Down Time by Michael R. Burch Quora is down! I frown: how long can the universe suffice without its ad-vice? Fierce ancient skalds summoned verse from their guts; today’s genteel poets prefer modern ruts. —Michael R. Burch Vice Grip by Michael R. Burch There’s no need to rant about Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The cruelty of “civilization” suffices: our ordinary vices. Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends I by Michael R. Burch Conformists of a feather flock together. Winner of the National Poetry Month Couplet Competition Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends II by Michael R. Burch Fascists of a feather flock together. Less Heroic Couplets: Shell Game by Michael R. Burch I saw a turtle squirtle! Before you ask, “How fertile?” The squirt came from its mouth. Why do your thoughts fly south? The Better Man: a Double Limerick by Michael R. Burch Dear Ed: I don’t understand why you will publish this other guy— when I’m brilliant, devoted, one hell of a poet! Yet you publish Anonymous. Fie! Fie! A pox on your head if you favor this poet who’s dubious, unsavor- y, inconsistent in texts, no address (I checked!): since he’s plagiarized Unknown, I’ll wager! “The Better Man” is a double limerick originally published by The Eclectic Muse The Hippopotami by Michael R. Burch There’s no seeing eye to eye with the awesomely huge Hippopotami: on the bank, you’re much taller; going under, you’re smaller and assuredly destined to die! Cover Girl by Michael R. Burch Cunning at sunning and dunning, the stunning young woman’s in the running to be found nude on the cover of some patronizing lover. First Base Freeze by Michael R. Burch I find your love unappealing (no, make that appalling) because you prefer kissing then stalling. Less Heroic Couplets: Negotiables by Michael R. Burch Love should be more than the sum of its parts— of its potions and pills and subterranean arts. Less Heroic Couplets: Mini-Ode to Stamina by Michael R. Burch When you’ve given so much that I can’t bear your touch, then from a safe distance let me admire your persistence. Published by Asses of Parnassus Unapproved Absence, or, Slip Up by Michael R. Burch Christ, how I miss you!, though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips. Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips and the dishes are all stacked away. You left me today ... and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets. The Red State Reaction by Michael R. Burch Where the hell are they hidin’ Sleepy Joe Biden? And how the hell can the bleep Do so much, in his sleep? Red State Reject by Michael R. Burch I once was a pessimist but now I’m more optimistic ever since I discovered my fears were unsupported by any statistic. pretty pickle by michael r. burch u’d blaspheme if u could because ur Gaud’s no good, but of course u cant: ur a lowly ant (or so u were told by a Hierophant). The wordplay of “ur Gaud” and “u cant” is intentional, as always. briefling by michael r. burch manishatched,hopsintotheMix, cavorts,hassex(quick!,spawnanewBrood!); then,likeamayfly,he’ssuddenlygone: plantfood Here “briefling” is a diminutive of “brief” and also a pun on “brief fling.” Nonbeliever by Michael R. Burch She smiled a thin-lipped smile (What do men know of love?) then rolled her eyes toward heaven (Or that Chauvinist above?). A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint by Michael R. Burch Santa Claus, for Christmas, please, don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . . just . . . Santa, please, I’m on my knees! . . . please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi! Hymn to Apollo by Michael R. Burch, age 16 something of sunshine attracted my i as it lazed on the afternoon sky, golden, splashed on the easel of god; what, i thought, could this airy stuff be, to, phantomlike, flit through tall trees on fall days, such as these? and the breeze whispered a dirge to the vanishing light; enchoired with the evening, it sang; its voice enchantedly rang chanting "Night! "... till all the bright light retired, expired. I wrote this poem around age 15 or 16 and it was published in the Lantern, my high school literary journal, as “Something of Sunshine.” Erin by Michael R. Burch All that’s left of Ireland is her hair— bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin, her brilliant air of cavalier despair, her train of children—some conceived in sin, the others to avoid it. For nowhere is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin, gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair! How can men look upon her and not spin like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air? They buy. They grope to pat her nyloned shin, to share her elevated, pale Despair ... to find at last two spirits ease no one’s. All that’s left of Ireland is the Care, her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’. This is one of my most-rejected poems, but I have always liked it myself. Aflutter by Michael R. Burch This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.—Yahweh You are gentle now, and in your failing hour how like the child you were, you seem again, and smile as sadly as the girl (age ten?) who held the sparrow with the mangled wing close to her heart. It marveled at your power but would not mend. And so the world renews old vows it seemed to make: false promises spring whispers, as if nothing perishes that does not resurrect to wilder hues like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend but cannot fail to keep. Now in your eyes I see the end of life that only dies and does not care for bright, translucent lies. Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend together, as before, then lay to rest these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast. Last Anthem by Michael R. Burch Where you have gone are the shadows falling . . . does memory pale like a fossil in shale . . . do you not hear me calling? Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen . . . does memory wane with the absence of pain . . . is silence at last your anthem? Lean Harvests (II) by Michael R. Burch for Tom Merrill the trees are shedding their leaves again: another summer is over. the Christians are praising their Maker again, but not the disconsolate plover: i hear him berate the fate of his mate; he claims God is no body’s lover. Sharon by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15 apologies to Byron I. Flamingo-minted, pink, pink cheeks, dark hair streaked with a lisp of dawnlight; I have seen your shadow creep through eerie webs spun out of twilight... And I have longed to kiss your lips, as sweet as the honeysuckle blooms, and to hold your pale albescent body, more curvaceous than the moon... II. Black-haired beauty, like the night, stay with me till morning's light. In shadows, Sharon, become love until the sun lights our alcove. Red, red lips reveal white stone: whet my own, my passions hone. My all in all I give to you, in our tongues’ exchange of dew. Now all I ever ask of you is: do with me what now you do. My love, my life, my only truth! In shadows, Sharon, shed your gown; let all night’s walls come tumbling down. III. Now I will love you long, Sharon, as long as longing may be. I wrote the first version of this poem around age 15. Shock by Michael R. Burch It was early in the morning of the forming of my soul, in the dawning of desire, with passion at first bloom, with lightning splitting heaven to thunder's blasting roll and a sense of welling fire and, perhaps, impending doom— that I cried out through the tumult of the raging storm on high for shelter from the chaos of the restless, driving rain . . . and the voice I heard replying from a rift of bleeding sky was mine, I'm sure, and, furthermore, was certainly insane. Shadows by Michael R. Burch Alone again as evening falls, I join gaunt shadows and we crawl up and down my room's dark walls. Up and down and up and down, against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns— we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown. We drown in shadows starker still, shadows of the somber hills, shadows of sad selves we spill, tumbling, to the ground below. There, caked in grimy, clinging snow, we flutter feebly, moaning low for days dreamed once an age ago when we weren't shadows, but were men . . . when we were men, or almost so. Stewark Island (Ambiguity) “Take your child, your only child, whom you love...” Seas are like tears— they are never far away. I have fled them now these eighteen years, but I am nearer them today than I ever have been. Oh, I never could bear the warm, salty water or the cool comfort here in the shade of an altar sweeter than sin ... Sweeter than sin, yet cleansing, like love; still its feel to doomed skin either too little or too much of whatever it is. Seas and tears are like life— ridiculous, ambiguous. I wrote "Stewark Island (Ambiguity)" around age 17-18 as a high school junior or senior. stones by michael r. burch i. far below me lies a village with its houses hewn from stone and though Everyman who lives there bravely claims he’s not alone, i can tell him, yes u are! for u cannot touch the stars no matter how u try; nor can u tame the mountain, nor appease the darkening sky. ii. and late at night their flinty fires blazing cannot warm their stony hearts; though each villager “believes” (in what?) the terror-fear departs them only at mid-day for they fear what Others say when their walls have shut them in. iii. and do they sin? who am i to say? most stones are shades of gray; what does it matter, anyway? iv. oh, i think that living is not easy and that dying is not hard ... as the stars above wink, meaningless, so they are; so we all are. v. a legion without sound in dusky darkness drawing down to settle on the town, the Night is like a stone — hard and dark and rolling on, hard and dark and rolling on. With my daughter, by a waterfall by Michael R. Burch By a fountain that slowly shed its rainbows of water, I led my youngest daughter. And the rhythm of the waves that casually lazed made her sleepy as I rocked her. By that fountain I finally felt fulfillment of which I had dreamt feeling May’s warm breezes pelt petals upon me. And I held her close in the crook of my arm as she slept, breathing harmony. By a river that brazenly rolled, my daughter and I strolled toward the setting sun, and the cadence of the cold, chattering waters that flowed reminded us both of an ancient song, so we sang it together as we walked along —unsure of the words, but sure of our love— as a waterfall sighed and the sun died above. This poem was published by my college literary journal, Homespun, in 1977. I believe I wrote it the year before, around age 18. Yesterday My Father Died by Michael R. Burch Rice Krispies and bananas, milk and orange juice, newspapers stiff with frozen dew . . . Yesterday my father died and the feelings that I tried to hide he’ll never knew, unless he saw through my disguise. Alarm clocks and radios, crumpled sheets and pillows, housecoats and tattered, too-small slippers . . . Why did I never say I cared? Why were no secrets ever shared? For now there's nothing left of him except the clothes he used to wear. Dimmed lights and smoky murmurs, a brief “Goodnight!” and fitful slumber, yesterday's forgotten dreams . . . Why did my father have to go, knowing that I loved him so? Or did he know? Because, it seems, I never told him so. The last words he spoke to me, his laughter in the night, mementos jammed in cluttered cabinets . . . I wrote "Yesterday My Father Died" in high school, circa age 16. What The Roses Don’t Say by Michael R. Burch Oblivious to love, the roses bloom and never touch ... They gather calm and still to watch the busy insects swarm their leaves ... They sway, bemused ... till rain falls with a chill stark premonition: ice! ... and then they twitch in shock at every outrage ... Soon they’ll blush a paler scarlet, humbled in their beds, for they’ll be naked; worse, their leaves will droop, their petals quickly wither ... Spindly thorns are poor defense against the winter’s onslaught ... No, they are roses. Men should be afraid. This was my second attempt at blank verse, after “Once Upon a Frozen Star.” The Monarch’s Rose or The Hedgerow Rose by Michael R. Burch I lead you here to pluck this florid rose still tethered to its post, a dreary mass propped up to stiff attention, winsome-thorned (what hand was ever daunted less to touch such flame, in blatant disregard of all but atavistic beauty)? Does this rose not symbolize our love? But as I place its emblem to your breast, how can this poem, long centuries deflowered, not debase all art, if merely genuine, but not “original”? Love, how can reused words though frailer than all petals, bent by air to lovelier contortions, still persist, defying even gravity? For here beat Monarch’s wings: they rise on emptiness! This was my third attempt at blank verse. Fairest Diana by Michael R. Burch Fairest Diana, princess of dreams, born to be loved and yet distant and lone, why did you linger—so solemn, so lovely— an orchid ablaze in a crevice of stone? Was not your heart meant for tenderest passions? Surely your lips—for wild kisses, not vows! Why then did you languish, though lustrous, becoming a pearl of enchantment cast before sows? Fairest Diana, fragile as lilac, as willful as rainfall, as true as the rose; how did a stanza of silver-bright verse come to be bound in a book of dull prose? Elemental by Michael R. Burch for and after Dylan Thomas The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil— for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet; each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil, dark images impacted, rooted clay. The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning— the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame that leashes and excites its turgid surface ... then squanders years imagining love’s the same. Belatedly, he turns to what lies broken— the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts, among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking one element whose scorching flame uplifts. gimME that ol’ time religion! by michael r. burch fiddle-dee-dum, fiddle-dee-dee, jesus loves and understands ME! safe in his grace, I’LL damn them to hell— the strumpet, the harlot, the wild jezebel, the alky, the druggie, all queers short and tall! let them drink ashes and wormwood and gall, ’cause fiddle-dee-DUMB, fiddle-dee-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee . . . jesus loves and understands ME! Happily Never After by Michael R. Burch Happily never after, we lived unmerrily (write it!—like disaster) in Our Kingdom by the See as the man from Porlock’s laughter drowned out love’s threnody. We ditched the red wheelbarrow in slovenly Tennessee, then made a picturebook of poems, a postcard for Tse-Tse, a list of resolutions we knew we couldn’t keep, and asylum decorations for the King in his dark sleep. We made it new so often, strange newness, wearing old, peeled off, and something rotten gleamed—dull yellow, not like gold— like carelessness, or cowardice, and redolent of pee. We stumbled off, our awkwardness—new Keystone comedy. Huge cloudy symbols blocked the sun; onlookers strained to see. We said We were the only One. Our gaseous Melody had made us Joshuas, and so—the Bible, new-rewrit, with god removed, replaced by Show and Glyphics and Sanskrit, seemed marvelous to Us, although King Ezra said, “It’s S--t.” We spent unhappy hours in Our Kingdom of the Pea, drunk on such Awesome Power only Emperors can See. We were Imagists and Vorticists, Projectivists, a Dunce, Anarchists and Antarcticists and anti-Christs, and once We’d made the world Our oyster and stowed away the pearl of Our too-, too-polished wisdom, unanchored of the world, We sailed away to Lilliput, to Our Kingdom by the See and piped the rats to join Us, to live unmerrily hereever and hereafter, in Our Kingdom of the Pea, in the miniature ship Disaster in a jar in Tennessee. Duet (I) by Michael R. Burch Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad, how worn and gray your auburn hair became! You’re very silent, like an evening rain that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed for days we danced together, glisten now; your flesh became translucent; and your brow knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved, but mine is not among them. Time has proved our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said I loved you once, how is it that could change? And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . . Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright my thought of you remains, and if I said I loved you once, then took him to my bed, I did it for the need of love, one night when you were far away. My heart endured transfigurement—in flaming ash inured to heartbreak and the violence of sight: I saw myself grow old and thin and frail with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . . And so I loved him for myself, despite the love between us—our first startled kiss. But then I loved him for his humanness. And then we both grew old, and it was right . . . Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered against the night, beyond this vale of tears, for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . . No, Peter, love is constant as the heart that keeps till its last beat a measured pace and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place by beds at first well-used, at last well-made, and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . . Duet (II) by Michael R. Burch If love is just an impulse meant to bring two tiny hearts together, skittering like hamsters from their Quonsets late at night in search of lust’s productive exercise . . . If love is the mutation of some gene made radiant—an accident of bliss played out by two small actors on a screen of silver mesh, who never even kiss . . . If love is evolution, nature’s way of sorting out its DNA in pairs, of matching, mating, sculpting flesh’s clay . . . why does my wrinkled hamster climb his stairs to set his wheel revolving, then descend and stagger off . . . to make hers fly again? Published by Bewildering Stories Oasis by Michael R. Burch for Beth I want tears to form again in the shriveled glands of these eyes dried all these long years by too much heated knowing. I want tears to course down these parched cheeks, to star these cracked lips like an improbable dew in the heart of a desert. I want words to burble up like happiness, like the thought of love, like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you to a nomad who has only known drought. Melting by Michael R. Burch for Beth Entirely, as spring consumes the snow, the thought of you consumes me: I am found in rivulets, dissolved to what I know of former winters’ passions. Underground, perhaps one slender icicle remains of what I was before, in some dark cave— a stalactite, long calcified, now drains to sodden pools whose milky liquid laves the colder rock, thus washing something clean that never saw the light, that never knew the crust could break above, that light could stream: so luminous, so bright, so beautiful . . . I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed, and all because you smiled on me, and warmed. Published by Borderless Journal All Afterglow by Michael R. Burch Something remarkable, perhaps ... the color of her eyes ... though I forget the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair the way it blew about ... I do not know just what it was about her that has kept her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow that lasted till July would be less rare, clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’ and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond the freezing point which keeps all things the same ... till what remains is fragile and unlike the world above, where melted snows and rains form rivulets that, inundate with sun, evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream remake the world again ... I do not know that we can be remade—all afterglow. Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo. Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor by Michael R. Burch After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs, Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs: “Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!” (His name, let’s assume, was, er ... Percival Queemly.) “Expel me! Expel me!”—She flashes her eyes. “Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise, for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name ... Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!” “Continue to live here—carouse as you please!” the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees. Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose: “I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ... but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.” (Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.) Album by Michael R. Burch I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane— and I see how young they were, and how unwise; and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane, their blissful arc through alien blue skies ... And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed— are also wings, but wings that never flew: like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed, their features never merged, remaining two ... And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ... and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise, who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies, clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be. Musings at Giza by Michael R. Burch In deepening pools of shadows lies the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes. Though centuries have passed, he waits. Egyptians gather at the gates. Great pyramids, the looted tombs —how still and desolate their wombs!— await sarcophagi of kings. From eons past, a hammer rings. Was Cleopatra's litter borne along these streets now bleak, forlorn? Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride fierce stallions through a human tide? Did Bocchoris here mete his law from distant Kush to Saqqarah? or Tutankhamen here once smile upon the children of the Nile? or Nefertiti ever rise with wild abandon in her eyes to gaze across this arid plain and cry, “Great Isis, live again!” Published by Golden Isis and The Eclectic Muse (Canada) The People Loved What They Had Loved Before by Michael R. Burch We did not worship at the shrine of tears; we knew not to believe, not to confess. And so, ahemming victors, to false cheers, we wrote off love, we gave a stern address to things that we disapproved of, things of yore. And the people loved what they had loved before. We did not build stone monuments to stand six hundred years and grow more strong and arch like bridges from the people to the Land beyond their reach. Instead, we played a march, pale Neros, sparking flames from door to door. And the people loved what they had loved before. We could not pipe of cheer, or even woe. We played a minor air of Ire (in E). The sheep chose to ignore us, even though, long destitute, we plied our songs for free. We wrote, rewrote and warbled one same score. And the people loved what they had loved before. At last outlandish wailing, we confess, ensued, because no listeners were left. We built a shrine to tears: our goddess less divine than man, and, like us, long bereft. We stooped to love too late, too Learned to whore. And the people loved what they had loved before. Bertolt Brecht Translations These are my modern English translations of poems written in German by Bertolt Brecht. After the poems I have translations of epigrams and quotations by Bertolt Brecht. The Burning of the Books by Bertolt Brecht loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch When the Regime commanded the unlawful books to be burned, teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires. Then a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of excommunicated texts, became enraged: he'd been excluded! He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath, to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power — Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen — Haven't I always reported the truth? Now here you are, treating me like a liar! Burn me! Published by Poetry Super Highway, The Tory and Convivium Parting by Bertolt Brecht loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch We embrace; my fingers trace rich cloth while yours encounter only moth- eaten fabric. A quick hug: you were invited to the gay soiree while the minions of the 'law' relentlessly pursue me. We talk about the weather and our friendship's eternal magic. Anything else would be too bitter, too tragic. Radio Poem by Bertolt Brecht loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch You, little box, held tightly to me during my escape so that your delicate tubes do not break; carried from house to house, from ship to train, so that my enemies may continue communicating with me by land and by sea and even in my bed, to my pain; the last thing I hear at night, the first thing when I rise, recounting their many conquests and my cares, promise me not to go silent in a sudden surprise. The Mask of Evil by Bertolt Brecht loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch A Japanese woodcarving hangs on my wall — the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer. Not unsympathetically, I observe the forehead's bulging veins, the strain such malevolence requires. Bertolt Brecht Epigrams and Quotations These are my modern English translations of epigrams and quotations by Bertolt Brecht. Everyone chases the way happiness feels, unaware how it nips at their heels. — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch The world of learning takes a crazy turn when teachers are taught to discern! — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Unhappy, the land that lacks heroes. — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Hungry man, reach for the book: it's a hook, a harpoon. — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Because things are the way they are, things can never stay as they were. — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch War is like love; true... it finds a way through. — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch What happens to the hole when the cheese is no longer whole? — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by threatening the poor clerk. — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Do not fear death so much, or strife, but rather fear the inadequate life. — loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Keywords/Tags: Bertolt Brecht, translation, translations, German, modern English, epigram, epigrams, quote, quotes, quotations Beast 666 by Michael R. Burch “... what rough beast ... slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats Brutality is a cross wooden, blood-stained, gas hissing, sibilant, lungs gilled, deveined, red flecks on a streaked glass pane, jeers jubilant, mocking. Brutality is shocking— tiny orifices torn, impaled with hard lust, the fetus unborn tossed in a dust- bin. The scarred skull shorn, nails bloodied, tortured, an old wound sutured over, never healed. Brutality, all its faces revealed, is legion: Death March, Trail of Tears, Inquisition . . . always the same. The Beast of the godless and of man’s “religion” slouching toward Jerusalem: horned, crowned, gibbering, drooling, insane. Bible libel (ii) by Michael R. Burch ur savior’s a cad —he’s as bad as his dad— according to your horrible Bible. demanding belief or he’ll bring u to grief? he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival! was the man ever good before being made “god”? if so, half your Bible is libel! Disconcerted by Michael R. Burch Meg, my sweet, fresh as a daisy, when I’m with you my heart beats like crazy & my future gets hazy ... 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 such great matters, ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters. Altared Spots by Michael R. Burch The mother leopard buries her cub, then cries three nights for his bones to rise clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise. Good mother leopard, pensive thought and fiercest love’s wild insurrection yield no certainty of a resurrection. Man’s tried them both, has added tears, chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’ white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs where dead men’s frozen genes convene ... there is no answer—death is death. So bury your son, and save your breath. Or emulate earth’s “highest species”— write a few strange poems and odd treatises. Having Touched You 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. Children by Michael R. Burch There was a moment suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall, impendent, pregnant with possibility ... when we might have made ... anything, anything we dreamed, almost anything at all, coalescing dreams into reality. Oh, the love we might have fashioned out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos and the rhythms of evening! But we were young, and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss and what is left is not worth saving. But, oh, you were lovely, child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars, and for a day, what little we partook of all that lay before us seemed so much, and passion but a force with which to play. we did not Dye in vain! by michael r. burch from “songs of the sea snails” though i’m just a slimy crawler, my lineage is proud: my forebears gave their lives (oh, let the trumps blare loud!) so purple-mantled Royals might stand out in a crowd. i salute you, fellow loyals, who labor without scruple as your incomes fall while deficits quadruple to swaddle unjust Lords in bright imperial purple! Originally published by The American Dissident Notes: In ancient times the purple dye produced from the secretions of purpura mollusks (sea snails) was known as “Tyrian purple,” “royal purple” and “imperial purple.” It was greatly prized in antiquity, and was very expensive according to the historian Theopompus: “Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon.” Thus, purple-dyed fabrics became status symbols, and laws often prevented commoners from possessing them. The production of Tyrian purple was tightly controlled in Byzantium, where the imperial court restricted its use to the coloring of imperial silks. A child born to the reigning emperor was literally porphyrogenitos ("born to the purple") because the imperial birthing apartment was walled in porphyry, a purple-hued rock, and draped with purple silks. Royal babies were swaddled in purple; we know this because the iconodules, who disagreed with the emperor Constantine about the veneration of images, accused him of defecating on his imperial purple swaddling clothes! Poets laud Justice’s high principles. Trump just gropes her raw genitals. —Michael R. Burch Roll on, Red River by Michael R. Burch Roll on, Red River, a cowboy has died. Roll on; we lay him down here at your side. Carry him off to the wild, raging sea... Roll on, Red River, and set his soul free. Roll on, Red River, roll on to the sea, and sing him to sleep as you roll up his dreams. Sing him to sleep with some old, lonesome song... Now roll on, Red River, and roll him along. Roll on, Red River and say a kind word for an old surly cowhand who died poor and hurt; poor as a pauper and hurt by his friends... Roll on, Red River, roll on to the end. Roll on, Red River, a cowboy has died. Nobody loved him and nobody cried. A cowboy's not much, but at least he's a man... So roll on, Red River, roll on and be damned. I believe I wrote the original version of this poem around age 14-15. Moore or Less by Michael R. Burch for Richard Moore Less is more — in a dress, I suppose, and in intimate clothes like crotchless hose. But now Moore is less due to death’s subtraction and I must confess: I hate such redaction! u-turn: another way to look at religion by michael r. burch ... u were born(e) orphaned from Ecstasy into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms dreaming of Beatification; u’d love to make a u-turn back to Divinity, but having misplaced ur chrysalis, can only chant magical phrases, like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ... no foothold by michael r. burch there is no hope; therefore i became invulnerable to love. now even god cannot move me: nothing to push or shove, no foothold. so let me live out my remaining days in clarity, mine being the only nativity, my death the final crucifixion and apocalypse, as far as the i can see ... The Tally by Hafiz aka Hafez loose translation by Michael R. Burch Lovers don't reveal all their Secrets; under the covers they may count each other's Moles (that reside and hide in the shy regions by forbidden holes), then keep the final tally strictly from Aunt Sally! jasbryx by michael r. burch hidden deep inside of Me is someone else, and he is free; he laughs aloud, but never is heard; he flits about, as free as a bird, so unlike Me silently within Myself, he shouts aloud and shuns the shelf that others deem to be his place; yet society is not disgraced, nor are we, for he is never heard above the spoken word o, i am not as others are — pale things of ice, devoid of fire, for i am all i seem to be — innocent, childlike, frolicsome, free — and i raise no ire no, he is not as others are — he lives his life without a care; and he is all he seems to be — wild, rambunctious, fervent, free, so unlike Me I wrote "jasbryx" in high school, under the influence of e. e. cummings, around age 16. The Red State Reaction by Michael R. Burch Where the hell are they hidin’ Sleepy Joe Biden? And how the hell can the bleep Do so much, in his sleep? Red State Reject by Michael R. Burch I once was a pessimist but now I’m more optimistic ever since I discovered my fears were unsupported by any statistic. Late Frost by Michael R. Burch The matters of the world like sighs intrude; out of the darkness, windswept winter light too frail to solve the puzzle of night’s terror resolves the distant stars to salts: not white, but gray, dissolving in the frigid darkness. I stoke cooled flames and stand, perhaps revealed as equally as gray, a faded hardness too malleable with time to be annealed. Light sprinkles through dull flakes, devoid of color; which matters not. I did not think to find a star like Bethlehem’s. I turn my collar to trudge outside for cordwood. There, outlined within the doorway’s arch, I see the tree that holds its boughs aloft, as if to show they harbor neither love, nor enmity, but only stars: insignias I know— false ornaments that flash, overt and bright, but do not warm and do not really glow, and yet somehow bring comfort, soft delight: a rainbow glistens on new-fallen snow. Snap Shots by Michael R. Burch Our daughters must be celibate, die virgins. We triangulate their early paths to heaven (for the martyrs they’ll soon conjugate). We like to hook a little tail. We hope there’s decent ass in jail. Don’t fool with us; our bombs are smart! (We’ll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.) The soul is all that matters; why hoard gold if it offends the eye? A pension plan? Don’t make us laugh! We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.) The second stanza is a punning reference to the Tailhook scandal, in which US Navy and Marine aviation officers were alleged to have sexually assaulted up to 83 women and seven men. Excelsior by Michael R. Burch I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . . Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned, complaining that I am no longer “pure?” I threw myself before you, and you frowned, so full of noble chastity, renowned for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark to light the cold dominions of your heart. What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim upon these territories, cold and dark, do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light my heart in death and leave me ashen-white, as you are white, extinguished by the Night? The Unregal Beagle vs. The Voracious Eagle by Michael R. Burch I’d rather see an eagle than a beagle because they’re so damn regal. But when it’s time to wiggle and to giggle, I’d rather embrace an angel than an evil. Plus, when it’s time to share the same small space, I’d much rather have a beagle lick my face! Update of "A Litany in Time of Plague" by Michael R. Burch THE PLAGUE has come again To darken lives of men and women, girls and boys; Death proves their bodies toys Too frail to even cry. I am sick, I must die. Lord, have mercy on us! Tycoons, what use is wealth? You cannot buy good health! Physicians cannot heal Themselves, to Death must kneel. Nuns’ prayers mount to the sky. I am sick, I must die. Lord, have mercy on us! Beauty’s brightest flower? Devoured in an hour. Kings, Queens and Presidents Are fearful residents Of manors boarded high. I am sick, I must die. Lord, have mercy on us! We have no means to save Our children from the grave. Though cure-alls line our shelves, We cannot save ourselves. "Come, come!" the sad bells cry. I am sick, I must die. Lord, have mercy on us! Milestones Toward Oblivion by Michael R. Burch “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” —Ronald Reagan A milestone here leans heavily against a gaunt, golemic tree. These words are chiseled thereupon: "One mile and then Oblivion." Swift larks that once swooped down to feed on groping slugs, such insects breed within their radiant flesh and bones ... they did not heed the milestones. Another marker lies ahead, the only tombstone to the dead whose eyeless sockets read thereon: "Alas, behold Oblivion." Once here the sun shone fierce and fair; now night eternal shrouds the air while winter, never-ending, moans and drifts among the milestones. This road is neither long nor wide ... men gleam in death on either side. Not long ago, they pondered on milestones toward Oblivion. Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) Mingled Air by Michael R. Burch for Beth Ephemeral as breath, still words consume the substance of our hearts; the very air that fuels us is subsumed; sometimes the hair that veils your eyes is lifted and the room seems hackles-raised: a spring all tension wound upon a word. At night I feel the care evaporate—a vapor everywhere more enervate than sighs: a mournful sound grown blissful. In the silences between I hear your heart, forget to breathe, and glow somehow. And though the words subside, we know the hearth light and the comfort embers gleam upon our dreaming consciousness. We share so much so common: sighs, breath, mingled air. Doppelgänger by Michael R. Burch Here the only anguish is the bedraggled vetch lying strangled in weeds, the customary sorrows of the wild persimmons, the whispered complaints of the stately willow trees disentangling their fine lank hair, and what is past. I find you here, one of many things lost, that, if we do not recover, will undoubtedly vanish forever ... now only this unfortunate stone, this pale, disintegrate mass, this destiny, this unexpected shiver, this name we share. Role Reversal by Michael R. Burch The fluted lips of statues mock the bronze gaze of the dying sun . . . We are nonplussed, they say, smacking their wet lips, jubilant . . . We are always refreshed, always undying, always young, forever unapologetic, forever gay, smiling, and though it seems man has made us, on his last day, we will see him unmade— we will watch him decay as if he were clay, and we had assumed his flesh, hissing our disappointment. Improve yourself by others' writings, attaining freely what they purchased at the expense of experience. — Socrates, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Celebrate the New Year? The cat is not impressed, the dogs shiver. —Michael R. Burch Relativity and the "Physics" of Love by Albert Einstein loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. That's relativity! Oh, it should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid! . . . but how could she ever, in a million years, explain love to an Einstein? All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springboards of man's actions—because any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves! Unaware it protects the hilltop paddies, the scarecrow seems useless to itself. —Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Ebb-tide: everything we stoop to collect slips through our fingers ... —Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Ascendance Transcendence by Michael R. Burch Breaching the summit I reach the horizon’s last rays. —Michael R. Burch Fledglings by Michael R. Burch With her small eyes, pale blue and unforgiving, she taught me: December is not for those unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings who bicker for worms with dramatic throats still pinkly exposed, ... who have yet to learn the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned fortress and impregnable bower from which men must fly like improbable dreams to become poets. They have yet to grasp that, before they can soar starward like fanciful archaic machines, they must first assimilate the latest technology, ... or lose all in the sudden realization of gravity, following Icarus’s sun-unwinged, singed trajectory. The Higher Atmospheres by Michael R. Burch Whatever we became climbed on the thought of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings ten thousand miles above the breasted earth that 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, since Love melts callow wax the higher atmospheres made brittle. I flew high, just high enough to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers. Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds! by Michael R. Burch “Bury St. Edmonds—Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, download files or surf the Web, absolutely free.”—Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.) Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet, commune with nature, interact with hackers, design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers. Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs— four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs, so your privacy’s assured (a threesome’s fine) while invited friends can scan the party line: for Internet alerts on new positions, the randier exploits of politicians, exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!). The cybersex is great, it’s guaranteed to leave you breathless—flushed, free of disease and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees, the birds, the bench—this product of Our pen. We won in with an ode to MSN. Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray by Michael R. Burch It was not so much dream, as error; I lay and felt the creeping terror of what I had become take hold . . . The moon watched, silent, palest gold; the picture by the mantle watched; the clock upon the mantle talked, in halting voice, of minute things . . . Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings scored anthems to my loneliness, but I have dreamed of what is best, and I have promised to be good . . . Dismembered limbs in vats of wood, foul acids, and a strangled cry! I did not care, I watched him die . . . Each lovely rose has thorns we miss; they prick our lips, should we once kiss their mangled limbs, or think to clasp their violent beauty. Dream, aghast, the flower of my loveliness, this ageless face (for who could guess?), and I will kiss you when I rise . . . The patterns of our lives comprise strange portraits. Mine, I fear, proved dear indeed . . . Adieu! The knife’s for you. Flight by Michael R. Burch Eagle, raven, blackbird, crow . . . What you are I do not know. Where you go I do not care. I’m unconcerned whose meal you bear. But as you mount the sun-splashed sky, I only wish that I could fly. I only wish that I could fly. Robin, hawk or whippoorwill . . . Should men care if you hunger still? I do not wish to see your home. I do not wonder where you roam. But as you scale the sky's bright stairs, I only wish that I were there. I only wish that I were there. Sparrow, lark or chickadee . . . Your markings I disdain to see. Where you fly concerns me not. I scarcely give your flight a thought. But as you wheel and arc and dive, I, too, would feel so much alive. I, too, would feel so much alive. I don’t remember exactly when this poem was written. I believe it was around 1974-1975, which would have made me 16 or 17 at the time. I do remember not being happy with the original version of the poem, and I revised it more than once over the years, including recently at age 61! The original poem was influenced by William Cullen Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl.” The Princess and the Pauper by Michael R. Burch for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June Here was a woman bright, intent on life, who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye and drew him, powerless, into her spell of wanting her himself, so much the lie that she was meant for him—obscene illusion!— made him seem a monarch throned like God on high, when he was less than nothing; when to die meant many stultifying, pained embraces. She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces that tied her to the earth: then she was his. Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness— her ghost beyond perfection—for to die was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless. Professor Poets by Michael R. Burch Professor poets remind me of drones chasing the Classical queen's aging bones. With bottle-thick glasses they still see to write — droning on, endlessly buzzing all night. And still in our classrooms their tomes are decreed ... Perhaps they're too busy with buzzing to breed? 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! The Song of Roland by Michael R. Burch “for spring in retreat” Rain down, strange murmurous water... no, summer is not yet nigh. Cease your complaining, for May is, calling December a lie, still rocking the high white sky. Sleep now, summer hours... too soon your time shall come. Softly straining, the raining spring begs, "Let me run one more hour beneath the sun, for soon I shall be gone." Lie down, weary Roland, for summer is not yet nigh. Remember a pyre of stars blazing higher upon night’s immense dark sky unsettling as her eyes, unregretful, as you died... Lie down, weary Roland, for summer is not yet nigh. Poet to poet by Michael R. Burch I have a dream ...pebbles in a sparkling sand... of wondrous things. I see children ...variations of the same man... playing together. Black and yellow, red and white, ... stone and flesh, a host of colors... together at last. I see a time ...each small child another's cousin... when freedom shall ring. I hear a song ...sweeter than the sea sings... of many voices. I hear a jubilation ... respect and love are the gifts we must bring... shaking the land. I have a message, ...sea shells echo, the melody rings... the message of God. I have a dream ...all pebbles are merely smooth fragments of stone... of many things. I live in hope ...all children are merely small fragments of One... that this dream shall come true. I have a dream! ... but when you're gone, won't the dream have to end?... Oh, no, not as long as you dream my dream too! Here, hold out your hand, let's make it come true. ... i can feel it begin... Lovers and dreamers are poets too. ...poets are lovers and dreamers too... Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) Editor's Notes by Michael R. Burch Eat, drink and be merry (tomorrow, be contrary). (Bitch and complain in bad refrain, but please—not till I'm on the plane!) Write no poem before its time (in your case, this means never). Linger over every word (by which, I mean forever). By all means, read your verse aloud. I'm sure you'll be a star (and just as distant, when I'm gone); your poems are beauteous (afar). Amending Walls by Michael R. Burch “Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.” Robert Frost, one fears, was undoubtedly right. They can’t go beyond their father’s saying. They’re building walls, the intolerant and the straying. They’re building walls again, to shut in night. “Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.” “Stabbed in the back!” Thus cry the ones betraying, who turn their sullen backs on the Lord of Light. They can’t go beyond their father’s saying. Screaming curses, froth-mouthed, vile and baying, having no care for their frailest victim’s plight. “Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.” The oddest of heroes, fraying while still braying, embracing hatred, it seems, with great delight, they can’t go beyond their father’s saying. Raging at children, brutes intent on slaying. Robert Frost, one fears, was undoubtedly right. “Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.” They can’t go beyond their father’s saying. My Epitaph by Michael R. Burch Do not weep for me, when I am gone. I lived, and ate my fill, and gorged on life. You will not find beneath this glossy stone the man who sowed and reaped and gathered days like flowers, undismayed they would not keep. Go lightly then, and leave me to my sleep. Everlasting by Michael R. Burch Where the wind goes when the storm dies, there my spirit lives though I close my eyes. Do not weep for me; I am never far. Whisper my name to the last star ... then let me sleep, think of me no more. Still ... By denying death its terminal sting, in my words I remain everlasting. 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 scoffs at these churchyards littered with 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, Yahweh, or Thor. Think of Me as the 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.

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