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Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
cheap write *******:

i almost wish i was bitter - but as i'm ageing -
it's not so much bitterness - a woman in her 60s
will say about her son:
well he's sorted his life out,
he's in his early 30s, has a job,
a wife, two children...

this man... has "sorted" his "life"...
more like when darwinism meets
existentialism -
hardly a sorted life -
a sorted life by ape standards -
not keikegaard's standards: if any...

it's not about bitterness -
but i would be more inclined to say:
early 30s, wife, kids... mortgage...
the rollercoaster is just about to start...
the kids: oh sure... cute...
until they start having a mind
of their own...
and... they will betray the senile
old fool that will come,
eventually...
and off to broadmoor with 'im!
life sorted... when the children could
almost be treated as pets...
fine! fine...

it's not out of bitterness -
i'm thinking... more on the lines:
i'm getting my years tally too...
i'm getting used to my own "solipsistic" routines...
it's not out of bitterness:
it's out of having my own routines:
my own idiosyncracies -
that i will take two ciders for a walk
(perhaps a dog would be better) -
and my shadow -
and take two home and drink them
with a tease of brandy -
and want to get to that sweet k.o. point
come 12am so i can,
wake up: frisky and fresh like a sparrow
full of song come 8am...
well... that's me...

i can imagine how symbiosis happens when
you shackle up with someone
in your early 20s...
forget doing it in your 30s...
my ship / my train has sailed... a long time ago...
i still can't find anyone i could
speak to about philosophy -
and to be frank? i hope i never will -
not now - when i wanted to talk about it:
no one -
now it doesn't matter -
because i don't want to talk about it...
i might slide in a sly ref. to something -
but... the aspirations for conversation
on these matters are... i would just tell someone
to buy a self-help book and kindly *******...

if women: hit the wall...
i've reached my impasse -
i have dug the trench long enough - deep enough -
i can proudly say it's a labyrinth -
and i'm happy in my labyrinth -
it's not much: but it's not a cage -
and this is not some bitter me:
woe me - blah blah -
i have routines - i like to sit an extra 10
minutes on the toilet - becauase -
i'm automating a massage of my prostate...
apparently... bid on this poker being true:
the fear of over-doing it and...
haemorrhoids... the same fear associated with
sitting on cold stones for too long
(ref. lethal weapon II - sam and martin riggs
sitting at the beach)...

but this is not what i was intending to write...
i've been trying to cut down on watching youtube...
i figured... what i should have been doing
was watching an english soap-opera -
akin to eastenders - religiously -
instead - i would have, at least: plenty more ref.
points...
but as for jokes... i make the odd "mistake"...

it's always like watching a paul joseph watson video...
i'm not a fan but i'm a fan of entertainment -
i must have a really low i.q. because
i find lee evans to be a rare genius of comedy...
old school funny - the body can become
a language for comedy -
you really don't need to over-talk the jokes -
after a while intelligent stand-up monologues just
bore me: humor of the monolingual crowd -
anagrams and... too many ciphers -
nothing wrong with your base crude of:
a ****** expression, the body itself -
the language can take a break -
but i must be really stupid for liking...
universal comedy... for me lee evans is a universal
comedian...

but this one video is likewise...
blackpill jesus - the inequality of the dating market:
it's over for many men...

and i'm like: those pro-life arguments are
just starting to kick in...
no... seriously... those pro-life arguments are
starting to kick in: right about now...
what arguments?
sometime in the distant future
an untouchable ** will come into contact
with an untouchable XY example -
long may they prosper -

but all of this is like... watching delayed...
abortions... walking abortions -
by: when darwinism met feminism:
and the two -isms lived happily ever after...
some people... really don't want to be told
they'll be walking abortions:
well: quasi-abortions... the living-dead:
by all standards of darwinian selection -
again... not bitter... routine baron -
but not in a culture:
we could talk about stendhal -
but we won't...
we could talk about bukowski: of all people!
but we won't...
we could talk kabbalah and gnosticism
and the nag hammadi library...
but we won't...
we could talk about music!
but we won't...
first sucker through the floral gates
of the ******: **** first in... head last out...
but at lucifer dived head-first from
a star...
by comparative images:
caesars were born via the caesarean section...
the rest of us...
let's just say: there's no more ***** envy
after a human head starts to:
appear from a place it never should have...

my 20s are a fog...
i might remember 4 odd *****...
one picked up from a club who decided to
take a taxi with me towing but
forgot she was riding with me
and did her usual: jump from a moving car
and not paying the fare...
which i later paid...
cocoon *** under the bedsheets and:
coffee in the morning with three homosexuals...

that south african: again cocoon *** under
the bedsheets - second time lucky for her...
but... is it technically "****"...
when she wants to ******* but is somehow
not aroused and she hasn't spoken to
any ******* about using some cream
and you little richard in that sort of purse...
sandpaper friction?

the black girl at my birthday party...
the right sort of cocktails...
the right sort of music: cedric 'im' brooks...
and then... proper coccyx ramming
that left me with a plum hue tattoo
in the eden of my ***** the next morning...
finally! a black girl with an *** that allowed
her to ram her coccyx into me...

i'll miss some... other... details from elsewhere...

but of course that thai surprise...
picked her in the park...
random as any lottery jackpot...
beers on the bench... more beers at the house...
some jazz... cigarettes in the garden...
later ****** in the shed...
walked the thai surprise home...
why thai surprise?
i wasn't sure... sports bra -
transgender "issues" were only starting
to come to the fore... "4 out of 10"...
tom boy haircut...
until the hand reached into the underwear
and i found oyster...
but prior to: thai surprise...

those ***** were free...
the brothel ***** are more vivid and... well...
there was always some kissing involved...
for some reason i can remember kissing prostitutes
more than ******* them...
with the "free women of the west":
it's more about... the sort of *** that is comparible
to... when foxes in essex come and mate at
night... you forget whether you kissed...
but oh sure... ******* sure did...

it's not sad it's... visceral...
work with enough raw meat in the kitchen -
curing it - slicing it -
rubbing it with marinade -
after a while you're no longer objectifying
anything: you're being subjected to it...

but i do wonder with regards to:
some people would like to know they're walking
abortions - the abortions pandering to the pro-life
argument... otherwise the pro-life argument is
a bit like: shackling - a safety-net guarantee -
or whatever: because what's the argument when...
there's the coming dissonance
of pairing?

perhaps i haven't said this more often than
i should...
of the books i've read... mostly french and german
and scandinavian existentialism -
with a tease of russian...
darwinism and existentialism can't sleep together...
that's what i originally thought...
how can existentialism reconcile itself
with darwinism: when it can't...
darwinism is existentialism for women...
the quantity: not the quality argument / line of reasoning...

i can't reconcile myself with darwinism -
a weakness or just:
there's just too much borrowed from a plethora
of animals -
so many studies concerning apes
and **** similis -
and even the mantis -
but... the noble swan and the phenomenon
of the widow and the widower swan...

days when you could just listen to
bloodhound gang's hooray for ******* and...
also find falco... you almost desire
to walk away from the sandpit where
the children listen to nothing but
philip glass and penderecki and speak
in sudoku language...
otherwise there's missing the middle ground
and reaching for the ***** and *****
of punk and... the scent of burning leather
wrapped in a ****** of stiched together
foreskins...

and i can't imagine... but i can...
cutting someone's eyelids...
and watching them... endure the subsequent
insomnia while having to plunge their
head into water ever 10 minutes...
******* is no help...
ear: eh... cartilege -
but the eyelids... we could be rid of those:
couldn't we?

because i know the potential sleeping in me...
i decided to arrive face first and meet "him"...
just so i don't miss the jinx:
i grab my ******* with one forcep of index
and thumb of the hand...
with the other forcep i pinch
the eyelid of my left eye -
funny... the skin feels... synonymous!

no, i can't reconcile darwinism with continental
existentialism:
as i can't reconcile the former idealism
of mine - not even after a ******* -
where's jack?! where's the jack in me?
but gym and squash and rock climbing later:
i was dating a crab and scraps were
the vulture's ambrosia -

what became of aphex twin? he slowed down
and that cul de sac became...
something known as burial - album untrue...
darwinism was always going to be impossible
to reconcile with: the role of humanity
beyond - it's almost easy to transcend the pure
animalistic comparison -
there's neither fire, nor the second fire:
electricirty in the nocturnal, feral heart of
the bottomless pit of anima -
currently: curated by over-stretched facts
and sleepwalking statistics...

bound to england for the past 26 years...
the closest i came was an: encounters of the third
kind with an australian oddity...
why would i date an english girl?
i thought they were into their pakistanis?
that's a question that's not a joke...
seek and you will find: mongolian-esque
rummaging...
the tartar "heretic" of crimea...

on repeat on repeat...
climbing over a fence from a darkened park...
came across a 15 year old running to and fro...
in the days when i still owned a phone...
tried to teach her how to roll a cigarette...
cleavage more visible than her neck...
reunited her with disgruntled friend
lying face down at a bus stop...
a black cat befriended me...
and this lass was running away from me
and toward me...
she texted about 20 people with my phone
before contacting her mum and dad...
and her cabbie dad later picked the two
of them up from a bus-stop at the tesco metro...
but of course prior to she had to take
a selfie of the three of us...

in the back of my head... the silent whisper
and the prosecutor simply whispered...
why not ask her to climb over the park fence
with you... and do the nightmarish deeds justice?

in england for the past 26 years: genesis aged 8...
and, well... "no luck"...
mongol attitude no likey-likey-lucky-or-lackey...
reciprocating "hubris"...
i guess i must be lucky...
come and go ******* like a nomad...
and: should i take myself more seriously...
invoke a talk about diacritical marks:
and those non-existent in the english language...
an octopus audience: the tenticles
do not count as 8 x 1...

20s... a complete blur...
and those vivid conversations in the brothel...
when i faked a death and managed to
get my overdraft limit increased...
and spent 4 hours in that ****-warehouse...
and was asked in the "interlude"...
wouldn't you want two at the same time?
i once heard:
the world is divided into men who have
slept with two women...
and those who haven't...

i gladly declined...
with two i'd need a room of mirrors...
hungry leech eyes need mirrors...
one simply can't have the 1st person shooter
experience anymore...
one would require as many mirrors when
*******... as a woman would require toys
to ******* with...
it might as well be called:
the mirror deity that spawned narcissus -
although - the more contorted
nightmare of narcissus -
the faces riddled with onomatopoeias
rather than words -
and faces that truly deserve to hide behind
a niqab...
or if the eyes become too fungus esque...
would require the samuel beckett's not i...
mouth like an intrusive phallus metaphor
of exposure...

in the past decade: well thank god
*** never became boring, routine...
it didn't require dressing up,
using third party limbs... and pieces...
*** was scarce - therefore *** was feral -
*** was never allowed a relationship -
*** never became familiar,
*** could never become mundane words
that would allow themselves
advice from some journo agony aunt column...
*** was a rarity -
and when it wasn't... kissing became more
important... and itchy fingers that
would read in braille the earth and its contorts
of a woman's body...
there was never a whip or a gulag
of infantile barbie imaginings to rule, either...

sometimes i would indefinitely try to catch
the certain days of winter when
spring blossoms prematured with buds...
if i was lucky... the magnolia bushes would also
blush...
and i would become a dog-***** of these perfumes...
walking for miles and miles per night...

the body takes care of itself:
trouble is... the mind doesn't...
better to allow it this sort of cameo cinema -
memory is the most ideal cameo cinema -
nothing i have mentioned is par excellance -
more... on par: per view...
if memory can't become a cinema...
what's left? nostalgia of 20th century cinema?
that can only live for so long...

as a "transgender" moment...
perhaps i can compete...
willingly ingest a tapeworm embryo...
keep it for 9 months...
then... ingest some praziquantel and ****
the little ****** out...
that's... the closest i'll ever come
to uniting myself with: the female ordeal
of giving birth: imagine...
the ego coupled the delusion the size
of the universe...
i really should start looking for a tapeworm
embryo... keeping it for 9 months...
and then... hey presto!
extra-protein pasta!

otherwise: oh sure... the would-be abortions...
only learn much later...
that they are... not the pro-life argument
they heard as embryos of foetuses...
they are... much to their amusement...
the walking-abortions they were to begin with...
while the pro-life arguments sort of...
die off... when... the fully grown...
self-aware specimen is given charge...
the pro-life argument dies...
the mortgage on a engagement ring...
the shackles...
it's only a pro-life argument...
until the incel mushroom pops up...
then it's no longer a pro-life argument...
ha... delayed abortion: slackers' argumentation...
yeah but no but, oh ****...

frankenstein! it talks! it breathes!
it's immune to all those philosophical cul de sacs
of arguments!
the slow death - the lack of gene motivation
tactic to: pass...
ha... to pass...
in the vicinity of the courageous virus...
shockwave reminders of: genesis vivo...

give me the fully formed xenomorph...
but a genesis vivo: akin to the film LIFE?
wouldn't you believe it?
form... a xenomorph has a concrete form -
a rigid square is...
well... it's not an imploded square -
a hyper-geometric revision...

modern anglo-speaking world and...
milan kundera's existentialism:
i will only kiss when i close my eyes -
but nonetheless -
i will open my eyes when kissing...
because i'm bluffing...
and gambling on... the hope that...
even the sofa "architecture" of a woman's
body reclining to entertain the 300 spartans...
eyes always open...
daggers for eyes...

upon the zenith close -
i imagined myself to be more...
buck-tooth antics -
trivia and encyclopedic knowledge -
pub quizes -
*** on wisteria lane -
no mongol horde ever passed the clefts
of pickets and homebugs...
and this... grand sanity project...
people never seem to go, truly mad,
from... gossip.... glibs...
or soap-opera immoralities: of flacid oopses...
perhaps it is true:
most people never go mad...
what horrible lives they must lead...

perhaps that is very true:
so true it deserves the bells of nortre dame
to echo...
inside a can kicked down a street...
kissing a ******* is not a basic immorality...
having toy soldiers and wars of lies -
and soap opera demagogic dramaturges?
wasting other peoples time with:
there's no crease in a sunrise -
when there are no clouds to stage the subtle
detail of diluted hues of seeing:
a giraffe's belly when it's lying on
the ground?

some people never go mad...
and they do require language to be as strict as:
what's precursor formal -
dear sir / madam...
and every time they try an informal: oops...
it's never on paper...
but always in a mouth that's exploring
the fermentation process of a glass of wine...
me?
gods' **** and gods' blood...
cider / beer with a tease mrs. cognac:
that's the elevated status of whiskey via: née:
ms. amber.

could i be a father and an alcoholic?
no... ever time i tried to exfoliate my own language,
my... idiosyncracy, my solipsism,
barriers and people reaching for...
prime navel and crimson as the standard
colour for lipstick...
one can only stomach so much...
before treating oneself to a hermit's adventure...
on the odd chance... giving coordinates
of the day-to-day...

i would have died a decade prior...
if i didn't find voyeurs to look at a language...
that cannot be spoken by someone alive:
among the living... to the future dead!
i was alive once, too! to the future dead!
Sophia Granada Nov 2012
Sweet-lipped Psyche's pale white skin
All the men in Greece dragged in.
And the poor girl's dark brown eyes
Led Aphrodite her to despise.
For Psyche truly was a beauty,
Reputed as brighter than Aphrodite.
If Aphrodite was a dark red rose,
Of which we've written poetry and prose,
Psyche was a pure-white Aganisia
For which they wrote a deep-sea saga.
But she knew it was sore unwise
To find herself level with a Goddess' eyes.
The only proof needed for Psyche
Was the sad fate of the maiden Arachne,
Who challenged Athena to a weaving contest,
And though her tapestry was judged the best,
It was she that ended as the melancholy loser,
For Athena punished her with the life of a spider.
And so it was that Psyche knew
Aphrodite wold claim her life too.
So Aphrodite sent her son,
The lovely, winged, holy one,
Whose golden arrows fly at night
And relieve bored lovers of their plights.
She sent Eros to shoot his arrow
And pierce it through to Psyche's marrow,
Then set before her a crocodile,
The scaly terror of the Nile,
With which she'd fall in love straightway,
And then she'd come to rue the day.
For crocodiles have no love to give,
So it would eat her, and she'd cease to live.
On the sleeping Psyche Eros descended,
Long before the night had ended,
In whose dainty breast to shove
A golden arrow poisoned with love.
He prepared to bury it to the hilt,
But a drop of love on him was spilt,
At the moment he saw her eyes, dark brown,
Look to him and stare him down.
Then Eros went back to his mother
And told her he could not wed another
Who did not shine quite so brightly
As his sweet-lipped brown-eyed Psyche.
So spiteful Aphrodite cursed
Psyche through her red lips pursed,
That the girl would find no husband
Among God, animal, or man.
And Eros this so greatly angered
He could no more with arrows linger
At the foot of lovers' beds
To foster love in their young heads.
The entire world then ceased to love
Whether it walked on foot or hoof.
Whether it swam or flew on wing
It could not love nor gain others' loving.
When love no longer circulated,
Aphrodite it aggravated
To see her temple lying bare
And to feel the gray growing in her hair.
She told Eros he'd have what he desired
If only he would kindle love's fires.
So at the mountain, Psyche's family offered her
And she was borne away on the back of Zephyr
To Eros' golden gay abode
That he and his ghostly servants called home.
In the golden rooms she wandered by daylight,
But she lay with Eros in the dark when came night.
She knew not who her darling was,
But called her ignorance a test of trust.
Never to look upon him by day,
She continued in this way,
Until she longed to visit her family,
Which her husband granted her gladly.
But he held her, and he warned her
Not to let her sisters persuade her.
"They may try to tear you away
By telling you gruesome stories." he'd say.
Then, trippingly, from Olympus she jumped down
To walk the streets of her hometown.
She told her sisters her whole story
And they turned it into something gory.
"He could be a serpent," they'd say,
"Fattening you up for the day
When he can pop you in his mouth and eat you"
Unfortunately, she took their words as true.
"So, when he comes to you at night,
Just gaze on him by candlelight!
If he's a serpent, use this knife,
And you'll no longer be his wife.
But make sure not to spill the oil,
Or his waking will cause great turmoil!
We'll find out about that young buck!
Use the candle, the knife, don't spill, and good luck!"
She walked back to the palace at their behest,
Butterflies banging within her chest.
Could the faceless man with whom she'd spent her nights
Be revealed as a serpent by candlelight?
She did not have to wait for long
To prove her treacherous sisters wrong.
As she lay in the great soft bed,
The instructions tangled inside her head,
And lighting the candle, she almost fumbled,
But when she saw his face, she truly stumbled!
Eros' beauty knocked her senseless,
Leaving mortal Psyche defenseless,
And causing her to spill the oil, which smoldered
On Eros' godly golden shoulder.
He, awaking with a start
Was disappointed to his heart
That Psyche cold be so unfaithful
And make a decision so egregiously fatal.
Then, jumping from the casing, he flew
Out of Psyche's lustful view.
And she, for her part, suddenly found
That from the palace she'd been cast down
To a field of which she had no memory,
Or very dim, if she had any.
In despair, she began to flounder,
Then resigned herself to wander
Until she came to a temple edifice,
Which was, on Earth, Aphrodite's face,
And begged the unseen Goddess hear her out,
Trying her patience with childish whining shouts.
Aphrodite, trying only to divert,
Cast a basket of grains down to the dirt,
And told the weeping lovely malcontent
That if she sorted the grains 'fore day was spent,
She just may see her sweetheart once again.
All she had to do was sort the grain.
But Psyche, though her fingers were dainty and thin,
To separate the grains could not begin,
And sobbing, lay upon the stony floor
That was as cold as the Goddess had acted before.
The ants, which had been drawn to the golden grain,
Bore her load and relieved her of her pain.
In their famously sure and straight black line,
They each picked up a piece of grain so fine
That it might with ease pass through a needle,
And into order they the sweet grain wheedled.
Then at the very setting of the sun,
Aphrodite found the task was done,
And though she praised the poor girl outwardly,
Inside she felt the bloom of hate for Psyche.
So she set her down on one side of a stream,
Where on the other was a field of green,
In which lived Helios' golden sheep
From which she was to obtain some shining fleece.
Then Aphrodite left her there to play,
And flew to Mount Olympus far away.
But Flumen, God of Rivers, raised his head
To warn sweet Psyche from his riverbed
That the sheep were so fierce, if she but pulled one hair,
They'd all turn on her and eat her then and there.
It was better if she waited 'til midday
When the sheep lay down to sleep the heat away.
Then she could cross where the river rushes,
And pick the wool that had got caught in the bushes.
So Psyche followed Flumen's good advice,
And for Aphrodite's cruelty she paid no price.
Aphrodite's blood boiled when she saw
That Psyche had survived it after all.
Again, she tried to send her to her death
And charged her to collect water from a cleft
Which mortal humans could not enter,
And in which serpents would surely spend her.
But now it was an eagle came to her aid,
Who stormed inside and flew between the snakes,
Then picked a pouch of water in its beak,
And back out of the cleft to Psyche it sneaked.
Aphrodite, at her dastardly wit's end,
Devised a horrible place for her to Psyche send.
"Psyche, caring for my ailing son
Has drained each drop of beauty, every one,
From my former glory of a face.
Therefore, I command you to that place
Where Persephone dwells. Then you must beg
For some of her beauty, just a tiny dreg.
Then you may have my son, I give my promise,
As holding him from you has marred my face."
Then Psyche, with tears streaming from her eyes,
Decided the only way there was to die.
In what she had appointed her fatal hour,
She climbed up to the top of a high tower,
But her melancholy was so disturbingly great,
All the Universe moved to it abate,
So that the very tower she climbed upon,
Awoke and spoke to her as if a person.
"Psyche, there is a way to the Underworld alive,
So that you need not from my roofing dive."
And to the Underworld the tower gave her
A route and some directions just to save her,
Then it sternly warned her that not of meat,
Nor of anything but bread in Hades could she eat.
So she followed the Tower's path back down
And disappeared into the heaving ground.
And when she found herself before Persephone's throne
She asked to take a parcel of her beauty home,
Which the emotionless Queen of the Screaming ******
Without word placed in Psyche's quivering hand.
The hardest part of the impossible task being done,
Psyche headed back up toward the sun,
And, reasoning that she was to see her beloved before nightfall,
Decided to use some beauty from the parcel.
Inside she found not beauty, but a stifling sleep,
Which forever in its clutches would she keep
If Eros had not chancely happened by,
And wiped Persephone's sleep from Psyche's eye.
Then, carrying her on his back, he barged
Into the Hall of the Olympian Gods.
He bade them let him wed himself and Psyche
And disregard the protests of Aphrodite.
Then Jupiter, indeed, allowed it obligingly,
For he was a man who greatly enjoyed a party.
Ambrosia she was given so to seal
Her immortality and place her among the surreal.
Then after many years of love and laughter,
Psyche bore Hedone, their lovely daughter.
This is how the beauty of the Human Soul,
Triumphed over the beauty of lust and gold.
All this Eros and Psyche had to take.
All this they endured for their love's sake.
They demonstrate the purity of love,
That is admired by Gods above.
In the end, it is the pure Mariposa
Who is more deserving of ambrosia.
Lunar  Mar 2014
homework love
Lunar Mar 2014
sometimes you're like homework
so confusing
and i just stare at you
absent-mindedly
hating you
yet you're important to me
it's so hard to finish you
and i lose inspiration every now and then
but when i get high as my grades
i come running back to you

i can't wait to graduate from school
get rid of this infatuation
we would be adults by then
and hopefully this mess will be sorted out
Michael R Burch Nov 2020
Poems about Icarus

These are poems about Icarus, flying and flights of fancy...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast... solitariness... there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you
stall,
spread-eagled, as the canvas snaps

and *****
its white rebellious wings,
and all

the houses watch with baffled eyes.



Flight 93
by Michael R. Burch

I held the switch in trembling fingers, asked
why existence felt so small, so purposeless,
like a minnow wriggling feebly in my grasp...

vibrations of huge engines thrummed my arms
as, glistening with sweat, I nudged the switch
to OFF... I heard the klaxon's shrill alarms

like vultures’ shriekings... earthward, in a stall...
we floated... earthward... wings outstretched, aghast
like Icarus... as through the void we fell...

till nothing was so beautiful, so blue...
so vivid as that moment... and I held
an image of your face, and dreamed I flew

into your arms. The earth rushed up. I knew
such comfort, in that moment, loving you.



I AM!
by Michael R. Burch

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

I am not one of ten billion, I.

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

I am not one life has left unsquashed.

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

I am not one without spots of disease.

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

I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



Finally to Burn
(the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus)
by Michael R. Burch

Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand

and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands

where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting

and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting

and all I remember
, upon awaking,

is: to Love sometimes
is like forsaking

one’s Being―to glide

heroically beyond thought,

forsaking the here
for the There and the Not.



O, finally to Burn,
gravity beyond escaping!

To plummet is Bliss
when the blisters breaking

rain down red scabs
on the earth’s mudpuddle...

Feathers and wax
and the watchers huddle...

Flocculent sheep,
O, and innocent lambs!,

I will rock me to sleep
on the waves’ iambs.



To sleep's sweet relief
from Love’s exhausting Dream,

for the Night has Wings
gentler than Moonbeams―

they will flit me to Life
like a huge-eyed Phoenix

fluttering off
to quarry the Sphinx.



Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,

Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.

Quixotic, I seek Love
amid the tarnished

rusted-out steel
when to live is varnish.

To Dream―that’s the thing!

Aye, that Genie I’ll rub,

soak by the candle,
aflame in the tub.



Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,

Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.

Somewhither, somewhither
aglitter and strange,

we must moult off all knowledge
or perish caged.

*

I am reconciled to Life
somewhere beyond thought―

I’ll Live the Elsewhere,
I’ll Dream of the Naught.

Methinks it no journey;
to tarry’s a waste,

so fatten the oxen;
make a nice baste.

I’m coming, Fool Tom,
we have Somewhere to Go,

though we injure noone,
ourselves wildaglow.

This odd poem invokes and merges with the anonymous medieval poem “Tom O’Bedlam’s Song” and W. H. Auden’s modernist poem “Musee des Beaux Arts,” which in turn refers to Pieter Breughel’s painting “The Fall of Icarus.” In the first stanza Icarus levitates with the help of Athena, the goddess or wisdom, through “strange dreamlands” while Apollo, the sun god, lies sleeping. In the second stanza, Apollo predictably wakes up and Icarus plummets to earth, or back to mundane reality, as in Breughel’s painting and Auden’s poem. In the third stanza the grounded Icarus can still fly, but only in flights of imagination through dreams of love. In the fourth and fifth stanzas Icarus joins Tom Rynosseross of the Bedlam poem in embracing madness by deserting “knowledge” and its cages (ivory towers, etc.). In the final stanza Icarus agrees with Tom that it is “no journey” to wherever they’re going together and also agrees with Tom that they will injure no one along the way, no matter how intensely they glow and radiate. The poem can be taken as a metaphor for the death and rebirth of Poetry, and perhaps as a prophecy that Poetry will rise, radiate and reattain its former glory...



Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch

I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
swirling together through Himalayan serene altitudes―
no more man and woman than exhaled breath―unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness...

But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!

We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter there will be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.



Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch

With her small eyes, pale 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 not yet learned
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 learn 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 had vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth...

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

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



Notes toward an Icarian philosophy of life...
by Michael R. Burch

If the mind’s and the heart’s quests were ever satisfied,
what would remain, as the goals of life?

If there was only light, with no occluding matter,
if there were only sunny mid-afternoons but no mysterious midnights,
what would become of the dreams of men?

What becomes of man’s vision, apart from terrestrial shadows?

And what of man’s character, formed
in the seething crucible of life and death,
hammered out on the anvil of Fate, by Will?

What becomes of man’s aims in the end,
when the hammer’s anthems at last are stilled?

If man should confront his terrible Creator,
capture him, hogtie him, hold his ***** feet to the fire,
roast him on the spit as yet another blasphemous heretic
whose faith is suspect, derelict...
torture a confession from him,
get him to admit, “I did it!...

what then?

Once man has taken revenge
on the Frankenstein who created him
and has justly crucified the One True Monster, the Creator...

what then?

Or, if revenge is not possible,
if the appearance of matter was merely a random accident,
or a group illusion (and thus a conspiracy, perhaps of dunces, us among them),
or if the Creator lies eternally beyond the reach of justice...

what then?

Perhaps there’s nothing left but for man to perfect his character,
to fly as high as his wings will take him toward unreachable suns,
to gamble everything on some unfathomable dream, like Icarus,
then fall to earth, to perish, undone...

or perhaps not, if the mystics are right
about the true nature of darkness and light.

Is there a source of knowledge beyond faith,
a revelation of heaven, of the Triumph of Love?

The Hebrew prophets seemed to think so,
and Paul, although he saw through a glass darkly,
and Julian of Norwich, who heard the voice of God say,
“All shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well...”

Does hope spring eternal in the human breast,
or does it just blindly *****?



Icarus Bickerous
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Like Icarus, waxen wings melting,
white tail-feathers fall, bystanders pelting.

They look up amazed
and seem rather dazed―

was it heaven’s or hell’s furious smelting

that fashioned such vulturish wings?
And why are they singed?―

the higher you “rise,” the more halting?



Earthbound, a Vision of Crazy Horse
by Michael R. Burch

Tashunka Witko, a Lakota Sioux better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a spirit horse, flying through a storm, as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.

Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.

Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay―
the sheep,
the earthbound.

Published by American Indian Pride and Boston Poetry Magazine



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)



The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch

(for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric,
who was a friend and mentor to many poets, and
a fine poet in his own right)

The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites―amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true...

but came almost as static―background noise,
a song out of the cosmos no one hears,
or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys,
lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared.

They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks
electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke
of words poured from their overheated hearts.
The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope...

You will not find them here; they blew away―
in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung
by fingertips to satellites. They strayed
too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young,

their words are with us still. Devout and fey,
they wink at us whenever skies are gray.

Originally published by The Lyric



American Eagle, Grounded
by Michael R. Burch

Her predatory eye,
the single feral iris,
scans.

Her raptor beak,
all jagged sharp-edged ******,
juts.

Her hard talon,
clenched in pinched expectation,
waits.

Her clipped wings,
preened against reality,
tremble.

Published as “Tremble” by The Lyric, Verses Magazine, Romantics Quarterly, Journeys, The Raintown Review, Poetic Ponderings, Poem Kingdom (All-Star Tribute), The Fabric of a Vision, NPAC―Net Poetry and Art Competition, Poet’s Haven, Listening To The Birth Of Crystals(Anthology), Poetry Renewal, Inspirational Stories, Poetry Life & Times, MahMag (Iranian/Farsi), The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



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 insects’ 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.



Springtime Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

They’ll have to grow like crazy,
the springtime baby geese,
if they’re to fly to balmier climes
when autumn dismembers the leaves...

And so I toss them loaves of bread,
then whisper an urgent prayer:
“Watch over these, my Angels,
if there’s anyone kind, up there.”

Originally published by The HyperTexts



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly―
away, away...

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

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



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

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

Published by Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly, The Chained Muse and Poetry Life & Times. This is a poem I wrote for my favorite college English teacher, George King, about poetic kinship, brotherhood and romantic flights of fancy.



For a Palestinian Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times, Victorian Violet Press (where it was nominated for a “Best of the Net”), The Contributor (a Nashville homeless newspaper), Siasat (Pakistan), and set to music as a part of the song cycle “The Children of Gaza” which has been performed in various European venues by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab



Sioux Vision Quest
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux (circa 1840-1877)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.

Published by Better Than Starbucks, A Hundred Voices



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 subsequently nominated for the Pushcart Prize



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



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 sunlit sky,
I only wish that I could fly.
I only wish that I could fly.

Robin, hawk or whippoorwill...
Should men care that 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.

This is a poem that I believe I wrote as a high school sophomore. But it could have been written a bit later. I seem to remember the original poem being influenced by William Cullen Bryant's "To a Waterfowl."



Flying
by Michael R. Burch

I shall rise
and try the ****** wings of thought
ten thousand times
before I fly...

and then I'll sleep
and waste ten thousand nights
before I dream;
but when at last...

I soar the distant heights of undreamt skies
where never hawks nor eagles dared to go,
as I laugh among the meteors flashing by
somewhere beyond the bluest earth-bound seas...

if I'm not told
I’m just a man,
then I shall know
just what I am.

This is one of my early poems, written around age 16-17. According to my notes, I may have revised the poem later, in 1978, but if so the changes were minor because the poem remains very close to the original.



Stage Craft-y
by Michael R. Burch

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



Clyde Lied!
by Michael R. Burch

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



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.

Published by Lighten Up Online and in Potcake Chapbook #7

NOTE: 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! ― MRB



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’
by Michael R. Burch

Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’ the bees rise
in a dizzy circle of two.
Oh, when I’m with you,
I feel like kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’ too.



Delicacy
by Michael R. Burch

for 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.



Lone Wild Goose
by Du Fu (712-770)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The abandoned goose refuses food and drink;
he cries querulously for his companions.

Who feels kinship for that strange wraith
as he vanishes eerily into the heavens?

You watch it as it disappears;
its plaintive calls cut through you.

The indignant crows ignore you both:
the bickering, bantering multitudes.

Du Fu (712-770) is also known as Tu Fu. The first poem is addressed to the poet's wife, who had fled war with their children. Ch'ang-an is an ironic pun because it means "Long-peace."



The Red Cockatoo
by Po Chu-I (772-846)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A marvelous gift from Annam―
a red cockatoo,
bright as peach blossom,
fluent in men's language.

So they did what they always do
to the erudite and eloquent:
they created a thick-barred cage
and shut it up.

Po Chu-I (772-846) is best known today for his ballads and satirical poems. Po Chu-I believed poetry should be accessible to commoners and is noted for his simple diction and natural style. His name has been rendered various ways in English: Po Chu-I, Po Chü-i, Bo Juyi and Bai Juyi.



The Migrant Songbird
Li Qingzhao aka Li Ching-chao (c. 1084-1155)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The migrant songbird on the nearby yew
brings tears to my eyes with her melodious trills;
this fresh downpour reminds me of similar spills:
another spring gone, and still no word from you...



Lines from Laolao Ting Pavilion
by Li Bai (701-762)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The spring breeze knows partings are bitter;
The willow twig knows it will never be green again.



The Day after the Rain
Lin Huiyin (1904-1955)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love the day after the rain
and the meadow's green expanses!
My heart endlessly rises with wind,
gusts with wind...
away the new-mown grasses and the fallen leaves...
away the clouds like smoke...
vanishing like smoke...



Untitled Translations

Cupid, if you incinerate my soul, touché!
For like you she has wings and can fly away!
―Meleager, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

As autumn deepens,
a butterfly sips
chrysanthemum dew.
―Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, butterfly,
it’s late
and we’ve a long way to go!
―Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Up and at ’em! The sky goes bright!
Let’***** the road again,
Companion Butterfly!
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ah butterfly,
what dreams do you ply
with your beautiful wings?
―Chiyo-ni, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, dreamlike winter butterfly:
a puff of white snow
cresting mountains
―Kakio Tomizawa, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Dry leaf flung awry:
bright butterfly,
goodbye!
―Michael R. Burch, original haiku

Will we remain parted forever?
Here at your grave:
two flowerlike butterflies
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

a soaring kite flits
into the heart of the sun?
Butterfly & Chrysanthemum
―Michael R. Burch, original haiku

The cheerful-chirping cricket
contends gray autumn's gay,
contemptuous of frost
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Whistle on, twilight whippoorwill,
solemn evangelist
of loneliness
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The sea darkening,
the voices of the wild ducks:
my mysterious companions!
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

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

This snowy morning:
cries of the crow I despise
(ah, but so beautiful!)
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

A crow settles
on a leafless branch:
autumn nightfall.
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hush, cawing crows; what rackets you make!
Heaven's indignant messengers,
you remind me of wordsmiths!
―O no Yasumaro (circa 711), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Higher than a skylark,
resting on the breast of heaven:
this mountain pass.
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An exciting struggle
with such a sad ending:
cormorant fishing.
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gull
in his high, lonely circuits, may tell.
―Glaucus, translation by Michael R. Burch

The eagle sees farther
from its greater height―
our ancestors’ wisdom
―Michael R. Burch, original haiku

A kite floats
at the same place in the sky
where yesterday it floated...
―Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Critical Mass
by Michael R. Burch

I have listened to the rain all this morning
and it has a certain gravity,
as if it knows its destination,
perhaps even its particular destiny.
I do not believe mine is to be uplifted,
although I, too, may be flung precipitously
and from a great height.

"Gravity" and "particular destiny" are puns, since rain droplets are seeded by minute particles of dust adrift in the atmosphere and they fall due to gravity when they reach "critical mass." The title is also a pun, since the poem is skeptical about heaven-lauding Masses, etc.



Ultimate Sunset
by Michael R. Burch

for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr.

he now faces the Ultimate Sunset,
his body like the leaves that fray as they dry,
shedding their vital fluids (who knows why?)
till they’ve become even lighter than the covering sky,
ready to fly...



Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr.

I see the longing for departure gleam
in his still-keen eye,
and I understand his desire
to test this last wind, like those late autumn leaves
with nothing left to cling to...



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



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes―
I can almost remember―goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss―
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves you famished;
earthly tides
soon call you back―
one long, descending glide...

3.
Disgruntledly you ***** dirt shores for orts
you pull like mucous ropes
from shells’ bright forts...
You eye the teeming world
with nervous darts―
this way and that...

Contentious, shrewd, you scan―
the sky, in hope,
the earth, distrusting man.



Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes,
imposing night on one who clearly saw.
Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw―
envenomed, fanged―could swallow, whole, your Awe.
And yet it was not death so much as you
who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing
and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's
white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing!
But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren!
Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.

A poet like Nadia Anjuman can be likened to a caged bird, deprived of flight, who somehow finds it within herself to sing of love and beauty. But when the world finally robs her of both flight and song, what is left for her but to leave the world, thus bereaving the world of herself and her song?



Performing Art
by Michael R. Burch

Who teaches the wren
in its drab existence
to explode into song?

What parodies of irony
does the jay espouse
with its sharp-edged tongue?

What instinctual memories
lend stunning brightness
to the strange dreams

of the dull gray slug
―spinning its chrysalis,
gluing rough seams―

abiding in darkness
its transformation,
till, waving damp wings,

it applauds its performance?
I am done with irony.
Life itself sings.



Lean Harvests
by Michael R. Burch

for T.M.

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.

Published by The Rotary Dial and Angle



My Forty-Ninth Year
by Michael R. Burch

My forty-ninth year
and the dew remembers
how brightly it glistened
encrusting September,...
one frozen September
when hawks ruled the sky
and death fell on wings
with a shrill, keening cry.

My forty-ninth year,
and still I recall
the weavings and windings
of childhood, of fall...
of fall enigmatic,
resplendent, yet sere,...
though vibrant the herald
of death drawing near.

My forty-ninth year
and now often I've thought on
the course of a lifetime,
the meaning of autumn,
the cycle of autumn
with winter to come,
of aging and death
and rebirth... on and on.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “My Twenty-Ninth Year”



Myth
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf―
full of faith, full of grief.

Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain―
golden and humble in all its weary worth.



What Works
by Michael R. Burch

for David Gosselin

What works―
hewn stone;
the blush the iris shows the sun;
the lilac’s pale-remembered bloom.

The frenzied fly: mad-lively, gay,
as seconds tick his time away,
his sentence―one brief day in May,
a period. And then decay.

A frenzied rhyme’s mad tip-toed time,
a ballad’s languid as the sea,
seek, striving―immortality.

When gloss peels off, what works will shine.
When polish fades, what works will gleam.
When intellectual prattle pales,
the dying buzzing in the hive
of tedious incessant bees,
what works will soar and wheel and dive
and milk all honey, leap and thrive,

and teach the pallid poem to seethe.



Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch

Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.

Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and―spent of flame―
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.

You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies―
imprisonment your sense denies.

You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None―winsome, bright or rare―
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.

But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew―
each moonless night the nettles grew

and strangled hope, where love dies too.

Published by Penny Dreadful, Carnelian, Romantics Quarterly, Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Life & Times



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.



Prodigal
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Kevin Longinotti, who died four days short of graduation from Vanderbilt University, the victim of a tornado that struck Nashville on April 16, 1998.

You have graduated now,
to a higher plane
and your heart’s tenacity
teaches us not to go gently
though death intrudes.

For eighteen days
―jarring interludes
of respite and pain―
with life only faintly clinging,
like a cashmere snow,
testing the capacity
of the blood banks
with the unstaunched flow
of your severed veins,
in the collapsing declivity,
in the sanguine haze
where Death broods,
you struggled defiantly.

A city mourns its adopted son,
flown to the highest ranks
while each heart complains
at the harsh validity
of God’s ways.

On ponderous wings
the white clouds move
with your captured breath,
though just days before
they spawned the maelstrom’s
hellish rift.

Throw off this mortal coil,
this envelope of flesh,
this brief sheath
of inarticulate grief
and transient joy.

Forget the winds
which test belief,
which bear the parchment leaf
down life’s last sun-lit path.

We applaud your spirit, O Prodigal,
O Valiant One,
in its percussive flight into the sun,
winging on the heart’s last madrigal.



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



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.



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.



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.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Keywords/Tags: Sports, locker, lockerroom, clamor, adulation, acclaim, applause, sentiment, darkness, light, retirement, athlete, team, trophy, award, acclamation


Keywords/Tags: Icarus, Daedalus, flight, fly, flying, wind, wings, sun, height, heights, fall, falling, ascent, descent, imagination, bird, birds, butterfly, butterflies, hawk, eagle, geese, plane, kite, kites, mrbfly, mrbflight, mrbicarus
CK Baker  Mar 2017
Stanley Park
CK Baker Mar 2017
there’s a barnacle scar
deeply ingrained
on the basalt stack
at mark thirty two
whispering summer winds
scented oil
cotton and roe
drift
as waves brush
and shape
the sandstone shore

the briny air
and lost erratic
set a tone to this
pollyanna portrait
it's andrews undulations
and gifted benches
its concessions
and traces of the barry burn
its sculpted driftwood
and sanko lines
make this picture
almost perfect

children play
as venom spews
from the caterwaul pair
those odd looking mates
casting smiles
with arrested despair
settling shots
swiping bugs
dipping and darting
as photo men
and muscles
and long neck seabirds
make their turn

the hunched hoody
and his sorted sidekick
get their fill
(of moss and rubble ~ chubby and kelp)
nice to meet your acquaintance
the pho man would say
an odd drop
and ironic turn
from those horrific corners
of timeless desperation
down by cannon bridge

harbor seals
and carriage horse
are fronted by
raven shade
jolly tides pause
in quiet bays
(with curious looters
and *** pickers)
sand merchants
and field totems
all streamed by the light

cirrus strands
blanket the
outer edge
hovering craft
and shimmering willows
bolt the evening frame
blood orange
and tethered
with a filtered glare
bottle-nose dolphins
and seabirds
(and shifting tides)
are all settling in
for the long night stay
Umi  Apr 2018
Stones
Umi Apr 2018
Silicate, emotionless sedimentary,
Darling, it is cold, doesn't care wheter it breaks or if it is swept away in a stream, cut into small pieces by the sharp rush of flowing water,
While it may hold no emotions, it can be the bringer of hope, bliss, happiness, sadness but also spite and envy, or a simple fulfilment,
Look at the wedding-rings, their stones on top to embellish beauty such as the insurance to be with the other through thick and thin,
Some diamonds are rough, but they are stronger than stones, if that is enough, harder and almost unbreakable, sorted in line moliculary,
When the kiss of death puts us to rest, a tombstone is the sad, cruel remembrence of a former life, sprouting blossoming and blooming, before returning to the soil it once had found its origin, its beginning,
I will try to be your wishing one, your shooting star, racing through the glory of the starlit nightsky to catch a moment of your passion,
Burning up within the atmosphere of your warm embrace, dearest.
Drawn by your gravitational impact on me, I will be your comet, returning to you each day without burning away as rapid as a meteor.
Darling, alike a blazing Sun you make me melt.

~ Umi
I am sorry for these love poems, I can't help it sometimes <3
The Napkin Poet Dec 2016
To make wine,
Grapes are crushed then poured into fermentation tanks.
Once fermentation begins, the grape skins are pushed to the surface by carbon dioxide gases released in the fermentation process.

I am the only fruit who has the necessary acids to make natural, stable wine.
My tannins add a bitterness and astringency,
But I must be picked at the right time.
My acidity and sweetness must be zen in balance.
The right ones are sorted through, but not all of us make the cut.
Unable to be served as sweet wine, too bitter.
Some more sweet, not bitter enough.
Simply picked at the wrong time, their peak unwanted, forgotten.

After being sorted we are destemmed and crushed.
Our roots ripped from us, dignity stomped upon.
For years, it was done manually, by foot.
Now, preformed mechanically, systematically.
But hey!
"Mechanical pressing has brought tremendous sanitary gains as well as increased the longevity and quality of wine."

Grape abuse continues, white wine grapes are quickly crushed.
Why do you ask?
To keep unwanted "color" from leeching into the wine.
But red wine,
Red wine is left in contact with it's skin, forced to acquire more color, more flavor and additional tannins.

After being sorted and crushed, I naturally ferment with in six to twelve hours.
This continues until all my sugar,
Is converted to alcohol.
To produce dry, wine.

The final stage is aging.
I am bottled with a cork,
Put on a shelf.
And ironically,
await my optimal fruitfulness.
Madisen Kuhn Sep 2014
03:00
When I think about never speaking to him again, I picture a girl walking in a crowd that’s all moving in the same direction, and then suddenly she drops everything she’s holding and turns around and starts running as fast as she can, smiling and pushing past everyone till finally she reaches an open space and her face looks like sunshine as her hair blows behind her in the wind and she’s free she’s free, oh God, she’s free.

03:15
But then I think about walking into a doctor’s office ten years from now and sitting on a cold metal table, staring at my legs dangling off the edge, waiting. And then I look up as the door opens slowly, not expecting to see his tattooed arms hidden in a lab coat, but there he is and, oh God, his eyes haven’t changed, and I can’t breathe, and he just stands there, looking at me like an unfinished sentence. Then I’d have to let him put a stethoscope to my chest and listen to my heart and I wonder what it’d sound like, if it would sound like messy half beats of missing him. If he’d be able to tell. If he’d care.

03:30
Or maybe the next time I see him, if I ever see him again, we’ll both be whole versions of ourselves, content and in good places, our lives all sorted out and how we always hoped they’d be. And maybe we’d be able to talk about the weather and our kids and the lives we created apart. And maybe I’d be able to look at him with only feelings of pleasant acquaintance and relative indifference, not seeing the boy I fell for when I should’ve been focused on catching myself.

03:45
And I know I should find comfort in thinking about how one day I may look at him and feel nothing,

04:00
but it’s four in the morning and I don’t want to let go.
Ken Pepiton Oct 2018
'Put my hand in the hand of the man from Galilee,

that song keeps playing in my memory, and I recalled

Or I thought I did, I imagined he'd walk with me
and talk with me
Along life's merry (or was it narrow?), way

a light touch, his arm around my shoulders,
as boys are wont to do,
I axed 'im,
help me fill the darkness behind my eyes,
which I think may have been blind, at that time,

I have memories like that.
packed away in old memes. That mean something...
Gold-something...
color maybe, Goldfarv? Bloom.
Right, my augmentatious savant
looked it up and I sorted what I recalled

Google The Global Brain, Howard Bloom,
where he named a kind of
category of knowability. Memes, he called them.

And I thought, memes mean something more,
not Dawkins's, nor Bloom's, but these,
heteromemes bubbling out my belly button,
look real close.

Here a seeing being done, words appearing...

fractally featureless by the time a clock could have been imagined,

the point of the story was made,
and there is no end in sight.

Pop. Another apocalypse bubble collapses by mortality. Whaddyaknow?

What remains when a bubble pops at a positron level,
after the charge is touched and
the tension-power-loss collapses the bubble?

You should think, you know atoms work, this way.

Touchy bubbles disappear when their form is disinformed,
the wall of a bubble,
one quanta of power thick,
vanishes
as the charge that formed it flees.
That bubble,
not cloud-based, random super positioning,but
elect
tric-magi-tech, a touch screened
at the quantum accounting point of real-ification,
but, probably,
a bubble,indeed,
powered, one way or another, with a single charge,
Go, that's it.
(I charge thee, son Timothy, go)
That's all an electron does.
It goes, as soon as any sense can be made of it,
outa here, oughta hear it, clear,
ping. No charge, no bubble, but next sure as...
No, ah, when I think about that..

Hell,
somethi' from nuthin musta hapt one time,

but ya'll take no heed, this voice,
m'fallin angel, Tantan, droppin' in ol-fren, tricky hybridbast...

Noah was a tellin' Ham the truth
found in wines that moved themselves aright,
slurry tongued, and laughin' but pisstoff.

The idea of somethin' goin' south in a family,
that started up again when
ever Noah started drinkin' old wine, sayin' sbetter'n...

Old story, God damened 'em, not me, I just
built the box.

Who told you I was naked? Noah queried Shem.

-- aye, ye know, Noah was drunk,
No excuse, but you know.

Things were said, that maybe could be forgotten, after a while,

But those father wounds a man imagines worst
are the one's his son's forgot.
Forgot can't be forgiven it seems, sometimes...

The story being told is complicated. See,
the Bible is a lens,
not a map.

I've looked so long through that lens,
that I began to see the bubble formed around me,
charged powerfully with fear,
'yond my bubble monsters lurked.

But, my bubble bumped another,
purest of happenstance,
the bubbles merged and merged again,
their power building to a wave,
crashing to the shore and no more
was I bubbled in my safe place.

I found this trail up from the beach.

It got me much farther than this, should you ever
visit me.
Did you regret the defeat at Ai,
or were you
Aachen, bold?

No, irrelevant, obtuse allusion to Yahshua,
that's not in the stack,
that card's about as relevant as McLuhan's hair of the dog.

Information unformed begins to boil deep in me.

Somethin', ain't it?  All them three meter dishes shrunk down
to the size of a spoon, a teeny weeny spoon, a coke spoon,
like on Miami Vice, back when.

Satellite TV changed the desert, fer sher, but 4g, brohan,

that was the trick. Elect trick.
Future, on demand, where outhouses are still de rigueur.

Before you know it, country kids,
too poor for any but outlaw dreams,
can audit courses at MIT,
if somebody
shows him, it can be done, prove t' him
it works, faith can make things happen,
but
happening as an event, in the Deep Field,
is sorta hard to nail down to one thing,
until the very last
Planc-sec.  
Astrophysics is part of the metagame, fer sher.
But
there's some stuff that takes some patience,
to learn. Fifty year'r longer.

Everything that's old and still works is only old, not rotten.

Olde time religion, at the oldfo'k dayroom,
where the clock runs the whole show.
It's another game show. Saint Bob Barker takes a bow,
and declares the potential worth of all your eyes behold,
behind the curtain,
lies the prize.

If, if, if you are a luckywinner and
you arise when I call your name
to come on down,
fall on your knees and declare the worth...

pure gamesmanships required here, golf whispers only,
worship, 'smuch more difficult to aim for than praise.
I agree.
Praise, appraisal, worthyness, worthship, prize, what's the diff?
How comes a thing to be worthy,
in your estimation? Tell me no lie.

A feeling? What's it worth?
Depends.
Safe? Priceless! Don't shout. There's money to make.

'Got a busy-ness pre-positioned high above the rest.
A super-positioned superstion. The darkness.
See, safety is a human right.
So we sell walls, impermeable. It's always, lights on
within, then
We'll be rich and powerful wallbuilding,
citi-zen warriors fed and fattened
by those we make
feel safe, from the dark unknowns seeping in.

That's the idea. It's worked for years, at least
since
we saw the Power in Myth and
capitalized Campbell's bliss and Sagan's billions and billions of stars.

Within these walls workers will work for food and a feeling.
And Facebook.
They choose a place and stand, and do what comes to hand.
Heartily
grip what's easiest for you to hold on to,
they are told.

Attendants bring the meds, settling every disruption
of the peace the patient craves in his comfort.
The price ain't right, m'mouthmumbles...

You are absolutely co-rect-allatime, tekayepeel.

There are wishes being made,
on all manner of stars
for happy ever afters.

If wishes were askings, what if
connecting to the source of haps which,
every expert knows, haps are
all happiness can possibly
consist of.
Oh, consist.
That sticky, gluteny idea stuck in my daily bread.
It's related to resist, desist and the command to stand.
Sistere. Shield-wall and all that. Turtles all the way down.

A disruption!
Day room Now! Granpa's shouting,

This is that bomb, this is a dam buster Jesus H Christ Bomb!
I'll drop it. I swear.

Something's bound on earth to go wrong,
ever since Eve bit that apple, if she'da left that apple on the apple tree
Nah, that ain't how it went down and
songs about it don't change it none.

But, maybe this is me interrupted... in my meander.

What if, nothing is immaterial,
as an idea, it can't go wrong,
and Murphy's law, obeyed, is good, all the time.
If nothing can go wrong, it won't.
Ask the pilot flying by faith in his checklist.

What if,
asking for help helps?
Was that a message? A touch by an angel?
Spirit, the idea? An answered prayer?

Are you familiar with its role in reality?
Something makes these bubbles spin, y'know.

Ignoring is bliss, nay,
No more,
precisely, nevermore,
quoth the raven, shall the man who can read
be locked away from all the stories,
telling eventualities that
men, wombed and un,
have told and tested for ever, it seems,

Stop
striving for perfection and let patience have her way witcha,

whatcha learn can change the world.

Look back. Good news from a far country come our way.
Grandpa made some sense and we built a fort, of pillows
This is a reworking of Good news from a far country, I am attempting to rein in my scattered mind. Let me know if you see improvement or parts in need thereof.
Vandy Madireddy  Sep 2018
Family
Vandy Madireddy Sep 2018
I walked into a church today,
One I wanted to visit for days,
I passed by it, saw the huge doors open
Inviting me in daily, but I just didn’t go in.

I’m a Hindu by religion,
Indian by birth,
I have an older sister,
My mom and my dad obviously.

Why am I telling you this?
Well because I’m everything but
Happy, calm and sorted,
Just angry, irritated and anxious.

They fight, my mom and dad,
They love each other, or maybe they don’t,
But they fight and argue,
They don’t hold back on concern either.

They talk a lot, my sister and him,
The guy she’s seeing but not dating,
The guy she’s serious about but hasn’t met,
She’s always on the phone, sharing every bit of her life.

I entered the church,
Felt nothing, felt the same as usual,
No excitement, disappointment, nothing,
Temples don’t help either.

I love my family, they love me back,
They care and support me, a lot!
I don’t want it most of the times,
It both keeps me alive and suffocates me.

They are always there,
Standing right by me,
If not in person, then by spirit,
Always a call away.

I talk to them every day, thrice,
Twice at least, message my whereabouts,
It’s a habit, a want, a need
To let them know everything about me.

They are fighting now,
I got an email this time,
Not a phone call, nor message,
Mom lied, that she’s got her migraine.

Dad’s left the family WhatsApp group,
Blamed it on the work stress,
But I know better, we all do,
I may be the youngest, but I’m 20.

My sister’s fed up with me,
Well she’s not the only one,
I shout, scream, screech rudely,
Loudly, with no sane reason.

I know I need help,
We all do, for anger,
To love and feel loved,
But it’s never going to happen.

I am a psychology student,
I want to let the world know,
With my research that depression and anxiety,
Can’t be beat with medicines nor by expressing.

My sister’s a Human Rights student,
Who wants to help people,
Support and care for them,
You can’t, nothing will end human suffering.

We are the sole cause of it,
Human suffering, the ones with fuel,
The ones with the extinguisher,
Yet, each time we choose poorly.

My family is broken, ******* up,
It’s surviving on a thin string,
But it won’t break, ever,
We’ll all just drift apart.
ottaross  Aug 2013
Waste Disposal
ottaross Aug 2013
Once it was garbage, refuse, trash.
A jumble of foul-smelling detritus hauled to the curb
And removed by sinewy men
Contributing a harder day's work
Than anyone else in the city.

Our energy now removes its entropy.
Sorted and classified into coloured bins,
We add order to our rejected matter.

Specialized trucks arrive to collect
The date-synchronized bins
Emptying them into functionally compatible mechanisms.

Most desolate is the black box of paper and cardboard.
Brochures and flyers, old magazines and letters.
Annual reports and cereal boxes.
Once these were enameled with crafted sentences,
Painstakingly typed, edited and debated,
On the monitors of copywriters.

Now they are just millions of words printed on flattened fibre substrates,
Jumbled into the bruised and scarred black box,
Entering into the recycling stream.

The nouns and adjectives,
Prepositions and gerunds,
All jumble together.

Fragments of precisely-crafted sentences and paragraphs
Are gradually broken, shredded and pulped.
Incomplete thoughts, broken phrases
Like those of a rejected stranger
In an lonely, unknown country.
Then words without context.
Then just disparate letters
Are all that remain.
Their  M  ea  N inG
G  r a Du all y
is re mov
e d
.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
the Islam of Malcolm X isn't the Islam of today... it isn't really the prescription of Nietzsche had before the Heraclitus flux took sway and said: waterfall or lottery... it really, really, really doesn't matter. the Islam of the 1960s isn't the Islam of today... too tinged with Sieg Heil... although less the Ave Caesar salute and more akin to: who's up for ****, *******? the Islam has changed... if i was wise enough i'd have converted, to mind you... but i thought: putting my faith by only having a library of only one book... i thought... n'ah... that's a bit extreme, can i at least have a comic book strip to add to that massive library? no? oh well, no, sorry, at least one book mentions several authors who tried to imitate but failed on the last hurdle, at least i can revise that, and completely erase the two extensions that borrowed from Hinduism; 'cos' like it ******* mattered.. don't test me, i'm anticipating death like  suicide-vest child... come on! let's start the Slavic crusade!

perhaps it's not about not thinking certain thoughts,
or feeling certain emotions...
but perhaps it just is...
i say, we need the Sophists these days to
apply the fishing-net tactic to deciphering or
simply selectively reflecting our vocabularies...
strait-jacket vocabularies are there in plain sight...
i mean... wait a minute...
i jumped from jazz into pop music on the headphones,
from Miles Davis' *kind of blue
defining
moment of the flamenco sketches right into the bog
of one direction - so i guess this is where
the antidote for art being too subjective comes in...
well, they sorted that problem already...
objectivity in art is around us as we speak,
it means "artists" that are manufactured,
art in the age of mechanical reproduction
(Walter Benjamin), it means more props than artists,
the problem got solved, it means reaching an
autocratic plateau of plugging in and sharing
a non-individualistic stream of emotion,
the opposite of democracy is autocracy, it isn't
despotism... i don't know why democracy doesn't
understand that it's ugly sister (autocracy)
is the enemy and not a Genghis Khan style of government...
democracy in the form of autocracy is a failed
attempt at Utopia... it suggests the system is perfect...
it means the institutions go about their daily business
like children in the playground who ******* and wet
themselves (the bankers), and still not one does anything
about it... what was once a demo tape of a indie band
becomes an automatic big seller big grosser E.P.,
just because the tragedy came, and they drove the touring
bus off a bridge in Sveeden... *******...
you ain't fighting dictators, you're fighting your change
from democracy into autocracy... where things
seem so perfect they can hardly ever change,
they're automated, they're not demographically sound...
sure, i'm the clown, i'll juggle a few big words around...
but in term of art? well, pop music has reached
the limit of what "philosophers" argued against...
to be frank... jealousy got to them that argued
for counter-productive constraints...
now they rebel against this objective construct of
artists in the shadows, writing text and tune and needing
some amateur to perform... and where do you
seek their rebellion? in the subjectivity they once
argued against: that famous Rage Against the Machine
protest against the X-factor...
so wait, first you argue against the subjectivity
of the artistic expression, then you postulate the non-existence
of the self: countered as the dasein for all subjectivity,
then you miss artistic objectivity with the karaoke
and what comes as the **** utopia with French
euthanasia tourists in Switzerland and Belgium...
you missed the argument you favoured, i.e.
artistic objectivity, i.e. performers, not people who write
the hit singles, Hiroshima Karaoke,
well, aren't we all objective now, that we have to source
our feelings in the expressions we once made angst against?
odd, isn't it? you never knew how well established
the counter argument became...
it's pop culture, it's evidently going to become viral...
but you see the power of subjective art...
it spreads like an infection, no point arguing against it...
objectivity in art is already a well established
virus, it doesn't really bite into your soul,
it bites, but you just get the odd body chicken ****...
that's what i mean about how a self-assured-without-a-self
democracy morphs into autocracy...
the fake Utopia of the well-established social
institutions actually being bankrupt, starting
with the post-colonial charity companies,
lying sharks and interest rates at 2000% per annum
i'm starting to think of Islam... leeches and hypocrites...
so your pointless critique of the subjectivity of the arts
became your most sling-shot friction strained weapon
to aim at the industry of art objectified,
in the age of mechanical reproduction true art = dodo...
it's on its way out... i hardly think that
50 years from now you'll find someone as idiotic
as me writing poetry for the love of the **** thing...
you'll get Utopian plateaus, anaesthetic democracy in
the realm of humanism, and hanging over you
autocracy... immovable foundations, cos' everything's
just perfect, time to invade another Libya where
some genius ensured the people knew their place
and who kept order on the pretence of
keeping weapons of mass destruction and
dog leashes... but there you will be ****-strapped going
huh? i thought subjectivity in art was bad?
n'ah mate, that's the only thing that made art good...
you got your ******* Karaoke, live with it!
the English Renaissance of the 1960s ain't coming back,
even if you gave Belfast back to the Dublin crew...
i say we need another Protagoras to get
the vocabulary inflation up to speed...
i say devalue the words self, ego... and make the
psychologists bums..
i say devalue the words nation, british and hamburger
to make the anglophile influence on Europe
a bit like sniffing a mortar of ******* off a penny...
i say reestablish the virtues of Japanese feudalism,
scare depressed teenagers with the words:
your only way out is by Hara Kiri.
something must come from a poem like this...
i have rage... you reason with it...
i'm not going to reason a calm into my heart with the words
i just wrote... n'ah... n'ah n'ah... that ain't happening...
it only took one needle in a haystack to give me prompt...
the ailments of subjectivity in art...
that got me, bull's eye reddened mad...
you ain't turning me into Darwinian grey matter!
this is democracy at its most despotic...
let me try democracy first, before i join the legion of dentists
with happy middle-class lives in autocracy...
can't blame ****** in this guise of organising people,
'cos' there just ain't no ******...
that got me hot wired and hired to argue...
first they say: art deserves no subjectivity...
fair enough: 1 man draws a rhombus a 1000 men draw a square...
but now that we can finally see objectivity being applied
to art, we only get pop: **** jazz, classical, rock and speedy-indie...
we get manufacture... as you once hated those with
personal intention to add to the democratic demographic,
now you turn against them for disturbing the status quo...
well, happy are those that come to the sun's repeat jargon
and happily doubt the roundabout...
because criticising art as subjectively orientated
really spared you art having ascribed objectivity to its cause
of attaining mechanical reproduction,
and the subjective placebo... neither thinking nor feeling
anything deeper than nervous yoga twitching dances...
spare me the ******* details if you come up with
a more accurate historical pinpoint.

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