These are poems about poetry, poems about writing, poems about the process of composition...
The Composition of Shadows
by Michael R. Burch
“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”—W. B. Yeats
We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.
And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,...
sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze
that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.
Less Heroic Couplets: Questionable Credentials
by Michael R. Burch
Poet? Critic? Dilettante?
Do you know what’s good, or do you merely flaunt?
Less Heroic Couplets: Dark Cloud, Silver Lining
from “Love in the Time of the Coronavirus”
by Michael R. Burch
Every corona has a silver lining:
I’m too far away to hear your whining,
and despite my stormy demeanor,
my hands have never been cleaner!
A Passing Observation about Thinking Outside the Box
by Michael R. Burch
William Blake had no public, and yet he’s still read.
His critics are dead.
Distances (II)
by Michael R. Burch
There is a small cleanness about her,
as if she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.
She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.
She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.
At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.
Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia and Lone Stars
This Distance Between Us
by Michael R. Burch
This distance between us,
this vast gulf of remembrance
void of understanding,
sets us apart.
You are so far,
lost child,
weeping for consolation,
once dear to my heart.
Once near to my heart,
though seldom to touch,
now you are foreign,
now you grow faint...
like the wayward light of a vagabond star—
obscure, enigmatic.
Is the reveling gypsy
becoming a saint?
Now loneliness,
a broad expanse
—barren, forbidding—
whispers my name.
I, too, am a traveler
down this dark path,
unsure of the footing,
cursing the rain.
I, too, have felt pain,
pain and the ache of passion unfulfilled,
remorse, grief, and all the terrors
of the night.
And how very black
and how bleak my despair . . .
O, where are you, where are you
shining tonight?
East Devon Beacon
by Michael R. Burch
Evening darkens upon the moors,
Forgiveness—a hairless thing
skirting the headlamps, fugitive.
Why have we come,
traversing the long miles
and extremities of solitude,
worriedly crisscrossing the wrong maps
with directions
obtained from passing strangers?
Why do we sit,
frantically retracing
love’s long-forgotten signal points
with cramping, ink-stained fingers?
Why the preemptive frowns,
the litigious silences,
when only yesterday we watched
as, out of an autumn sky this vast,
over an orchard or an onion field,
wild Vs of distressed geese
sped across the moon’s face,
the sound of their panicked wings
like our alarmed hearts
pounding in unison?
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 ***.
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.
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.
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 ***** of Parnassus
Less Heroic Couplets: Sweet Tarts
by Michael R. Burch
Love, beautiful but fatal to many bewildered hearts,
commands us to be faithful, then tempts us with sweets and tarts.
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.
Published by The New Stylus
The Drawer of Mermaids
by Michael R. Burch
This poem is dedicated to Alina Karimova, who was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. Alina loves to draw mermaids and believes her fingers will eventually grow out.
Although I am only four years old,
they say that I have an old soul.
I must have been born long, long ago,
here, where the eerie mountains glow
at night, in the Urals.
A madman named Geiger has cursed these slopes;
now, shut in at night, the emphatic ticking
fills us with dread.
(Still, my momma hopes
that I will soon walk with my new legs.)
It’s not so much legs as the fingers I miss,
drawing the mermaids under the ledges.
(Observing, Papa will kiss me
in all his distracted joy;
but why does he cry?)
And there is a boy
who whispers my name.
Then I am not lame;
for I leap, and I follow.
(G’amma brings a wiseman who says
our infirmities are ours, not God’s,
that someday a beautiful Child
will return from the stars,
and then my new fingers will grow
if only I trust Him; and so
I am preparing to meet Him, to go,
should He care to receive me.)
alien
by michael r. burch
there are mornings in england
when, riddled with light,
the Blueberries gleam at us—
plump, sweet and fragrant.
but i am so small...
what do i know
of the ways of the Daffodils?
“beware of the Nettles!”
we go laughing and singing,
but somehow, i,...
i know i am lost. i do not belong
to this Earth or its Songs.
and yet i am singing...
the sun—so mild;
my cheeks are like roses;
my skin—so fair.
i spent a long time there
before i realized: They have no faces,
no bodies, no voices.
i was always alone.
and yet i keep singing:
the words will come
if only i hear.
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!
Paradoxical Ode to Antinatalism
by Michael R. Burch
A stay on love
would end death’s hateful sway,
someday.
A stay on love
would thus be love,
I say.
Be true to love
and thus end death’s
fell sway!
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.
How Could I Understand?
by Michael R. Burch
The intense heat and light of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts left ghostly silhouettes of human beings imprinted in concrete, whose lives were erased in an instant.
How could I understand
that light
might
be painful?
That sight
might
be crossed?
How could I understand
the cost
of my ignorance,
or the sun’s
inflorescence?
Who was there to tell me
that I, too,
might be one of the
Lost?
The First Christmas
by Michael R. Burch
’Twas in a land so long ago . . .
the lambs lay blanketed in snow
and little children everywhere
sat and watched warm embers glow
and dreamed (of what, we do not know).
And THEN—a star appeared on high,
The brightest man had ever seen!
It made the children whisper low
in puzzled awe (what did it mean?).
It made the wooly lambkins cry.
Not far away a new-born lay,
warm-blanketed in straw and hay,
a lowly manger for his crib.
The cattle mooed, distraught and low,
to see the child. They did not know
it now was Christmas day!
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 **** 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!
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.
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!
Haunted
by Michael R. Burch
Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.
Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.
Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.
Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.
Published by Romantics Quarterly
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 and The HyperTexts
Duet, Minor Key
by Michael R. Burch
Without the drama of cymbals
or the fanfare and snares of drums,
I present my case
stripped of its fine veneer:
Behold, thy instrument.
Play, for the night is long.
Published by Brief Poems
At Tintagel
by Michael R. Burch
The legend of what happened on a stormy night at Tintagel is endlessly intriguing. Supposedly, Merlin transformed Uther Pendragon to look like Gorlois so that he could sleep with Ygraine, the lovely wife of the unlucky duke. While Uther was enjoying Ygraine’s *******, Gorlois was off getting himself killed. The question is: did Igraine suspect that her lover was not her husband? Regardless, Arthur was the child conceived out of this supernatural (?) encounter.
That night,
at Tintagel,
there was darkness such as man had never seen . . .
darkness and treachery,
and the unholy thundering of the sea...
In his arms,
who can say how much she knew?
And if he whispered her name . . .
“Ygraine”
. . . could she tell above the howling wind and rain?
Could she tell, or did she care,
by the length of his hair
or the heat of his flesh, . . .
that her faceless companion
was Uther, the dragon,
and Gorlois lay dead?
Published by Songs of Innocence, Celtic Twilight, Fables, Fickle Muses and Poetry Life & Times
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
Crunch
by Michael R. Burch
A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucus you scrounge from your nose
then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor...
You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere,
sometimes as you ****** encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan ***
and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic.
You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion
to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters:
surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information,
in order to ensure the survival of the species.
Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces;
their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium.
But your cranium
is not nearly so adaptable.
A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch
Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the darkening autumn, how swiftly life goes—
as I fled before love ...
Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.
I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the specter of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.
O, where are you now?—I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.
Published by Chrysanthemum and Tucumcari Literary Review
What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch
This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?
How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?
Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?
Now I am truly lost!
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.
Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
The night is full of stars. Which still exist?
Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know.
For now I hold your fingers to my lips
and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow...
once slow to match this reckless spark in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame...
for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie
in dawning recognition is enough...
enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.
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 (Singapore)
First Steps
by Michael R. Burch
for Caitlin Shea Murphy
To her a year is like infinity,
each day—an adventure never-ending.
She has no concept of time,
but already has begun the climb—
from childhood to womanhood recklessly ascending.
I would caution her, "No! Wait!
There will be time enough another day . . .
time to learn the Truth
and to slowly shed your youth,
but for now, sweet child, go carefully on your way!..."
But her time is not a time for cautious words,
nor a time for measured, careful understanding.
She is just certain
that, by grabbing the curtain,
in a moment she will finally be standing!
Little does she know that her first few steps
will hurtle her on her way
through childhood to adolescence,
and then, finally, pubescence . . .
while, just as swiftly, I’ll be going gray!
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.”
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.
Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch
for and after William Blake
O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!
Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)
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 ****
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.
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 Borderless Journal (Singapore)
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.
Our English Rose
by Michael R. Burch
for Christine Ena Burch
The rose is—
the ornament of the earth,
the glory of nature,
the archetype of the flowers,
the blush of the meadows,
a lightning flash of beauty.
This is my translation of a Sappho epigram.
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 *****
toward self illumination ...
becoming an angel
(pure love)
and yet You must love Your Self
Attend Upon Them Still
by Michael R. Burch
for my grandparents George and Ena Hurt
With gentleness and fine and tender will,
attend upon them still;
thou art the grass.
Nor let men’s feet here muddy as they pass
thy subtle undulations, nor depress
for long the comforts of thy lovingness,
nor let the fuse
of time wink out amid the violets.
They have their use—
to wave, to grow, to gleam, to lighten their paths,
to shine resplendent glories at their feet.
Thou art the grass;
make them complete.
Talent
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
I liked the first passage
of her poem—where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.
There's something of love
in the rhythms of night
—in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end—
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.
So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.
Pool's Prince Charming
by Michael R. Burch
this poem is my tribute, written on the behalf of his fellow pool sharks, for the legendary Saint Louie Louie Roberts
Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool,
making all the ladies drool ...
Take the “nuts”? I'd be a fool!
Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool.
Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis,
owner of (ahem) a similar pelvis ...
Compared to you, the books will shelve us.
Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis.
Louie, Louie, fearless gambler,
ladies' man and constant rambler,
but such a sweet, loquacious ambler.
Louie, Louie, fearless gambler.
Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic,
pool's charming hero, but tragic, Byronic,
winning the Open drinking gin and tonic?
Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic.
Ave Maria
by Michael R. Burch
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
Listen to my earnest prayer.
Listen, O, and be beguiled.
Ave Maria.
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
Be Mother now to every child
Beset by earth’s thorned briars wild.
Ave Maria.
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
Embrace us with your Love and Grace.
Let us look upon your Face.
Ave Maria.
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
Attend now to our earnest call—
When will Love be All in All?
Ave Maria.
bachelorhoodwinked
by michael r. burch
u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly alarming
since all my resolve
dissolved!
u
are
chic
as a sheikh’s
harem girl in the sheets
but my castle’s no longer my own
and my kingdom’s been overthrown!
Published by Brief Poems
Virginal
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
For an hour
every wildflower
beseeches her,
"To thy breast,
Elizabeth..."
But she is mine;
her lips divine
and her ******* and hair
are mine alone.
Let the wildflowers moan.
Published by Songs of Innocence
BEAD BY BEAD
by Michael R. Burch
Bead by bead,
I count my lovers’ moons...
Moon by sad moon,
I await my children. Soon...
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.
Burn
by Michael R. Burch
for Trump
Sunbathe,
ozone baby,
till your parched skin cracks
in the white-hot flash
of radiation.
Incantation
from your pale parched lips
shall not avail;
you made this hell.
Now burn.
Originally published by Setu
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—
i note per ur 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 ur Bible is libel!
Here "being made god" can be read two ways. Jesus was a man "made god" but he was equated with Jehovah, a mythical being also "made god." This is a follow-up poem to my childhood poem "Bible Libel."
dark matter(s)
by michael r. burch
for and after William Blake
the matter is dark, despairful, alarming:
ur Creator is hardly prince charming!
yes, ur “Great I Am”
created blake’s lamb
but He also created the tyger ...
and what about trump and rod steiger?
Rod Steiger is best known for his portrayals of weirdos, oddballs, mobsters, bandits, serial killers, and fascists like Mussolini and Napoleon.
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...
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?
absinthe sea
by michael r. burch, circa age 18-19
i hold in my hand a goblet of absinthe
the bitter green liqueur
reflects the dying sunset over the sea
and the darkling liquid froths
up over the rim of my cup
to splash into the free,
churning waters of the sea
i do not drink
i do not drink the liqueur,
for I sail on an absinthe sea
that stretches out unendingly
into the gathering night
its waters are no less green
and no less bitter,
nor does the sun strike them with a kinder light
they both harbor night,
and neither shall shelter me
neither shall shelter me
from the anger of the wind
or the cruelty of the sun
for I sail in the goblet of some Great God
who gazes out over a greater sea,
and when my life is done,
perhaps it will be because
He lifted His goblet and sipped my sea.
Am I
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14
Am I inconsequential;
do I matter not at all?
Am I just a snowflake,
to sparkle, then to fall?
Am I only chaff?
Of what use am I?
Am I just a feeble flame,
to flicker, then to die?
Am I inadvertent?
For what reason am I here?
Am I just a ripple
in a pool that once was clear?
Am I insignificant?
Will time pass me by?
Am I just a flower,
to live one day, then die?
Am I unimportant?
Do I matter either way?
Or am I just an echo—
soon to fade away?
The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch
How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...
Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...
“O, let down your hair!”—we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...
was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.
Published by Romantics Quarterly and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)
Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch
As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.
These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.
Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.
God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.
Published by The NeoVictorian/Cochlea, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)
You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened . . .
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching . . .
You paid love no notice,
though she lay in my arms
as the stars rose in swarms
like a legion of poets,
as the lightning recited
its opus before us,
and the hills boomed the chorus,
all strangely delighted . . .
Originally published by Contemporary Rhyme
Break Time
by Michael R. Burch
for those who lost loved ones on 9-11
Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
Published by Sonnet Writers, Freshet and Sontey (Czechoslovakia)
Dancer
by Michael R. Burch
You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,
waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.
Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.
They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled
of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,
of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.
They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh
for ages,
stages
slipping by.
You pause;
applause
is all you hear.
You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.
Bound
by Michael R. Burch
Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.
Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.
Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch
for my mother, Christine Ena Burch, who was always a little giggly girl at heart
. . . qui laetificat juventutem meam . . .
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
. . . requiescat in pace . . .
May she rest in peace.
. . . amen . . .
Amen.
Originally published by Setu
Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.
Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt ... I am undone.
Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.
Published by Setu
Ambition
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18
Men speak of their “Ambition”
and I smile to hear them say
that within them burns such fire,
such a longing to be great...
For I laugh at their “Ambition”
as their wistfulness amasses;
I seek Her tongue’s indulgence
and Her parted legs’ crevasses.
Analogy
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18
Our embrace is like a forest
lying blanketed in snow;
you, the lily, are enchanted
by each shiver trembling through;
I, the snowfall, cling in earnest
as I press so close to you.
You dream that you now are sheltered;
I dream that I may break through.
Dance With Me
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18
Dance with me
to the fiddles’ plaintive harmonies.
Enchantingly,
each highstrung string,
each yearning key,
each a thread within the threnody,
bids us, "Waltz!"
then sets us free
to wander, dancing aimlessly.
Let us kiss
beneath the stars
as we slowly meet ...
we'll part
laughing gaily as we go
to measure love’s arpeggios.
Yes, dance with me,
enticingly;
press your lips to mine,
then flee.
The night is young,
the stars are wild;
embrace me now,
my sweet, beguiled,
and dance with me.
The curtains are drawn,
the stage is set
—patterned all in grey and jet—
where couples in like darkness met
—careless airy silhouettes—
to try love's timeless pirouettes.
They, too, spun across the lawn
to die in shadowy dark verdant.
But dance with me.
Sweet Merrilee,
don't cry; I see
the ironies of all the years
within the moonlight on your tears,
and every ****** has her fears ...
So laugh with me
unheedingly;
love's gaiety is not for those
who fail to heed the music's flow,
but it is ours.
Now fade away
like summer rain,
then pirouette ...
the dance of stars
that waltz among night's meteors
must be the dance we dance tonight.
Then come again—
like a sultry wind.
Your slender body as you sway
belies the ripeness of your age,
for a woman's body burns tonight
beneath your gown of ****** white—
a woman's ******* now rise and fall
in answer to an ancient call,
and a woman's hips—soft, yet full—
now gently at your garments pull.
So dance with me,
sweet Merrilee ...
the music bids us,
"Waltz!"
Don't flee!
Let us kiss
beneath the stars;
love's passing pains will leave no scars
as we whirl beneath false moons
and heed the fiddle’s plaintive tunes ...
Oh, Merrilee,
the curtains are drawn,
the stage is set,
we, too, are stars beyond night's depths.
So dance with me.
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?
Published by Tucumcari Literary Journal and Night Roses
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.
I had Robert Frost in mind when I wrote this poem, thus the title. Frost was fond of the word “arch,” and it’s here because of that fondness.
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 *** 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.
Over(t) Simplification
by Michael R. Burch
“Keep it simple, stupid.”
A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful,
or comforting, or horrifying. Move
the reader, and the world will not reprove
the idiosyncrasies of too few lines,
too many syllables, or offbeat beats.
It only matters that she taps her feet
or that he frowns, or smiles, or grimaces,
or sits bemused—a child—as images
of worlds he’d lost come flooding back, and then...
they’ll cheer the poet’s insubordinate pen.
A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful.
Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch
Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.
But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.
So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
departed with her, in the darkest of nights, the flame!
Here I lie, the pallid vision of man—the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.
I love her beyond and despite even shame.
1-800-HOT-LINE
by Michael R. Burch
“I don’t believe in psychics,” he said, “so convince me.”
When you were a child, the earth was a joy,
the sun a bright plaything, the moon a lit toy.
Now life’s small distractions irk, frazzle, annoy.
When the crooked finger beckons, scythe-talons destroy.
“You’ll have to do better than that, to convince me.”
As you grew older, bright things lost their meaning.
You invested your hours in commodities, leaning
to things easily fleeced, to the convenient gleaning.
I see a pittance of dirt—untended, demeaning.
“Everyone knows that!” he said, “so convince me.”
Your first and last wives traded in golden bands
to escape the abuses of your cruel hands.
Where unwatered blooms line a small plot of land,
the two come together, waving fans.
“Everyone knows that. Convince me.”
As your father left you, you left those you brought
to the doorstep of life as an afterthought.
Two sons and a daughter tap shoes, undistraught.
Their tears are contrived, their condolences bought.
“Everyone knows that. Convince me.”
A moment, an instant ... a life flashes by,
a tunnel appears, but not to the sky.
There is brightness, such brightness it sears the eye.
When a life grows too dull, it seems better to die.
“I could have told you that,” he shrieked, “I think I’ll **** myself!”
Originally published by Penny Dreadful
Pilgrim Mountain
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16
I have come to Pilgrim Mountain
to eat icicles and to bathe in the snow.
Please don’t ask me why I have done this,
for I do not know . . .
but I had a vision of the end of time
and I feared for my soul.
On Pilgrim Mountain the rivers shriek
as they rush toward the valleys, and the rocks
creak and groan in their misery,
for they recollect they’re prey to
night and day,
and ten thousand other fallacies.
Sunlight shatters the stone,
but midnight mends it again
with darkness and a cooling flow.
This is no place for men,
and I know this, but I know
that that which has been must somehow be again.
Now here on Pilgrim Mountain
I shall gouge my eyes with stone
and tear out all my hair,
and though I die alone,
I shall not care . . .
for the night will still roll on
above my weary bones
and these sun-split, shattered stones
of late become their home
here, on Pilgrim Mountain.
The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch
Love among the infinitesimal
flotillas of amoebas is a dance
of transient appendages, wild sails
that gather in warm brine and then express
one headstream as two small, divergent wakes.
Minuscule voyage—love! Upon false feet,
the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep
toward self-immolation: two nee one.
We cannot photosynthesize the sun,
and so we love in darkness, till we come
at last to understand: man’s spineless heart
is alien to any land.
We part
to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears,
amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ...
and still we sink.
The night is full of stars
we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours.
Have we such cells within us, bent on love
to ever-changingness, so that to part
is not to be the same, or even one?
Is love mere evolution, or a scream
against the thought of separateness—a cry
of strangled recognition? Love, or die,
or love and die a little. Hopeful death!
Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.
First and Last
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth, after Pablo Neruda
You are the last arcane rose
of my aching,
my longing,
or the first yellowed leaves’
vagrant spirals of gold
forming huddled bright sheaves;
you are passion forsaking
dark skies, as though sunsets no winds might enclose.
And still in my arms
you are gentle and fragrant—
demesne of my vigor,
spent rigor,
lost power,
fallen musculature of youth,
leaves clinging and hanging,
nameless joys of my youth to this last lingering hour.
Published by Tucumcari Literary Review and Poetry Life & Times
Her Preference
by Michael R. Burch
Not for her the pale incandescence of dreams,
the warm glow of imagination,
the hushed whispers of possibility,
or frail, blossoming hope.
No, she prefers the anguish and screams
of bitter condemnation,
the hissing of hostility,
damnation's rope.
the Horror
by Michael R. Burch
the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads
the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”
Man Retreats into Savagery
by Michael R. Burch
What I ache to say is beyond saying—
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.
No, there are no words for the horror
as a cyclone howls between teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes...
What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.
These are poems about poetry, poems about writing, poems about the process of composition.