Let me climb the intellectual bandwagon of Chamara Sumanapala of the Sunday Nation in Sirilanka, to recognize a world literary fact that Taras Shevchenko was the grandfather of literature that paid wholesome tribute to Ukrainian nationalism. In this juncture it has to  be argued that it is ideological shrewdness that has taken Russia to Crimean province of Ukraine but nothing like justifiable law and constitutionalism. Let it also be my opportune time for paying tribute to Taras Shevchenko, as at the same time I pay my homage to Ukrainian literature which is also a cultural symbol of Ukrainian statehood. Just like most of the European gurus of literature and art of his time, Taras Shevchenko received little formal education. The same way Shakespeare and Pushkin as well as Alexander Sholenystisn happened to receive education that was clearly less than what is received by many children around the world today.
Like Lucanos the Greek writer who wrote the biblical gospel according to saint Luke, Taras Shevchenko was Born to parents who were serfs. Taras himself began his life being a slave. He was 24 years a serf. He spent only one fourth of his relatively short life of 47 years as a free man. The same way Miguel Cervantes and Victor Marie Hugo had substantial part of their lives in prison. Nevertheless, this largely self-educated former serf became the headmaster, the guru and fountain of Ukrainian cultural consciousness through his paradigmatic literature written basically in the indigenous Ukrainian language. He was a prototype in this capacity given that no any other writer had made neither intellectual nor even cultural stretch in this direction by that time.
And thus in current Ukraine of today, Taras Shevchenko is a national hero of literature and collective nationalism. But due to the prevailing political tension between Ukraine and Russia, his Bicentenary on March 9, 2014 was marred by hoi polloi of dishonesty ideology and sludge of degenerative politics. For many us who derive pleasure from literature and diverse literary civilizations we join the community of Ukrainians to remember Taras Shevchenko the exemplary of patriotism, Taras Shevchenko the poet as well cultural symbol of complete state of Ukraine.
There is always some common historical experience among the childhood conditions of great writers.  In the same childhood version as Wright, Fydor, Achebe, Nkrumah, Ousmane and many others, Shevchenko was born on March 9, 1814 in Moryntsi, a small village in Central Ukraine. His parents were serfs and therefore Taras was a serf by birth. At the age of eight, he received some lessons from the local Precentor or person who facilitated worshippers at the Church and was introduced to Ukrainian literature, the same way Malcolm X and Richard Wright learned to read and write while in prison. His childhood was miserable as the family was poor. Hard work and acute poverty ate up the lives of the family, and Tara’s mother died so soon when he was nine. His father remarried and the stepmother treated Taras very badly in a neurotic manner. Two years later, Taras’s father also passed away. Just in the same economic dint poverty ate up Karl Marx until the disease known us typhus killed her wife Jenny Westphelian Marx.
The 19th century Russian Empire was largely feudal, Saint Petersburg being the exception, just like the current Moscow. It was the door and the window to the West. Shevchenko’s timely and lucky break in life came when his erratic landlord left for Saint Petersburg, taking his treasured serf with him. Since, Taras had shown some merit and knack as a painter, his landlord sent him to informally learn painting with a master. It was fashionable and couth for a landlord to have a court painter in those days of Europe. However, sorrow had to build the bridges in that through his teacher, Shevchenko met other famous artists. Impressed by the artistic and literary merit of the young and honesty serf, they decided to raise money to buy his freedom out of serfdom. In 1838, Taras Shevchenko became a free man, a free Ukrainian and Free European.
As it goes the classical Marxist adage; freedom gives birth to creativity. It happened only two years later, Taras Shevchenko’s collection of poetry, Kobzar, was published, giving him instant fame like the Achebean bush fire in the harmattan wind. A kobzar is a Ukrainian string instrument and a bard who plays it is also known as a Kobzar. Taras Shevchenko also enjoyed some literary epiphany by coming to be known as Kobzar after the publication of his collection.
He was dutifully speaking of the plight of his people in his language, not only through music, but even poetry. However,  there were unfair and censuring restrictions in publishing books in Ukrainian. But lucky enough, the book had to be published outside Russia.

Shevchenko continued to write and paint without verve. Showing considerable merit in both. In 1845, he wrote ‘My Testament’ which is perhaps his oeuvre and best known work. In his poem, he begs the reader to bury him in his native Ukraine after he dies. Not in Russia. His immense love for the land of his birth is epitomized in these verses. Later, he wrote another memorable and compelling piece, ‘The Dream’, which expresses his dream of a day when all the serfs are free. When Ukraine will be free from Russia. Sadly, Taras Shevchenko came to his demise just a week before this dream was realized in 1861.
Chamara Sumanapala wrote in the Sirilanka Sunday Nation of 16 march 2014 that, Taras lived a free man until 1847 when he was arrested for being a member of a secret organization, Brotherhood of St Cyril and Methodius. He was imprisoned in Saint Petersburg and later banished as a private with the Russian military to Orenburg garrison. He was not to be allowed to read and paint, but his overseers hardly enforced this edict. After Czar Nicholas II died in 1855, he received a pardon in 1857, but was initially not allowed to return to Saint Petersburg. He was however, allowed to return to his native Ukraine. He returned to Saint Petersburg and died there on March 10, 1861, a day after his 47th birthday. Originally buried there, his remains were brought to Ukraine and buried in Kaniv, in a place now known as Taras Hill. The site became a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. In 1978, an engineer named Oleksa Hirnyk burned himself in protest to what he called the suppression of Ukrainian history, language and culture by the Soviet authorities.

Consider the background to this war in the Ukraine, consider the effects of the accumulation of generated rage over the decades?

Russia has historically subjugated Ukrainians since the 1930s when Stalin, motivated by racial prejudice and a desire to dominate, implemented a policy of extermination which systematically starved the largely rural population to death in the phenomenon known as the"Holodomor"... and forbade any complaint being uttered by the suffering peasants with the penalty of being frozen to death in the gulags of the wilderness of Siberia.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent nation by popular decree. This was not received well by  Russia nor by the Russian speaking populace of the Donbass region in the East.

In 2013 revolution occurred in the Maidan Square in Kiev where protestors revolted against the thuggish government of Victor Yakunovych who had implemented, in the face of Russian pressure, a forced decision against the popular choice of the people for the Ukraine to join the European union.

The Maidan revolution resulted in the collapse of the Yakunovych government and his forced sudden retreat to Russia. Pro Russian separatist forces in the Donbass supported by euphemistically titled "Russian Military Advisors" in February of 2014, attacked loyalist forces of the Ukraine in  the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics. Military escalation continued through to 2018 including artillery exchanges and the decision by Russia to militarily invade and annex the Crimean peninsular.

An undeclared war began between Ukrainian forces on one side, and separatists intermingled with Russian troops on the other, although Russia attempted to hide its involvement. The war settled into a static conflict, with repeated failed attempts at a ceasefire. In 2015, the Minsk II agreements were signed by Russia and Ukraine, but a number of disputes prevented them being fully implemented. By 2019, 7% of Ukraine was classified by the Ukrainian government as temporarily occupied territories, while the Russian government had indirectly acknowledged the presence of its troops in Ukraine.

In 2021 and early 2022, there was a major Russian military build-up around Ukraine's borders. NATO accused Russia of planning an invasion, which it denied. Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the enlargement of NATO as a threat to his country and demanded Ukraine be barred from ever joining the military alliance. He also expressed Russian historic views, questioning Ukraine's right to exist, and stated wrongfully that Ukraine was created by Soviet Russia. On 21 February 2022, Russia officially recognized the two self-proclaimed separatist states in the Donbas, and openly sent troops into the territories. Three days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Much of the international community has condemned Russia for its actions in post-revolutionary Ukraine, accusing it of breaking international law and violating Ukrainian sovereignty. Many countries implemented economic sanctions against Russia, Russian individuals, or companies, especially after the 2022 invasion.

The Russian genocide handbook was published on April 3, two days after the first revelation that Russian servicemen in Ukraine had murdered hundreds of people in Bucha, and just as the story was reaching major newspapers.  The Bucha massacre was one of several cases of mass killing that emerged as Russian troops withdrew from the Kiev region.  This means that the genocide program was knowingly published even as the physical evidence of genocide was emerging.  The writer and the editors chose this particular moment to make public a program for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.

Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so.  Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.....and incidentally, recently Ukraine geophysicists discovered vast gas and oil deposits in the, then, Ukrainian administered segment of the Black Sea. These deposits would have had the capacity and potential to render the Ukraine, not only independent of Russian hydrocarbon dependence but also capable of being developed into a major commercial supplier of oil and gas to the European community. Russia's annexation of Crimea and the recent military occupation of the Eastern corridor effectively opens the door to Russian monopolization of these deposits...and closes the door to Ukrainian aspirations!

Ukraine bleeds, Russia’s Putin must live with the guilt of the suffering and destruction he has caused for the rest of his living days. Emotions are running high on the vast steppes of Central Asia, whatever the outcome of this turmoil, decades of hate and resentment, violence and vengeance have been wrought by this action, the birth of this animosity shall grow and pervade, unhindered, for centuries in the heart of the angry denizens of this poor, tortured land.

Ukraine, Ukraine...Cry the Beloved Country

M.
20 April 2022

Sorbian, meaning, tickling the armpit of Germany
in terms of what's the desired encoding;
the variations of person:
            čłowjek (upper sorban)
               cłowjek (lower   "    )
     čovjek (croatian)
                           člověk    (czech')
człowiek (polish)      clawak (polabian)
              człowiek (kashubian)     človek (slovak)
                                 człowiyk (silesian)
         чoлoвік (ukranian).

' well, there is a little misunderstanding with the
  czech caron e (ě), mind this later.

yes, the peasants spoke more softly
compared with urban sharpening of accents,
so that you knew that in urban areas South
London has hardly Hackney Cockney,
and never Richmond, like Essex never spoke
good Yorkshire -
                             so they sharpened the letters
and that translated into involving accents
to later be abused -
                             the recipe? yes,
i was cooking Ukrainian Borscht today -
apart from the fact that Borscht isn't exactly classified
as a soup, a Borscht is a *Borscht,
   it transcends the category of being a soup,
just like rosół transcends the same category of being a soup,
           it's a very fine version of what is otherwise
chicken soup -
                            and as a critique of western cuisine?
why are all western soups like puree? they have
snot consistency, they ever never see-through -
they're all ******* creamy, like toddle-pulp of mauled
faeces - as if a bird feeding its chicks with regurgitated
products - eastern soups are see through,
floating bits you can see, a bit like the sea turned into
a Narcissus clarity. let me tell you,
the nurses love hearing the answers to the questions:
do you do any exercise?
                 yes, i walk everyday, once a week a take on
the miles.
             do you smoke?
        i try to fit within a packet of 20 a day.
do you drink?
                   only on alternative days.
        do you eat your five-a-day necessary ration
of fruits and vegetables?
          i don't like fruits... i avoid them...
vegetables? sure.
the basic ingredients of an Ukrainian broth?
        carrots, beetroots, celery, parsley root,
potatoes, leeks, fibre: green broad beans,
                   mushrooms,
                         red borscht concentrate
           white borscht concentrate for the sourness -
garlic.
                             (base? chicken, salt to taste).
well, coming back to the czech variation of the word
person... i feel there's a need to somehow find
diacritical uses coherent -
                                  i can only see it as
the nakedness of the original phonta (variation
on quanta: a specified sound being encoded with each
letter) -
                      it's diacritical marks akin to punctuation
marks and a few mathematical deliberates -
                  e.g. caron:
                                                        z
                                                      š
the z is invited to be applied to the s to make a shush
stress -
                                       arms wide open looking to
the sky for manna from heaven -
soon enough and y and j were confused with
yaks, tetragrammatons and some Spanish conquistadors
named Jesus - whether jumping or yanking the
shortest straws while sitting in a kayak -
or as Jacky said yards ahead if himself -
                   for every Jew there's a yew tree blossoming.
              there should be a rule of law stating:
only such and such diacritical marks to be applied
to vowels, and such and such marks to be applied to
consonants - but, evidently, this is not the norm -
             these are not merely unconscious accepted
aesthetic consideration, when i was being taught
French at school, i was never taught that
    ê (circumflex e) does as much damage to pronunciation
as does the è (grave e) - i.e. the circumflex is binding
the two letters in-between the stressed vowel,
while the incisor e with è cuts the word off when it's used -
              so the caron (mathematically more than? i.e. >)
  asks pleading to the skies for a letter to balance on?
   and the circumflex looks to the earth to find the seashells
and pebbles?
                             as in less than? i.e. <     ?
i rose above language, i rose above spelling because
i decided i could say to Bukowski's claim of genius:
tie your shoelaces before you talk to me:
simple as simply said: whatever lessons in life
i have to learn i'll learn them by my own accord -
               being drunk in Europe is the norm,
as is prostitution -
               last time the police booked me for drinking
i wasn't there... last time i talked with the Bulgarian mafia
i went back to get my debit card back,
            the **** showed me a wallet with 100 or so more
credit cards, i said: none of these are mine...
          the police cruised pretending law abides to the
standard imposed by politicians...
                   prostitution is fair game, but
keeping the girls contrary to self-employment is abhorred....
            me? i just don't do the dating scene,
should i be harrowed from that hide & seek of western
society's women woefully fishing? can i?
i can't be bothered with the games and the Geisha.
                       - you reach the proper level of appreciation
when you start to ridicule your heroes -
                                  you overpower them,
there's no point brown-nosing them with excess over-quotation,
you brown-nose them for a while, but then the gimmicks
begin... and they know it to be true:
    i' peg down Mr. B like anyone critical of getting an
education: learn to spell, and punctuate, and tie your shoelaces.
       you can't let them get away with it... those dumb-*****,
you can't: we all have a sad story...
    does anyone give a ****? m'eh... probably not.
it's the part when he says he read philosophy
but never bothers the ideas behind into a narrative:
                                   with him your end up *******
before Sophia rather than ******* her...
                        you have to **** her at some point...
                  no point ******* women and simply
******* before the deity -
                  better nothing ******* women and not
******* before the deity of worded fertility -
i was brown-nosing him for much too long...
                 whatever he said in his defence,
i'm aiming to capture the imagination akin to ****** addicts.
                      and that's hardly a feat to undertake.
so yeah, punctuation marks and some mathematical marks
above the Latin... Greek went wholly toward the Cyrillic -
oddly enough a Persian, Cyrus, entombed it into the strength
it possesses, rather than some Saint...
                                        so if i'm a loser at considering
myself a citizen of the world... what is Syria to me?
                                               Syria to me being Anglo-Slav
is:                    when Ramses destroyed Syria...
            don't come here with Westminster, please don't,
leave it out in the open with the paedophiles...
                                            i'm a citizen of England,
not of this world: you keep concerns over Syria where
you're at... if i can't be a citizen of thee world in a world
of globalisation, don't include me!
                                    diacritical marks, punctuation
alongside mathematical Copernican -
                                             yes, umlaut and the colon:,
what's the list? an extra oh... the latter phrase for
          omicron.
                                               Boršč or z z (zed zed)
             or h h (tricky, hay hay? ****** ******?
                               hatch hatch?)
            evidently the pronounced: shoo!
                                                        stinker that one:
given z morphs into h when given s or c...
                                i guess it's easier with      šč,
                   a.k.a.           shch...
and the most frequently asked question in English?
(by the middle class), how do you pronounce this?
                   you know why gangsters don't attack
educated people?
                           they love the fact that people made
the effort to learn reading and curtail other peoples' efforts
in changing perceptions -
                  for me it was always about being taught bad
French and rewriting the laws of stress -
                       i'll never understand the caron on vowels:
sure, the French makes it assured to make the circumflex
and the grave accenting above vowels synonymous...
  &

.i. if Kant could have his von Kleist... well... who else to juggle juggernauts if not me? as a task of redeeming that poor soul who succumbed to the terminator of all poetic ambitions, with his systematisation off-the-page, as eccentric and punctual as a sunset on a sundial at 16:11... and in case either the spring of sunrise, or the autumn of sunset... but so many hours after exacting a sunset... that gluttony of the eyes to stare at it... 16:11 is the zenith of a sunset in november the 15th... much prolonged when warmer... supersized sun when setting in summer, and all that whiskey-copper wiring for the eyes to stare at it: oh for goodness sake, who really cares for Ikea likened assembling of words... we're not putting together a coffee table, we're looking for Darwinistic entrapment, we're scared of the aeons and yawns... we're trying to create a Darwinistic entrapment saying what segregates us from apes! that's how anti-Darwinism works - if they can easily call you a poet and a technophobe... then that hardly makes you a merchant with a Quran... to encapsulate the language of our modernity we're doing everything against writing the onomatopoeia of our beginning... monkey ooo! monkey ooo ah ah! or a gorilla grunting and then snorkeling... we're encapsulating our language more and more... because beginning with ape and then looking at history, and then looking at the consensus of the contemporary: Darwinism's greatest enemy is not theology... it's history... Darwinism and history are not compatible... oddly enough Darwinism and theology are compatible, simply because they are dynamically equal for the case of furthering both arguments in debate... but Darwinism is an odd starting point to argue, given that physicists argue from the perspective of prior to dinosaurs, prior to all things formed.

how can i begin this? it will leave me having to
write it for two days,
the anti-narrative sketch first, then filling in
the gaps sober... just to get second opinions...
i might have to cook a quasi-Hungarian borscht
and fry up a few potato flattenings to a crispy
yum... first the narrator comes in to describe what's
in store, a bit like a translator comes in and says
of Joyce: that's Irish... well, yeah.
               hence the italic preface...
as some would say, the person who wrote these
sketches worked quicker that an algorithm in asking
and also quicker to copy & paste the required
atomic encoding... e.g. ч and ch
                   э and euro and epsilon...
      once upon a time there was nothing prior
to Copernicus, then the somersaults came,
    h ч y        what coordinates where?
    well of course perfecting the encoding of something,
if things weren't stated awry there would be
no optometrists either...
                  it's not hard to read, it's hard to
remember how to read, given that being literate reached
the omnipresent velocity, the new powers had to
include some new power struggle...
mingling Latin and Runes, Greek and Cyrillic...
     and the proto-Latin of additional diacritical marks...
they exposed the entirety of humanity to literacy
within the framework of post-industrial society,
after hitchhiking a ride on the 19th century donkeys
they suddenly had to reveal their power-secret of
being literate, and by the account of women:
corset bound and bored in salons...
      but something else appeared that didn't really fascinate
them: that over-complication of Latin with
punctuation marks above letters: or diacritical
distinction, crowns over letters, subatomic particularisation
of once favoured: universal applicability...
as a narrator? i have to make a complicated
introduction, the sketch lends itself to do so,
it suggests that not all writing can be as simple as
a nursery rhyme, not all writing can actually
    **** memory, not all writing desires being remembered,
not all writing can be remembered,
                in the mediation of the two chiral opposites
there's fiction, which is suspended in an armchair of
pleasurability... but on the opposite side of a nursery rhyme
or a well versed poem? writing akin to arithmetic...
  something truly painful for those competent with
lettering, but not really competent with ten digits...
      as a narrator who has already read the sketch,
i'm trying to not write a "filling in the gaps" to the sketch
like an art-critic might do to a painting deviating from:
brushstrokes were employed. well... d'uh!
variation of italics as in transcending the pause that
implies a condescending variation of taking a pause,
also excluded are: dot, comma, hyphen, semicolon
and colon.                         dot-dot-dot is not joining up
the dots: it implies a variation of how to anticipate
a punchline: drummed: tu-dum wet snare!
     i am actually a narrator who is trying to find
that other part of me that might digest this sketch properly,
     and return fully competent to pick up another
sketch... if ever there was a narrator in this sketch,
it has to be me, after the sketch has been scripted,
and i am left to suggest a need for a dot-dot-dot connectivity
of the strokes of the pen...
i warned myself: do not overdo the introduction in italics,
you know how picky people are...
whether pickled pineapple of cucumber...
i swear Turks invented pickling chillies...
         oh look! an inflatable gazebo filled with helium!
no one's laughing: only because i didn't mention vegina.
narrative puritanism? you get distracted a lot...
but this sketch is really a thesis for narration,
all i have to do is find the antithesis of narration in it:
an actual narrative!          it stretches for ~30 pages...
   well that's me turned archaeologist with a Grecian urn
with a snap of the finger... because that's how this
sketch looks like: ancient -
                         but understandably modern.
              so .  ,  - and ;
        were racing... out came the world record
             9.58(0)         the full-stop is the bracket-bound
0... i.e. it actually happened: hence the pinpoint...
or in Formula 1 a timed nonsense of ave. m/ph
     noted to three decimal points: 130.703...
                                    or chicane cha chicane cha cha!
as said, this is an actual representation of a narrator
encountering this sketch: so before you lose your head...
i've lost mine!
  look at the correlation though!
we've gone way past atoms with the atomic bomb
and encountered subatomic particles...
    we're not going to get beyond subatomic particles
because we're going to encounter the already apparent
reality of obatomic particle: namely our bodies,
   the perceived ******* (ob- is the antonym
                                                  prefixation of sub-):
             that's were the microscope adventure ends,
    and this is parallel to cutting up a second with
three decimal points, as the safetynet suggests:
                                                              π / 3.14;
yep, the obstructive - hence we can't spontaneously
combust... but then again Goethe's Werther did:
  out of love... down the spiral: you sweet little *******.

~ii. i'm actually too lazy to write the sketch and fill
in the blanks... so i'm going to fill in the blanks as i go along,
  or that's what's called the rebellious stance of narrator: mmm,
work in progress, could you see that coming?

ii. a beer in between glugs of whiskey - runes
combined in the ******* / sigma, variant of agliz or
the rune-zeta extended toward a dark shadow of the rebirth
of Ishrael: zoological enclosure; sigma *******
sigma ******* sigma *******, sigma *******...
rune-zeta... we cannot say there are ******
mathematicians and poets akin,
not then one optic encoding states
     a b c d e
         another states f u þ a r
yet another а б (ρ) в г
  α β γ δ:
for worth of gamma into a trill only because of
   a wave, that's ~ approx. on the side of the letter
   e.g. г & r.
   or rho upside down? what the ****?
did Voltaire write this? reading Candide,
i hope he ****** did!
you the problem is pixelated paper? if you know
how you enter a deciphering mode...
                    but you require a personal library to boot,
all that dos formatting,
                       well there's formatting in the humanity
outstretch of this white medium too...
after it isn't all ******* white when all the psychiatric
pills are white too... i have really found something better
than the Bermuda Δ...
       Greek, Latin, Cyrillic and Runes...
i could say neo or proto otherwise,
but i still haven't unearthed the sketch, that
is probably puzzling the Danes, with Cnut on the forefront...
                    but the arrangement of numbers is universal,
but it's not universal, given the particularity of
how language is encoded and why some people are
richer than others...
            but it's still a beer between glugs of whiskey that
makes more sense...
i said, retype the sketch and go to bed...
and i figured: that's probably the wisest of all possible
events stemming from this...
    that's ~27 pages of notes to retype... and i'm already
in a disclosure mode as to expect what's to be jargoned...

p. 1        cкεтч       /      σкεтχ
   necessity of                        (acute
a-       -the           (ism)
is that of language structure,
          only from the use of one's language does
a deity present itself: from within the noumenon
ground work, not the reverse, as in from
(pp. 2, 3)
                 a phenomenological exercise in
the use of language: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, (etc.)...
       e.g. Islam is a phenomenon,
  it's not a noumenon: or a thing-in-itself...
  for the Islamic god to emerge from Islam's-in-itself
Islam will have to prevent itself from being-outside-itself...
or overpowering other in-itself contentions
but still: to no apparent success narrative of true intention
as satisfactory appropriation and hence lending itself
to a widespread nod of approval.
  challenging space: word compounding, or the space
between conjunctional deficiencies: nod-of-approval (e.g.).

p. 2    concussion (great film, Alec and Will, 2015, NFL)
concussion... Blitzkrieg Alzheimer's....
brain is fat.... dementia = attacking proteins...
  steroids... the noumenological use of language:
e.g. that ****** is an enigma,
therefore his views will not go viral,
and he'll not become fashion trendy...
it's not individualistic idealism, it's reality.
as will die sonne satan - orbis reach more than 5K
views... so... clap clap... clap, clap.
           what i meant about the a-     and -the
and the ism is following a sentence that sort of
does away with conjunctional fluidity,
apart from the big words, i treat all minor words as
categorically conunctional... and, the, a, is, to, too...
given the sentence: brain fatty *****,
brian organic giraffe wall... ******* hieroglyphic...
           stood above the rest, rest assured.
  dementia: invading protein cells
   (bulging prune of the opportune: purely
digestion?) no thought to eat or eat itself like,
cannibalistically. the brain is fatty...
not fat in muscle for mmm, schmile and flex
for the selfie. how about a protein inhibitor?
(by now, rewriting the sketch, i've lost the page count,
it's actually p. 5 of note paged toward 27).
how about the explanation that we're living in
times of post-industrialisation and thanksgiving
feminism? to me post-industrialisation has created
a class of meaningless white-collar workers
and no blues... it's what the Chinese blues call
the Amazonian nomads: ******* happy...
no amount of crosswords or sudoku will exert
your body to do things for others...
   no amount of mind games will actually tell your
brain to be equipped with: a bunch of hyenas... run!
dementia is a result of creating too many
white-collar jobs (thanks to feminism)
and exporting the blues to China (thanks to feminism
and: oh i broke a nail, can i get a Ching plumber to
fix my heating while i get a ****** to **** me up my
****?!) - maybe i'm just dreaming...
it's great to censor dreaming, i mean: you stop dreaming,
you get to see reality, and you don't even need to
read Proust on a ricochet.
  - so we have brain as fat, and invader cells as protein...
protein digests fat... and creates cucumbers out
of people... where do the carbohydrates come into play?
it can't be at the point of a.d.h.d., can it?
     i'm blaming post-industrialisation, the complete
disappearance of the blues (formerly known as the reds,
in the east) for the whites...
or that old chestnut of: my god you're goon'ah luv it!
   to till for worth from the sweat of yer brow -
funny funny funny... to earn your loaf of bread
you will toil...
                   and toil until you are physically assured
that not ghostly / mental life can enter your world /
books... that went well... didn't it?
   i should be tilling a potato plateau rather than
be bound to be writing this epic (by modern standards)
poem...
             but that's the curse of exporting all the blue
collar jobs to China, then importing mindless
white collar jobs to the west, what the hell do you think
would happen, not the pandemic of dementia?
if you do not exert the body, and then you do not
exert / exhaust the mind... do you think
you can secure a narrative with a post-industrial
westerner on the premise of that person simply being
able to solve a crossword? well... i believe in santa
claus too... but i don't believe in him giving out
presents... because to me, in my oh-so-called maturity
that's called an anagram of satan's clause: which is a legal
term for: i can turn civilisation into shrapnel
of what's said and what's to be said: and what's not to be
said. people can't expect to turn honest labour
for the recreational run on the treadmill in a gym...
and they can't expect photocopying in an office space
to replace Newton's curiosity, and then compensate
all this distraction with mind-games...
          can they? well... they did!

poets are gagged by writers of prose,
no wonder they write so sparingly,
      they are gagged in the sense that they write
as if asphyxiated: they need breathing room.

well sure, if he can revive the Polish steel industry
and i can go back to steel plates and pillars,
then the rust belt will get a polishing also.

or what's called: shrapnel before the waterfall of
narration: darting eyes, and poncy **** all the way through...

     muse... muse...

        well, how about we take the fluidity out of language?
declassify certain words into one grammatical broth,
say words like i and they
                              a  and the    are all conjunctions?
how about that? let's strip it bare, after all: what categories
of words exist for us to primarily speak (let alone think)?
     nouns, verbs, adjectives... adverbs?
       but all those words in between are so jungly classified
into a tangle that i'm about to sprout a handshake
          of a Japanese vine grip: and never let go...

an actual extract from the sketch:

      https that doesn't recognise UCS
                   and insists on IPA cannot be deemed
       encyclopaedic

              i need runes for this! i need runes for this idea!
i don't need transliteration right now...
                but hey! that's an idea, etymological transliteration...
bugly term, sure, but the previous night i was thinking
  of transcendental etymology, as you do, likened to
carbohydrates... so it was transliteration after all...
but a dead end when it comes to geometry and Pythagoras...
      
    three words... and they are computerised (i guess you
have to buy a decent book to decode this), a bit like
buying paint in a d.i.y. shop...
       16DE (dagaz / d) 16DC (ingwaz / ŋ / grapheme of n & j)
                  16DF (ōþala / Valhalla / o / ō = oo),
in total d'njoo / d'nyoo - even i concede the fact that this
is a ******* mind-******... it's a ****** congregation of
four optic encodings of phonos... i moved away from
the ancient greek fetish for the logos... i'm looking at
the phonos... not the logos with Heraclitus et al.
               φº θ þ фª f

ªgreek
  ºcyrillic                ever see a prettier pentagram?
                      i haven't.

(false original title:
škic / cкэтч / φº θ þ фª f: thespian pandemic - pending)

looking at the phonos is painful, actually painful,
it's like reading a book with a myopic pair of glasses:
a ******* aquarium blurry right there, befor...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

'e'? were you: was i, looking for an 'e'?

i can say this much...
what do you get when you mix a shot
of whiskey with a shot of bourbon:
i'm moving between bottles...
it's nearing christmas eve and i'm a ripe
taoist... i.e. i better this world:
by not having the world mind me...
on the odd occasion: oh... you're still here?!

yeah... i'm still here... i have glued-to-fascination
with my shadow... i'm just waiting
for the atom bomb to relieve me of a body
but ensuring my shadow is kept intact...
as if it were a Monet signature on a wall...

but i lament... the momentum has vanished...
i don't even know why i'm so idiotic as
to presume that: from the hour 22:00GMT
to the hours 00:00 circa 00:30GMT...
something will land into my lap,
my lisp... my cranium the oyster shell
my tongue the oyster...

it will not... i can't simply **** anything into
an existence that doesn't want to exist...
perhaps lurking in a canvas of:
"lost luggage" in an airport...
perhaps "there"...
i could be excused my... lethargy...

when was this written? back in 2018?
so i was thinking about teasing cyrillic even then?
wasn't i?
sketch cкэтч or?

what do you get when you mix a shot of whiskey
with some bourbon?
a Burguandian whisker...
i am not going to sound witty...
Ron's key...

that's still a cyrillic "or"... isn't it?
шкиц: škic...

i'm... deflated... nothing "new" has come my way...
i would have thought that...
reading some Knausgård would have /
could have... invigorated me:
reading him was supposed to be my:
dialysis my transfusion!
my zombie-go-to-literature...
it has proven an exhaustive enterprise
to begin writing again:
i became too comfortable
in reading - i almost forgot
the agony of writing...

alas... a contemporary of mine...
and someone well adjusted to prose...

notably: who would have thought
that death in june - the calling (MK II)
was something to be recorded in 1985...
for one: i wouldn't...

but i did begin: back in november 2016...
begin what? to tickle the cyrillic alphabet...
which is way before i discovered my reply
to the runes... to the ancient greek...
and this... "ancient", ahem... still in use...
latin script...

that script that went into the molloch couldron
of being invested in to code...
pristine as the hebrews cited:
how many holes in it?
to write onto a canvas of 0?
q Q R O o p P A a D d g b B...
which leaves...
W E T Y U I S F H J K L
Z X C V N and M "out of the equation"...

škic / cкэтч / φº θ þ фª f: thespian pandemic (pending):
i better rename it as... circa 2016...
that's way before i even acknowledged
the cyrillic text applying diacritical markers...
i thought them too crude at the time...

beside borrowing outright from greek...
the already at hand oddities of glagolitic,
notably: Ⱎ...Ⱋ...

it's only a single word i'm using...
i have abandoned all notions of metaphysics
in favor for orthography...
i'm not going to burden myself
with: what's after the physics...
i'm after: what's now...
in the respective tongues...
2 tongue deviations from
the original latin and greek...

what came with the runes and what
came with the glagolitic scripts...
what was ****** and had to succumb
to inter-breeding...

come 2020... i will have one clarification
to base my existence on...
pronouncing the growth of my ****** hair...
i will hope to aim at a length of beard
that will forever hide the neck...
i will aim at... somewhere to the level
of my heart... when i will then manage
to turn my beard into an orchestra's
nieche of violins when i procrastinate with it...

since 2016...
i have identified russian in ******...
i've seen it... finally!
зъaрт... i.e. żart
and the "hard sign" becoming a "soft sign"
in źrenica: зьрeницa...

i still think the russian orthography
is... as... primitive as the western slavic...

after all... зъ = ż...
зь = ź...
the balkan slavs have a caron...
which is neither a hard or a soft sign / acute...

their caron is... ч (č) or cz...
CHeaper in english...
and their caron is ш (š) or sz...
SHeep...
or the two together...
and always шч (šč): szczekam...
i'm barking...

pu-shch-air... a rare example in english
of the puщair...
but then lookie lookie 'ere:

CZACHA... skull...
ЧAХA...

perhaps this is my "revenge ****" on russia?
hey! boris the kremlin mascoot...
come and 'ave a look...
with how i disect your orthography
on the / with the language that asks
too many metaphysical questions and no
orthographic curiosities!

i'll meet you in Warsaw... given that you're
probably moving from Novosibirsk...
and i'm either in Stockholm...
Edinburgh or the outskirts of London:
Warsaw will be halfway for both of us...
you don't have to like Warsaw...
i only like it when the Ukrainian smugglers
and the Mongols appear
in the West Warsaw coach station...

smart as who? i am discovering this for
the first time myself...
i was only teasing it back in 2016...
way before i found the right sort of accents
in mother russian...

i do know that that crescent oddity:
above the ja: йa... is what it is...
if you only cut off the head in english... ȷ...
again: it's я given that most russians
are pulled toward an anglophile world-view...
they all see the window to europe...
the baltic and st. petersburg is somehow...
London... and the atlantic...
like hell it is...

i guess i feel it was a waste of time to
have re(a)d Kant, simply because:
i'm not here for the schematics...
i want to know how my thought my labyrinth
building architecture is coming along...
but with no one to talk to about it?

i found the categorical imperative most
dissatisfying... i didn't want to abide by universal laws...
poetry is already shoved out of waiting room
of the republic...
if my "poetry" is not a categorical imperative...
and it's not quiet a a hypothetical imperative...
it needs to be sharpened on a thesaurus
and some grammar...

categorical (adjective)... imperative (adjective)...
well two adjectives never imply much
if there's no noun involved...
and i'm pretty sure that... if i sharpen
the next word i'll compound with categorical-
in that hyphen construct that's only
allowed in oxford dictionary english:
since it's not: propergermannonhyphenfaustian:
i.e. carboxylic (carbo-xylic) acidity...

poetry doesn't belong in either
the categorical imperative focus...
nor the hypothetical imperative focus...

i.e. i must write a poem... to feel better...
i must write a poem... to organise my thoughts...
no! a poem is not a maxim is not a categorical
imperative! a language of poetry is not
a language of morality: it's a language
of experience - or a lack / a lackey's "sentiment"...

i need a... categorical: impetus!
it's not enough to have read kant's critique of pure
reason... it must also involved
having re(a)d the: groundwork of
the metaphysics of morals...
but i'm a democratic reader...
i need to hear the other voices...
i can't be a kantian scholar...
a snippet 'ere, a snippet v'ere (funny how
THETA disappears when making the posit:
THERE - ver!)

who needs metaphysical absolutes...
when orthography (or a lack of it)
in english... spreads open its legs...
and the tongue remembers its tongue-brain-phallus
stage of co-existence in the oyster?!

i'm pretty sure that a categorical imperative
is by no means a categorical impetus...
this had to be written,
but it had to be written in order to disregard
anything a priori... prior to it...
a poem is a shady concern for action or inaction...
it's a deviation from the cartesian crux:
res cogitans (thinking thing)...
into the cartesian levy (res extensa)...
it's an action of inactivity...
as much as it's an inactive activity...
"the rest"...

impetus is not an imperative...
an impetus sources its meaning in a per se
investement... of itself - in itself - for itself...
an imperative?
in pronouns... impetus: i want... i will...
imperative? you want... you will...

an impetus is self-dictative...
an imperative is: indicative...
someone would rightly claim...
those that mourn indicatively...
will don the right garments for the process
of mourning...
which is indicative and devoid of
the per se manifestation of mourning...
it is an imperative when compared to
the impetus to mourn -
which is self-dictative...
which does now shallow itself in
grief by making a socially agreed to fiasco
of a very specific choice of wardrobe...

basically: however you like it...
an IMPERATIVE ≠ IMPETUS...
the year is almost over and i want to break-off
the dust from the thoughts that fudge-packed themselves
as worthy of occupying the minor instance
of having to count a depth of:
not dead within the year of being written.

i write about these things,
because in all honesty?
they don't matter to me.

you can call it assimilation, then you'll call it
   i'm making a worded salad, so it doesn't really matter
whether i speak the language or not,
being native you'll tell me i have to be a diacritically
riddled over-laden version of you  nativeness...
you'll basically tell me i have to speak a worse-off
native than you didn't bother to grasp...
after that? i turn Sioux and scalp you.
  because that's what you deserve.
i could have come up against you
in the thick of night and turned you into a kebab,
and do you think anyone would have
cared? is it one thing to assimilate,
and another to assimilate into a skin-head culturalism
implosive that's brimming to the full with your patriotic
hopes as being acted upon? i can speak the perfect
English and still be more welcome in Scotland
than in Kent... but that will not not do,
not until i shave my hair off,
grow a beard, and runsack my skin
with quasi-Hindu ******* tilts...
           and when this foreign legion
of Swedish journalists bemoan why
their **** ain't where their heart is?
have you seen the *sienkiewicz"
trilogy of *potop? you want history?
how about: in the beginning
there was an invading horde of Swedes
that tried to topple the proto-commonwealth
of Poland and Lithuania...
  even how much i cared to learn the tongue:
i'd be left belittled by ugly accenting
stereotypes...
                          i'd be Islam of drunk,
while the engineers would be left saying:
and unto us amphetamines,
and Mamelukes were never Egyptian...
because Egypt was what Egypt desired...
a quasi thingy... then i turned my ear
to Macbeth, and earned 70 years
and a Spartacus' worth of ears to my nearing 31...
                   i turned to Macbeth the theatricals
silences, and let, the music... play.
i can learn the language, but i am expected
to push the natives from a career of criminality,
i am expected to become the criminal,
i've learned the language beyond the natives,
what else?
   to learn the debasement of the natives akin to
every other culture? am i to become the
criminal statistic of the ruling political elite?
so they can "know" but that they merely quote?
   i owe my ode to Macbeth,
for Hamlet can become tiresome aligned with
Sisyphus in hell...
              we'll have builders by the end of
the debate...
     how much more do i have to learn?
is language not enough? then velkommen Syriac!
               is it not enough that i know the tongue?
must i be jeopardised by using it,
and say that universality is to be excluded,
simply because it does not abide by an utopian
ideal of pure English sprechen pure English?
         there are scapegoats to be festering upon
the spike that's readied to be fried...
but come on... is this deutschesprechen?
              it can't be! if i pretend to be Malcolm...
you pretend to be Duncan,
but nonetheless the speech makes us both truant
ghouls and guises receding
   into the demands of operatic - kindred to
Lady Macbeth (a protestant, or should she be
known catholic: McBeth) -
      as Glasgow religion of the coliseum of the times
testifies... celt and ranger... green & white vs. blue and
   black...
     lady mc.: what beast was 't thou,
        that make you break this enterprise with me?
(no matter if you killed a man, of whatever
stature he be worth, what beast are you to suddenly
cage my heart, when having agreed to make my heart
and feeling thus: storm the heights of Ben Nevis,
and descend as angrily as a woman might please,
  and with her whim, descend from the mountain
as if a mountain descends into desert?! what
courage, ye! to throw a woman into such woe
and leave a man's promise, the very least
a man can bestow upon this earth: but a woman
yet to come to correct!) so thus the elvish Anglican
was spoken, and thus continued:
- when you durst do it, then you were a man;
   and, to be more than what you were, you would
be so much more the man. nor time, nor place,
did then adhere, and yet you would make both...
  from his boneless gums...
nor have i understood Hamlet as the model student,
the puppet if not the mere mascot...
for the Freudian couch... then again i navigated
past Kant with Macbeth,
having yet to complete reading the critique...
       i took to maturity, and said
what others wished upon: there is true
adult agony in a well versed poetry...
       more so than adolescence in what's deemed
a maturation process...
             perhaps i should have served the concern
for Hamlet and laid bare upon the psychoanalytic
couch... but Macbeth: of said
sepia as copper, so said of woad as in aquamarine
surrender... led me to cite...
          for i was never bound to own the tongue
i would acquire... i was told:
   well, hello there, dishonourable squire...
ah... the queen's majestic airs...
    will make any Irishman desist from the republic's
gaze...
             and sloth in a respectably believed state
of consolidatory affairs under the kites of Yates...
   but never you mind the Silesian consumed
by former guardian of the coalmine...
or what L'vov wouldn't say in Ukrainian...
mind you Nevada and Lasso Vegan...
mind you that...  for that speaks biblical studies!
i will never assimilate, in that i will never be
allowed to own this tongue...
            and if i am allowed to own it...
i am but a furry-faced-bloat of faked pleasantries
   and closet nationalism...
        i wish i could own this language as if i
might own a typewriter... but i'm apparently
not welcome, by the pseudo-irish who
mediate the English assertion of the understanding
of the dover sieve...
                 ******* leprechaun mafia...
  paddy paddy oo too the butch-faced freckled girl...
   it's as if the Italians have Manhattan,
    and the Corke conglomerate prescribed
everyone a pint of Guinness rather than iron-pill
supplements...
                 well: and so the Titanic bellows
out an oceanic morse code of tantrums on
the accordions.
                      which sorta soothed the mermaids
digest contemplation for the vegan accomplishment
of shrimp... and over seafoods...
being digested.
         now i'm apparently not speaking English,
or i'm speaking English and i don't understand it,
or i'm understanding how i'm speaking English,
and how i'm supervising all things uranium
                               bound hallucinogenic...
or how, even though urbanity took off and
the countryside disappeared, you think you'll never
meet peasants in smirk attire to condescend you
gravity toward theatre or opera...
     but peasants are reall... you can recognise a peasant
the minute they don't recognise you insulting them;
it's a bit like telling a very witty joke...
         i don't get witty jokes because i tend to treat them
like a siegl heigl salutation...
   and i respect the memory of Octavian...
                                 it's the wittiness that comes into
contact with actually not telling a joke: and people
end up laughing... that's when you spot the peasants.
    so you see... i speak the ****** language,
but i'm sorta denied the access for drinking a cosmopolitan
at a Shoreditch pub...
                        which makes all arguments
for learning the language obsolete in terms of gaining
a "fair" advantage... and this is European to
European lingo...
        didn't i ask that Swedish journalist
ingrid carlqvist to watch the trilogy, including
potop about the war between Sweden and
the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, and ask her
about what's to be culturally inherited?
**** me... maybe i'm sleepwalking...
                     dodo zombified or something...
                                     oh wait...
                                         if ever there was a regressive
reparation policy in a country:
i'd hear: guilt from western countries taking the bribes
of the Marshall Plan...
      and overt pride from countries post-world-war ii
being prescribed communism, as a way to rebuild
their nations: for fear of having to commit to
hara kiri... or *******...
                                         as said: becoming
the easily bribed convenience...
                              the concept of assimilation
within the construct of selective migration has transcended
the mere acquisition of language...
  acquiring a language isn't enough...
         the reverse policy of colonialism is hushed-down
ethnic cleansing...
          which goes beyond language per se,
since it goes beyond dialect ex lingua...
              it is a necessitation of also acquiring
national stereotypes of unengaged in dialectics...
it is one thing to rhetorically assert a need to debate,
and another to understand that dialectics ≠ debate;
but rather a service to prompt and engage thinking,
rather than debating... dialectics is an art-form,
     it's intended to encourage thinking,
rather than the continuum of polarised / schizoid
debating: debates never accomplish a convergence...
whereas dialectics is intended to establish
a convergent pinpoint... as Socrates said unto the young,
so i find myself talking to old men and being
in accordance to have shared a park bench,
one sunny afternoon at the nadir of summer.
                why is it that acquiring language is not
enough these days?
       or why is it that a poor acquisition of a language,
or acquiring a language without correcting
accentuated stresses particular to a tongue
are given a freer access to labour, then
acquiring a language to a standardisation of
mimic localisation, and fence: a faking of
a faking (ad infinitum) or locality?
i.e. overly-successful assimilation?
             overly-successful assimilation is punished!
   it is punished by speaking as a fluent native
might... but having no discriminatory biases
that could enable one to be completely native...
and this is punishable!
             by a stance that it's a robotics project,
that one is nothing more than an a.i. enterprise...
even those dearest to me acknowledge me
as a robot... an a.i.,
           but they can't seem to understand that
artificial intelligence, and authentic intelligence
cannot be superficial intelligence of
natives... for the natives have a placebo
to what is otherwise a Pompeii resurrection
to the volcano-dynamic of analysing-ergo-synthesising
           ana ergo syn           which
constructs the opposite of thesis and antithesis,
given that the equation combines two adequate prefixes,
ana- and syn-...
                      "against" therefore "with".
isn't that how we cling to social pressures
or prejudices and still accumulate 8 billion examples
of a comparative e.g. that's a John Smith?
     i have yet to come across a contemporary that
might become as if fatherly...
   i just see opportunist buckling down the M25 of
encircling nothing more than a venture into
gaining a quick buck... and it could, it could
almost be sad... but it's not...
              it took me almost 13 years of synthesising
the English language: synthesising i.e.
mimicking - before i started analysing it...
      and when i say the groundwork for any
theory on the subconscious is to focus on grammar
and grammatical word interjections into
a Joycean stream-of-consciousness...
                              for that's worth the upper-tier
working from the sub-level...
                          of utilising language:
then the unconscious is far from dreaming...
it's equivalent in seeing how i acquired a language
at the age of 8 to synthesise / mimic what the children
around me were saying...
   but that it took me so long to analyse the language...
which the children around me acquired within
a reflexive bias to later strand such reflexiveness into
a divergence of calling their angular retraction
philosophy, linguistics, poetry, psychology...
whole all i had to do is to appropriate a reflective bias to
later strand such reflectiveness as to say:
of my mother i say polski, of my father i say:
             ojczym - and i can reflect upon him,
foremostly his diacritical lack of the wriggling-blagger's
economisation, when due coinage is needed.

the torso of stars of the constellation of scorpio is dying, it's weakening; the venomous scorpion tail still shines brightly, and the pliers are bright enough to see even with immediate light pollution: but no street lamp shines brighter than the stars, even the the distance disparity, and indeed if the last constellation of the zodiac becomes dim, i'll begin to worry.

i was given three christmas presents this year,
the third i can't immediately remember
but the first two i can:
two houses side by side,
one had twelve black bin bags and one orange
recycling bag for collection -
the other had a skip in its driveway
with a sign in the skip:
PLEASE TAKE YOUR DOG ****
FROM MY SKIP AND NEVER DUMP
IT HERE AGAIN!
ah... the third present, it's january
and i'm walking without gloves,
in converse, with a short sleeve shirt
and a hoodie and nothing else:
newspaper "dialectics" section writers
say northern england floods of recently
are not due to global warming...
i wonder how much this writer gets paid
to say the floods were caused by orangutan farts,
or the dairy factories of ukrainian methane punch
politics; i really do wonder...
i guess newtonian physics' principles
died with einstein's theories
stuck in the deep end of einstein's parabolas
of solid objects dipped into: speed of light
indeed, it gains momentum because it travels
via parabolas rather than straight lines,
hence the parabolic acceleration: up-down
up-down trigonometry linear functions of
either sine or cosine... the third trigonometric
allowance i cannot explain but it doesn't really
matter when it comes to what i'm trying to say:
relativity of immersion as a sinking into:
time relative to space means it equates at some point,
either death as a point of departure
or life as a point of constant engagement -
and as for those who say the theory is too difficult
and your interpretation of a theory in a different
medium is stupid... well... do the mathematics,
my mathematical + and = are equivalent to adjectives
and verbs (e.g.).
no, what really bothers me with this problem
of the global warming debate is the synchronised
activation of denial with doubt missing,
if it can't be doubted (cause & effect), and if
nothing is to be done about it... the only solution
is to deny it: block a punch... get a tsunami back.
it's bothersome on two levels...
english as the language of globalisation (
not exactly the old lingua franca), but rather
the encircling language, the language of constraints,
lingua amplexa / lingua stasus quo, hardly a language
of trade, a language of monotone -chromatic politics...
is very prone to bombastic expressions:
it has not philosophical narrative in the sense
of a book of philosophy - it merely ushers in
a maxim to stop any philosophical narration or dialogue.
on another level though, it's immersion in darwinism,
educational darwinism of post-colonialism is horrid,
if all that scientific positivism was the zenith of science
between the 18th and 19th centuries, the nadir
came with darwinism... because with science being
tricked to encapsulated popular imagination
the greater proportion of the populace had the easiest
of accesses to a scientific theory (aristotle kept in
the **** in the dark all this time), an with a popularised
imagining of darwinism hell broke free in the 20th
century... indeed darwinism killed off scientific positivism,
and by doing so... all noble and human ideals died
with it... came the mechanisation of society,
the death of the rural life, a detachment from nature
as man took to live above nature rather than parallel with it;
and the new zenith that's the zeitgeist of today?
humanistic negativism, humanistic negativism...
the death of the novel, the death of an interest in
philosophy in the english speaking world...
take as you like...
but when you're a sensitive drinker as i am,
and you watch the 2014 film *i origins and don't cry...
well... then i guess anaesthetics won't work
when your heart can't feel the calm good apathy
with your many stage frights concerning your
next ingenious plot-line over a little hurt or a little
scare... not courageous enough to hurt the one
that hurt you, but simply passing the hurt onto
a stranger.

p.s. YOU RENTED THE ******* SKIP!
       AND DOG **** IS NOT REALLY ASBESTOS!

give me five minutes i said and
the glass, notempty, stared back
   americans at the bar
   refused to be quiet
as the poem forced itself through the belgian air
brussels they said is where
it all comes together - the barmaid, watching me silently, agrees
       difficult not to see that 0-0 result as a judgment, a prediction an omen

no score?

i'd hoped for more

.so... just because he's copper skinned, and doesn't speak the English language with a continental accent but some brash, canopy of urban slang, he's the superior authority of the dialectical drag of opinion? oh! really?! so we're talking to diacritical aesthetic snobs?! wow! i thought i was bad at that, which i am... but i'm first generation, and i know the courtesy of remaining the voice tracking, a minority... that somehow has enough oil in the cogs of cognition, to leave these isles... i'll stay... blend in... only the more obnoxious english people are bothered by my "accent"... like that one comic in Edinburgh said... you might wonder about my accent... it's educated... my one flaw... i live in Essex but don't fit the Essex boy stereotype... some i'm primarily foreign... not educated.

that's nice, no really...
  back in 1997
   i was an illegal immigrant -
deported from England
with my parents...
aged...
  1986... aged... 11...
about to start
secondary school...
Canon Palmer,
7 kings...
i remember the whole encounter,
happened on Sunday -
the Home Office officers came
plain clothes... knocked
on the door...
my father started running...
jumped a few garden fences...
was caught...
my grandfather was visiting,
kept blaming himself
for the incident....
the day before?
   we were out doing the usual
family stuff -
won a massive red dog doll
for my mother rolling
***** into holes with
camels racing across the
canvas...
   what was that place...
can't remember...
   but sure as hell i remember
the ride...
   started off circular horizontal,
ended up circular vertical...
    but turns out i remember
that Sunday better...
         one of the home office officers
walked into my bedroom with
me sobbing...
   and only said:
you have a nice computer...
i gave him the death stare...
   well... second time round
my parents figured out all the legal
issues of applying for citizenry -
  and managed to get it...
did i sing the national anthem
at the integration ceremony?
like **** it did...
           i speak an english
that transcends national anthem *******,
plus i'm waiting for Charlie...
   who probably going to
become George VIII or something...
    but i know the backbone of
illegal migration,
i was one, aged 11...
seeing my parents get arrested
i started a fist-fight with a wall
that i knew i was going to lose...
      point being...
  whenever some, ******* Somali migrant...
some African migrant in his teens
gets away with illegal migration?
look...
i know what illegal migration
looks like...
   don't tell me no person is illegal
because you're copper-skinned
and bronze when tanned...
and that's your sole excuse!
        ****** me off...
****... didn't you hear that
Bukowski already said?
  the poor are not good unto their fellows
and the rich are likewise...
so why expect economic migrants
to not think less of refugees?
economic migrants at least do
not smuggle in tears and homeland
literary worth regrets...
no-nonsense migration...
  competent roofers -
   competent plumbers...
   but i... kinda love how the middle class
english "lass" will prefer Afro-****
over an unblocked toilet...
            and their children,
Bahamas beauties, all of them...
pretty mongrels outliving pedigrees...
  there is a concept of illegal
immigration,
i was an illegal immigrant...
    but, hey... a white among whites
means i don't have the copper skin
argument to call it: "racism"...
   can people actually file for
a de- citizenship?
               there are still parts of Europe,
that do not have a post-colonial
  present...
  where the Somali, Nigerian argument...
will not, work...
it, will, not, work...
             it's days like these where
i'm like: whatever the U.S.S.R. was,
and what it became...
   i'm about to snuggle up to the current
shadow...
          no... illegal immigration
exists...
             unless you're *******
color blind...
                   hell...
at least i spent 1998 being home schooled -
and watching the World Cup with
my great-grandmother...
   and discovering Metallica...
but no... when some ******* sub-Saharan
tells me about the citizenry of
the world...
          look... head over to Kiev...
  see how happy the Ukrainians will be...
head over to the Warsaw...
   where the signs are in both Polish
and Ukrainian...
                please! please! i implore you!
try assuming that everyone
over those parts is bilingual speaking
English...
i'm waiting to see the Islamic takeover...
on the local and primordial level
of a "peasantry" -
                      but like shaggy said -
wazzin' me...
    i didn't castrate the English...
      to me their testicles are still dangling...
or at least i like to think they are...
    but as an economic migrant...
i abhor what others somehow find
emotional cupcakes of sugary ooze for
in terms of sympathy...
             guess the first line of chess -
collateral - pawns -
       is necessary beside the bishop -
   like what the Palestinians do with their
civilians, according to the Israeli
army...
                     so why bother making
psychedelics legal...
  when you trip on moral relativism?!

no, i don't need an outlet: talk to the public,
they tell you you're
either a well guised political machine,
a psychiatrist,
           or an oddity: come October time
propheteering rather than profiteering;
your choice, not mine:
   i look at poetry like
a plumber might look at a toilet:
go in and get the francophone out!
    so pardoning the French
is lost, as casual phrasing goes, woop,
  away away Superman included.

oh right, you might think i'm spelling
something Evangelical,
sure, i hope you do or d.p. as in
do please,
           what with the cool of Wall St.
sprechen d.l. (down low);
i had a few scribbled notes,
yes, Yanky, my laptop broke down
and i'm reduced to pen & paper
         like handcock & *******,
easy does the ****** of loser vill
           (can we drop the e
for the sake of autocorrect being right
when the big words matter? thanks) -
Platonism is plainly Thespian,
             Platonic thought is a Thespian
"espionage", get used to it,
you haven't matured into Aristotelian
         autism: you still want to act,
to puppeteer that shadows of people
without ever *being the people,
don't take it as if it's supposed to be unlikely:
there's a boss around every corner:
whether you get paid or don't, which is fun,
because you state an authority but
still only play the cameo.
      reminiscent guise literature
of rewatching that t.v. phenomenon
that's billions -
             oh sure, t.v. these days overshadows
cinema, cinema is worth jack-****,
it's poverty is intrinsic in forming ideas
or reversed "Latin" grammar  idea-fermentation,
i said English loves to hyphenate
two kindred words,
    like that ego theory
             with the Germanic self-theorising,
self-enabling, self-interest, self-haemorrhaging
  gusto of the capital -
    what a way to finish, i as a prefix
toward robotic modula.

(i write pending, but ensure the enso,
            or Swahili wasabi sting of
green horseradish,
       same so, i live dangerously, or pretty
much on the sly,
           if i tell the taxpayers
  they're getting their money's worth
i'll bound to see a third runway at Heathrow:
got my nose in an Alsatians' buttocks mind you).

so...

i was going to end with it, but i'm afraid i must
begin with it, page entitled

a. a rebellion from the top?
    or right, it only comes from the bottom,
the guillotine and all,
  but never the despotic cupcake for an Antoinette,
right? wrong!
                coming from a worker's background,
i'd been happy doing the ******* roofs of
the Tate Gallery among other examples,
but i was educated as a chemist,
  and, i was told, you need toothpaste, or
am i wrong in that assumption?
     picture it thus:
a son of a roofer is real smart,
      goes to Edinburgh, gets his money's worth
in terms of tuition, over 30 hours year three
of his chemistry degree, when things were still
decent, ~£1,250 a year (one thousand two hundred
and fifty pounds): with words like that
you might sketch Dante and Donatello and
the Italian Renaissance in terms of clapping the ****
away at the gesture...
     but no, it was like that, study chemistry
and you get your money's worth in terms of tuition,
so how the **** did i descend from the "high" tier
of the sciences into the murk of poetry
and humanism?
       history of science and David Hume:
black swans to mind, also.
                          but the other kid in question
was a son of a doctor / radiologist,
and this talk of rebellion from the top?
he couldn't stomach a shifting hierarchy,
he couldn't stomach social progress,
     had i or hadn't i invested my pleasure
time in reading philosophy is no one's business,
had i made a professional wage from it,
sure, but i wasn't intending to do so:
      what's your favourite colour sort of
question and whether truant of the zeitgeist:
the ******* guillotine, mate!
            i just can't perpetuate this loaf of wording,
but it's necessary:
    of jealousy so corrosive, of jealousy so lined
with lice, only then a god is spawned -
           the person in question?
a skiving belittling camel jockey -
and that's me being polite...
       you can almost become auto-suggestive
of needing to cite: what Abel did next when
the roaring Milton God subsided and
     wanked a crucifix that later became 2000 years of
history: or in the making.

i can be a pompous and bombastic parrot
          that cites Polly this, Polly that,
but i can speak to a scaffolder and laugh: with him,
and not, at him...
                 because i know my bombastic mr. fantastic
behaviour about spending aeons in a library
   rather than sniffing bullseyes and ****
        is made to be the fo' sho' lingua rapper tinder
of something or other that doesn't require me
to foolishly date...
                         **** it, cheaper at the brothel.

...........................

                        oh­ i'm just getting started, hence
the title with (penting) in it: no, not really mr. tough-guy,
just a **** break and a smoke and all that's
necessary in terms of transparency, begging to
be revealed in all forms of literary composition...
  
let's just say: a new interpretation of the paragraph,
     for me reading books, a paragraph means Sunday,
1905... because of the constipation and what-not,
   a comma makes me feel like i need a pause to
hiccup or sneeze,
       a full-dot is never a full-dot unless it's a full-dot
and then it's a definite article of end, rather than
the intermediate an end: let's start over, once again;
       but when have you actually experienced
a Macgyver of what's otherwise a "work in progress"?
answer? never!
               you never have: you had to become
censored by publishers and editors for everything to
look the end-product squeaky-clean!
                   unless published posthumously...
and then... you might already be dead:
you never got to see a work in progress...
   and believe me, i have 8 pages worth of notes to
encode into something that's not
that fable about a boy waking up Barbarossa
from slumber and upon seeing crows
shouting: messerschmitt! messerschmitt! messerschmitt!
well, a diet of hanzel und gretyl will do that
to you, you get a fetish like Shpielberg and direct
the Indiana Jones franchise...
                       funny little me, "phony" Englishman
speaking a piquant variation of Essex banter,
8 years in Poland and of memories i speak of the fondest
in my life, and 22 years in this rotting *******...
                    i feel less organic, more inorganic,
i.e. metallic,
       it's like my insides were hollowed out
and i was faking that i am actually being -
   weird sensation, ask any displaced individual when
they have the organism of a Slavic, but a soul
of a German... feels, ******* weird...
                        i mean, Nietzsche and that complement
that the Poles are the French in the ethnic category?
what are the English in the Slav category then?
                          most likely Ukrainian.
i dare you to find a philosopher with a similar dilemma,
i dare you: in light of how this whole
gaining of fame works, not one wrote about
being displaced... well... unless you're talking about
Moses -

                (haven't even started, i need a drink).

there was no social tract anyway!
    to be forced into accepting insemination
        when the forward wording was:
       "i'm talking counter-contraceptive
measures" & 'i want you to *** in me'.
                 ditto encapsulating quote
for ambiguity, the otherwise: real life.
       is my ***** worth more than me?
have i not transcended a weak bladder / **** muscles?
       a pseudo-humanity, intrinsic in man
but not not in beast?
                    i call upon a reversal of what's
a staging of ****, or money grubbing -
                with a woman's twist of the Grimm tale:
as she said: i want this man,
              i will impose a moral grounding / battlefield,
judgement on him! entrapment!
and there's me apologising for the "****" / so-called,
in a fully-consenting intimacy:
   well, *****, why don't you? another Beethoven
is waiting? who's the whopper feminist these days?!
               me? you?! hardly you!
   i consented to a full intimacy,
        is ***** a foetus?
tissue would know,
    or a twisted fetish for ****** cream
advertisement in ****, huh?
              sure, my socks smell, but so does
your moral instinct.
                        the difference is that that i get to
say airy, while you get to say fairy.
                         it really takes a man respecting
a woman's freedom: i seriously thought you
were advocating the right to abort
as you might avert ****...
    sure: i'm sorry i inseminated you,
can you please treat it as a tear-jerker experience
of a rom-com that's actually a transvestite-rom
  and needs 50 years to ferment for the earthquakes
and heartaches and cha cha attacks?
              to me it's an apron needing a wash,
to you it a ******* moral dilemma needing
a ******'s rights to not father a child and you
needing your body to unnecessarily incubate it
so you get the Catholic nod... bonkers!
    yes, i impregnated a girl, at university:
i avoided white trash at school, sorry, but it's true,
i liked reading... let me stress that: i liked reading,
      or bold if italics and colon Gemini be antiquity...
she lacked the character judgements,
the 'why he didn't stay' method statement...
she called my friend and study buddy a troll
based on her aesthetic tastes...
          i could have had a family now, and all
the responsibilities, it just didn't fit into
a replica of Cleopatra and Anthony *******
when they honestly didn't have ******* to claim
as their own...
          jeez (replica of the hand-written transcript) -
writing this on pen + paper is like *******
a **** for reach a champagne fizz of ******
for an hour - thank you keyboard and the digital
pixel off blank: ******* is less painful
than writing with that oddity that's handwriting).
there was no social contract anyway!
     it's not like i was married, there's
no unwanted child joke in this: i do find abortion
abhorrent within a social contract, a marriage,
but outside of marriage? are you ******* kidding me?!
you an Irish priest or something?
       there was no social contract,
did i sign a social contract akin to marriage?
      am i in this for the shambles?
of course i didn't get married,
there was no +ring,
                     sure abortion is abhorrent,
but under a social contract,
  without a social contract (marriage)
i,    had,    no,         obligation.
      what, in order to practice a variation of Islam
on a woman's whim?
    *******.
                     plus i had the gross indecency
gay men have with surrogate mother prostitution;
oh wait, it isn't that? my bad.
            i always had a nicety divisiveness for
incubators... a 9 month ****, with dividends...
        really: feminism can **** itself!
because aren't we at a stage of rhetorically counter-validating
what we abhor in certain Asian communities?
oh sure, the patriarchs are gone,
forced marriages are gone too...
          but didn't i just describe a case
of forced marriage, where a western girl is given
all the powers to reign over a young man
as any despot might over a worker
so he can "think" and drink cocktails and
chuckle over his position between cocktails?
      
  i said abortion, yes, i didn't like the girl's aesthetic,
and you know what? that thing you call abortion,
apart from the fact that the foetus has no soul
the baby neither: not until the diaper is off...
to learn to strain the muscles outside the womb:
you really forgot that the implant of soul
or the later disputed notion of god
is only implantable once the memory kicks into
gear...
               only when you start to remember
is the human person born:
   beyond that it's still nature's brutalist lottery...
maybe a Beethoven might have been born,p
but who cares? we already have a Beethoven!
it's avoiding consented ****:
that's feminism and 9 months spared
the continuation of endured affair / "relationship",
i seriously thought that's what women
were campaigning for... obviously it's counter!
   i claim soul outside of a woman's body:
when the ****** thing passes the diaper gym
and learns to automate the bladder and the ****...
then i say: worthy an implant of a soul...
or chauvinistically that's counter and double-****
of 9 months and Bach with his 14 children,
and the Borgia Popes...
          but at least we have the surrogate "mothers"
and that pretty Disney scenario of two gay dads
to fictionalise into watchable Platonic cavemen
when the eyes aren't glued to the 2D.
why do you think such thoughts ferment in
the heterosexual imagining of actuality?
                your utopian counter-clockwise
has already extended into China being the only
provable state of physical activity...
    and the western zoo of mental philosophical
build-up-detachment? your mental health
scenario only suggests you created acid professions...
at least the physical "antiquity" of China
is compensated by a universal shortcoming:
death and mortality...
you created acid-baths: sport and completely mental
professions: YOU'RE SICK!
     honestly!
     people used to enjoy physical professions,
and the essence of such professions?
no immediate competitiveness!
         you replaced physical professions
with sports!
                  and compensated the need for
physical hands-on with the ****** gym!
no wonder you countered-Darwinism while
adapting the need to advertise it
            and made so many young people
mentally ill...
      because your whole mental estrangement
is the sauce or a broth that's currently on the boil!

First they came for the Muslims
by Michael R. Burch

after Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.

Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.

Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?

"First they came for the Muslims" was published in Amnesty International’s "Words That Burn" anthology and is now being used as training material for budding human rights activists. My poem was inspired by and patterned after Martin Niemoller’s famous Holocaust poem. Niemoller, a German pastor, supported Adolph ****** in the early going, but ended up in a **** concentration camp and nearly lost his life. So his was a true poem based on his actual life experience. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, genocide, apartheid, racism, intolerance, Jew, Jews, Muslim, Muslims, homosexuals, feminists, apathy, sisters, brothers, Islam, Islamic, God, religion, intolerance, race, racism, racist, discrimination, feminist, feminists, feminism, sexuality, gay, homosexual, homosexuals, LGBT, mrbmuslim, mrbpal, mrbnakba



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere tomorrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels’ white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness―as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now―
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness―time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?―insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask―

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?



I, too, have a Dream ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve their enmity.



My Nightmare ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.



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 and 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



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this―
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...

Published by The Lyric, Promosaik (Germany), Setu (India) and Poetry Life & Times; translated into Arabic by Nizar Sartawi and into Italian by Mario Rigli

Note: The phrase "frail envelope of flesh" was one of my first encounters with the power of poetry, although I read it in a superhero comic book as a young boy (I forget which one). More than thirty years later, the line kept popping into my head, so I wrote this poem. I have dedicated it to the mothers and children of Gaza, who know all too well how fragile life and human happiness can be. What can I say, but that I hope, dream, wish and pray that one day ruthless men will no longer have power over the lives and happiness of innocents? Women, children and babies are not “terrorists” so why are they being punished collectively for the “crime” of having been born “wrong”? How can the government of Israel practice systematic racism and apartheid, and how can the government of the United States fund and support such a barbaric system?



who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of “no Room!”
and Puritanical scorn ...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same―
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame:

“who’s to blame?”

(In the poem "US" means both the United States and "us" the people of the world, wherever we live. The name "jesus" is uncapitalized while "Room" is capitalized because it seems evangelical Christians are more concerned about land and not sharing it with the less fortunate, than the teachings of Jesus Christ. Also, Jesus and his parents were refugees for whom there was "no Room" to be found. What would Jesus think of Christian scorn for the less fortunate, one wonders? What would he think of people adopting his name for their religion, then voting for someone like Trump, as four out of five evangelical Christians did, according to exit polls?)



Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.  

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus



Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



Brother Iran
by Michael R. Burch

for the poets of Iran

Brother Iran, I feel your pain.
I feel it as when the Turk fled Spain.
As the Jew fled, too, that constricting span,
I feel your pain, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I know you are noble!
I too fear Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
But though my heart shudders, I have a plan,
and I know you are noble, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I salute your Poets!
your Mathematicians!, all your great Wits!
O, come join the earth's great Caravan.
We'll include your Poets, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I love your Verse!
Come take my hand now, let's rehearse
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
For I love your Verse, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, civilization's Flower!
How high flew your spires in man's early hours!
Let us build them yet higher, for that's my plan,
civilization's first flower, Brother Iran.



These are my translations of Holocaust poems by Ber Horvitz (also known as Ber Horowitz); his bio follows the poems. Poems about the Holocaust and Nakba often bear striking resemblances, especially when written from the perspective of a child.



Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray ...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.

The birds have fled
far overseas;
"Tomorrow I’ll migrate too,"
I said ...

These gloomy autumn days
it rains and rains.
Woe to the bird
Who remains ...



Doctorn
"Doctors"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Early this morning I bandaged
the lilac tree outside my house;
I took thin branches that had broken away
and patched their wounds with clay.

My mother stood there watering
her window-level flower bed;
The morning sun, quite motherly,
kissed us both on our heads!

What a joy, my child, to heal!
Finished doctoring, or not?
The eggs are nicely poached
And the milk's a-boil in the ***.



Broit
“Bread”
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness. Why?
On the hard uncomfortable floor the exhausted people lie.

Flung everywhere, scattered over the broken theater floor,
the exhausted people sleep. Night. Late. Too tired to snore.

At midnight a little boy cries wildly into the gloom:
"Mommy, I’m afraid! Let’s go home!”

His mother, reawakened into this frightful place,
presses her frightened child even closer to her breast …

"If you cry, I’ll leave you here, all alone!
A little boy must sleep ... this, now, is our new home.”

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness all around,
exhausted people sleeping on the hard ground.



"My Lament"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Nothingness enveloped me
as tender green toadstools
lie blanketed by snow
with its thick, heavy prayer shawl …
After that, nothing could hurt me …



Ber Horvitz aka Ber Horowitz (1895-1942): Born to village people in the woods of Maidan in the West Carpathians, Horowitz showed art talent early on. He went to gymnazie in Stanislavov, then served in the Austrian army during WWI, where he was a medic to Italian prisoners of war. He studied medicine in Vienna and was published in many Yiddish newspapers. Fluent in several languages, he translated Polish and Ukrainian to Yiddish. He also wrote poetry in Yiddish. A victim of the Holocaust, he was murdered in 1942 by the Nazis.


Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you—
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

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

eternally present
and Sovereign.



The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Published by Angle and Poem Today



Annual
by Michael R. Burch

Silence
steals upon a house
where one sits alone
in the shadow of the itinerant letterbox,
watching the disconnected telephone
collecting dust ...

hearing the desiccate whispers of voices’
dry flutters,—
moths’ wings
brittle as cellophane ...

Curled here,
reading the yellowing volumes of loss
by the front porch light
in the groaning swing . . .
through thin adhesive gloss
I caress your face.

Published by The HyperTexts



US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)

Published by The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse and Poetry Life & Times

The Unisphere mentioned is a spherical stainless steel representation of the earth constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age and dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." The lines quoted in the epigraph are from W. H. Auden’s love poem “Lullaby.”



Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen.
By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.

With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.
Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.

In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.
I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.

I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no man has sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.

And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing . . .

But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray . . .

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs that I used to climb
when the wind was **** with a taste of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.

Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright.

Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-aged wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.

Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam . . .
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!

It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then . . . what then?

I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach . . .
And then, what then?

Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.
When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.

Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.
The distant cooling clouds.

Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over different lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.

Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that rush into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams . . .
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18, circa 1976-1977. For years I thought I had written “Sea Dreams” around age 19 or 20, circa 1978. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about the poem in my freshman dorm, so the poem must have been started around age 18 or earlier. Dating my early poems has been a bit tricky, because I keep having little flashbacks that help me date them more accurately, but often I can only say, “I know this poem was written by about such-and-such a date, because ...”

The next poem, "Son," is a companion piece to “Sea Dreams” that was written around the same time and discussed in the same freshman dorm conversation. I remember showing this poem to a fellow student and he asked how on earth I came up with a poem about being a father who abandoned his son to live on an island! I think the meter is pretty good for the age at which it was written.

Son
by Michael R. Burch

An island is bathed in blues and greens
as a weary sun settles to rest,
and the memories singing
through the back of my mind
lull me to sleep as the tide flows in.

Here where the hours pass almost unnoticed,
my heart and my home will be till I die,
but where you are is where my thoughts go
when the tide is high.

[etc., see handwritten version, the father laments abandoning his son]

So there where the skylarks sing to the sun
as the rain sprinkles lightly around,
understand if you can
the mind of a man
whose conscience so long ago drowned.



Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds!
by Michael R. Burch

"Bury St. Edmonds—Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, files or surf the Web, absolutely free."—Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.)

Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let
you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet,
commune with nature, interact with hackers,
design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers.

Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs—
four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs,
so your privacy's assured (a *******'s fine)
while invited friends can scan the party line:

for Internet alerts on new positions,
the randier exploits of politicians,
exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!) .
The cybersex is great, it's guaranteed

to leave you breathless—flushed, free of disease
and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees,
the birds, the bench—this product of Our pen.
We won in with an ode to MSN.



Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.

Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.

Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require

the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.


Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway . . .

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

I believe I wrote the original version of this poem in my early twenties.



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.



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 . . .



Through the fields of solitude
by Hermann Allmers
translation by David B. Gosselin with Michael R. Burch

Peacefully, I rest in the tall green grass
For a long time only gazing as I lie,
Caught in the endless hymn of crickets,
And encircled by a wonderful blue sky.

And the lovely white clouds floating across
The depths of the heavens are like silky lace;
I feel as though my soul has long since fled,
Softly drifting with them through eternal space.



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 ...



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her . . .
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

I believe I wrote this poem around age 20, in 1978 or thereabouts. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.



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,
and the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some savage ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze,
blown high, upward yearning,
twin spirits returning
to the world of resplendence from which we were seized.

In the whispering night, when the mockingbird calls
while denuded vines barely cling to stone walls,
as the red-rocked rivers rush on to the sea,
like a bright Goddess calling
a meteor falling
may flare like desire through skeletal trees.

If you look to the east, you will see a reminder
of days that broke warmer and nights that fell kinder;
but you and I were not meant for this life,
a life of illusions
and painful delusions:
a life without meaning—unless it is life.

So turn from the east and look to the west,
to the stars—argent fire ablaze at God's breast—
but there you'll find nothing but dreams of lost days:
days lost forever,
departed, and never,
oh never, oh never shall they be regained.

So turn from those heavens—night’s pale host of stars—
to these scarred pitted mountains, these wild grotesque tors
which—looming in darkness—obscure lustrous seas.
We are men, we must sing
till enchanted vales ring;
we are men; though we wither, our spirits soar free.



and then i was made whole
by Michael R. Burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Bowery Boys
by Michael R. Burch

Male bowerbirds have learned
that much respect is earned
when optical illusions
inspire wild delusions.

And so they work for hours
to line their manly bowers
with stones arranged by size
to awe and mesmerize.

It’d take a great detective
to grok the false perspective
they use to lure in cuties
to smooch and fill with cooties.

Like human politicians,
they love impressive fictions
as they lie in their randy causes
with props like the Wizard of Oz’s.



THE KNIGHT IN THE PANTHER’S SKIN

***** Rustaveli (c. 1160-1250), often called simply Rustaveli, was a Georgian poet who is generally considered to be the preeminent poet of the Georgian Golden Age. “The Knight in the Panther's Skin” or “The Man in the Panther’s Skin” is considered to be Georgia’s national epic poem and until the 20th century it was part of every Georgian bride’s dowry. It is believed that Rustaveli served Queen Tamar as a treasurer or finance minister and that he may have traveled widely and been involved in military campaigns. Little else is known about his life except through folk tradition and legend.

The Knight in the Panther's Skin
by ***** Rustaveli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

excerpts from the PROLOGUE

I sing of the lion whose image adorns the lances, shields and swords
of our Queen of Queens: Tamar, the ruby-throated and ebon-haired.
How dare I not sing Her Excellency’s manifold praises
when those who attend her must bring her the sweets she craves?

My tears flow profusely like blood as I extol our Queen Tamar,
whose praises I sing in these not ill-chosen words.
For ink I have employed jet-black lakes and for a pen, a flexible reed.
Whoever hears will have his heart pierced by the sharpest spears!

She bade me laud her in stately, sweet-sounding verses,
to praise her eyebrows, her hair, her lips and her teeth:
those rubies and crystals arrayed in bright, even ranks!
A leaden anvil can shatter even the strongest stone.

Kindle my mind and tongue! Fill me with skill and eloquence!
Aid my understanding for this composition!
Thus Tariel will be tenderly remembered,
one of three star-like heroes who always remained faithful.

Come, let us mourn Tariel with undrying tears
because we are men born under similar stars.
I, Rustaveli, whose heart has been pierced through by many sorrows,
have threaded this tale like a necklace of pearls.

Keywords/Tags: ***** Rustaveli, Georgia, Georgian, epic, knight, panther, skin, queen, Tamar, praise, praises, Tariel, Avtandil, Nestan-Darejan



Final Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

Sleep peacefully—for now your suffering’s over.

Sleep peacefully—immune to all distress,
like pebbles unaware of raging waves.

Sleep peacefully—like fields of fragrant clover
unmoved by any motion of the wind.

Sleep peacefully—like clouds untouched by earthquakes.

Sleep peacefully—like stars that never blink
and have no thoughts at all, nor need to think.

Sleep peacefully—in your eternal vault,
immaculate, past perfect, without fault.



don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved
(like your Heart)
and that even Light is bent
by your Gravity.

I dedicated this poem to the love of my life, but you are welcome to dedicate it to the love of yours, if you like it. The opening lines were inspired by a famous love poem by e. e. cummings. I went through a "cummings phase" around age 15 and wrote a number of poems "under the influence."



Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
by Michael R. Burch

“Evolution’s a Fishy Business!”

1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair
to swim among anemones’ pink frills.

2.
My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk,
a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s
sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk,
to take in this green land on which it gawks.

3.
No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt.
Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic―I’ll take such nice long naps!

The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt
to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.)

4.
I woke to find life teeming all around―
mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds.
And now I cringe at every sight and sound.
The water’s looking good! I look Absurd.

5.
The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap
wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep.
And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure
leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure.

Originally published by Lighten Up Online

Keywords/Tags: amphibian, amphibians, evolution, gills, water, air, lungs, fins, flippers, fish, fishy business


These are my modern English translations of poems by Dante Alighieri.

Little sparks may ignite great Infernos.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Beatrice I beheld the outer boundaries of blessedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She made my veins and even the pulses within them tremble.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Her sweetness left me intoxicated.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love commands me by dictating my desires.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Follow your own path and let bystanders gossip.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The devil is not as dark as depicted.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is no greater sorrow than to recall how we delighted in our own wretchedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As he, who with heaving lungs escaped the suffocating sea, turns to regard its perilous waters.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you nosedive in the mildest breeze?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you quail at the least breath of wind?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midway through my life’s journey
I awoke to find myself lost in a trackless wood,
for I had strayed far from the straight path.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

INSCRIPTION ON THE GATE OF HELL
Before me nothing created existed, to fear.
Eternal I am, eternal I endure.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Ladies of Modest Countenance” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You, who wear a modest countenance,
With eyelids weighed down by such heaviness,
How is it, that among you every face
Is haunted by the same pale troubled glance?

Have you seen in my lady's face, perchance,
the grief that Love provokes despite her grace?
Confirm this thing is so, then in her place,
Complete your grave and sorrowful advance.

And if, indeed, you match her heartfelt sighs
And mourn, as she does, for the heart's relief,
Then tell Love how it fares with her, to him.

Love knows how you have wept, seeing your eyes,
And is so grieved by gazing on your grief
His courage falters and his sight grows dim.



Paradiso, Canto III:1-33, The Revelation of Love and Truth
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That sun, which had inflamed my breast with love,
Had now revealed to me―as visions move―
The gentle and confounding face of Truth.

Thus I, by her sweet grace and love reproved,
Corrected, and to true confession moved,
Raised my bowed head and found myself behooved

To speak, as true admonishment required,
And thus to bless the One I so desired,
When I was awed to silence! This transpired:

As the outlines of men’s faces may amass
In mirrors of transparent, polished glass,
Or in shallow waters through which light beams pass

(Even so our eyes may easily be fooled
By pearls, or our own images, thus pooled):
I saw a host of faces, pale and lewd,

All poised to speak; but when I glanced around
There suddenly was no one to be found.
A pool, with no Narcissus to astound?

But then I turned my eyes to my sweet Guide.
With holy eyes aglow and smiling wide,
She said, “They are not here because they lied.”



Sonnet: A Vision of Love from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To every gentle heart which Love may move,
And unto which my words must now be brought
For true interpretation’s tender thought―
I greet you in our Lord's name, which is Love.

Through night’s last watch, as winking stars, above,
Kept their high vigil over us, distraught,
Love came to me, with such dark terrors fraught
As mortals may not casually absolve.
Love seemed a being of pure joy, and had
My heart held in his hand, while on his arm
My lady, wrapped in her fine mantle, slept.
He, having roused her from her sleep, then made
Her eat my heart; she did, in deep alarm.
He then departed; as he left, he wept.


Excerpts from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri

Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.
Here is a Deity, stronger than myself, who comes to dominate me.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra.
Your blessedness has now been manifested unto you.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps.
Alas, how often I will be restricted now!
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fili mi, tempus est ut prætermittantur simulata nostra.
My son, it is time to cease counterfeiting.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ partes: tu autem non sic.
Love said: “I am as the center of a harmonious circle; everything is equally near me. No so with you.”
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Love’s Thoroughfare” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“O voi che par la via”

All those who travel Love's worn tracks,
Pause here, awhile, and ask
Has there ever been a grief like mine?

Pause here, from that mad race;
Patiently hear my case:
Is it not a piteous marvel and a sign?

Love, not because I played a part,
But only due to his great heart,
Afforded me a provenance so sweet

That often others, as I went,
Asked what such unfair gladness meant:
They whispered things behind me in the street.

But now that easy gait is gone
Along with the wealth Love afforded me;
And so in time I’ve come to be

So poor that I dread to ponder thereon.
And thus I have become as one
Who hides his shame of his poverty

By pretending happiness outwardly,
While within I travail and moan.



Sonnet: “Cry for Pity” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts lie shattered in my memory:
When through the past I see your lovely face.
When you are near me, thus, Love fills all Space,
And often whispers, “Is death better? Flee!”

My face reflects my heart's blood-red dammed tide,
Which, fainting, seeks some shallow resting place;
Till, in the blushing shame of such disgrace,
The very earth seems to be shrieking, “Die!”

’Twould be a grievous sin, if one should not
Relay some comfort to my harried mind,
If only with some simple pitying
For this great anguish which fierce scorn has wrought
Through faltering sights of eyes grown nearly blind,
Which search for death now, like a blessed thing.



Excerpt from Paradiso
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

****** Mother, daughter of your Son,
Humble, yet exalted above creation,
And the eternal counsel’s apex shown,

You are the Pinnacle of human nature,
Your nobility instilled by its Creator,
Who did not, having you, disdain his creature.

Love was rekindled in your perfect womb
Where warmth and holy peace were given room
For this, Perfection’s Rose, once sown, to bloom.

Now unto us you are a Torch held high
Our noonday sun―the light of Charity,
Our wellspring of all Hope, a living sea.

Madonna, so pure, high and all-availing,
The man who desires grace of you, though failing,
Despite his grounded state, is given wing!

Your mercy does not fail, but, Ever-Blessed,
The one who asks finds oftentimes his quest
Unneeded: you foresaw his first request!

You are our Mercy; you are our Compassion;
you are Magnificence; in you creation
Unites whatever Goodness deems Salvation.



THE MUSE

by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My being hangs by a thread tonight
as I await a Muse no human pen can command.
The desires of my heart ― youth, liberty, glory ―
now depend on the Maid with the flute in her hand.

Look! Now she arrives; she flings back her veil;
I meet her grave eyes ― calm, implacable, pitiless.
“Temptress, confess!
Are you the one who gave Dante hell?”

She answers, “Yes.”



I have also translated this poem written by Marina Tsvetaeva for Anna Akhmatova:

Excerpt from “Poems for Akhmatova”
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You outshine everything, even the sun
at its zenith. The stars are yours!
If only I could sweep like the wind
through some unbarred door,
gratefully, to where you are ...
to hesitantly stammer, suddenly shy,
lowering my eyes before you, my lovely mistress,
petulant, chastened, overcome by tears,
as a child sobs to receive forgiveness ...


Dante Criticism by Michael R. Burch

Dante’s was a defensive reflex
against religion’s hex.
―Michael R. Burch


Dante, you Dunce!
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is hell, Dante, you Dunce!
Which you should have perceived―since you lived here once.

God is no Beatrice, gentle and clever.
Judas and Satan were wise to dissever
from false “messiahs” who cannot save.
Why flit like a bat through Plato’s cave
believing such shadowy illusions are real?
There is no "hell" but to live and feel!



How Dante Forgot Christ
by Michael R. Burch

Dante ****** the brightest and the fairest
for having loved―pale Helen, wild Achilles―
agreed with his Accuser in the spell
of hellish visions and eternal torments.
His only savior, Beatrice, was Love.

His only savior, Beatrice, was Love,
the fulcrum of his body’s, heart’s and mind’s
sole triumph, and their altogether conquest.
She led him to those heights where Love, enshrined,
blazed like a star beyond religion’s hells.

Once freed from Yahweh, in the arms of Love,
like Blake and Milton, Dante forgot Christ.

The Christian gospel is strangely lacking in Milton’s and Dante’s epics. Milton gave the “atonement” one embarrassed enjambed line. Dante ****** the Earth’s star-crossed lovers to his grotesque hell, while doing exactly what they did: pursing at all costs his vision of love, Beatrice. Blake made more sense to me, since he called the biblical god Nobodaddy and denied any need to be “saved” by third parties.



Dante’s Antes
by Michael R. Burch

There’s something glorious about man,
who lives because he can,
who dies because he must,
and in between’s a bust.

No god can reign him in:
he’s quite intent on sin
and likes it rather, really.
He likes *** touchy-feely.

He likes to eat too much.
He has the Midas touch
and paves hell’s ways with gold.
The things he’s bought and sold!

He’s sold his soul to Mammon
and also plays backgammon
and poker, with such antes
as still befuddle Dantes.

I wonder―can hell hold him?
His chances seem quite dim
because he’s rather puny
and also loopy-******.

And yet like Evel Knievel
he dances with the Devil
and seems so **** courageous,
good-natured and outrageous

some God might show him mercy
and call religion heresy.



Of Seabound Saints and Promised Lands
by Michael R. Burch

Judas sat on a wretched rock,
his head still sore from Satan’s gnawing.
Saint Brendan’s curragh caught his eye,
wildly geeing and hawing.

I’m on parole from Hell today!
Pale Judas cried from his lonely perch.
You’ve fasted forty days, good Saint!
Let this rock by my church,
my baptismal, these icy waves.
O, plead for me now with the One who saves!

Saint Brendan, full of mercy, stood
at the lurching prow of his flimsy bark,
and mightily prayed for the mangy man
whose flesh flashed pale and stark
in the golden dawn, beneath a sun
that seemed to halo his tonsured dome.
Then Saint Brendan sailed for the Promised Land
and Saint Judas headed Home.

O, behoove yourself, if ever your can,
of the fervent prayer of a righteous man!

In Dante’s Inferno, Satan gnaws on Judas Iscariot’s head. A curragh is a boat fashioned from wood and ox hides. Saint Brendan of Ireland is the patron saint of sailors and whales. According to legend, he sailed in search of the Promised Land and discovered America centuries before Columbus.



RE: Paradiso, Canto III
by Michael R. Burch

for the most “Christian” of poets

What did Dante do,
to earn Beatrice’s grace
(grace cannot be earned!)
but cast disgrace
on the whole human race,
on his peers and his betters,
as a man who wears cheap rayon suits
might disparage men who wear sweaters?

How conventionally “Christian” ― Poet! ― to ****
your fellow man
for being merely human,
then, like a contented clam,
to grandly claim
near-infinite “grace,”
as if your salvation was God’s only aim!
What a scam!

And what of the lovely Piccarda,
whom you placed in the lowest sphere of heaven
for neglecting her vows ―
She was forced!
Were you chaste?



Intimations V
by Michael R. Burch

We had not meditated upon sound
so much as drowned
in the inhuman ocean
when we imagined it broken
open
like a conch shell
whorled like the spiraling hell
of Dante’s Inferno.

Trapped between Nature
and God,
what is man
but an inquisitive,
acquisitive
sod?

And what is Nature
but odd,
or God
but a Clod,
and both of them horribly flawed?



Endgame
by Michael R. Burch

The honey has lost all its sweetness,
the hive―its completeness.

Now ambient dust, the drones lie dead.
The workers weep, their King long fled
(who always had been ****, invisible,
his “kingdom” atomic, divisible,
and pathetically risible).

The queen has flown,
long Dis-enthroned,
who would have given all she owned
for a promised white stone.

O, Love has fled, has fled, has fled ...
Religion is dead, is dead, is dead.



The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

Here I am, talking to myself again . . .

******* at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!

Still, I remember when . . .

planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity

worth a chuckle or two.

Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;

Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;

Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;

Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .

for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,

and they fill the world with their pale derision

of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,

reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all ******.

Keyword/Tags: Muslims, sonnet, Italian sonnet, crown of sonnets, rhyme, love, affinity and love, Rome, Italy, Florence

Published as the collection "First they came for the Muslims"