Do we dance to this song 
After we've said our vows and I do's?
Will you hold me close
In your white wedding dress
And stare into my eyes
As they brim, beholding you?
The melody waltzes on.
Is this our farewell, 
Departure and heartbreak in 12/8 time?
Will we say our last goodbye
As different tears fill my eyes?
The melody waltzes on. 
Will I crumble inside 
When its haunting soundscape 
And splashing cymbals come to mind
And I remember what I had?
The melody waltzes on. 
Somehow I can't discern
Whether the rhythm is truly made for dancing;
It mimics a runner's perfect pace. 
Are we running away or toward each other?
The melody waltzes on. 
Is it a rendezvous or a cry of surrender?
Is it me bending down on a knee
Or hanging my head in defeat?
Is it everything I've wanted
Or what I have when all is gone?
The melody waltzes on.

I found you in the cracks of winter between puffing breaths of cold air like a dragon, on that cold Wednesday afternoon. I swore your eyes were the ocean, and I could see all the way to Europe. You held your books like a shield guarding your chest and you introduced yourself like a king.

We talked of Bukowski and Frost in between sips of lukewarm water. I fell in love with every pause you took and every time you blinked my heart beat increased. I was surprised you couldn't feel it from across the table.

You showed me the scars on your legs and arms you've gotten over the years. One from jumping off a roof into a pool. One randomly showing up when you woke up that morning. And one from that time you had a tumor removed from your chest. You told me don't feel sorry for you and don't feed you sympathy because you have been full for years.

We spent the next couple of months telling secrets. You told me I was the first person you have ever felt comfortable with in a long time. You kissed me so silently and slowly it was like breathing underwater. Forgive me if I sound selfish but I could not stay under the water any longer and I couldn't hold my breath for another second. I gave all my wishes and stars to you that night. I wrote poetry on your skin that we created when our hands touched.

We explored the mountains and ate picnics every Saturday afternoon. We ran from the rain as we saw the clouds roll in, we sat in the car and played truth or dare for an hour straight. I promised you I will love you until we're old and I'll have to feed you with a spoon until this action isn't anymore romantic but necessary instead.

It was a Tuesday at 2:35 in the morning when you were experiencing pain. I drove you to the hospital.

Our love was like a mother teaching a daughter how to slow dance for the first time; clumsy.
You didn't know how to hold me properly anymore because you were to busy holding medical bills in your hands. When I see these papers my mind loses focus and all those words form one big blur, and they become wet with warm teardrops smudging the news across the white crinkled paper. I turned off the tv that night and we actually looked at each other staring like we were both blank canvases and had painters block for the first time ever. That night you packed a suitcase and went away in a taxi. The hospital wasn't too far away but I couldn't bare to see you walk into that place again.

It was cold and it was Sunday. The doctors tried everything they could but it was already too big and eating you away. Old friends were always bitter when they weren't welcomed back but stormed in like a hurricane destroying everything the future has to hold. Your eyes were colorless and your hands were too fragile to hold anything. My heart was beating out of my chest and my palms were shaking. It felt like I was holding an earthquake.

You were only 21.

You had a warm heart and a beautiful brain. You were drained like rain-soaked up from the earth. I wished I could have taken you places and brought you flowers. But it was always too cold to go somewhere and all the flowers have disappeared away until next spring. For on now I'll just have to bring you back to life through words and hope not to cry. Another love is too far away to see and my vision is blurry but I don't want it to be clear. For I fear that I will once again become too selfish because I can't wait forever for you because death is miles away, and I'm not ready to see that side of my life. But when tomorrow starts without you I guess I'll just go home because, sweetheart, all the dust has disappeared.

Let us praise the time when we flew to Vegas one night because we were board. Praise the moment when we were so full of glee that time we won $20, and how we ignored that fact we lost $600. Praise the day our car broke down on the side of a mountain and so we finally got a chance to talk to each other and confess our problems. Praise that moment we meet on that frosty December. I hope your ghost waltzes at sunset with my shadow. I know it's only been a few years since we meet but for me, it was a lifetime of happiness.  Let it be known you are engraved into my brain and I'll always remember the time I saw you clutching books to your chest and puffing dragon breath.

Meet me in Valhalla
When the battle's done
The cries of enemies long slain
Have faded one by one
Hold my hand, brave brother
As our glory's crowned in blood
The sword strikes deep but still
Our souls will rise above the mud
O warrior, our destiny was
To fall in foreign lands
Within our veins flow rivers strange
Our mouths pour forth with sand
We do not fear the bitter dark
That waltzes round our eyes
Hold my hand, brave brother
Led by the Valkyrie we die
We march on toward golden shields
To fight under burning suns
Meet me in Valhalla
When the battle's won

Is there tear gas in this room?
Because I can't stop crying
The gas crawls down my esophagus
And crushes my wounded heart.

“God this hurts”

I keep typing,
Praying to computer screen
That I'll forget the smell of your hair
I type till my fingers bleed
So I can forget what your touch feels like
How our lips fit perfectly together.

“God I hate myself”

The only phrase I think of
When I'm pleading for things to back to normal
Back to the days
Where you didn't want to to crack open my skull
And see all of the ugly things
That drift around my cranium

“Baby please I'm sorry. I’m a mess,
A klutz, who waltzes around with stupidity
Baby I get this feeling in my head
When you are not around
I want to keep writing you these love letters
By sliding them under your doors called your eyelids”
But I can’t

I sit alone in the bus called life
Looking across my seat
I see you, my love
Holding onto the bar
Your pretty Blue headlights
That make me drawn to you
Your pretty Blue headlights
Covered with the rain I caused
I'm a rain man,
you see, when people get close to me
I get scared
And force the skies rain to tears with pain.


The only thing that floats in my mind
Is that I hope the man of you life
Buys you flowers
Sunflowers especially
And shows up to your work unexpectedly.
I hope you can travel to Paris
and keep a long list of all of the countries
you've cuddled in.
With him.
I hope you he can handle seeing the stars
From your eyes every time you guys cuddle
Under the moon light.
I hope he can teach you how to slow dance
And I hope that he can teach me
On how to be a better man.

Muse of the many-twinkling feet! whose charms
Are now extended up from legs to arms;
Terpsichore!—too long misdeemed a maid—
Reproachful term—bestowed but to upbraid—
Henceforth in all the bronze of brightness shine,
The least a Vestal of the ****** Nine.
Far be from thee and thine the name of *****:
Mocked yet triumphant; sneered at, unsubdued;
Thy legs must move to conquer as they fly,
If but thy coats are reasonably high!
Thy breast—if bare enough—requires no shield;
Dance forth—sans armour thou shalt take the field
And own—impregnable to most assaults,
Thy not too lawfully begotten “Waltz.”

  Hail, nimble Nymph! to whom the young hussar,
The whiskered votary of Waltz and War,
His night devotes, despite of spur and boots;
A sight unmatched since Orpheus and his brutes:
Hail, spirit-stirring Waltz!—beneath whose banners
A modern hero fought for modish manners;
On Hounslow’s heath to rival Wellesley’s fame,
Cocked, fired, and missed his man—but gained his aim;
Hail, moving muse! to whom the fair one’s breast
Gives all it can, and bids us take the rest.
Oh! for the flow of Busby, or of Fitz,
The latter’s loyalty, the former’s wits,
To “energise the object I pursue,”
And give both Belial and his Dance their due!

  Imperial Waltz! imported from the Rhine
(Famed for the growth of pedigrees and wine),
Long be thine import from all duty free,
And Hock itself be less esteemed than thee;
In some few qualities alike—for Hock
Improves our cellar—thou our living stock.
The head to Hock belongs—thy subtler art
Intoxicates alone the heedless heart:
Through the full veins thy gentler poison swims,
And wakes to Wantonness the willing limbs.

  Oh, Germany! how much to thee we owe,
As heaven-born Pitt can testify below,
Ere cursed Confederation made thee France’s,
And only left us thy d—d debts and dances!
Of subsidies and Hanover bereft,
We bless thee still—George the Third is left!
Of kings the best—and last, not least in worth,
For graciously begetting George the Fourth.
To Germany, and Highnesses serene,
Who owe us millions—don’t we owe the Queen?
To Germany, what owe we not besides?
So oft bestowing Brunswickers and brides;
Who paid for ******, with her royal blood,
Drawn from the stem of each Teutonic stud:
Who sent us—so be pardoned all her faults—
A dozen dukes, some kings, a Queen—and Waltz.

  But peace to her—her Emperor and Diet,
Though now transferred to Buonapartè’s “fiat!”
Back to my theme—O muse of Motion! say,
How first to Albion found thy Waltz her way?

  Borne on the breath of Hyperborean gales,
From Hamburg’s port (while Hamburg yet had mails),
Ere yet unlucky Fame—compelled to creep
To snowy Gottenburg-was chilled to sleep;
Or, starting from her slumbers, deigned arise,
Heligoland! to stock thy mart with lies;
While unburnt Moscow yet had news to send,
Nor owed her fiery Exit to a friend,
She came—Waltz came—and with her certain sets
Of true despatches, and as true Gazettes;
Then flamed of Austerlitz the blest despatch,
Which Moniteur nor Morning Post can match
And—almost crushed beneath the glorious news—
Ten plays, and forty tales of Kotzebue’s;
One envoy’s letters, six composer’s airs,
And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsic fairs:
Meiners’ four volumes upon Womankind,
Like Lapland witches to ensure a wind;
Brunck’s heaviest tome for ballast, and, to back it,
Of Heynè, such as should not sink the packet.

  Fraught with this cargo—and her fairest freight,
Delightful Waltz, on tiptoe for a Mate,
The welcome vessel reached the genial strand,
And round her flocked the daughters of the land.
Not decent David, when, before the ark,
His grand Pas-seul excited some remark;
Not love-lorn Quixote, when his Sancho thought
The knight’s Fandango friskier than it ought;
Not soft Herodias, when, with winning tread,
Her nimble feet danced off another’s head;
Not Cleopatra on her Galley’s Deck,
Displayed so much of leg or more of neck,
Than Thou, ambrosial Waltz, when first the Moon
Beheld thee twirling to a Saxon tune!

  To You, ye husbands of ten years! whose brows
Ache with the annual tributes of a spouse;
To you of nine years less, who only bear
The budding sprouts of those that you shall wear,
With added ornaments around them rolled
Of native brass, or law-awarded gold;
To You, ye Matrons, ever on the watch
To mar a son’s, or make a daughter’s match;
To You, ye children of—whom chance accords—
Always the Ladies, and sometimes their Lords;
To You, ye single gentlemen, who seek
Torments for life, or pleasures for a week;
As Love or ***** your endeavours guide,
To gain your own, or ****** another’s bride;—
To one and all the lovely Stranger came,
And every Ball-room echoes with her name.

  Endearing Waltz!—to thy more melting tune
Bow Irish Jig, and ancient Rigadoon.
Scotch reels, avaunt! and Country-dance forego
Your future claims to each fantastic toe!
Waltz—Waltz alone—both legs and arms demands,
Liberal of feet, and lavish of her hands;
Hands which may freely range in public sight
Where ne’er before—but—pray “put out the light.”
Methinks the glare of yonder chandelier
Shines much too far—or I am much too near;
And true, though strange—Waltz whispers this remark,
“My slippery steps are safest in the dark!”
But here the Muse with due decorum halts,
And lends her longest petticoat to “Waltz.”

  Observant Travellers of every time!
Ye Quartos published upon every clime!
0 say, shall dull Romaika’s heavy round,
Fandango’s wriggle, or Bolero’s bound;
Can Egypt’s Almas—tantalising group—
Columbia’s caperers to the warlike Whoop—
Can aught from cold Kamschatka to Cape Horn
With Waltz compare, or after Waltz be born?
Ah, no! from Morier’s pages down to Galt’s,
Each tourist pens a paragraph for “Waltz.”

  Shades of those Belles whose reign began of yore,
With George the Third’s—and ended long before!—
Though in your daughters’ daughters yet you thrive,
Burst from your lead, and be yourselves alive!
Back to the Ball-room speed your spectred host,
Fool’s Paradise is dull to that you lost.
No treacherous powder bids Conjecture quake;
No stiff-starched stays make meddling fingers ache;
(Transferred to those ambiguous things that ape
Goats in their visage, women in their shape;)
No damsel faints when rather closely pressed,
But more caressing seems when most caressed;
Superfluous Hartshorn, and reviving Salts,
Both banished by the sovereign cordial “Waltz.”

  Seductive Waltz!—though on thy native shore
Even Werter’s self proclaimed thee half a *****;
Werter—to decent vice though much inclined,
Yet warm, not wanton; dazzled, but not blind—
Though gentle Genlis, in her strife with Staël,
Would even proscribe thee from a Paris ball;
The fashion hails—from Countesses to Queens,
And maids and valets waltz behind the scenes;
Wide and more wide thy witching circle spreads,
And turns—if nothing else—at least our heads;
With thee even clumsy cits attempt to bounce,
And cockney’s practise what they can’t pronounce.
Gods! how the glorious theme my strain exalts,
And Rhyme finds partner Rhyme in praise of “Waltz!”
Blest was the time Waltz chose for her début!
The Court, the Regent, like herself were new;
New face for friends, for foes some new rewards;
New ornaments for black-and royal Guards;
New laws to hang the rogues that roared for bread;
New coins (most new) to follow those that fled;
New victories—nor can we prize them less,
Though Jenky wonders at his own success;
New wars, because the old succeed so well,
That most survivors envy those who fell;
New mistresses—no, old—and yet ’tis true,
Though they be old, the thing is something new;
Each new, quite new—(except some ancient tricks),
New white-sticks—gold-sticks—broom-sticks—all new sticks!
With vests or ribands—decked alike in hue,
New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue:
So saith the Muse: my——, what say you?
Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain
Her new preferments in this novel reign;
Such was the time, nor ever yet was such;
Hoops are  more, and petticoats not much;
Morals and Minuets, Virtue and her stays,
And tell-tale powder—all have had their days.
The Ball begins—the honours of the house
First duly done by daughter or by spouse,
Some Potentate—or royal or serene—
With Kent’s gay grace, or sapient Gloster’s mien,
Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush
Might once have been mistaken for a blush.
From where the garb just leaves the ***** free,
That spot where hearts were once supposed to be;
Round all the confines of the yielded waist,
The strangest hand may wander undisplaced:
The lady’s in return may grasp as much
As princely paunches offer to her touch.
Pleased round the chalky floor how well they trip
One hand reposing on the royal hip!
The other to the shoulder no less royal
Ascending with affection truly loyal!
Thus front to front the partners move or stand,
The foot may rest, but none withdraw the hand;
And all in turn may follow in their rank,
The Earl of—Asterisk—and Lady—Blank;
Sir—Such-a-one—with those of fashion’s host,
For whose blest surnames—vide “Morning Post.”
(Or if for that impartial print too late,
Search Doctors’ Commons six months from my date)—
Thus all and each, in movement swift or slow,
The genial contact gently undergo;
Till some might marvel, with the modest Turk,
If “nothing follows all this palming work?”
True, honest Mirza!—you may trust my rhyme—
Something does follow at a fitter time;
The breast thus publicly resigned to man,
In private may resist him—if it can.

  O ye who loved our Grandmothers of yore,
Fitzpatrick, Sheridan, and many more!
And thou, my Prince! whose sovereign taste and will
It is to love the lovely beldames still!
Thou Ghost of Queensberry! whose judging Sprite
Satan may spare to peep a single night,
Pronounce—if ever in your days of bliss
Asmodeus struck so bright a stroke as this;
To teach the young ideas how to rise,
Flush in the cheek, and languish in the eyes;
Rush to the heart, and lighten through the frame,
With half-told wish, and ill-dissembled flame,
For prurient Nature still will storm the breast—
Who, tempted thus, can answer for the rest?

  But ye—who never felt a single thought
For what our Morals are to be, or ought;
Who wisely wish the charms you view to reap,
Say—would you make those beauties quite so cheap?
Hot from the hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side,
Where were the rapture then to clasp the form
From this lewd grasp and lawless contact warm?
At once Love’s most endearing thought resign,
To press the hand so pressed by none but thine;
To gaze upon that eye which never met
Another’s ardent look without regret;
Approach the lip which all, without restraint,
Come near enough—if not to touch—to taint;
If such thou lovest—love her then no more,
Or give—like her—caresses to a score;
Her Mind with these is gone, and with it go
The little left behind it to bestow.

  Voluptuous Waltz! and dare I thus blaspheme?
Thy bard forgot thy praises were his theme.
Terpsichore forgive!—at every Ball
My wife now waltzes—and my daughters shall;
My son—(or stop—’tis needless to inquire—
These little accidents should ne’er transpire;
Some ages hence our genealogic tree
Will wear as green a bough for him as me)—
Waltzing shall rear, to make our name amends
Grandsons for me—in heirs to all his friends.

My sadness gets up at 2:00 am
Then again at 4:00
And 5:30
And 6:45
Then 7:00am

After the snooze alarm goes off
My sadness wears concealer and mascara to make it
feel awake
and pretty

My sadness hides behind a joke, a smile, a laugh
My sadness is scared of my happiness, who
Stops by once in a while
but just for a quick hello

My sadness doesn’t show through the way
I pull myself together in the morning like nothing is wrong
Or when people ask “how are you?” And replies “I’m good!”
People don’t see my sadness in the stories I tell,
the schoolwork I do, the advice I give them for their problems

My sadness doesn’t show up like other’s sadness
It doesn’t hold its head down in the hallway,
or sleep in until 12, it doesn’t go days without eating,
and it doesn’t try to keep happiness in a locked door

No.

My sadness only shows through the poetry I write
The music behind my earbuds
The short stream of tears when the doors are
closed and the windows are open hoping that just one
small bit of happiness will come inside and stay for longer
than a joke, a laugh, a smile.

My sadness stays in the shower longer than usual,
gets angry a little too easily, and cries a little too much
when watching The Notebook.
It doesn’t look like sadness or walk like sadness or talk like sadness
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t sadness.

No.

You can’t see my sadness.
It doesn’t show like a person with a
broken leg and crutches
You don’t take one look at it and know that
It is crippled and broken down

No.

My sadness is like cancer
You don’t know it’s there until you strip me down
peel back the layers of my skin
to see that I’ve been breathing an air like smoke
that’s caused a growth in my lungs and heart so
that each breath I take, each drop of blood that flows
through my veins feels like a weight on my chest that
can only be lifted with you laying beside me and holding
me until I feel as light as a feather souring through the wind
after finally break free of its bird. Its burd-en.
The thing that’s been holding it down, keeping it from doing
the impossible. But, possibly you can’t lift that weight.
possibly it’s only me that can lift that weight.

Possibly it’s been me the whole time.
Possibly I am the one that kicks happiness out the door
When it stops by because I don’t see happiness
Without you here
But how dare I place the image of happiness
Only in your presence when happiness can fall
In from any joke, or laugh, or smile
And happiness can stay past the sunset
Because you can still see happiness when all you feel
Is the darkness
Happiness can come in when the door
Is bolted shut because happiness doesn’t
Ask if it can come over
Happiness waltzes right in, unannounced, but
Always welcome.
So the next time my sadness is sitting at the table
And we are having a cup of coffee,
And happiness runs through the door
I will show sadness the exit
And then turn to happiness and say “it is great to
See you, please stick around for a while.”
And later when it gets up to leave
I will grab it by the arm and hold
onto it tighter than you ever held me.

Sonnets

For this collection I have used the original definition of "sonnet" as a "little song" rather than sticking to rigid formulas. The sonnets here include traditional sonnets, tetrameter sonnets, hexameter sonnets, curtal sonnets, 15-line sonnets, and some that probably defy categorization, which I call free verse sonnets for want of a better term. Most of these sonnets employ meter, rhyme and form and tend to be Romantic in the spirit of the Romanticism of Blake, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas.




Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch

There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon's, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her, and is not the same.
I still love her and enlist this sacred fire
to keep her memory exalted flame
unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.

On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles;
they sleep alike―diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the "surgeons." Sleeping, all.

Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
if accidents of coloration, gall my heart no less.
Amid thick weeds and muck
there lies a rose man's crackling lightning struck:
the only Rose I ever longed to pluck.
Soon I'll bed there and bid the world "Good Luck."

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.

If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax―their circumstance
as humble as it is?―or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?

Originally published by The Eclectic Muse and in The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003



Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed―
why should such tattered artistry be banned?

I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."

Originally published by The Chariton Review



The Forge
by Michael R. Burch

To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,

then bend this way and that, and slowly cool
at arms-length, something irreducible
drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool

of water so contrary just a hiss
escapes it―water instantly a mist.
It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ...

And then the driven hammer falls and falls.
The horses ***** their ears in nearby stalls.
A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles.

A sound of ancient import, with the ring
of honest labor, sings of fashioning.

Originally published by The Chariton Review



For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron―
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful―
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



Isolde's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation―all but one:
we felt the night's deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring's urgency, midsummer's heat, fall's lash,
wild winter's ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life's great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold.
And you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn't seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs,
and deepens on itself, as though mirth took
some comfort there and burrowed deeply in,
outlasting winter. See how very thin
her features are―that time has made more spare,
so that each bone shows, elegant and rare.

For loveliness remains in her grave eyes,
and courage in her still-delighted looks:
each face presented like a picture book's.
Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes.

Originally published by Writer's Digest's: The Year's Best Writing 2003



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 bodies to some violent 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.

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



The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak and scarred and lone,
for seas reflecting distant suns
and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown,
for waltzes ending in a hush,
for rhymes that fade as pages close,
for flames' exhausted, drifting ash,
and petals falling from the rose, ...
I raise my cup before I drink,
saluting ghosts of loves long dead,
and silently propose a toast―
to joys set free, and those I fled.



Second Sight (II)
by Michael R. Burch

(Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches.)

Wiser than we know, the newborn screams,
red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means
this close to death, amid the arctic glare
of warmthless lights above.
Beware! Beware!―
encrypted signals, codes? Or ciphers, noughts?

Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts―
the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist.
Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist―
this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense.
Why can he not float on, in dark suspense,
and dream of life? Why did they rip him out?

He frowns at them―small gnomish frowns, all doubt―
and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!,
re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null
ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful.



Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star―demanding our belief.
You must change your life.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This is a Rilke sonnet about a major resolution: changing the very nature of one's life. While it is only my personal interpretation of the poem above, I believe Rilke was saying to himself: "I must change my life." Why? Perhaps because he wanted to be a real artist, and when confronted with real, dynamic, living and breathing art of Rodin, he realized that he had to inject similar vitality, energy and muscularity into his poetry. Michelangelo said that he saw the angel in a block of marble, then freed it. Perhaps Rilke had to find the dynamic image of Apollo, the God of Poetry, in his materials, which were paper, ink and his imagination.―Michael R. Burch



Komm, Du (“Come, You”)
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you―the last one I acknowledge; return―
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage―
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return―my heart’s reserves gone―
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life―my former life―remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!



Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar [1460-1525]
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.

Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet everywhere, no odor but bitter rue.

I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden―
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray―
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.

Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by Southwest Review.



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy's a wan illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.

Originally published by The Lyric



The City Is a Garment
by Michael R. Burch

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,―
the city is a garment stretched so thin
her festive colors bleed into the night,
and everywhere bright seams, unraveling,

cascade their brilliant contents out like coins
on motorways and esplanades; bead cars
come tumbling down long highways; at her groin
a railtrack like a zipper flashes sparks;

her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool
and from their cleavage winking lights enlarge
and travel, slender fingers ... softly pull
themselves into the semblance of a barge.

When night becomes too chill, she softly dons
great overcoats of warmest-colored dawn.

Originally published by The Lyric



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by Romantics Quarterly.



The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
felt more than seen.
I was eighteen,
my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.

There was an instant . . .
without words, but with a deeper communion,
as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
liquidly our lips met
―feverish, wet―
forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.

Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.

This is one of my early free verse sonnets but I can’t remember exactly when I wrote it. Due to the romantic style, I believe it was probably written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time.



Abide
by Michael R. Burch

after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"

It is hard to understand or accept mortality―
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea

boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle
than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists
simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.

And so we abide . . .
even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink,
it is best not to drink
(or, drinking, certainly not to think).

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by Light Quarterly.



Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.

Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes―the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel

toward some draining revelation. Air―
too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ...

two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other―fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.

This is a 15-line free verse sonnet originally published by Sonnet Scroll.



Once
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name . . .

Once when her ******* were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist . . .

Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant . . .

Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed―
this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.

Originally published by The Lyric



At Once
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Though she was fair,
though she sent me the epistle of her love at once
and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would dare
pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once,
the dark, haggard keeper of the lair,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would share
the all of her being, to heal me at once,
yet more than her touch I was unable bear.
I did not love her at once.

And yet she would care,
and pour out her essence ...
and yet―there was more!

I awoke from long darkness,
and yet―she was there.

I loved her the longer;
I loved her the more
because I did not love her at once.

Originally published by The Lyric



Twice
by Michael R. Burch

Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days

when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.

But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:

rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.

Originally published by The Lyric



Moments
by Michael R. Burch

There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.

There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight―how the cold stars stare!―
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.



The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

I have not come for the harvest of roses―
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.

Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer―
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Distances
by Michael R. Burch

Moonbeams on water―
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night ...
So your memories are.

Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter ...
So near, yet so far.

NOTE: In the first stanza the "halcyon star" is the sun, which has dropped below the horizon and is thus "drowning in night." But its light strikes the moon, creating moonbeams which are reflected by the water. Sometimes memories seem that distant, that faint, that elusive. Footprints are being washed away, a heart is missing from its ribcage, and even things close at hand can seem infinitely beyond our reach.



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world―
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace―Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night―your wound would not scar.

The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.



Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

for Nadia Anjuman

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes,
imposing night on one who clearly saw.
Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw―
envenomed, fanged―could swallow, whole, your Awe.

And yet it was not death so much as you
who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing
and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's
white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing!
But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren!
Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.

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



Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.

Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
now brittle and brown
as fierce northern gales sever.

Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.

NOTE: I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone.



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza and loving, compassionate mothers everywhere

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?



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.

This is a mostly tetrameter sonnet with shorter and longer lines.



Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch

These are the narrows of my soul―
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.

Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.

Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned

why it is named:
Mare Clausum.

This is a free verse sonnet with shorter and longer lines, originally published by Penny Dreadful. Mare Clausum is Latin for "Closed Sea." I wrote the first version of this poem as a teenager.



Redolence
by Michael R. Burch

Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.

Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.

And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.

Published by The Eclectic Muse and The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003



Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets' wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:
to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,―
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs
seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun's pale tourmaline.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...

... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...

... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees ...

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...

... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...

Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...

"O, let down your hair!"―we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...

was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly (USA) and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

This is a free verse sonnet published by The Chariton Review as “The Knitter,” then by Penumbra, Black Bear Review and Triplopia.



If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...

You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your ******* ...

Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...

Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.



A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the minions of autumn, how swiftly life goes
as I fled before love ... Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.

I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the specter of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.

O, where are you now?―I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.

Published by Chrysanthemum and Tucumcari Literary Review



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.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”



Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.―Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart. It marveled at your power
but would not mend. And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep. Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.

This is a poem about a couple committing suicide together. The “eerie pact” refers to a Bible verse about the rainbow being a “covenant,” when the only covenant human beings can depend on is the original one that condemned us to suffer and die. That covenant is always kept perfectly.



To Flower
by Michael R. Burch

When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.

We are not long for this earth, I know―
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



Flight 93
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by The Lyric.



Oasis
by Michael R. Burch

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.

I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.

This is a mostly hexameter sonnet with shorter and longer lines.



Melting
by Michael R. Burch

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave―
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools, whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous, so bright, so beautiful ...
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.



Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

The night is full of stars. Which still exist?
Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know.
For now I hold your fingers to my lips
and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow ...

once slow to match this reckless spark in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame ...

for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie
in dawning recognition is enough ...

enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.



All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade―all afterglow.



These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time alone, not untouched,
and I am as they were―unsure, for the days
stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze.
Ah, faithless lover―that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart that has leapt every pinnacle of Love,
and the result of all such infatuations―
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.



Come!
by Michael R. Burch

Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?

When my womb has conformed to the chastity
your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,
will you finally be pleased that my *** was thus rendered
unpalatable, disengendered?

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so
have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow
with the approval of God that I ended a maid―
thanks to a *****?

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?



Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair―
bright carrot―and her milkmaid-pallid skin,

her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children―some conceived in sin,

the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They ***** to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair ...
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.



The Composition of Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”―W. B. Yeats

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape―
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,

sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face―
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze

that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.



The Composition of Shadows (II)
by Michael R. Burch

We breathe and so we write;
the night
hums softly its accompaniment.

Pale phosphors burn;
the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean
we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’

strange golden weight,
the blood’s debate
within the heart. Here, resonant,

sounds’ shadows mass
against bright glass,
within the white Labyrinthian maze.

Through simple grace,
I touch your face,
ah words! And I would gaze

the night’s dark length
in waning strength
to find the words to feel

such light again.
O, for a pen
to spell love so ethereal.



To Please The Poet
by Michael R. Burch

To please the poet, words must dance―
staccato, brisk, a two-step:
so!
Or waltz in elegance to time
of music mild,
adagio.

To please the poet, words must chance
emotion in catharsis―
flame.
Or splash into salt seas, descend
in sheets of silver-shining
rain.

To please the poet, words must prance
and gallop, gambol, revel,
rail.
Or muse upon a moment, mute,
obscure, unsure, imperfect,
pale.

To please the poet, words must sing,
or croak, wart-tongued, imagining.



The First Christmas
by Michael R. Burch

’Twas in a land so long ago . . .
the lambs lay blanketed in snow
and little children everywhere
sat and watched warm embers glow
and dreamed (of what, we do not know).

And THEN―a star appeared on high,
The brightest man had ever seen!
It made the children whisper low
in puzzled awe (what did it mean?).
It made the wooly lambkins cry.

For far away a new-born lay,
warm-blanketed in straw and hay,
a lowly manger for his crib.
The cattle mooed, distraught and low,
to see the child. They did not know

it now was Christmas day!

This is a poem in which I tried to capture the mystery and magic of the first Christmas day. If you like my poem, you are welcome to share it, but please cite me as the author, which you can do by including the title and subheading.



The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence―
the last unspoken moment
before death,

when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,

when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief―
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...

There is no emptier time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears

beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.



Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by The HyperTexts.



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June Kysilko Kraeft

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of wanting her himself, so much the lie
that she was meant for him―obscene illusion!―

made him seem a monarch throned like God on high,
when he was less than nothing; when to die
meant many stultifying, pained embraces.

She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces
that tied her to the earth: then she was his.
Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces
and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness―
her ghost beyond perfection―for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them―trapped in brittle cellophane―
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight―an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which―tattered, frayed―
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like insects’ wings―pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never changed, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on feral claws
as It scratched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat―those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt, I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.



911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”

They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,

far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot . . .

Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.



At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch

“Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.


At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
―perhaps by God, perhaps by need―

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember,
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus―hard toil―
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes―dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning―
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.

Belatedly he turns to what lies broken―
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.



Downdraft
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

We feel rather than understand what he meant
as he reveals a shattered firmament
which before him never existed.

Here, there are no images gnarled and twisted
out of too many words,
but only flocks of white birds

wheeling and flying.

Here, as Time spins, reeling and dying,
the voice of a last gull
or perhaps some spirit no longer whole,

echoes its lonely madrigal
and we feel its strange pull
on the astonished soul.

O My Prodigal!

The vents of the sky, ripped asunder,
echo this wild, primal thunder—
now dying into undulations of vanishing wings . . .

and this voice which in haggard bleak rapture still somehow downward sings.



Huntress
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire

Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep
across a crevice dropping deep
into a dark and doomed domain.
Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane.
Rain falls upon your path, and pain
pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause
and heed the oft-lamented laws
which bid you not begin again
till night returns. You wail like wind,
the sighing of a soul for sin,
and give up hunting for a heart.
Till sunset falls again, depart,
though hate and hunger urge you―"On!"

Heed, hearts, your hope―the break of dawn.

Published by The HyperTexts, Dracula and His Kin and Sonnetto Poesia (Canada)



Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.



Because She Craved the Very Best
by Michael R. Burch

Because she craved the very best,
he took her East, he took her West;
he took her where there were no wars
and brought her bright bouquets of stars,
the blush and fragrances of roses,
the hush an evening sky imposes,
moonbeams pale and garlands rare,
and golden combs to match her hair,
a nightingale to sing all night,
white wings, to let her soul take flight ...

She stabbed him with a poisoned sting
and as he lay there dying,
she screamed, "I wanted everything!"
and started crying.



Caveat
by Michael R. Burch

If only we were not so eloquent,
we might sing, and only sing, not to impress,
but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed.

We might inundate the earth with thankfulness
for light, although it dies, and make a song
of night descending on the earth like bliss,

with other lights beyond―not to be known―
but only to be welcomed and enjoyed,
before all worlds and stars are overthrown ...

as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face
and find it beautiful for emptiness
of all but joy. There is no thought to love

but love itself. How senseless to redress,
in darkness, such becoming nakedness . . .

Originally published by Clementine Unbound



To the Post-Modern Muse, Floundering
by Michael R. Burch


The anachronism in your poetry
is that it lacks a future history.
The line that rings, the forward-sounding bell,
tolls death for you, for drowning victims tell
of insignificance, of eerie shoals,
of voices underwater. Lichen grows
to mute the lips of those men paid no heed,
and though you cling by fingertips, and bleed,
there is no lifeline now, for what has slipped
lies far beyond your grasp. Iron fittings, stripped,
have left the hull unsound, bright cargo lost.
The argosy of all your toil is rust.

The anchor that you flung did not take hold
in any harbor where repair is sold.

Originally published by Ironwood



Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch

We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each face―
a carnival-like mirror. In the space
between the silver backing and the glass,
we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass
who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed
to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed
for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee
to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key.
We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung.
In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue―
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise―
adagio, the music she now hears;
and we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars’ bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



130 Refuted
by Michael R. Burch

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
―Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Seas that sparkle in the sun
without its light would have no beauty;
but the light within your eyes
is theirs alone; it owes no duty.
And their kindled flame, not half as bright,
is meant for me, and brings delight.

Coral formed beneath the sea,
though scarlet-tendriled, cannot warm me;
while your lips, not half so red,
just touching mine, at once inflame me.
And the searing flames your lips arouse
fathomless oceans fail to douse.

Bright roses’ brief affairs, declared
when winter comes, will wither quickly.
Your cheeks, though paler when compared
with them?―more lasting, never prickly.

And your cheeks, though wan, so dear and warm,
far vaster treasures, need no thorns.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Love Sonnet LXVI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates between ice and fire.

I love you only because you’re the one I love;
I hate you deeply, but hatred makes me implore you all the more
so that in my inconstancy
I do not see you, but love you blindly.

Perhaps January’s frigid light
will consume my heart with its cruel rays,
robbing me of the key to contentment.

In this tragic plot, I ****** myself
and I will die loveless because I love you,
because I love you, my Love, in fire and in blood.



Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.

I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your ******* like almonds, whole.

I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.

I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.



Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame;
I love you as obscure things are embraced in the dark ...
secretly, in shadows, unguessed & unnamed.

I love you like shrubs that refuse to blossom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now, thanks to your love, an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body’s odors.

I love you without knowing―how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care;
I love you this way because I know no other.

Here, where “I” no longer exists ... so it seems ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.



Sonnet XLV
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't wander far away, not even for a day, because―
how can I explain? A day is too long ...
and I’ll be waiting for you, like a man in an empty station
where the trains all stand motionless.

Don't leave me, my dear, not even for an hour, because―
then despair’s raindrops will all run blurrily together,
and the smoke that drifts lazily in search of a home
will descend hazily on me, suffocating my heart.

Darling, may your lovely silhouette never dissolve in the surf;
may your lashes never flutter at an indecipherable distance.
Please don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because then you'll have gone far too far
and I'll wander aimlessly, amazed, asking all the earth:
Will she ever return? Will she spurn me, dying?



Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.

We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.

Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams ...
and ******* limply, screams and screams.

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



Mayflies
by Michael R. Burch

These standing stones have stood the test of time
but who are you
and what are you
and why?

As brief as mist, as transient, as pale ...
Inconsequential mayfly!

Perhaps the thought of love inspired hope?
Do midges love? Do stars bend down to see?
Do gods commend the kindnesses of ants
to aphids? Does one eel impress the sea?

Are mayflies missed by mountains? Do the stars
regret the glowworm’s stellar mimicry
the day it dies? Does not the world grind on
as if it’s no great matter, not to be?

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.
And yet somehow you’re everything to me.

Originally published by Clementine Unbound



Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official―zenlike Art―
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile becomes mock porcelain.

Till in the end, the smile alone remains:
titanium-based alloys undestroyed
with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains
of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed

us most about the corpses rectified
to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.



Modern Appetite
by Michael R. Burch

It grumbled low, insisting it would feast
on blood and flesh, etcetera, at least
three times a day. With soft lubricious grease

and pale salacious oils, it would ease
its way through life. Each day―an aperitif.
Each night―a frothy bromide, for relief.

It lived on TV fare, wore pinafores,
slurped sugar-coated gumballs, gobbled S’mores.
When gas ensued, it burped and farted. ’Course,

it thought aloud, my wife will leave me. ******
are not so **** particular. Divorce
is certainly a settlement, toujours!

A Tums a day will keep the shrink away,
recalcify old bones, keep gas at bay.
If Simon says, etcetera, Mother, may
I have my hit of calcium today?


Mother of Cowards
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

So unlike the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Spread-eagled, showering gold, a strumpet stands:
A much-used trollop with a torch, whose flame
Has long since been extinguished. And her name?
"Mother of Cowards!" From her enervate hand
Soft ash descends. Her furtive eyes demand
Allegiance to her ****'s repulsive game.

"Keep, ancient lands, your wretched poor!" cries she
With scarlet lips. "Give me your hale, your whole,
Your huddled tycoons, yearning to be pleased!
The wretched refuse of your toilet hole?
Oh, never send one unwashed child to me!
I await Trump's pleasure by the gilded bowl!"

Originally published by Light



Premonition
by Michael R. Burch

Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go―
each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their warm laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...

and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...

and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.

And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
to be wiped clean, like slate, by the dark hand of fate
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...

You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking gently above ...

Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.

I rather vividly remember writing this poem after an office party the year I co-oped with AT&T (at that time the largest company in the world, with presumably a lot of office parties). This would have been after my sophomore year in college, making me around 20 years old. The poem is “true” except that I was not the host because the party was at the house of one of the upper-level managers. Nor was I dating anyone seriously at the time.



Your e-Verse
by Michael R. Burch

for the posters and posers on www.fillintheblank.com

I cannot understand a word you’ve said
(and this despite an adequate I.Q.);
it must be some exotic new haiku
combined with Latin suddenly undead.

It must be hieroglyphics mixed with Greek.
Have Pound and T. S. Eliot been cloned?
Perhaps you wrote it on the ***, so ******
you spelled it backwards, just to be oblique.

I think you’re very funny, so, “Yuk! Yuk!”
I know you must be kidding; didn’t we
write crap like this and call it “poetry,”
a form of verbal exercise, P.E.,
in kindergarten, when we ran “amuck?”

Oh, sorry, I forgot to “make it new.”
Perhaps I still can learn a thing or two
from someone tres original, like you.



http://www.firesermon.com
by Michael R. Burch

your gods have become e-vegetation;
your saints―pale thumbnail icons; to enlarge
their images, right-click; it isn’t hard
to populate your web-site; not to mention
cool sound effects are nice; Sound Blaster cards
can liven up dull sermons, [zing some fire];
your drives need added Zip; you must discard
your balky paternosters: ***!!! Desire!!!
these are the watchwords, catholic; you must
as Yahoo! did, employ a little lust :)
if you want great e-commerce; hire a bard
to spruce up ancient language, shed the dust
of centuries of sameness; lameness *****;
your gods grew blurred; go 3D; scale; adjust.

Published by: Ironwood, Triplopia and Nisqually Delta Review

This poem pokes fun at various stages of religion, all tied however elliptically to T. S. Eliot's "Fire Sermon: (1) The Celts believed that the health of the land was tied to the health of its king. The Fisher King's land was in peril because he had a physical infirmity. One bad harvest and it was the king's fault for displeasing the gods. A religious icon (the Grail) could somehow rescue him. Strange logic! (2) The next stage brings us the saints, the Catholic church, etc. Millions are slaughtered, tortured and enslaved in the name of religion. Strange logic! (3) The next stage brings us to Darwin, modernism and "The Waste Land.” Religion is dead. God is dead. Man is a glorified fungus! We'll evolve into something better adapted to life on Earth, someday, if we don’t destroy it. But billions continue to believe in and worship ancient “gods.” Strange logic! (4) The current stage of religion is summed up by this e-mail: the only way religion can compete today is as a form of flashy entertainment. ***** a website before it's too late. Hire some **** supermodels and put the evangelists on the Internet!



The State of the Art (?)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has passion been coerced?

Shall poetry fade slowly,
like Latin, to past tense?
Are the bards too high and holy,
or their readers merely dense?



Plastic Art or Night Stand
by Michael R. Burch

Disclaimer: This is a poem about artificial poetry, not love dolls! The victim is the Muse.

We never questioned why “love” seemed less real
the more we touched her, and forgot her face.
Absorbed in molestation’s sticky feel,
we failed to see her staring into space,
her doll-like features frozen in a smile.
She held us in her marionette’s embrace,
her plastic flesh grown wet and slick and vile.
We groaned to feel our urgent fingers trace
her undemanding body. All the while,
she lay and gaily bore her brief disgrace.
We loved her echoed passion’s squeaky air,
her tongueless kisses’ artificial taste,
the way she matched, then raised our reckless pace,
the heart that seemed to pound, but was not there.



“Whoso List to Hunt” is a famous early English sonnet written by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) in the mid-16th century.

Whoever Longs to Hunt
by Sir Thomas Wyatt
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Whoever longs to hunt, I know the deer;
but as for me, alas!, I may no more.
This vain pursuit has left me so bone-sore
I'm one of those who falters, at the rear.
Yet friend, how can I draw my anguished mind
away from the doe?
                                   Thus, as she flees before
me, fainting I follow.
                                     I must leave off, therefore,
since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Whoever seeks her out,
                                         I relieve of any doubt,
that he, like me, must spend his time in vain.
For graven with diamonds, set in letters plain,
these words appear, her fair neck ringed about:
Touch me not, for Caesar's I am,
And wild to hold, though I seem tame.



Alien Nation
by Michael R. Burch

for J. S. S., a "Christian" poet who believes in “hell”

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices “speech”
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro―
far colder than Jesus’s words
over the “fortunate” sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.



Keywords/Tags: sonnet, sonnets, meter, rhythm, music, musical, rhyme, form, formal verse, formalist, tradition, traditional, romantic, romanticism, rose, fire, passion, desire, love, heart, number, numbers, mrbson

From the interstitial bile of the Profitis Ilias, was emanated the inaugural armour of the codes of Radius’s Eurhythmy. With it traces it typology of the three broken areas of energeia purple that will raise from bases it elementary of the contrafactum of melody of the Raedus. First with the paragraph’s of the Prophet Elias in the portion of the firstly 103 meters but awarding the contrafactum melodic same on the text of the Raedus Codex, that they will be rhythmic epigraphs of hallelujah and beginning of the Kirye. The polyphony will be an elevation of liturgy that will deliver doubly for the pipe that carries the prolific ascension to the face of the surface of the Profitis Ilias. Hypostasis Will be the substance, but of be to of way of the true unified to the all of the reality of the Áullos Kósmos.  To some 1, 7 years incessant light followed coming the Fourth Saeta of Zefian, to order the Áullos Kósmos with the ordination of the Go Auric that will conclude the retina that remains of the firmament and of his path like full earthly extra. The quota of prophecies will reside in the tectonics of the cliff and in fail them of the rocky mass, on the upper blocks from this outcrop from the inferior layers, from the start of the materials allochthonous on the hole of erosion, going in the Sibyls and the Prophet Elias until the 103 meters of the height.  

Codex I -Tectonic Nihil

The honor explains the Regressive Legend of this good piece of Meat Corpulent and Brain also, was born to write his astragals in his terminal syllable, whole and dying with the blood of Etruscans Steeds and Macedonics, each had golden piercing hanged internally in one of his six ******* paranasal, sealing the life of this blood caretaker Franciscan and swordsmiths extemporal so that with his last four molars yielded the light amalgamated Crystalline and overflowing in the gums of the lapse that soaks of blood the fields equestrian. In this codex Sibyl Pérsica would enter by the cylindrical vault, she advanced with a light secluded and stepped a snake, under the steeled hooves of Alikanto. She with his veil and oil lamp announced the arrival of the Messiah, here the awakening semblance invokes by the honor of his come, to Parents and the Mothers. The Souls of Trouvere appear beside Estratónice, Lochnith, and Wonthelimar.

It says Lochnith: The world abdicated the pontifical, have run the curtains so that enter the light, Moses here has to come with the true curtains that house the lunettes, the thrones of the Sibyls and Prophets that come us the miracles salvations that are born of his entelechy, for the one who is forbidden in the thousandth portion of the broadcast that break out like an affair signal, and testamentary of the Apocalypse to the Poielipsis in creation testament were live in the whispers of Emmanuel, in the verses burnished and oracular of Sibyl, daughter of Dárdano and Neso. With meager differences and matrices between Hellespont and Dardania, like Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and this last between the outstandingly in Eon Kareem, but in the corresponding bifurcation approximated to the baptistery. The Hexagonal Primogeniture will mandate the hardships of hexameters in front of the hectometers that will do evidence of the Escatón a third world is like a consistent reality, real that will carry us to the hope of a life satisfied and trained.  

Codex II - Tectonics Supra Lithosphere

Three white eagles’ headed flew by Tel Gomel, carrying blood in his claws twisted of spines turgid. They brought the vaticinator of double death predicted, with his double craze put and his double helmet that transmitter the rings of the putrid Tanat’s by the faces, and by his lips lackluster feeble in Him, Vernarth had sent them a missive with the Eagles in low flight; all they were dressed of the stink of the field of yellow fog and black battle, on the silty hooves of Beelzebub that heaved in the ones of Alikanto, they moan on the lymphoma of the size of a dream of six decades in his ridge crucible, that wheezed purges by his full snout of rests of lymph remaining in the interstitial of his teeth Burnished canine-alanos. His heart reconverted in armour red ad limitem with blue endocardial flourishing. When putting the twilight of the blowout lying of wind Eolionimi and Shamal, went breaking the vertical with the halter of his greedy steed to the spit helicoidal volatile mats in the catacombs of Markazí where residents of his lineage forge dwelt in abominations of the Lives that renacían victorious from the fire of cult to the city that houses his true Life and Soul in Sibylla Pérsica.

Singing of Wonthelimar: Already the veils have collected will carry the candles that wire the souls freed of Trouvere cries of prosperity expect us from the medrons that rebirth of the immanent presence of her same, to meters on the level of the lithosphere showed the Rings Ibics to the meeting of a tertiary matchmaker in the Saeta of Zefian,  and behold where interprets the law, the future gives us the pennant of justice insufficient of Light but there of the cavern that is born in the turns of the third world. It says Of Meturgeman or Rabí that break down the avatars of his advances, by ends off-center if they have to be the verticality of the Sibyllas with the mind of God. Like this we go topping by this axon of spiritual fatigue, centering in the nervous excessively that goes out of the body of consciousness of the cosmos, transmitting impulses of the same by Elías´s links, where the motor structure of the teacher and the testamentary of Leví, and Greek Aramaic Leví in Qumram subsisting to the big speed of how has to pass the Messiah priestly will interpret all the word of the Mashiaj in the Áullos Kósmos in his order motor and behold the Messiah  Priestly, and the patriarchs like Set, Enoch, and Isaac having the work of unraveling the illusions and mysteries of the cosmos of the same way that the angel interpreter the nocturnal visions in the apocalyptic relates of San John the Apostle.

Codex III -Tectonic Quartzite

The disloyal Ghosts came from 70 km of the Iranian city of Shiraz province of Fars, near the place where the river Pulwar ends in the Kur (Kyrus).  His construction and destruction would be provinces that will be subjected until the conquest of the Persian Empire subjected in October by Alexander the Great. Persépolis Remain turned into rooms of the Harem and in *** of magnet bizarro between massacred gods. The transitions of the porches in the sides are joined by angular towers in the Apadana of profane interlock. The two big doors remained opened in eternity groaning salts in interminable assets of predefinition and recharge in his abortive degree.

Here they were the comrades of Vernarth overwhelmed of preparations and attires in the lobs of Mars on his shoulders after oracles tempest of the burning sun in his heads.  Anahita; Goddess of the nature, pours the blessed waters of the nature that washed with morbid rains the bodies of the fallen in the ***** battles with the roosters of the Zoroaster, cutting the palanquin where are seated, and enraptured in polytheism with Ahura Mazda with a short difference like cloister and capota, ad carry to shoe the monarchic attires of Macedonia in front of his defeated realm by the subjugated constitution of golden blood of Alexander the Great and Vernarth tied to the Macedón or Zeus, fully Hellenic that ran vast both strides by muted seams of basaltic streets of paving stones, and obsidians between paradises of vintage and wind. The Sybilla Eritrea shows his veil not only collected but significantly knotted on the belly that alludes to the state of gravity of the ****** in Incarnation (scene of the Annunciation). The meters of ascension to see determinant the first 103 meters of climbing insinuate the appellatives of Erqia, Eriflam Herifle, and Riquea.

Singing of Estratónice: In the marble reside of white Apeiron of indeterminate infinite matter, exempt of quality and that finds in the eternal movement of the Eolionimi, that has to dwell in his belly a savior white from the Áullos Kósmos or paradise of Vernarth, the word will say that it rescues the life of the mortal the facets of the Katapausis would make amends the effluvia Hebrew in the ponderation of the mainstay of the virola that embraces the saeta of Zefian falling from the altitude. The biface solitude will trespass the rocky subsoil of the peak of the Profitis Ilias like this with tender meters that will cross the Fero of absorption of his Santity and Salvation of the Humanity.

Codex IV Tectonic Cenozoico

From Rodas, the geological temporary scale will contribute us the evolutionary frame of the rocky mantle, and superpositions in the happen of time. I register fossils of organisms that underlying in layers or endodermis of the prehistory of the Dodecanese. Vernarth After crossing the Helesponto transgressed his for psiquis parapsychological in the substitute Brook to Sudpichi like a weightless mantle of a Machi praying to the Kósmos Negechen by the rickty Rehue prophesying to him on his hands dismembered of bravery, of big assistance in 300 years of souls Nge-Nge Mapus deu in the raging nose that propelled the wrath; similar substitute with which trigger the knot, Champollion with some sphinx uncovering the allegories of Pandora from the Valleys of the Kings.

Singing of Sibila Líbica: The sparking plugs will inflame the Iridescent eyes of the Mashiaj flashed in the likely settlement mortuary of Alexander the Great in the oasis of Siwa: Oh My warm wind of Libya that flatters my chees, and my shoulders that groove in the light of the callous brain coexistence of Zeus. Singing by you my Didaskein; treating or teaching to the baffled herd that confuses the menages that were born to. B.C., not having a reminiscence of Irradiation in the mastery of the continuous-time of not contravening of ignorance, but yes to find him agreed and effulgent!    

Codex V Tectonic Brisehal  

By the desolate empty Dasht-and-Lut, Brisehal a huge shady of structure is moved him when is covered until all half orient, even disobeying to his parents; beings in uncrowded places of contemplation that were surfacing of his big mountain of the delighted desert overflowed the lemurs strolling alone as wanting to take off the last spark of politics that remained them for surrendering in his own banishment encountered. Brisehal Was an eminent mount with a head of the can similar to Anubis, but million times of the size upwards and with a clorhídricbreath, like a perspective of the congregation to go into the garden-realm of The Skies and in his laps. Before shivering the day with the movement of his shuddered step, Brisehal was two years moving day and night in the surface that did alluring of lux Solaris.  Brisehal In this fifth codex liquefied in the black layer of the tunnels of wind that hide by Dash-and-Lut, until the sensory layer of Dasht-and-Kavir, attracting by the tunnel of the grotto of 308 meters of height of Patmos intra geological, all the sculptures and images of the cusps did near to the 103 meters of initial altitude in this vertical underground in attachment with the parallel that retracted in cubic tones drilling the doloninas or geological depressions in the extensive of Lut for a giant that is born of the wails and lacerations of Vernarth when it was tutored by saetas in the middle of the field of Gaugamela, even moving to Maceo. When they moved noisily the dolines, lower mountains conceived deduced with the greater effect of his swivels nerves were immense thunderclaps that even reflected until the spheroids nimbus reddened by the riot of Dasht-and-Kavir. It turned off left to right pretending exile the Desert of Lut tubed in pro generation by both do of optical rope or fibers in high energy density, and that it could cohabit beside Vernarth disabling in the odyssey of the Horcondising (Paradise of the lineage of Vernarth to Gaugamela).

Singing of Brisehal: The veil that receives the indifference, has knotted in the abdomen hatched of the earth, and of the dolonina that protected me of the folio that barter what there was or of will have to become. The Gesta of all those that suffer from foot and rely on, have three abortive routines in his gravidity of a white relative, that did to shelter me in the love to my gentleman Vernarth. Sibila Eritrea neither in Greeks nor Latins has to sortear the breviaries of the maximum pontifex that speaks while dozing of anilines nights where anybody perishes awake in his epítome?

Sibilino By the Saudi, from the vórtice direct the gulfs that hide from where rebirth like choruses of Esquilo, behind the springs of Agamemnon in where Clytemnestra opens plains that do to run the Shamal by his dry disposition of dew, but humid of the sap of Eritrea faces in springs subtropical that tears dry of the tough body fallen in tears that will not hear by the tenacious hemp?

To the-Haffar, the third party is with saetas in his thigs, arms and pectoral, where the star does open shining for the one who dies by her in the first lightning of the night Thurayya, with violent embraces to receive to the one who from a codex receives the fifth bowl for violent winds of fishermen that resolved of the wind in a fine dust of the cleft hands of Aldebarán, peepholes of bilges of ogres that are born hell to die as pious in arms of Sybilla Eritrea, and in prologues of Brisehal with so many meters of wingspan, nevertheless that of any rye in the greater degree that have to ceremoniously in perks of a revived Sybilla Líbica.      


Codex VI - Strigoi Asthenosphere

In the spring of 331 b. C., Alexander the Great left Egypt returning to the port of Shot, where was his fleet. Of there it headed to Antioquía, crossing the valley of the river Orontes, and arrived at the River Éufrates to the height of Tapsaco, were founded the city of Nicéforo so that it was a strong square and tank of the supplies of the army, Here it was learned that Darius was found in Arbelas as he was crossing the Tigris, and heading north along the eastern bank of the river. The Sybilla Cumana found in the height 97 of the tunnel of wind when auscultating these waves very near of the dolonines, in avidity of the Pythia Délfica with divinatory proselytes that visited the folds of his attire, in places of his divinatory crowd cerebral. His relativity Cumana waste of energy of the Mausoleum, prophesying life for all in the passion of the life together with the abandoned bodies by the souls of the Devotio Roman, and in the poverty of the soul that drains scared by not remaining desolate between half of the parchment of Lilith, and in the offering of the Strigoi by breaches of troubling visions in the darkness of the cavern of Chauvet, when sacrificing competitive emotions of the Votum maléfico of Lilith.  Only one can exist like an inviolable part of the tradition of the chastest Wonthelimar, attempting the Xiphos with human chamois in tectonic offering and frizzing the altitude 103 of the tunnel of wind of the Strigoi.    

Vlad Strigoi Sings: Mardiath, noble and loyal hussar of the sea of Vernarth, Boss of the fleets of the Gulf, came by the cover when giving the turn by the bauprés, sees collected and hit by ropes in parasitosis that shined like a stray in the oars of the gods, and pleading that felt in the whistling of the wind. It approaches and it descends by dark sheds stairs with direction to the piston of water, who heresy in the ship Vladiana is quarreling when I training me in writing when saying who love the one who I am not, alone receipt phlegmons multitudinous Saecula Saeculorum, not hitting any foundation to confess me. They say not knowing that reveal due to the fact that it is not content that compares to the one who does not have Age, Life either Compassion that only has to communicate me like messenger Strigoi! Now I know that anybody will sing my thoughts, there is not ink that dares to spread a comparable quill that resists my word of ammonium Strigoi, usurped of a shipping Ballinger to some Flemish pirates, seconded to the side by a barge of Panescalm, that threw to 64 one thousand bodies massacred of the Bubonic Plague. Mardiath, get out of the Ballinger and leaves his sword to Vlad beside a geographic table to rediscover a destination in some doncella that could attend his disorders, more than ganglion suppuration in prostration. It traces back the course to shot to find with Vernarth and his minions to direct finally to the braves fields of Gaugamela and the Prehensile Ctónicos who revered to the gods or telluric spirits in the tectonic infra world by opposition to celestial deities, appearing in the tubular ascension of the warm wind that topped the consecration of my roman arteries, and all those that were up expecting them. The oblations of light lit the particles of the woodworm that suspended expelling those that magnetized the fosca matter. The unconnected syntax did periodically in the words of Strigoi from the Capite Velato or head watched from the Ballinger Strigoi that attained relocate. In double increase of sap did it minor to resist his life and his closure lying minimum in front of Wonthelimar, and Mardiath that satisfied him of the company in the eyebolt that sustains the road in his sullen life.

It sings Mardiath: The troops of Vernarth would split from Shot were found his fleet that came from Sudpichi from the Empire of the Horcondising. It explains the legend that in the heights of the Gulf when his army goes sailing, break out on his squares a mysterious tempest of hot airs of Ormuz to the height  665 in miles of Um Kasar, had found pertinent shipping of current Romania. when spotting them and take part inside this frigid ship at all there was, only crunches of topmasts and his sail greater that was spurring and presenting fenced curtains that came from of Sighisoara/Transilvania; where the alike Vlad Tepes stated seated behind a chamber of captaincy writing in his buffet. Each true interval took out a handkerchief to dry his ****** nose, like a pinch of gelatinous darky ink and sullied. It sings Isaías: The presence in the versed and corresponding folio, does relative the prophecy of Emmanuel been born of a ****** that associates to similar prophecy Virgiliana of the Cumana justifying his prophetic symbolism and beholds the caution that blackens skies where the light retracted, thousands are chained during the annunciation of a thousandth abyss like the fateful Strigoi only troubled pastures will have to transplant rebellions, that dying slept for the winnow of the ideal of incipient spiritual ******* dressed of execration. It has trigged the conflagration of the heart that resists the death and that is in decline several times in the conditions awaited by the apostates when denying of the water that does not do them Optimus and does elliptical the radius of obedience in the heart Vernarthiano satisfied of granules of Physconia grumose, whose frequency they become encysted in bodies of traitors reigns and of fungus lineages. The reign of the saints will judge plurality in the thrones with devastation in fatuous beatifications in Pérgamo, already admonished by me.    

Codex VII - Báculo of Sheesham  

Vernarth it calms lying down on the bunks of the fire of Sheesham. Beam and Incense with ultra olfactory and sensory powers, delineating the elementary and phenomenal cores housing and adapting híper connectivity with probity Hinduist the akasha executed the essential foundation in all the things of material cosmovision; the first palpable material element and concrete was created by the god Brahmá (air, fire, water, earth are the others). Did it treat one of the classical elements of Hinduism, pañcha-majá-bhuta or? Five big elements; His main characteristic is the sabda (sound). In sanscrit, this word means "space. It is the physical and eternal substance Akasha, of the ether that flows by the Akasha-Nautas and by Vernarth in each regression parasicológica. Vernarth Takes of a báculo called Key of Sheesham purchased it once anxious for delivering it to his beloved Toscana in the Cathedral St. Mary dei Fiori, in one of his Regressives Lives. They expected it astonished by the tyrannized impulsiveness of the noble in Florencia, of which once again came delayed of the tillage of the barley and of the god’s fatuous next to the Porcellino. It expected long hours until it went out his beloved Maddalena of the Eucharistic ceremonial, while the carried in his right hand his crosier, and in the left a rectangular box sizeable for his hand, inside carried essences of the potpourri of lavender and vellorita, a ring with a stone of amethyst coated by a concave skittle of gold, in the outline supra circulate carried medieval ornaments of silver of Etruria of the Party of the past barley. In front of this acquiescence Sybilla Samiense, followed carrying the clairvoyance where the prophet Isaías there was untied the conflagration of the heart that resists the death and that is in decline several times in the form today from Kafersesuh in Ein Karem, opens the stamp of residing in the cradle where María poses beside his son, already being part of the lithosphere of Getsemaní and of Vernarth in the heart of Maddalena.

Phylogeny in Getsemaní: The **** erectus crossed with multiple pieces of evidence of beings pro-evolutionary-adaptative, Neanderthal/HomoSapiens. Children of Israel wrote parables, epistles, verses, histories, and books, his vocal tract and phonetic spoke of tempest and environmental factors between sky and earth, of the big noise out of us, but little silence in us. The elementary is larynx that only pronounces the image that reports concepts evocative minimal of the sound in distinct placings of the melisma in mega sound. Speaking us how the language varies according to the history, and the half civic-climatic instructing us to his threshold and descendants when giving off by the effusions aerial of the language in assiduous levels tracheo-laryngeal. Earning authoritatively the intervals of vocalization, and relation of the junction with the agriculture and all his dimension descending by his internal walls, but going up by parietal overexcites out of her same.

Of the little air that remains to the world, to follow digesting temporarily assumes leaving flow his extra-air that possessed this in particles mechanically inert, and no in sanctified prophecies with miracles inferences and Inherence that Innova factótum, in the súper existence of which even do not perish by the hand of a monarchic mandate. Like this, the world swallows air in halves suffocating and contaminated whole, whereas others redistribute it for the one who needs to seat at the table to collect the Bread and share it with the other half.  Here it echoes the echo of body Christic, that in Aramaic syndicate much more than a language in his blood, grapheme and phonemes of stylistic in vibratory shock further of his deep stretch reverberating with the grace of his billed divine. Joshua swallows spikes and leaves simultaneously having us in his arms like children of olive-nursling, risk a sheep in his arms giving us lactate hydro-milk of the sustain of a verb creator. Fact strict to preserve the Aramaic and no stray with turning the turns of the leaves in the history, the Aramaic has to incorporate for the times that Joshua grazes us after more than two thousand years even. The one who is walking of one side to another to say us that it still is here, only comfort suggest your walk plagiarized with his larynx the sound of his expression the sheep is mammalian but mammalian that the man as his billed formulates bleats always reflected in the base of his skull for the rest of his children like biblical language, under all the rainbows of Querubines bawling beside boys surrounding them in identical intention! **** habilis, **** Sanctus in a process that possesses Orthodox bases and peripheral anatomical capacity, a linguistic Pythagorean shortcut of the dalliance and sternum when confusing it between yes, not altering his structural complexity neither functional. Of the potential of the Lepidoptera and winged insects, will arise the phenotype that will relate and relativize the mechanical aramea or Aramaic method for no stray the divine tongue, as well as it also is sublime the laryngitic torque of the one who possesses blood and body Aramaic, as his mechanized mystic devours the minimum words with the maximum in an all of the ranges of cacophonies and of prototyped field, they see to my field here spoke the spikes and the insects more than the own mechanical potential of your Voice.

The tunnel of wind filled with Lepidópteras that flew rising in shape helicoidal, everything sensitized with the imminent advent of the saeta magnánima of Zefian that came crossing the perihelion from the high Áullos Kósmos, dialécticamente with abundance credibility in the interior of the geological tunnel of the Profitis Ilias, list to the turgent of lactation doctoral theological. Timoratas And long justices rounded in those who were even exhausted, entre ajar the colophon of the days that began with the identification of the báculo Sheesham, appointing regent of tribulations that drains by his length of trip, to the basality static focusing idiosyncrasies and interests of the Prophet Elías that it received them in the height 103 with passages of Corintios that the saints go to help in the administration of the saints millenials. His capacity will not have the limits of his previous earthly life?  


Codex VIII - Ultramundis Alikantus

Alikantus Archetype of his a short astral trip three days that topped in Gaugamela...! Bulle In hides and discomfort after lightening his igneous hooves by slippery Lerapetras of Lasithi in stepped that seemed to be the same inflows of committed that brought Kanti of Creta, that pyrographed the floor Traciano before arriving at the request of his address. It resorts to Medea, before arriving at Tracia after errate by distinct places in search of protection and councils to protect to his master Vernarth, while it subjected to the last libations opiáceas of vivid liliáceas and angiosperms encapsulated in his pectoral right in the anonymous of Alikanto, asking him to Medea a potion to be able to supply him to his master and reduce inflammation his pectoral for like this can use his armour Áspis Koilé in the fight, as they subtracted three days for the duel. Medea Arrived at the city of Athens on a tempestuous day with a gray dantesco Fusco on the palm of the cliff escaping previously near Abdera, in which the orient proceeded to evacuate sooty plectrums to the sunset. Medea While it looked to the sky, took a piece of anthracite of feldspar to create javelins of aluminum that would have to carry Alikanto to his return, beside the potions for deflating his pectoral infected. It painted the sky with grey lines plotted and lodged later in his wry loop,  sighting from the infinite signals that came joining up in a ray of an alloy whose semblance seemed to be a king, it was Egeo, that not only offered him hospitality but it would link with Medea with the hope that his sorceries allowed him to conceive a son in spite of the advanced of his age. The sorceress fulfilled his expectations by having a son to call Medo. When Teseo, the secret son of Egeo, arrived in Athens had to that his father recognized it like heir Medea took it as a threat to the future of his son and tried to poison it. But Teseo discovered it, accusing it to commit horrible crimes and witchcraft, Medea had to escape again. This crusade had the assistance of Alikantus that transported it flying from Abdera, not to be captured and can supplement the potions that had requested him Alikantus, also with javelins that had to carry to Vernarth to escort him off the splendorous insult. The convulsed Sybilla Cimera customized the symbols of the ceremonial willing forging classical gestures of prodigality, and that at all less was a cornucopia given to zephyrs of the Ultramundis, that revolutionized the boss around that shuddered in the pickets of the dermis rocky that dressed the walls of the final tubule of 103 meters. The channel located referred inclinations of Likantus that harassed, and customize the final discretion of Teseo to finish with the folio of Egeo downward breaking the sentence of his son, and evading it of his stepmother. In this colisseo rooted Teseo beside his mother Etra that did not reveal him the name of his father until it fulfilled sixteen years. Arrived at this age, Teseo could raise the stone, shoe in the sandals and the sword of his father, and initiate his trip to Athens to be recognized like a son of the king. From this obviously Vernarth in the film of Gaugamela dressed him in the sandals Persikaia that did of him the one who never was, and if it died would carry them settled until the altar of the comedies in the Tristanía, where all that surrealist exceeds the loquacity narrow of reality, more than at all in racked muses in forced symptomatology of paranoia or of a heroine Sybilla, that mediated with the Arms of Christi in the iconology of the Codex Raedus.

Vernarth Seated in the edge of the Ultramundis, and broke in front of the cosmos and the solitude that hid all the beings that floated in the ditch that he collected in his moaning, in such judge that it rejected all the creations when feeling his wails, where the demons looked him from the darkness that fragile hastened his Magro occipital, attacking him in front of Medea evading the Satanic circumscription to contravene it the agreed with Egeo. The perjures reigned in the doubts of tragedy favored of Komedia parading in victorious procession, and singing triumphs of duality paranoic tragic, enthroned in the martyrs of tribulation, and in the seeds of the one who does not cease Tragediopathic Ubis, and in facts that speak of the hunger of solitude in all man plunged of the Ultramundis, as only dimensional of the one who burns in his doubts and of Anastasia frustrated. Vernarth Saysekáthisan and the Duoverso in consequence of the Universe seated to dry his tears then Vernarth received from the darkness of the Ultramundis a golden light of steeds Hippeis with an aura of Tesalia, where the krima or criminality become in three chambers threaten from Maceo to the confrontable in the half-hour of Arbela. Vernarth compress desisting the essays of procrastination reconstructing bodies’ severed here more than going isolating of his own souls and sins, with Hebrew souls of root Néfesh that took spooky in capsizing of decapitation of the one who lives exponentiating in the solitude of the Ultramundis. Inexorably the infra earthly holiness of the surrealism exceeds any verse, if it is that it was Lazarus here in the tunnel of wind the one who raises in front of Vernarth embracing him,  and playing it cool the greek of Likantus to fulfill him his mission.


Codex IX Ultramundis Phalanx
            
The labaros of the Phalanx saw from Asia some of the faithful groups of Alexander the Great. They appeared like ursids and Amphibians that came by the near step from Gorgan. "The Red Snake" was a defensive construction from here come the palfreys of Alikanto, preview with big camerades of animals for the body adhered to the cavalry of Alexander the Big. This incredible barbican begins on the coast of the Caspio, north of Gonbade Kavous, and continues to the northwest and disappears in the mountains of Pishkamar. They continued on the buttresses beside Bears and Leviathanes, they formed part of the totemic dreams, that taenia Vernarth when it assumed hallucinations doped by regressive turn by hieratic spaces to the slip away in hardships and incorporate in connection with animal pets in rhythms and waltzes of the applause of his atabales. Alikantus came speedy flying almost without detaining and without distracting when he brought the poisons and instruments of the armory of the panoply. He came Already had for the hours that came to fill out details before taking the game besides the Heavy infantry, Light, and Thessalonians. Inside the most elementary of his mission, he was to do the protocol of the potion, broadcast the preaching beside the Lumberjack, and distribute the javelins to the Hetairoi of Vernarth.

When anchoring the cerulean hoofs of the fire unknown of the Gods, attains to discern as to Vernarth took him out of the back of an Elephant attacker was besides accompanied by the cunning guard dog of Alexander called Péritas, that insinuated him start and raise with windstorms in warlike stratagems. Vernarth Came of his last session frugal Opiácea, for institute vegetal nervous lianas that commonly remained with some of them, and remained cut off in his cephalic vein and jugular stalking his ******, that always spreads in laurels of Cocoon, and by averages of intríngulis that had to gobble up by some days. It would follow daily being joined to the infinite that saw him be born, like the most magnificent Commander of Alexander the Great neither imagined nor collated! The wall Gorgan possessed a length of at least 200 kilometers upper to any one of the Roman walls that outlined in archeology like works of bastion. It was exhausting to exceed it and take a course with beasts since they were upset when being near Tel Gomel to the present that they were approaching the mulch of Vernarth; due to the fact that they were his very adored pets besides the Crocodiles Tupak. The Alazanes were prescribed by a watchdog of the wall of Gorgan being of the Persian army that was seduced by the bears to combat beside Vernarth.

Next to the Bumodos, already saw Vernarth play with his pets, Bears, Crocodiles, and the can of Alejandro Magnus. Further submissively approached shoring his frozen neck, Alikanto or Alikantus preceded with donations and drugs for his master brought of the sleight phalanges by Medea. Vernarth was appreciated and almost emancipated of the branch mowing and the strains venal that populated mostly in his pectoral and both full arms of smelly tattoos that had colonized him. Almost when getting dark on burgeoning them and fluffs of Zeus then begin to arrive the phalanges of Vernarth. The Phalanx of Macedonia was the training of infantry created and used by Filipo II, and later by his son Alexander the Great in the conquest of the Persian Empire. The phalange Macedonia arose, in fact, like the answer in front of holistic modifications and tactical Hellenistic of Theban strategists, Epaminondas and Pelópidas of strengths of earth that deployed at the beginning of the 4th century B.C. For opposition to the superiority, although it already was decadent in training hoplític spartan, that had exerted in the terrestrial fights between the polis Greek until that dates.

The Sybilla European carried a Gladius in his hand but exchanged it with the Xiphos in alternation by the death of innocent entrusted by Herodes the Big, and of the escape of the Holy family to Egypt. This confirms the liturgical grouping of the Triduo Pascual; the alluding passion of Christ and perpetrating the typical dolorism of the Devotio to his death, and triumph to his resurrection. The transposed of surrealism transports to San Juan digging in all the layers and hordes of the Faith, his componential of tribulación that moved in the Egyptian and Greek cartography, moving the triangular areas of the Phalanx, that moved en geometrical block reaching the edges of the hypotenuse gradient and of the tunnel of wind that elevated them cornering to the beast that visited them pretending to be feeble and imprecise.

The dolines collapsed in myriads substances in suspension, while the two swords Gladius and Xiphos were satisfied with blood Greco-roman. Here vegetated the verb of Elías in the corporal resurrection with similarity of triangular body Lazarinus that saw dragging by the power of tow of the ionic Phalanx in his stuck. They were Beings Equis that abstracted in a start of the Be X in his contrary algebraic; an incógnita or something that could take any quantity in other words something unknown, so that the algorithmic links and cater corporeality resuscitator in Lazarus of Betania inside his angles of Holy Geometry. The winds of swing presented viviparous in future observances of visions and perplexity of consciousness, governing fiscality that does resurrect in rabbinic worlds from the highest occupying thrones in the bracket, but of thrice ignoring the belief by means of greater incredulities that the direct truth and more brief. Elías is attracted by the Cinnabar that ponders in an apocalyptic mosaic, in the chamber Esdras, at the end of the mundane reign dissolved and that dies in the same Messiah. Satanás Does not tire to attack the credibility of the Phalanx in manifolds of dispensationalism, perhaps being strongly attached to Carmelo and of the unloyal that never revive in his same bodies unconverted.    


Codex X Ultramundis Lepanto  

Of Lepanto appeared exhausted the Armis Christi with burned eyes volatilized in stratospheres that received them Belligerent. Cual if they went alien castes settled in inflexible breath, refloating from his clámide in fuss and idiosyncrasy. They arrived cracking the pristine stretches from Tel Gómel when they arrived it charges it a military strategist asking him clemency to extend.

Falangist: With the crest in my hands and the Dorus on my clámide from the floor said; each disposal that tried in the double edges of my sword that dent. The upper leaf Sansevieria nominated me to a Hebraic past and to a medieval future, it was the Sword of Saint Jorge, notifying that my family in Kalidona was under a state paradoxical, given to my two greater children that were quoted to the service of the militia. The second inferior edge of my Xiphos and the Sansevieria bent me ruin in front of the prosopopoeia to the entrance with discouraged to defray the sclerosis of my soul follows exploding, surpassing and impelling to my wife in spars of easy undress. I know that my descendants remained buried under the effect of mortal meeting in the catharsis of Pompeii, the future of Saint George that patented! All emigrated and will escape afterward to remain desolated, and attain to return the inopportune comrades to the reintegrate in the verbena of St Mary in Athens, the Saint Patron saint comforted me and prepared my resist of such bad numerary so that someday left to fall my seeds in the wisdom of archangels peasants with sacral devotional fruits. I sighed and I groaned rubbing in my animals! my empties eyes day and night were mesmerized to the ethereally magnetized. They did it beside me, with the singularity of not to affect me, they went by little booklet near to moan not to see them demagnetized by some fatalistic effects and consummatory.

Etréstles moved by the tribulations of the Child of the Falange, bent imposing non-existence afterward that his words involved the exhortation to Hera by his benevolence consummatory to be able to reside beside her. Like this, they would remain immune to progressive lives under the influence of sharp primary stew and secondary in arms of the phalanx. Shinings the eyes of Hera when the spirit of the Falangist is entering to her were not vanities but if the advent of the vanity in ínfulas to the Acrópolis is carrying it to her.  

Sibila Tiburtina sustains it gathering him in his arms saying him: You will receive the heat that you will imprison in the house of the great priest, a scene that will be represented in Prócoro in the neutral corresponding folio. Events and expletives will be of the past, no longer allocated him neither he annoyed. The Arms Christi again swirling with the Souls of Trouvere in last irascible chinks of the winds Eolonimi in the holístic of all the winds that appointed to Vernarth. "They did not go back to live your children heard a Macedonio military", The physical resurrection of the unconverted take place after the tree of Mars when they free to the innocent fallen in the belief versicular that divides the ray with his half where any minute will be able to hit it. The passages of the tunnel of wind are the wasteland that dies revived by the *** cutting overflowing fibrils of vitality from the high for overflow it downwards for those who even expect amazing miracles, walking beside the alive with hypocoristic triviality reborn in his same blood that was spilled. Everything famous goes walking with pennants that raise of his own sepulcre, cutting lower capillaries of the impetuous rising of his pale cheeks, where the scepter Greco-tridentate will be a forbearance of the one who frees and purposeful escape of the tree of Mars. Now lie down beside your children and will be between the hazels and Eolonimis doing revived of the Tágmati or order of succession of the Polis like the unit of elite tribulating the final stretches of the straight of the Ultramundis to the fries the 103 meters glorified.

Etréstles during the millennium of the Satagenesis and Deidagenesis beside the Heosphoros and the Uomo of Valplacci they prostrated to Lucifer in front of Etréstles (Koumeterium Messolonghi, Cap. 45 - Palibrio USE), reflowing and emulating wars of the Peloponeso, is being east a garrison of the general of the Athenian fleet in western Greece. The mentor floats were directed by the admiral Formión that defeated all the Lacedemonios in Naupacto. When they approximated to the province of Nafpaktia, of the Nomo of Aitoloakarnania confined followed the indivises and weightless musks disseminated, disintegrating immortal souls with the damage of the break exhaled that is extinguished in his offering. It is as well as it could cause some aversion not to be condemned to the Hadic infra world, to Tee castes of gods and semi-gods with Sansevierias in green leaves, and clover that chained to the freedom of the furious gases of Xenon and Lithium, slipping away by drainages and spaces where any sword neither launches will cross the atmosphere of Gaugamela-Macedónica, only Vernarth here was hádic and will have to pipe by the untouched pavilions of the spotless backsstore with heroic lineage. Any curly tease or flagrant will slice sanctified carnosities purchased in quoted sessions in the manacled of the Bumodos with the drugs and the potions of Medea.

Codex XI - Ultramundis Raeder      

From Patmos saw come hundreds of hanged boys of the stringers of the pelican blue of the Dodecanese. Raeder cames Hanged with both hands on the rings of iron plating of jasper; from the Greek "iaspis", that means "stone marked". Raeder found it in sharp hydrothermal, in volcanic rocks, and in sedimentary rocks in the surroundings. With four palmate fingers that shod in the hoops of amethyst for the owners of the house that celebrated the actions of thank you, and the celebration of the guidelines of Saint John that sent them transported in his peak golden shoe. Generally, they were more than five thousand those that transited by the regions, they swallowed canonized water of the sea Jonico with the big advantage to reproduce saltwater seas in freshwater to drink. They carried them to each house to fill his vessels and also in periods of seed, irrigated his tillage in summery periods where scarce, with his brown golden plumages raffle the fields of olives and of the ***** vineyards of the Goddess Afrodita. With his whites plumages, they spray the tillage of barley with vinegar and recently wheat fields fished of the legs of Petrobus, his pelican of the dreams! From here they were born all the recipes by all the regions when it depressed them the Bread without firewood and tares. Patmos has recorded in the stringers of the pelican planning every day and go looking for houses where arrive to carry them the Gospel. To all the boys like Raeder accompanied him other blessed, to carry the good news to families that seated expected near in denouements of his social limits when they expected them by the afternoons with the action of gratitude. They ate by the afternoons to expect the boys to taste them Tzatziki; Sauce of yogurt with cucumber and candy with drinks of poppies and honey, they received them in chambers near his gynoecium and right there exchanged the gifts that brought of the Grotto of the Evangelist in Patmos. The boys from the same moment in that the future mother knew or suspected that it was pregnant, attended speedy so that the distribution did not have problems considered them a divine gift,  the only children to the firstborn or those that were born of greater parents, was the privilege of these primogenitures. Reckless renowned and quotations that appear in the Apocalypse of John, in whose introduction says that the author was banished to Patmos, where had his meeting with Jesus in the called Grotto of the Apocalypse that originated everything.

The grotto or foundation of sapphire, was just to the addition of the empty that levitated from the walls of the grotto were molecules with mass hyperactive, delivering him tracks to Raeder near to the Jasper, calcedonia, emerald, sardónica, sardio, crisolito, berilo, topacio, and crisoprasa, but he magnetized with the Iaspis of the genealogy of Kalymnos that revealed him the wave vibrational on the Jasper,  the Arms Christi of Saint John in Apocalypse 21, of verse 19, says there: "The foundations of the wall of the city all lovely stone the first foundation jasper; in the paráfrasis predicted that the foundations of the Megarón will be most of these materials, but regularly of Iaspis of Raeder.

Sibila Gets flu carries the relative scourges to the scene of Flagellation in the praetorium here filigrees hematíes ran by exvotos simulating blood from the celestial, representing the corresponding straight folio. The natural laws of the Parables Iaspias do the alchemy with noble minerals immanent and hypocoristic in the cavern that revealed all this grace to Raeder for the propaedeutic of the Mashiaj when centralizing here the spacetime that said that God has similarity to the Iaspis, as its bed of condensed gold in the expiration and metalization of the cosmic essence. The similarity did that all the walls of the vault or tunnel of the Profitis Ilias governed of Jasper and Cornelian, being this last of blue greens eyes of Raeder glittering in his iris, and in the curvature of mass that did apressed in the interior of the tunnel of wind that also expanded, doing rubíes and sharpnesses of her same. The visibility of the Universe still did hyper brilliant on the inlet of Patmos, for this Petrobus his Pelicano blue topped surrounded in the arch superciliary of Apollo, to train similarity of the metals like his neighbor metalloid.

Isaías says 28:16: "Therefore, Iahveh the Gentleman says like this; Love and behold that I have put in Sion by the foundation a stone, stone tested, we look by where it begins, a stone, but first tested then angular, then lovely of stable foundation; the one who believed. From this situation the Iaspis and Sardio in the mountain of Sion the throne of the Gentleman that accompanied to Raeder and to the lamb flashing beside his idols Petrobus. They did angulars to all the stones some powdered finally and all pyramided by the dolines, in the exquisiteness of the son that presented in the cavern of the most refractory way for irradiate light that warned to Raeder to go by his progenitors. The glory of Raeder did of the glow to garrison enhanced in voices of boys by all Patmos, speaking that his parents were similar lovely stones to the Iaspis.    


Codex XII - Ultramundis Duodecim Evangelii

The twine of the Rainbow did to mutate the labaros in each color disseminated, already descends a peripeteia in the chromatic Era and niveous, discoloring in the Antiphony of entrance that says: I will give you shepherds according to my heart that grazes you in consciousness and experience. Oh God, that have aroused in the Church to Saint Joseph, Mariah, and his Rabí, wise priest, to proclaim the universal vocation to the holiness of the Duodecim Evangelii, grant us his intercesión and example, in the exercise of the ordinary debit having us to our Messiah, and serve with fervent passion in the work Redentive by our Gentleman Jesus Christ.

This big event exerts from the chasm of the Apocalypse, where daily inhabitants bound handwritten and ancient treasures  Sakkelion-Sakellarios. They upset conforming a new resolution in his scriptorium in the Byzantine period they administered alms and tributes, Curiously related with Zaqueo appearing in the new verses from Lucas´s Gospel, 19 1-10, when Jesus Christ goes in Jericho. It was a publican, boss of collectors, and very rich. The collectors worked for the Romans and besides asking for more money the Romans demanded doing this rich way easily, by what was doubly hated. Zaqueo was low in height and for this reason, when Jesus went in in the city of Jericho, all the world banked to see it and he remained backward and did not arrive to see it. Then it advanced and it went up to a species of the fig tree, a sycamore (Ficus sycomorus) since it went to happen in front of her. When Jesús arrived at that place, said him: Zaqueo goes down prompt; because it suits that today it remains me in your house. In front of this, the village muttered that it went to the lodge home of a sinner. Zaqueo retorts that it will give to the poor half of what has, and if it defrauded to somebody previously will give him the quadruple. Jesús answers that salvation has arrived at his house because he also is the son of Abraham. From this antiphony arises the Twelfth Evangelii, which arises in a file that celebrates the haughty morals of tributes that have to motivate by tribal crowds of Gaugamela for the presence of God, by what want his will and No!

The tessitura of the wind tunnel transfigured the next height of 103, after the blonde grace of Abraham murmuring his tent to generate height over Israel and Jacob. The dolines of aspersion evaporated the matter that transfigured in celestial plasma with ranks of metric coercive, of what that up to is down and vice versa for the hemispheres of the Sefirot, and for the Shemot or name of the start of the origin transfiguring in would idolise of Creation in the Universe-Duoverso. From all the corners will split to give reading to this big incident no easy to read, and listen neither less feel in his once become vibrations by the immortality of the events memorials of the history like regent conveyor of the meeting of all the frivolous voices that sin of ignorance, and those that know by ensuing ebullient. That they will be quadrupled the parchments to the fighters that finalize alive or died in Gaugamela, each one carrying in his hands one of them bled. All the crosses relations of the ancient society, infuse parallel of sustainability of Faith by means of the generosity, almost transferred of an essential charisma praised of the esoteric core of the Same dogma, confusing on the way that it has to transport it without having consciousness of the destination that will carry it, and comes badly from the limen of the doubt from the beginning. Since a king, impious Manases was imprisoned and exiled, designated king impío, convivió in the depths of the heat of the Averno. For the modern Christians, Manases is an icon of the Divine pardon, of where arises the traditional pray socrative of Manasés from the jaculatory of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, since after being one of the kings more bloodthirsty and pagan of the Jewish, forgave him and even was buried in the city of David, pantheon only reserved for the faithful kings with what deduces that God forgave it entirely.

The Sybilla Délfica carries the crown of spines of the Coronation of Jesús become equally in the praetorium, and as in previous cases to the scene that represents in the neutral corresponding. In the triade Eritrea, rather Herófila, if caste and clairvoyant Délfica and apologetic, his vernacular artery did it native of Marpeso, Trojan Tróade, as in fantasies to be a daughter of a Nymph and Shepherd. It chose it did him escort for the Duodecim Evangelii, from Samos this robbing to Patmos in the foundation of the Megarón with the same polygonal of the Chapel Sixtina in the quattrocento, where Vernarth had assistance in Regression parapsychological of the Quattrocento Duodecim Evangelii, announcing that the Vernolatría serious part of his Apologetic life inspiring prophecies with the Parables Iaspis, extolling erudition after the grave that was in the forest of Apollo Esminteo, returning to his origins to a sinkhole in the Córico mountain.          

Codex XIII - Nix in the Tenebrousness

All the demarcations derived to witness Bastos and impolitic utensils of the undivided Gaugamela. Three days before that the Falangists protested to Vernarth for when they were clouded by the Ekadashi. They fasted three days before and delivered to the visas of Zeus, graduating fulgid movements in his lunar seals eleven days before. It is the penultimate stair; already remained hours to walk by the woodworm that shook the heels of the Phalanges, all the accouterments and animals were conferred to the mysticism of essence and to his disputable worshipper. Now in the boundary circle of the heritages of Gaugamela, Darío came from afterward to move the Tigris, organizing his troops and his harem. The Macedonians had an army that added 7.000 riders and 40.000 children. The heavy cavalry of the elite of Alexander was the Hetairoi and was formed by the nobility of Macedonia, that accompanied Alexander in this battle and went the decisive factor in the faction, Vernarth commanded more than 40 one thousand children, saving narrow relation with the Hetairoi with his arms twinned of divine caste, and the Hoplites Greek that took part to cover the rear of the phalanx, that Vernarth defrays from the more furtive boundary of his doctrine in this mobile taint with thousands of Macedonians singing institutional quarrelsome poetry. From the Dodecanese, Kalidona and all the central Greek archipelagos came to surrender the figure of Vernarth, accompanied by Etréstles of Kalavrita, big hero and defender beside Markos Botsaris (Capitulate 6, pag. 36 Koumeterium Messolonghi / Palibrio USA) in this Magna Epos. Also, Raeder incorporated beside Petrobus the Pelican Blue, Brisehal of Dash-and-Lut and Vlad Strigoi appearing of the transversal valleys of Transilvania, suddenly after having arrived of the Reign of the Horcondising, tackling his Frigate in Valparaíso juxtaposing in the nine elements and in megatonnes to be ratified from the start in a new Celestial wasteland. All camp to five kilometers of the Rio Bumodos, in the ***** north where the shady blemishes favored them of a new lunar phase in tendencies, effusion, and backflow that was the apotheosis influence of energy. The worshipper of the clan did not give him any importance especially only given hierarchy by alone gnosis because in these goods could improve his devotion, so they are occupied in his service.  They are to the expectation to have the juncture of renovating even more his mourning for himself by second certificates to his right-handed with astrológics cosmic interpretations of the Ekadashi, being able to be explained by the shoots of the material world.  The concept contravened to the reverences is that the Ekadashi will be the day in that the Gentleman will persevere attaining the unitary joy dean, contesting flashes incessant by the unbalance emotional community of the assistants, like ingredient spirit that is allocated in his spree, and has to treat to give more start to Vernarth in his regression parapsychological. But besides it is necessary to conceive that we are in singing of subsistence of the hypotenuse, by which do not have to think this Zeus requires extremely our third. He is entirely self-sufficient and is tied to his transcendental world of the vilorta, but not to leave us alone with his vague shimmers of collectivity!

Sibila Helespóntica sustains the cross, the last emblem of the Passion represented in the chaining. As it corresponds in his straight and immediate folio representing the Crucifixión of Christ in the Gólgota, the spaces car selected consigning in the ashlar that came close in technical whispered of works that inspired to Sybilla of Helesponto, she approached with the gear and the utensils of the altarpiece of her same, decorating them with passions that represented in the lineup, eleven days before being sprayed the alcohol on them of first degree in his heads to leave them in the intemperate, and to posterity that came to the goddess of the darks Nix spilling petals macerated and turned sour on all they to inhume them in blasphemies of the god Erebus, in the deep light scarcity of all lethargy marginal to redeem them of the chaos, on an earthly crushed sea unfamous that will be the surface of Gaugamela transiting in the catacombs, with earthy rivers and elusive phlegm escaping of the insectaries light of Ultramundis of the god Tartar. Nix Runs alarming in his muddy tiled, appearing as a winged woman dressed with a black toga cover of stars. It will drive an armature thrown by two steeds properly accompanied by his children twins Hypnos and Tánatos, here besides them trepidation running by any place, for attesting the regrets of the Falangists Hoplites, after being suddenly invaded by mythological strengths of the Auqemenides. Through condensed pulses and of others no designated will be represented on diverse types and in supports of xylographic monumentality in the ceramics and even in the patrimonial immaterial with the hindsight of the Áullos Kósmos. From the Basiliscus will aim to Betelgeuse, dispensing in the Arms Christi to advance to the Fontana's and to Parables Iaspis, staging the Sibyllae Prophetae, vaticinating the paved of the Iaspis of lovely stones for fragment in the elevation and in the maremágnum issued by Sybilla of Helesponto,  raising on the height of 133 in the ordeal of the Gólgota, in orient skull of Abimelech and of Jezabel from the kraníon symbolizing the traffic in places of executions from a kraníon admonished.  

The place of the Gólgota also is uncertain of archaeology. All he knows is that it was out of the city, further from the second wall. It had to be a hill, as it could see from some distance and was near to a way, homologous to the initial of Getsemani, Saint John Apostle amplifies that a new grave was near, in an orchard. The tágmati translated as "order" Indicated the ranks in the Roman army; the saints of the Ancient Will and of the tribulation receive his bodies glorified near the return of Christ to the world. Being Greek root Tagma of put in order from the thoracic head and abdominal, in tagmatization and differentiation of regions of the body or tagmas formed by series of metámeros or similar segments between himself differentiated of the rest. The Ultramundis of the god Tartar here is conceptualized, and corresponds with the metamerization heteronomous of inert organic, and opposes to the of metamerization homonomous, in which all the metámeros or bilateral symmetry in all the appendices that are equivalent. They are those centurions that drilled the rib of the Mashiaj in the Gólgota with whispered symmetry from the head, thorax, and abdómen of the Tágmati, sorting out from the launched Pilum awarding them the Christo Salvatore Vaticinante, but in the dictamen or professing the same symptoms of his passion by the tagma abdominal, toráxico and head in his crown of spines Ziziphus.    


Codex XIV-  Ultramundis Primum apud Orionem finale    

Challenged by the sortilege of the Augur Vernarth gathered with his General Commander and invites him not to separate further of extending them that edging by a docile lunar greyish wind. They gather and they put near one of another.

Vernarth Says: That joy turns to my meditation behaving in this contiguous night to our Falangists Consecrated, and to the cavalry sleeping in Machiavellian dreams when falling in his sink, until in his parishioner and in his steeds so that they do not lose his eyes sung in the drain of the pressing. All lodging as if lying in a genial lawn and honesty of the belly of the Chaos, exhorting hallucinations to those who sleep in the cap of the kraníon, with the wise utopias of the Erebus. Dozing likewise  utopias to the high and rubbering in Orión with a pythoness expression and changing his tacit. Leaving hardly a space of turn to change the tri face cariátide tackling the secondary mirages of Aurion, turned into a decimated Muse captivate for desirous delectation treating them as his heirs, seeing them flatter with his scarlet layer and inscribed with Lambda in your magazine in Gaugamela.  Alexander Magnus answers: That the satirized arms re-spin by the ****** of Amón, popping your eyes-hearings and eyes unheard folded in the martyrdom glaucoma of Anubis, re transforming the constellation of Aurion after we heave us annihilating them in this silent furrowed already embattled! While, I have to wash down your sentences more cleaned with one thousand tempests more than the refrained gallantry that receives in my corrected hemisphere, unbalancing the **** Target of the night, situated in the Lambda on her so that it accompany me with his nurse to the temple, truncating the investment sovereign to the moaning in the lead of Febo.  

When observing Vernarth that the spittle of Febo or the personality of Apollo in Alexander the Great fell repaired, quickly the appraised on his jaw drying him, smiling him and at the same time changing his gestures of nervousness. Taking him and attaching him, since it seemed a retained dizzy of his long addresses parliament with his feudatory. Then it would be prosperous to leave him seated in the side of the aspect that escorts him. In this instant separates and extends his arms to the envious koelum or dialect sky, joint to both swords that also will accompany them with the bronze shake chatter, snorting in the retracted navels.

Vernarth Retorts: Dissolute In my infancy had to walk with my dogs as a ray stayed in his frame when it advanced me to them only sniffed my scarlet aureoles; that they were red stars súper giants and near to the Earth fading. Today it is the belt of Aurion beside the Big General, beating in his groove and changing his course precessional. His hallucinations will move, so that it remains alone in his reddish outline, but not in his physicist componential.

In this way, Vernarth moved the tunnel of the zephyr with the tip of his Dorus when they bent, the shining final of his tip warned to reopen in the intestinal of the firmament when going out launches. Mechanical ran Years light by much more than it has to describe, in front of exact science and in front of a Dorus inaccurate, in a universe that only this distant whereas Vernarth is doing using the protocol of governance, pulling on the floor with the drum, ratling by his dorsal in direction to his shaft that volatile attached of the abbreviated adminícule, for one launches used like Sword Xiphos, arriving at the vertex of Betelgeuse to approximate to the legatee space of radiosity, and of Persia joined in a billed merely advocator. It appears Vernarth behind the cloudscape coughing with cloying fever with a dazzling ruby hypnotizing the muffins of the colossal fénix cosmic, and lighting up to Alexander Magnus when waking up. Sibila Frigia, finally sustained the cross with the risen flag of the same representation that does it the own Christ resurrected in a corresponding scene of Resurrection, in extensive complement of the Sybillas with his Gothic imagination and recentish, with the Sybilla Frigia being the priest that will chair an apolíneo oracle of a historical realm in the western central part of the highlands of Anatolia contrasted with Casandra of the Ilíada.

The incipient muffins sequence to redeemed reigns in that the puérp postpartum aurora, intercede nonetheless of the facets and of the screams of the Cáucaso, of the one who this chained in the irons but frozen of his isolation, for the one who the panic of the Diaísthisi or presage, traps him in millennia taken from a heart stuck in the thorax of the Tágmati, to the Apollyon offered in the abyss of the consecratam, and of the abyssal jumping from the fathomless floor the abysmal destruction providential, and his tulle issuing in those who will not shine after exalting concluded in silty bottoms of the fosca. Regards and Tares will govern intolerable pacts s and promises, early tinted in the heartbreaking disclosures of Saint John, glimpsing to diábolos interventors of Apollyon beside the Sheol of the Koumeterium of Messolonghi, redeeming them in Nínive and ordering in Arbela and Gaugamela in the indissoluble planted zones of the Camels Gigas of Apollyon.    


Codex XV - Apud Secundus finale  

Arbela falls in the hands of castes of the mesnades of Etréstles of Kalavrita, collapsing like lightning and exceeding the charred farmhouses of alien Mosul, to his intrinsic compartments. Of to the contrary was the authority of Maceo, found immediate to Syrian troops, mesopotámicas, medas, split, sucianas, tibarianas, hircanias, albanias and sacesanias, scattered like disturbed Leviathanes of himself same and of debased titans in all the execrations not specified of this avalanche, so that they are carried by his dean leader, and donated to his physiognomy like limpid preys of misfortune when predicting for them in the banishment of his bravery. Later once encysted in the cracks of his stinks would look for in the fatuous emanations of the Phosphorus (Crash of the morning of Venus) drizzled by the glories of the morning and of his distractions, changing the decomposed inert matters to the Aqueménides, incontinenti to be bordered with all the fascination of the dawn. The commanded by Maceo; the commander of Dario, brought a heart to be transplanted from a wise person Dervish that had split to install it after conquering the epic Gesta, and his conjecture of it. They believed to ****** his ascribed gentlemen that seconded to his disconsolate of him…, but brought off by half the substrate character that moves the incessant rumbles in the bitterness of the cicuta unfunded in the Xiphos, offering to the twilight to mark the withdrawal between lights.

Etréstles, spotted a stray prescription in the field of battle, expelling it from the divine sky of Arbela. By the conferred adherents him to Vernarth in this round stroking to Alikanto by the gibbosity right of his steed Kanti, this would cause that they would cross on the same line and gave an oppressive split kinetic curve so that the lancers hyper vibrated with the spin of twist of his masses contracted, adding a field in the tips of the sky to the discouragements and the static Persian. Like this they fought together near of the children, infamous legislation plagiarizing the movement and tying the ribs of rows from left to right of the Syntagma, to fluctuate in the strengths of his graceful Falangists of anxiety. When observing this Moving away Magnus, redouble his heavy cavalry and also challenges similar concert in the maneuvers executed by Etréstles, designating it Diabolical Officiousness curiosity, as they visited inseparable in the Runes of the circulatory movement and in the cardiac system or Kardiá, reimplanting in the spin of twist of return of the children and the cavalry, but with the whole mass of his horses bluish lapis lazuli, wheezing of his nasal like a domestic nasal breath!

Auriga Says: Your venerate you milestones come to upset to the new beings, come to occupy your organisms with arrows on his bodies deterred by the quiver magic of Artemis, with new incarnations and manly gallantries?

Etréstles Jumps from Kanti, represses some militias that were surrounded, and reaches to spot Vernarth, to there is of the hubbub of his transmission recharged on the intimidated enemy. Sometimes they affirmed of one of his hangman of him to resist the pain of his ribs of him, while he vigorously tightened his sword and resisted the suffering that paled in his face, but increasing the size of his arms and legs, to unchain the big booming voice of Sheol or Hell, that piped him in the big stupor of the Persians resigned, afterward he clarified an all in the miscellanea was of the ardor and the pain of the souls expelleds, to testify the quantity of his independence consumed. The lightened environment of emptiness in the tunnel of the Profitis Ilias did feel in the peak of the surface, where was and trembled in the acroteria of entry of the Hexagonal Progenitura. Majestic Gravitational waves struggled here invested, oozing from the volcanic base of Patmos in vertexes of the physical fields and of elementary particles of great similarity to the caverns of Getsemaní, in the suggested detain of the phylogenetic mechanics and of the instauration of the phonetics, all embedded and propelled by the particles hitting on them, causing opposition of mass in the empty internal of the pipe covered by chairs of the Iaspis, propelling unions in progressive waves in viscous fields, very dense when being generated by the Arms Christi and the Souls of Trouvere. These elementary particles of God plunged into aroused basilisks in compound particles in the dynamics of energeia, preexisting already quoted, and adopted by Vernarth in his last parapsychological regression where he collided in the field of Higgs Ipso facto. In the areas W and Z, rather in the W of Wonthelimar and Z of Zefian like patterns of Lights without mass in his vectorial that were attracted by the maremágnum of his matter, where the viscosity is maybe, the confused darkness of the material fossil, mutating by atomic energy from the starvation of the Phoebus Shemesh, or false Sun of Apollo-Leviathan in his demolished asthenia. It was captive of a viscous moraine that collides between yes, arousing occupations of the empty field, already typecast in the boson of Higgs, and in the photons of Wonthelimar that taenia of on dowry, to be prone to the binomial W and Z, in the energized tangent of the shallow elementary bodies transformed in particles with mass. The interaction of the particles resembled a quantum field of the Orchard of Getsemaní with asymmetric and rocky graphics, that supremely did immanent in the trinitary energy that absorbed them in his arrest, concatenating the converted tendency of the field of Higgs in a quantum physical structure symmetrical, therefore in a perfect triangulation trinitarian of elementary particles, activating equidistant of his uniformity between if in all the spin of twist and in the three ataxic angles of unsteadiness of Zefian inroads of his fourth Saeta. The statics longed for the tendency that propagated in a fourth Angulo, but this time in the Progenitura Hexagonal in his six sides concealing the two equilateral triangles, subtended in no massive strengths, that is to say; feeble in a load of a photon, but if having to cross the unions of field that were him apt to auscultate the physics of God. We have to understand that all dogma gathers interactions with the field Diaísthisi or to presage, that recovers the mass of all this or that ventures the idleness of some silent particles that conform his weight, and the global mass affine of his material existence, sponsored by the proton in a cubic meter if it is accelerated. The field that underlies here in Patmos will be of upper physics from the Boson of Higgs or of God, for the grant of mass and of weight in the empty tunnel of wind in the Profitis Ilias, re sustaining the necessary ineffective light of the Febo Shemesh apocryphal of Sheol (Hades and Erebo), for constraining the symmetrical balance magmatic basality of intraterrestrial energy, contributing the supernumerary of her, turned into Light for the reborn world of the Apocalypse. The elementality bearer of the particle of Patmos, in his context of quantum physics, will enumerate like the theory of the Apud Secundus Finale, to generate interactions in the spacetime, that reduce physicality and delay when attending his credibility, in front of facts supra abnormal and bearers of his hyperactive dogmatic abulia, understanding that the graphic of his cerebral activity is genius of the quantum physics, provided with energy without mass, that vertiginously adheres to the protons of his physical strength consolidated, turning it into a kinetic inert element atomic, and in one dynamic of physical solidity. For all the solidness of the wasteland of the Apud (In) of Getsemaní, this will not be consecrated like a mystery, rather it will aspire the just act of immense clemency of the body compacted in the emotion of the feel gravitate, and accelerated transfiguring in an atomic elementary impulse that crystallizes the creative Faith, or was to the Vernarthian Duoverse! The Boson is massive, all the matter that is him leading will be poured by the standard of verticality in the creation, predicting theoretically in the tree of physics whose pipe hyper lives between the root and its foliage, and will consult the effect of his origin for greater challenges of his divine experience.

Singing of Sibila Líbica (bis): !The sparking plugs will inflame, the iridescent eyes of the Mashiaj flashed in the likely mortuary settlement of Vernarth in the oasis of Siwa: “Oh My warm blow of Libya that flatters my cheeks, and my shoulders that groove in the light of the callous cerebral coexistence of Zeus. Singing by you my Didaskein; treating or teaching to the baffled herd that confuses the kitchenware that was born to. b.C., not having a reminiscence of Irradiation in the mastery of the continuous turn to the not contravening of latent ignorance, but yes to find him agreed and effulgent”!

If today was for giant caterpillars,
giant crowds,
giant sounds,
and chaos, then this evening must be for

Blueberry fingertips
white wine in my glass
the music of an accordion
and a paperback novel.

Breeze in the window that waltzes with ribbons
and fills the bottles I’ve collected for the past six years.

(soft t shirt from the first time I fell asleep on his couch)

mmm, stop WORRYING.
It is no time at all for any of that.
Take the time to take the time to take your time.
shhh, brain.
hush, mouth.
Quiet Quiet Quiet