Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem about a crisis of faith that occurred after the death of the wife of a fellow poet.

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.

Published by The NeoVictorian/Cochlea, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada). Keywords/Tags: crescendo, heaven, salvation, price, cost, hymn, funeral, grave, graves, coffins, cross, crosses, cemetery, graveyard, church, spire, God, distant, silent, misunderstood

Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-******.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-******,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-******,
we first proved we had lives of our own).

Published by Barbitos, Trinacria, Songs and Poems that Changed the World (reference.com), Atomic Publishing and The Eclectic Muse

Keywords/Tags: Villanelle, hangovers, drugs, alcohol, drunk, ******, parents, children, graves, death, habit, bad habits, wasted, drink, drinking, *****, liquor, beer, wine, tombs, gravestones, headstones, lives, deaths, pregnant, pregnancy, pregnancies

Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust)

We saw their pictures:
tortured out of our imaginations
like golems.

We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,

pallid as our disbelief.
They are not
with us now ...

We have:
huddled them
into the backroomsofconscience,

consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,

buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.

We have
so little left
of them

now
to remind us ...

It was my honor to work with survivors of the Holocaust as we translated their poems and prose accounts into English as a way of preserving them and making them available to larger audiences. Unfortunately, time waits for no one and the Holocaust survivors I worked with are no longer with us. But their words and testimonies remain, if we will only take the time to read and consider them. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, victims, survivors, mass graves, pictures, images, tortured, frail, gaunt, skeletal, emaciated, thin, malnourished, golemic, horror, terror, inhumanity, madness, racism, antisemitism, slave labor, slavery, death camps, concentration camps, gas chambers, ethnic cleansing, genocide, memory, remembrance, memorial, tribute

I ain't got no signal,
              to tell your boys that

your shallow, shallow graved

beyond that your silent and I
                    throw gravel of silent
words over your face.

what that's all your worth.

I ain't got no signal to #hashtag
            you been died
                      after I shot you full

of body shots of verbal body shocks..



I never got your followers on my phone cos
            flakiness doesn't get followed but
                                 just shallow graved.

I poured water over you, cos a cap isn't worth
   finishing you off,

                     na my words collateral damage

on your form your slumped
                    blooded but no blood falling.

You need to realise you haven't got a shoot off,
            and your riddled with insecurities that
    

                  you and yours will have to either
   be buried in shallow graves or respect my
                                                            word around town.

Riding the train to Mall of America near Minneapolis. Fort Snelling National Cemetery lies East of the tracks. Outside the windows pass these gravestones. Stark marble markers in the place of heros. Rigid rank and file, monuments on parade in mimic  memory of the command to "Attention!"  

And there are thousands. Row after row, column upon column, they march into the distance

Until finally, I closed my eyes and listened to the rumble of the  train, wheels upon tracks, and to the conversion of a young family seated behind me as they talked about all the fun they will have at the mall. The Mall of America -- found out past the tombstones, beyond the graves of the fallen brave.

distance between our graves
spacious and airy—
leave our kids to sing
“vivere volumus permanere”