Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch
Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite ...
What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there
so that all that remains is to
fall?
Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you stall
spread-eagled as the canvas snaps
and ***** its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.
Originally published by Poetry Porch. Keywords/Tags: Icarus, flight, flying, hang-gliding, kite, glider, wind, canvas, South, southern, truck, unspooled
Note: The following poem unites Icarus with Tom O'Bedlam in a final, magical quest ...
Finally to Burn
(the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus)
by Michael R. Burch
I.
Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand
and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands
where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting
and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting
and all I remember
—upon awaking—
is: to Love sometimes
is like forsaking
one’s Being—to glide
heroically beyond thought,
forsaking the here
for the There and the Not.
II.
O, finally to Burn,
gravity beyond escaping!
To plummet is Bliss
when the blisters breaking
rain down red scabs
on the earth’s mudpuddle...
Feathers and wax
and the watchers huddle...
Flocculent sheep,
O, and innocent lambs!
I will rock me to sleep
on the waves’ iambs.
III.
To Sleep, that is Bliss
in Love’s recursive Dream,
for the Night has Wings
pallid as moonbeams—
they will flit me to Life,
like a huge-eyed Phoenix
fluttering off
to quarry the Sphinx.
IV.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Quixotic, I seek Love
amid the tarnished
rusted-out steel
when to live is varnish.
To Dream—that’s the thing!
Aye, that Genie I’ll rub,
soak by the candle,
aflame in the tub.
V.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Somewhither, somewhither
aglitter and strange,
we must moult off all knowledge
or perish caged.
VI.
I am reconciled to Life
somewhere beyond thought—
I’ll Live in the There,
I’ll Dream of the Naught.
Methinks it no journey;
to tarry’s a waste,
so fatten the oxen;
make a nice baste.
I’m coming, Fool Tom,
we have Somewhere to Go,
though we injure noone,
ourselves wildaglow.
