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 several stages of "religion," all tied into Eliot's "Fire Sermon," albeit elliptically. (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 an infirmity (lameness, infertility, it really didn't matter in those days). 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! Long live Darwin! We'll evolve into something better adapted to life on Earth, someday (if we don’t destroy it first). But what do we have now, except a hangover? Strange logic! (4) The current stage of religion is perhaps 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!  Keywords/Tags: god, gods, religion, saints, icons, images, imagery, update, scale, adjust

i have come to realize,
one day there will be a final curtain call on Youth,

and that,

the clouds that present themselves as mountains,
on the horizon of colourful life,

are to far for a mortal to touch,
to grasp and to hold,

for the youth that is holding me now;

will soon be like the clouds that possess, themselves as mountains,

on the horizons of life.

for my youth,
will soon be too far to reach,

and that the horizon of colourful life,
will soon be a wretched black sky,

for my youth, is not for me to hold forever.

If thou perchance hast longed for my embrace;
thou felt its spectre linger on thy skin,
thou must unearth a paradise wherein
abundant is the fruit that thou shall taste.
     Its sweetness and perfume will thus invade
thyself, who art perplexed by strident din,
(which one mistakes to be the medicine)
and shall be cured of solitude's malaise.
     And thou may wonder where doth one procure
this nectar so sublime that guarantees
escaping from the claws of loneliness?
    In silence, these empyreal orchards endure
the perturbations of the fleeting years,
and in the fruits they bear - thither I rest.

I know my garden of peace
Will not grow overnight;
Like any fruit worth eating
I will wait for my manifestations
To blossom and ripen
Before I can live them.
But as of today
I vow to plant my seeds of intention,
Water them every day
And to remove any weeds of doubt
That may creep up on me.

Come rain or shine
I await all nourishment for my garden
With open arms

Deep dark night
Helpless, state

Miserable plight
Cool and bleak

Wintry landscape
Unknown faces

Cruel blow
Strange air

Poisonous water
Stinging earth

Strange paths
Motionless movements

Voiceless calls
Senseless imagery

Weeping cries
lyrical emotions

All jerks, activities
Noises, announcements

Agreements, decisions
Every deal and done

Heartless, motionless
Helpless state

Miserable plight
Voiceless calls

All with my pangs
Only calling You

Make the all norm
With the warm sun

Illuminating rays
Eliminate darkness

The Merciful Lord

The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

for Harvey Stanbrough

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.

This poem was originally published by The Raintown Review when Harvey Stanbrough was the editor, then later by Mindful of Poetry. I wrote the poem out of dissatisfaction with the strange idea that poetry should consist entirely or primarily of concrete images. Would the “experts” who espouse this bizarre idea junk the great soliloquies of Shakespeare and Milton and the direct statement poems of A. E. Housman? It also bears noting that the twin titans of English modernism, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, did an awful lot of “telling” rather than always “showing.” Keywords/Tags: Harvest, roses, images, imagery, imagism, meter, time, beat, rhyme, shimmer, gloss, perfume, reap, reaping, gossamer