-Sound Advice



Listen oh reader to my advice I have for you,

You'll find it deeply unsettling but I swear it's true.

Now, I am very sorry, I hate to be that guy,

But real friends dont exist, it's all a big fat lie.

Human nature is so fickle, that's just who they are.

People come and then they go just like a shooting star.

So, do not let yourself get attached to anyone,

Treat everyone as an acquaintance under the sun.

And if you take my advice, your life will be stressfree,

No drama, no sorrow, no abuse, I guarantee.

~
Unusual and cloudless

This slippery world

Today is still contagious

Here is heat, here is rain

Here is love, regardless

Shadows in the scaffolding

Look like a broken alphabet

The sun in its anger

Just won't set

Life and how to do it

Perfectly absent
~

a friend is someone who is there for another
who is considerate
who is kind
a friend is someone who is there for you through time
these are my instructions to you
for the next person you find

The lighthouse nearby
Steady, bright
Its light keeps sweeping through
My little life

Beams of instruction
Welcomed every time

As we flow imagining we motivate
our selves to go on,
crack the whip,
try oomph-ala
like… take and read the little book, or swallow
what you're told…

for any mind a thinking thing is companion,
welcome the strange
little light leading on,
for minded beings do not live by bread, alone.

Inside, we see alone.
Outside, I see all one. Am I enlightened,

I ask my closest confidant.
Ah, I utter

as a sigh, slack jawed awe, a we is made
right now --
me and thee, dear, dear reading being thinking

do you mind?
Did I capitalize on your confusion to stick
a point into a bubble you believed?

How would you know?
{1.
Omphalos is the hub of any bubble of being,
center of gravity, if I may
make that assertion
as certain as
may be in these days of knowledge expansion.
May is you word, now. You know.}

Instruction
by Michael R. Burch

Toss this poem aside
to the filigreed and the prettified tide
of sunset.

Strike my name,
and still it is all the same.
The onset

of night is in the despairing skies;
each hut shuts its bright bewildered eyes.
The wind sighs

and my heart sighs with her—
my only companion, O Lovely Drifter!
Still, men are not wise.

The moon appears; the arms of the wind lift her,
pooling the light of her silver portent,
while men, impatient,

are beings of hurried and harried despair.
Now willows entangle their fragrant hair.
Men sleep.

Cornsilk tassels the moonbright air.
Deep is the sea; the stars are fair.
I reap.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly.

Keywords/Tags: instruction, sunset, night, skies, wind, sighs, moon, silver, portent, sea, stars

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.

*

Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England)

Also published by Michael R. Burch writing as Immanuel A. Michael and Kim Cherub

Keywords/Tags: Listen, heed, prophet, crying, wilderness, voice, prophecy, black, white, gray, moon, wind, speak, speaking, speech, instruction, teaching, warning, omen, illuminations, intimations, ears, hear, judgment, bell, toll, tolling, peal, pealing, tone, I, Am

Note: The poet as a “madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness” is likened to John the Baptist, foretelling a momentous “second coming”: his own, with no other Messiah in sight.

Selah, in this realm
means
pause. think. pause meaning, we agree, slow down,
focus,
extol, pay
attention based on worth ship possible to take
as granted, per se.

ya move toofastgottamockdemoanin'past foevah Jung.

were there no condemnation here,
could you abide?

Selah.
Y'see, we words form bubbles, in which we list
whither we will
in swirling mists of Swedenborgian beauty,
you can only imagine,

as winds return on circuits perpetual enough
for mortal bubble minds like ours.

Selah
For the players on ins
truements. Key of B, natural. lah lah lah la on an' on

whisperin' pine backin' old crow's caw.
This seems fine, f'now.

Selah some mo'