My teacher asks for the theme,
But I don’t know how to answer
I know and I know that
A theme is or is not one word,
A common thing, a binding spell
A theme is or is not an instruction,
Told by the character’s actions,
Shown in carefully crafted consequences.
A theme is or is not a quality,
Something which defines a character,
Which determines the course of the story
It is or is not more than one sentence.
It is or is not subjective to the reader.
It is or is not, so I don’t know the answer.

But I could tell you about the Little Chinese Seamstress
About blind obsession,
About jealousy, about wonder
Would that be enough? Would that be enough?
I could tell you about how reading is so personal,
Its effect on one
Can not be understood by another
Would that be enough? Would that be enough?
Or how skill is developed by tragic experience
How learning comes from failing to learn
Would that be enough? Would that be enough?
Or if I told you that the quality of a book
is only as good as its final passage,
If I told you that
a story shouldn’t be told until its last word,
Bound by something so profound,
The book must be reread, reanalyzed
Delving into the intricate mind of the author,
With full control over life and reality,
With the power to make one word thousands,
A detail into a novel,
Anything into anything without writing it down,
Because if you can understand what the author was thinking,
Then the author was not thinking at all
Would that be enough?
Could knowing be enough?

If you asked an author
To name to you one of their themes,
Do you think they’d know the answer?
Do you think they’d care what you mean?

Is it more valuable to the student
To understand or to define?
Is it more telling of the mind
To describe an impact,
Or to save time?

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as if she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.

Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia, Lone Stars. Keywords/Tags: distance, distances, convention, books, bookstores, art, literature, poetry, chasm, abyss, divide, Faust, Frost, clean break

I show you my heart and you shut me down,
‘That isn’t art’, you say, you frown,
‘I know that is true because i am a god
I can determine what’s art and what’s not.’

Do you want me to apologize and nod in submission?
Should I have used another juxtaposition?
Should I have adhered to a regular verse,
Iambic pentameter, rhetoric, curse?

‘Rhyme like an artist’, you say upon this,
‘Do it then’ i snap, ‘speak to me in sonnets,
I beg you, convey to me all of your losses,
Then try to woo me with caesural pauses.’

I say ‘Teach me what a verb is
and where I should place it,
And feed me a preferred list
of syntax arrangements.’

‘No, no, please, do mention once more,
What is a motif and what is it for?
How do I read and how do I spell?
Oh, please let me know, because you do it so well.’

‘Let me down gently because you know I can’t stand
A slap of reproval from your masculine hands,
One bad word about me and you fear i might shriek,
Or claw out my eyes, this emotional freak.’

‘Here’s a metaphor for you (or at least so i think
Silly me can’t tell the pen from the ink)
In this metaphor i am the man with the boot
And you are the cockroach crushed under my foot.’

Brother Iran
by Michael R. Burch

Brother Iran, I feel your pain.
I feel it as when the Turk fled Spain.
As the Jew fled, too, that constricting span,
I feel your pain, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I know you are noble!
I too fear Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
But though my heart shudders, I have a plan,
and I know you are noble, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I salute your Poets!
your Mathematicians!, all your great Wits!
O, come join the earth’s great Caravan.
We’ll include your Poets, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I love your Verse!
Come take my hand now, let’s rehearse
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
For I love your Verse, Brother Iran.

Bother Iran, civilization’s Flower!
How high flew your towers in man’s early hours!
Let us build them yet higher, for that’s my plan,
civilization’s first flower, Brother Iran.

Published by MahMag (translated into Farsi by Mahnaz Badihian), Other Voices International, Thanal Online (India), Deviant Art, Portal Vapasin (Farsi). Keywords/Tags: Iran, Iranian, Farsi, Persia, Persian, brotherhood, culture, civilization, poetry, literature, poets, mathematicians, philosophers

Sometimes I just
think I should  
be the
flow,
not the
girl
lost into
it.

Ba ba black man
wandering the flaming sun/

Why do you choose to smear the night?
is it that you're too sour for truth and light? /

What’s your guilt?  
why running from the sanctuary your ancestors built? /

Traveler beneath my country’s fire-rain
off to the backyard and heave my pain/

If you deem freedom to be tons of dollar
come swing ***** of dust into the eyes of your mother/

Life of a dark traveler isn’t a small joke
so don’t you find my words a suffocating smoke/