i am Orpheus in the clouds
playing clown for the masses.

i'm half of the shaft of light
breaking mosaically into
millions of pieces across the kitchen floor.

i'm a smoky chandelier swaying with
the bravado of a censure on high-holy-day.

i'm the royal velvet lining your blood.

i am a poem, without reason, read to you
by a stranger.

i am 200 tons of cracked granite one thousand
feet above you splitting off from the face of
the mountain.

but more so than any of that,

i'm a peculiar kind
of nothing

typing words onto
screens before
i die.

Because stones do not pray, even in their centuries’ quiet,
Because the vines are long, only for the sake of length,
Not like the drab Orpheus-song that always up-ruins.
Because vestal Autumn is a bride of noon-time rain,
A faithful stream with her white mist of suffibulum,
Beside the path whose footprints are half-notes from the grave.

Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch

after William Blake

I.

Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.

I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked

nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.

II.

Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,

the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.

III.

Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,

I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,

were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild

I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.

Keywords/Tags: Orpheus, singer, poet, William Blake, whistle, Satanic, mills, manacles, law, leaden, ball, chain, prison, song, freedom

Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

“What will you conceive in me?”—
I asked her. But she
only smiled.

“Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled . . .
naked, and gladly.”

“What will become of me?”—
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.

Centuries later, I understand:
she whispered—“I Am.”

Published by Romantics Quarterly (the first poem in the first issue), Penny Dreadful, Unlikely Stories, Underground Poets, Poetically Speaking, Poetry Life & Times, Little Brown Poetry. Keywords/Tags: Muse, Goddess, Erato, Beloved, poetic, inspiration, lyric, poetry, divinity, Orpheus, Sappho

You saw it as I did, clear as day:
Orpheus, with his heart on display
Raising his golden voice as if to pray
That Hades would not make his lover stay.

I saw it as you did, on that stage,
Eurydice opposing Hades' rage,
Rallying the dead-eyed workers to engage,
A songbird trying to break free from her cage.

We watched it unfold before our eyes:
Hades penned that fateful compromise,
Persephone, her arms raised to the skies,
Hermes already fearing their demise.

And in those final moments, I was sure
As lovers faced each other on death's door
And went their separate ways to love no more
That I'd never loved you so much before.