It's cold out.
I'm clinging to my wit while the cold air hits my body.
my skin feels dry, cold and frosted.
My head is filled with tired thoughts.
My heart is beating slower and slower.
My bones feel fragile.
It all doesn't feel right.
is it just me? or just the snow?

in a silent madness;- lies a lie like a gloomy past,
my eyes become a patch of crimson under a calmy vast
expanse of solid white -every tear was like frozen milk,
stirred by the coldness of a night.

the bitterness of an unfeeling presence, like a shadow
that invades my room; my unrest continued as daylight
darkened into night.

now dawning a forced crack of smile, like the winter
cracking the night’s skyline. the trees were so upset-
frost-shocked; swinging pieces of ice tears from the
winds upsetting cries- out loudly.

the frost in my veins freezes the time I have with a
jolt; it jars at my bones- like an endless fall into
tides, all rushing away, swept into my eyes.

for even when I close them so strongly, trying to
imagine warmth -I can still hear the harsh coldness
of this cold night.

Seasons change
Just ask the jay
Whose plume is blue
As the sky
After a fierce rain
Inundates the land
Bringing with it winds
Whose currents lift the jay
To dance among scattered clouds
Waving a final goodbye
To the warmth of summer sun
Setting past falls forward
Into winters grasp
Whose chill shocks the jay
With visions of ice and snow and frost
A sign to migrate to warmer climbs
Where fall has fallen backward
And summer sun rises anew
Challenging the changing season
To remain sunny and blue

Cold days are over
Shades on the Orchid’s petals
A gift from the Sun

The title speaks it all so clearly, unlike I who slurs my words
To write down what a handful will see, but phrases never to be heard
From obligations to congratulations, it all starts to feel the same
How petty it is I blame everything, how I must feel ashamed

Things I said to prove a point
messages left on read I wish I never sent
The cold is blistering, so are my fingers
Tell me how you can forget yet for me it still lingers

People go on with their lives, wishing for the summer
While I sit hear wishing I didn't think everything was a ******
Its so easy to appreciate the little things in life
But so hard when you feel teardrops turning into ice

Everyone says to seek help, that it gets better as you grow
yet almost a decade later I have nothing to show
Spreading positivity, have no certainty
Of the people coming and going, who matters and who closes the curtain

Future careers, games, girls, what I fear
Further encapsulating that I barely feel like I am here
Stuck between adulthood and being a child
Stuck between a mild nature and a wild imagination

Stuck between what games to play, what role to play
Which school to pay and which job pays better
Payment is engraved in my mindset, my parents make sure of it
Little do they know I hate adult life and I am sick of it

Crushes like a giddy child, in this darned freezing weather
Is it sad I feel better alone, or I feel alone and barely any better?
How ironic my words contradict each other
but thats what we were to one each other

Am I just ranting over you, this existence, or the future?
Is this in general or has my heart finally ruptured?
This barely makes sense, and neither does this life
Play, work, pay then get a wife? Is this why samurai always held a short knife?

Bound
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14-15

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.

Published as “Why Did I Go?” in my high school journal the Lantern in 1976. I have made slight changes here and there, but the poem is essentially the same as what I wrote in my early teens.

Golden Sunlight unfolds herself from the cracks of the frozen earth
Like silk, her fingers warm and soft against my cheek

She stands herself gracefully from among the glittering frost,
Tending to the falling and calling for the lost

She softens the scrape of black trees against the thin skin of the sky
And offers forgiveness from the endless nightly cry

And in the winter,
While she was still small and cold
I watched the sun rise to meet me, her smile
Softening the frost in my soul
.
And now sweet summer heat
Begins to bear down with heavy hand
I go out to meet her once more
At dawn, now twice the journey -
I rise early to watch her unfolding flower
And yet still the same tender light does shine
In that fragile hour

I have titled this collection of ancient Chinese poems SORROWS OF THE WILD GEESE by HUANG E

Sent to My Husband
by Huang E
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The wild geese never fly beyond Hengyang ...
how then can my brocaded words reach Yongchang?

Like wilted willow flowers I am ill-fated indeed;
in that far-off foreign land you feel similar despair.

“Oh, to go home, to go home!” you implore the calendar.
“Oh, if only it would rain, if only it would rain!” I complain to the heavens.

One hears hopeful rumors that you might soon be freed ...
but when will the Golden **** rise in Yelang?

A star called the Golden **** was a symbol of amnesty to the ancient Chinese. Yongchang was a hot, humid region of Yunnan to the south of Hengyang, and was presumably too hot and too far to the south for geese to fly there.




Luo Jiang's Second Complaint
by Huang E
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The green hills vanished,
pedestrians passed by
disappearing beyond curves.

The geese grew silent, the horseshoes timid.

Winter is the most annoying season!

A lone goose vanished into the heavens,
the trees whispered conspiracies in Pingwu,
and people huddling behind buildings shivered.



Bitter Rain, an Aria of the Yellow Oriole
by Huang E
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These ceaseless rains make the spring shiver:
even the flowers and trees look cold!

The roads turn to mud;
the river's eyes are tired and weep into a few bays;
the mountain clouds accumulate like ***** dishes,
and the end of the world seems imminent, if jejune.

I find it impossible to send books:
the geese are ruthless and refuse to fly south to Yunnan!



Broken-Hearted Poem
by Huang E
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My tears cascade into the inkwell;
my broken heart remains at a loss for words;
ever since we held hands and said farewell,
I have been too listless to paint my eyebrows;
no medicine can cure my night-sweats,
no wealth repurchase our lost youth;
and how can I persuade that ****** bird singing in the far hills
to tell a traveler south of the Yangtze to return home?

These are my modern English translations of poems by the Chinese poet Huang E (1498–1569), also known as Huang Xiumei. She has been called the most outstanding female poet of the Ming Dynasty, and her husband its most outstanding male poet. Were they poetry’s first power couple? Her father Huang Ke was a high-ranking official of the Ming court and she married Yang Shen, the prominent son of Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe. Unfortunately for the young power couple, Yang Shen was exiled by the emperor early in their marriage and they lived largely apart for 30 years. During their long separations they would send each other poems which may belong to a genre of Chinese poetry I have dubbed "sorrows of the wild geese."



Springtime Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

They’ll have to grow like crazy,
the springtime baby geese,
if they’re to fly to balmier climes
when autumn dismembers the leaves ...

And so I toss them loaves of bread,
then whisper an urgent prayer:
“Watch over these, my Angels,
if there’s anyone kind, up there.”

Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



The Mallard
by Michael R. Burch

The mallard is a fellow
whose lips are long and yellow
with which he, honking, kisses
his *****, boisterous mistress:
my pond’s their loud bordello!



Kindred (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?

Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,

so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?

What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.

We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,

and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,

for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.



Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-******.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-******,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-******,
we first proved we had lives of our own).



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Habeas Corpus
by Michael R. Burch

from “Songs of the Antinatalist”

I have the results of your DNA analysis.
If you want to have children, this may induce paralysis.

I wish I had good news, but how can I lie?
Any offspring you have are guaranteed to die.

It wouldn’t be fair—I’m sure you’ll agree—
to sentence kids to death, so I’ll waive my fee.



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels—winged,
shimmering, misunderstood—
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are ...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.

Their eyes—hypnotic, alluring—
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather ...
to see, to touch, to feel.

Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



Update of "A Litany in Time of Plague"
by Michael R. Burch

THE PLAGUE has come again
To darken lives of men
and women, girls and boys;
Death proves their bodies toys
Too frail to even cry.
I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!
Tycoons, what use is wealth?
You cannot buy good health!
Physicians cannot heal
Themselves, to Death must kneel.
Nuns’ prayers mount to the sky.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty’s brightest flower?
Devoured in an hour.
Kings, Queens and Presidents
Are fearful residents
Of manors boarded high.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

We have no means to save
Our children from the grave.
Though cure-alls line our shelves,
We cannot save ourselves.
"Come, come!" the sad bells cry.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!



faith(less)
by Michael R. Burch

Those who believed
and Those who misled
lie together at last
in the same narrow bed

and if god loved Them more
for Their strange lack of doubt,
he kept it well hidden
till he snuffed Them out.

ah-men!



The Cosmological Constant
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein the frizzy-haired
claimed E equals MC squared.
Thus all mass decreases
as activity ceases?
Not my mass, my *** declared!



***-tronomical
by Michael R. Burch

Relativity, the theorists’ creed,
claims mass increases with speed.
My (m)*** grows when I sit it.
Mr. Einstein, get with it;
equate its deflation, I plead!



The Hair Flap
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

The hair flap was truly a scare:
Trump’s bald as a billiard back there!
The whole nation laughed
At the state of his graft;
Now the man’s wigging out, so beware!



Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!

Keywords/Tags: Chinese poetry, China, sorrow, sorrows, geese, rain, heavens, hills, winter, trees, rivers, mountains, books, birds, spring, springtime, baby, babies, pray, prayer, angels