#central
A carriage
pulled by donkeys in yellow gloves
rides into the village square
The moon shines in the sky
carrying the wild night on its shoulders
Lamb clouds darken with fear –
chased by a wolf – the Evening
Out of the carriage looks HE – twenty years on his head
and SHE just a little less
People along the road graze on them with their eyes
tearing piece by piece from their bodies:
For the First Time
For the Last Time
Once
Above the procession
glows in a long strip
the centre of our Galaxy
toward the constellation of the Eagle –
breathing with a thin and fragile balance of the Universe
But no one here cares
astronomy is beyond their gaze
People say: it will rain
or: not a drop for a week
We have fun today – at last!
The fever won’t catch us –
in the lit dormers
under the red cockerel of roofs no one dies
The Two walk in a tight grip –
squeezing knuckles – but their touches are cold
For both –
this evening is stiff in shoulders
and they are forgetting
they are not just wooden figurines
Behind them the musicians -
trumpets tinny singing
the violins would rather not
A march of beats and musicians
walking through the quiet open land
The neighbour stretches her neck like a giraffe
to catch a piece of the wedding melody –
torn by cold and tossed in the wind
over the fences
Grandma and grandpa joke –
baring their gappy teeth at wooden chairs
The village wheel turns
***
Before the inn already waits a crowd:
Downcast eyes
a smile or a glance up –
Two three scarves
– the rest bare-headed
A shovel sinks into the soft soil
a pint slams on the table
and someone retches at the thought
that tomorrow the innkeeper will wade
through a stubble of empty battered chairs
asleep in the wildest positions
It’s
alive
loud
noisy
but not a single clear word crawls out of their mouths
Only the innkeeper laughs like an animal
but no one minds
no one thinks of him or of the lovers now
They are forgotten sooner
than they managed to grow up into their wedding clothes
Dinner ends –
Midnight is coming
The coachman cracks his whip
people jostle at the door
They push HER and HIM outside –
huddled together
so they don’t feel the silence and dark
on the way to church
at the hour of ghosts
Outside the snow creaks
frost flows along the ground
The holy mass in a church without a roof
flies straight into the ears of night
The priest searches in the book for Holy Scripture
like grains in a field
and at the words of the Last Judgement
the graves behind the church come alive
The lovers kneel on the tiles
eyes hanging on the cross
Their hands are trembling
but the crowd sweeps them up
tears the shyness
slides on the wedding rings
and joins together the first married kisses
***
The way from the church is easier –
outside God cannot guard them
All the pagan desires stand along the road
hidden behind the dewy trees
May 15
May 15, 2026 at 3:40 PM UTC
These ole' Ghetto streets
You got beef??
then bring the heat,
Don't make this an issue,
I might just diss you,
When You living in the hood, and
you wish a n**** Would!!
Aye, you good???
Everything's Aiight!!!
Aye, Ya'll cool???
Yeah we tight???,
Trash all over the place,
it's just a sin and
a shame it's such a disgrace,
Get outta my face, or
Imma put you in your place,
Don't make a sound,
not even a peep,
Can't keep your mouth shut,
then take several seats,
It's about to go down,
IN THESE OLE' GHETTO STREETS!!!
B.R.
Date: 10/29/2024
Oct 30, 2024
Oct 30, 2024 at 3:34 PM UTC
Cascading, at scale,
eye service,
watching,
int'resting, virtue really,
worth, feel touched,
touched in the head, late onset berdach.
Nah, tubes tied, abortions never needed.
but what, eight billion eaters on a world,
Malthusian Darwinian,
luck of the draw,
live hard, die young.
Too late. I sigh, and make peace
with that one old joke,
I am too old, to be the youngest anything.
Oct 8, 2022
Oct 8, 2022 at 5:43 PM UTC
I saw Sting in the lobby this morning, we were going out and he was coming in. Lisa nudged me, “Sting” was all she whispered. He was with a woman and a man. The woman was talking to the doorman. Sting was dressed all in black except for a long stark-white cashmere scarf, he was chatting and working a dark-gray French-flat-cap around in his hands. His hair is very short and white.
We wanted to walk in the snow, if only for a minute.
A gust of wind caught us as we reached the sidewalk. The two American flags, on either side of the entrance, went rigid, at 9-o’clock as if saluting us. “Jeeez!” I said, like the Georgia girl I am - or was. “Don’t be a baby,” Lisa answered, like a true, pittyless New Yorker but her cheeks had turned a child-like pink. She flipped up her collar.
I patted my pocket, relieved to feel my phone and know that if we froze to death the authorities could use “find my friends” to locate our bodies.
Leeza joins us a moment later and I can’t help but notice that she’s dressed like it’s a cool fall day. Back in the day, when my brother would dress like summer even though temperatures in Georgia had dipped cruelly into the fifties. Seeing him, my mom would say, “Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling,” but I don’t.
“Did you see Sting?” I asked Leeza (12). She gives me a blank look. “Sting”, I said, “the lead singer for The Police?” I add, as clarification. “I don’t know who that is,” she says flatly. “He was famous,” I say in surrender, “a long time ago, in the 90s.” Maybe the next generation won’t be as celebrity driven.
Thank God Lisa suggested I pin my artist-beret down or it would have blown away, like my resolve to walk in the snow. Still, I followed Lisa into the park like a cat on a leash - unwilling to be seen as any less Canadian. The show crunched like we were trampling over snow-cones.
Trees began turning away the wind as we entered Central Park, “I think we may survive.” I said cheerfully. Just because you're freezing to death doesn’t mean you can’t be affable.
Why don’t pigeons freeze to death - I thought birds flew south for the winter?
Jan 10, 2022
Jan 10, 2022 at 9:17 AM UTC
The Century’s Wake
by Michael R. Burch
(lines written at the close of the 20th century and introduction of the 21st century)
Take me home. The party is over,
the century passed—no time for a lover.
And my heart grew heavy
as the fireworks hissed through the dark
over Central Park,
past high-towering spires to some backwoods levee,
hurtling banner-hung docks to the torchlit seas.
And my heart grew heavy;
I felt its disease—
its apathy,
wanting the bright, rhapsodic display
to last more than a single day.
If decay was its rite,
now it has learned to long
for something with more intensity,
more gaudy passion, more song—
like the huddled gay masses,
the wildly-cheering throng.
You ask me—
“How can this be?”
A little more flair,
or perhaps only a little more clarity.
I leave her tonight to the century’s wake;
she disappoints me.
Originally published by The Centrifugal Eye. Keywords/Tags: new, century, wake, new year, party, Central Park, fireworks, song, display
Apr 13, 2020
Apr 13, 2020 at 12:51 AM UTC
A stop that my heart know.
Where I said goodbye, I have to go.
A stop that my mind could remember.
Where he held me gently and kissed my temple.
I am not drunk, I was sober.
He poured too much butterflies in me that made me tremble.
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 8:30 AM UTC
a brave
boo suit
belfry bat
and gob
for her
*** up
the line
and Oviedo
worried in
romance wouldn't
dire the
leader with
a draw
but this
question not
heard flew
the coup
Apr 3, 2019
Apr 3, 2019 at 9:37 AM UTC
My mother doused herself in pale blue cloth and lighter fluid.
Inch by inch, she covered her flesh and tightened her shroud;
her eyes screamed regret as soon as her skin touched the match.
Wailing shrilly “ya, Hussain,” my mother went up in flames.
I shut my eyes tightly and counted to eleven.
I heard her last choke and the thud that came after the turning.
Her blue skirts turned white, and in my mind they still billow.
Thundering through the doorway my father came unannounced,
he took a single glance at my charred mother and shut his eyes.
Her burqa was no longer blue, her body was a mess of boils,
on hands and knees he swept her up, no sound did he emit from his mouth.
My mother took no path into heaven:
she spoke no gentle words but rather she whirled burning.
Her movements, like a dervish, I watched amongst the pillows.
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 8:22 PM UTC
*Thin like the willow
Grey as the dove
Quiet as the wind beneath which pesters the cat floats the wings and sweeps the city streets clean of debris
Dark as the asphalt
Soft as the paws
Lean like meat
Old like soil
And slick like oil as it drips from beneath
Shaking like the bedrock
The running water whips
Damp as the corners
And dry as your eyes
It slips
And where asphalt meets the mossgrown bricks
Corners are placed and worlds collide
And the man within is locked away
Within the metaphorical city street
Would the Central Park I know and love, return to me?
In all such glory
The Willow trees*
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 1:13 AM UTC
Borodin's On the Steppes of Central Asia
Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute. But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute. Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the pot-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.
Jan 2, 2017
Jan 2, 2017 at 7:42 AM UTC
Have you ever made a pit stop on the road to success,
to just sit and marvel at the gifts of the ghetto?
Like the individually wrapped Treats that are left about.
have you seen the gum plastered across pavements,
the tagged up scenes...
all of these things.
The **** that people tend to turn their nose up to
is the most beautiful to me.
it reminds me of where I am and fuels me to reach for where I want to be.
Broken sidewalks, broken homes
babies out hustlin' to make their own.
For as long as I can remember,
this is all I've known
this is the land that I call home.
city buses and ratchet fights
****** scenes in broad daylight
beautiful ugliness at my eyesight
but it all pushes me to get it right.
Land of promises
Land of fame
home to Hollywood
and making a name
it is also home to heartache
and home of pain.
but if I must refrain..
If you make a pit stop on the road to success
and marvel at the ghetto
you'd realize you are blessed.
-ari b
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 2:16 PM UTC