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It’s a neat linguistic trick, a pun for the age, A headline’s sharp hook on a gilded page. The "I" is yourself, the singular soul, The "U" is the union, a shared common goal, Then "S" for the States, the land on the map, And "A" for America, snug in the lap Of a brilliant acronym, a debt turned to art--- A promissory note tattooed on the heart. An I.O.U.S.A., a clever, sad song, A market of promises, short-term and long. We owe it to ourselves, this union, this place, To build the next future with grit and with grace. A national mortgage, a contract, a start. But wait. What is an IOU, if not a confession Of a hole in the fabric, a gap in possession? A promise extracted from breath yet to come, A lien on the sunrise, a tax on the sum Of labor not given and lives yet unled, A mortgage not on a house, but on the head Of a child not yet born, who wakes in the dark, To sign with his future a covenant stark. Who is this "I," swollen with wanting and dread? Who is this "U," anesthetized, overfed, Rolled over in Congress, in lobbies, in vaults? And who are the scribes cataloguing the faults While the ink on the note turns from black to a red That’s no metaphor now, but the blood of the dead? Is it me? Is it you? Is it us in a trance, Watching the long, slow, leveraged end of the dance? And what of the "SA"? Sanctuary? Salvation? A solvent charade? A suffix that turns a debt slip to a nation And nations to debt slips, a slow liquidation. What a sterile, accountant’s moral disgrace, To see a republic not as a living face, Not as a home, a hunger, a huddled refusenik’s plea, But a balance-sheet entity, S.A., Inc. Whose assets are rivers, whose liabilities are the poor, Whose goodwill is a flag they haven’t yet torn. Whose debt-service coverage ratio is paid With the marrow of the sick and the dreams that are made To be packaged, securitized, bundled, and sold To a cold, distant future too weary to scold. It’s the quantified soul of a people in hock, It’s the key in the door and the click of the lock. I.O.U.S.A.---a long-term debit of the spirit, Recited so often we no longer hear it. Not a promise to build, but a writ to collect, A future not honored, but just cashed as a check Post-dated to Never, on the bank of Despair, Leaving nothing for breathing but the audited air.
0
May 11
May 11, 2026 at 3:45 AM UTC
PenumbraPoet
- I.O.U.S.A. -
It’s a neat linguistic trick, a pun for the age, A headline’s sharp hook on a gilded page. The "I" is yourself, the singular soul, The "U" is the union, a shared common goal, Then "S" for the States, the land on the map, And "A" for America, snug in the lap Of a brilliant acronym, a debt turned to art--- A promissory note tattooed on the heart. An I.O.U.S.A., a clever, sad song, A market of promises, short-term and long. We owe it to ourselves, this union, this place, To build the next future with grit and with grace. A national mortgage, a contract, a start. But wait. What is an IOU, if not a confession Of a hole in the fabric, a gap in possession? A promise extracted from breath yet to come, A lien on the sunrise, a tax on the sum Of labor not given and lives yet unled, A mortgage not on a house, but on the head Of a child not yet born, who wakes in the dark, To sign with his future a covenant stark. Who is this "I," swollen with wanting and dread? Who is this "U," anesthetized, overfed, Rolled over in Congress, in lobbies, in vaults? And who are the scribes cataloguing the faults While the ink on the note turns from black to a red That’s no metaphor now, but the blood of the dead? Is it me? Is it you? Is it us in a trance, Watching the long, slow, leveraged end of the dance? And what of the "SA"? Sanctuary? Salvation? A solvent charade? A suffix that turns a debt slip to a nation And nations to debt slips, a slow liquidation. What a sterile, accountant’s moral disgrace, To see a republic not as a living face, Not as a home, a hunger, a huddled refusenik’s plea, But a balance-sheet entity, S.A., Inc. Whose assets are rivers, whose liabilities are the poor, Whose goodwill is a flag they haven’t yet torn. Whose debt-service coverage ratio is paid With the marrow of the sick and the dreams that are made To be packaged, securitized, bundled, and sold To a cold, distant future too weary to scold. It’s the quantified soul of a people in hock, It’s the key in the door and the click of the lock. I.O.U.S.A.---a long-term debit of the spirit, Recited so often we no longer hear it. Not a promise to build, but a writ to collect, A future not honored, but just cashed as a check Post-dated to Never, on the bank of Despair, Leaving nothing for breathing but the audited air.
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52
it always seems that life is happy to remind you that it doesn't owe you anything. it doesn't owe you happiness. or friends. it doesn't even owe you an explanation of what happens at the end of your story. but guess what? you don't owe life anything either. you don't owe anything to anyone except yourself. it's your time. your happiness. your choice. because it is your story.
0
Mar 17, 2022
Mar 17, 2022 at 1:29 PM UTC
zackripley
iou nothing
it always seems that life is happy to remind you that it doesn't owe you anything. it doesn't owe you happiness. or friends. it doesn't even owe you an explanation of what happens at the end of your story. but guess what? you don't owe life anything either. you don't owe anything to anyone except yourself. it's your time. your happiness. your choice. because it is your story.
Continue reading...
11
iou by michael r. burch i might have said it but i didn’t u might have noticed but u wouldn’t we might have been us but we couldn’t u might respond but probably shouldn’t Keywords/Tags: iou, chit, debenture, bill, debt, relationship, lovers, impasse, silence, golden, I, owe, you, borrower, lender, Polonius, collectible, mrbiou Passionate One by Michael R. Burch for Beth Love of my life, light of my morning― arise, brightly dawning, for you are my sun. Give me of heaven both manna and leaven― desirous Presence, Passionate One. Talent by Michael R. Burch for Kevin Nicholas Roberts I liked the first passage of her poem―where it led (though not nearly enough to retract what I said.) Now the book propped up here flutters, scarcely half read. It will keep. Before sleep, let me read yours instead. There's something like love in the rhythms of night ―in the throb of streets where the late workers drone, in the sounds that attend each day’s sad, squalid end― that reminds us: till death we are never alone. So we write from the hearts that will fail us anon, words in red truly bled though they cannot reveal whence they came, who they're for. And the tap at the door goes unanswered. We write, for there is nothing more than a verse, than a song, than this chant of the blessed: "If these words be my sins, let me die unconfessed! Unconfessed, unrepentant; I rescind all my vows!" Write till sleep: it’s the leap only Talent allows. Burn by Michael R. Burch for Trump Sunbathe, ozone baby, till your parched skin cracks in the white-hot flash of radiation. Incantation from your pale parched lips shall not avail; you made this hell. Now burn. Burn, Ovid by Michael R. Burch “Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke Sunday School, Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973: I sat imagining watery folds of pale silk encircling her waist. Explicit *** was the day’s “hot” topic (how breathlessly I imagined hers) as she taught us the perils of lust fraught with inhibition. I found her unaccountably beautiful, rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue: adultery, fornication, ************ ****** Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush of her unrouged cheeks, by her pale lips accented only by a slight quiver, a trepidation. What did those lustrous folds foretell of our uncommon desire? Why did she cross and uncross her legs lovely and long in their taupe sheaths? Why did her ******* rise pointedly, as if indicating a direction? “Come unto me, (unto me),” together, we sang, cheek to breast, lips on lips, devout, afire, my hands up her skirt, her pants at her knees: all night long, all night long, in the heavenly choir. This poem is set at Faith Christian Academy, which I attended for a year during the ninth grade. Another poem, *** 101," was also written about my experiences at FCA that year. *** 101 by Michael R. Burch That day the late spring heat steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus crawling its way up the backwards slopes of Nowheresville, North Carolina ... Where we sat exhausted from the day’s skulldrudgery and the unexpected waves of muggy, summer-like humidity ... Giggly first graders sat two abreast behind senior high students sprouting their first sparse beards, their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ... The most unlikely coupling— Lambert, 18, the only college prospect on the varsity basketball team, the proverbial talldarkhandsome swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ... Beside him, Wanda, 13, bespectacled, in her primproper attire and pigtails, staring up at him, fawneyed, disbelieving ... And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her, as she twitched impaled on his finger like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes, I knew ... that love is a forlorn enterprise, that I would never understand it. Styx by Michael R. Burch Black waters, deep and dark and still . . . all men have passed this way, or will. I wrote the poem above as a teenager in high school. The lines started out as part of a longer poem, but I thought these were the two best lines and decided to let them stand alone on the principle that "discretion is the better part of valor." Medusa by Michael R. Burch Friends, beware of her iniquitous hair: long, ravenblack & melancholy. Many suitors drowned there: lost, unaware of the length & extent of their folly. Originally published by Grand Little Things At Cædmon’s Grave by Michael R. Burch “Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula. At the monastery of Whitby, on a day when the sun sank through the sea, and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free, while the wind and time blew all around, I paced those dusk-enamored grounds and thought I heard the steps resound of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede who walked there, too, their spirits freed —perhaps by God, perhaps by need— to write, and with each line, remember the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember, scorched tongues of flame words still engender. Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet. I lay this pale garland of words at his feet. Originally published by The Lyric Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD) loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian, the Measurer's might and his mind-plans, the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord, established earth's fearful foundations. Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof for the sons of men: Holy Creator, mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord, afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty! Cædmon’s Face by Michael R. Burch At the monastery of Whitby, on a day when the sun sank through the sea, and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free, while the wind and Time blew all around, I paced that dusk-enamored ground and thought I heard the steps resound of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede who walked here too, their spirits freed —perhaps by God, perhaps by need— to write, and with each line, remember the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember: scorched tongues of flame words still engender. * He wrote here in an English tongue, a language so unlike our own, unlike—as father unto son. But when at last a child is grown. his heritage is made well-known: his father’s face becomes his own. * He wrote here of the Middle-Earth, the Maker’s might, man’s lowly birth, of every thing that God gave worth suspended under heaven’s roof. He forged with simple words His truth and nine lines left remain the proof: his face was Poetry’s, from youth. Song from Ælla: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch O! sing unto my roundelay, O! drop the briny tear with me, Dance no more at holy-day, Like a running river be: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Black his crown as the winter night, White his skin as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, Cold he lies in the grave below: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note, Quick in dance as thought can be, Deft his tabor, cudgel stout; O! he lies by the willow tree! My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Hark! the raven ***** his wing In the briar'd dell below; Hark! the death-owl loudly sings To the nightmares, as they go: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree. See! the white moon shines on high; Whiter is my true love's shroud: Whiter than the morning sky, Whiter than the evening cloud: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Here upon my true love's grave Shall the barren flowers be laid; Not one holy saint to save All the coolness of a maid: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. With my hands I'll frame the briars Round his holy corpse to grow: Elf and fairy, light your fires, Here my body, stilled, shall go: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Come, with acorn-cup and thorn, Drain my heart’s red blood away; Life and all its good I scorn, Dance by night, or feast by day: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree. Water witches, crowned with plaits, Bear me to your lethal tide. I die; I come; my true love waits. Thus the damsel spoke, and died. The song above is, in my opinion, competitive with Shakespeare's songs in his plays, and may be the best of Thomas Chatterton's so-called "Rowley" poems. The fact that Chatterton wrote it in his teens is astounding. An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”) by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch As wroten bie the goode Prieste Thomas Rowley 1464 In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen, Then hot upon the meadows cast his ray; The apple ruddied from its pallid green And the fat pear did extend its leafy spray; The pied goldfinches sang the livelong day; 'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year, And the ground was mantled in fine green cashmere. The sun was gleaming in the bright mid-day, Dead-still the air, and likewise the heavens blue, When from the sea arose, in drear array, A heap of clouds of sullen sable hue, Which full and fast unto the woodlands drew, Hiding at once the sun's fair festive face, As the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace. Beneath a holly tree, by a pathway's side, Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent lead, A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide. Poor in his sight, ungentle in his **** Long brimful of the miseries of need, Where from the hailstones could the beggar fly? He had no shelter there, nor any convent nigh. Look in his gloomy face; his sprite there scan; How woebegone, how withered, dried-up, dead! Haste to thy parsonage, accursèd man! Haste to thy crypt, thy only restful bed. Cold, as the clay which will grow on thy head, Is Charity and Love among high elves; Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves. The gathered storm is ripe; the huge drops fall; The sunburnt meadows smoke and drink the rain; The coming aghastness makes the cattle pale; And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain; Dashed from the clouds, the waters float again; The heavens gape; the yellow lightning flies; And the hot fiery steam in the wide flamepot dies. Hark! now the thunder's rattling, clamoring sound Heaves slowly on, and then enswollen clangs, Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drown'd, Still on the coward ear of terror hangs; The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swings; Again the lightning―then the thunder pours, And the full clouds are burst at once in stormy showers. Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain, The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came; His chapournette was drenchèd with the rain, And his pinched girdle met with enormous shame; He cursing backwards gave his hymns the same; The storm increasing, and he drew aside With the poor alms-craver, near the holly tree to bide. His cape was all of Lincoln-cloth so fine, With a gold button fasten'd near his chin; His ermine robe was edged with golden twine, And his high-heeled shoes a Baron's might have been; Full well it proved he considered cost no sin; The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight For the horse-milliner loved rosy ribbons bright. "An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said, "Oh, let me wait within your convent door, Till the sun shineth high above our head, And the loud tempest of the air is o'er; Helpless and old am I, alas!, and poor; No house, no friend, no money in my purse; All that I call my own is this―my silver cross. "Varlet," replied the Abbott, "cease your din; This is no season alms and prayers to give; My porter never lets a beggar in; None touch my ring who in dishonor live." And now the sun with the blackened clouds did strive, And shed upon the ground his glaring ray; The Abbot spurred his steed, and swiftly rode away. Once more the sky grew black; the thunder rolled; Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen; Not full of pride, not buttoned up in gold; His cape and jape were gray, and also clean; A Limitour he was, his order serene; And from the pathway side he turned to see Where the poor almer lay beneath the holly tree. "An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said, "For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake." The Limitour then loosen'd his purse's thread, And from it did a groat of silver take; The needy pilgrim did for happiness shake. "Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care; "We are God's stewards all, naught of our own we bear." "But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me, Scarce any give a rentroll to their Lord. Here, take my cloak, as thou are bare, I see; 'Tis thine; the Saints will give me my reward." He left the pilgrim, went his way abroad. ****** and happy Saints, in glory showered, Let the mighty bend, or the good man be empowered! TRANSLATOR'S NOTES: It is possible that some words used by Chatterton were his own coinages; some of them apparently cannot be found in medieval literature. In a few places I have used similar-sounding words that seem to not overly disturb the meaning of the poem. ― Michael R. Burch ***** Nilly by Michael R. Burch Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? You made the stallion, you made the filly, and now they sleep in the dark earth, stilly. Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? You forced them to run all their days uphilly. They ran till they dropped— life’s a pickle, dilly. Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? They say I should worship you! Oh, really! They say I should pray so you’ll not act illy. Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? Are You the Thief by Michael R. Burch When I touch you now, O sweet lover, full of fire, melting like ice in my embrace, when I part the delicate white lace, baring pale flesh, and your face is so close that I breathe your breath and your hair surrounds me like a wreath... tell me now, O sweet, sweet lover, in good faith: are you the thief who has stolen my heart? Originally published as “Baring Pale Flesh” by Poetic License/Monumental Moments Children by Michael R. Burch There was a moment suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall, impendent, pregnant with possibility ... when we might have made ... anything, anything we dreamed, almost anything at all, coalescing dreams into reality. Oh, the love we might have fashioned out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos and the rhythms of evening! But we were young, and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss and what is left is not worth saving. But, oh, you were lovely, child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars, and for a day, what little we partook of all that lay before us seemed so much, and passion but a force with which to play. Davenport Tomorrow by Michael R. Burch Davenport tomorrow ... all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun. Now it is always summer and the bees buzz in cesspools, adapted to a new life. There are no flowers, but the weeds, being hardier, have survived. The small town has become a city of millions; there is no longer a sea, only a huge sewer, but the children don't mind. They still study rocks and stars, but biology is a forgotten science ... after all, what is life? Davenport tomorrow ... all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills whispered wonders of long-ago. Dawn by Michael R. Burch for Beth, Laura, and all good mothers Bring your peculiar strength to the strange nightmarish fray: wrap up your cherished ones in the golden light of day. Amen Originally published by The Lyric Twice by Michael R. Burch Now twice she has left me and twice I have listened and taken her back, remembering days when love lay upon us and sparkled and glistened with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze. But twice she has left me to start my life over, and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn: rekindle a fire from ash, soot and cinder and softly it sputters, refusing to burn. Originally published by The Lyric Pale Though Her Eyes by Michael R. Burch Pale though her eyes, her lips are scarlet from drinking of blood, this child, this harlot born of the night and her heart, of darkness, evil incarnate to dance so reckless, dreaming of blood, her fangs―white―baring, revealing her lust, and her eyes, pale, staring ... Vampires by Michael R. Burch Vampires are such fragile creatures; we dread the dark, but the light destroys them ... sunlight, or a stake, or a cross―such common things. Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings, we shrink from his voice. Centuries have taught us: in shadows danger lurks for those who stray, and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs. He has no choice. We are his prey, plump and fragrant, and if we pray to avoid him, the more he prays to find us ... prays to some despotic hooded God whose benediction is the humid blood he lusts to taste. Published by Monumental Moments (Eye Scry Publications), Weirdbook, Gothic Fairy, Dracula and His Kin, NawaZone and Raiders’ Digest The Vampire's Spa Day Dream by Michael R. Burch O, to swim in vats of blood! I wish I could, I wish I could! O, 'twould be so heavenly to swim in lovely vats of blood! This poem was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background. For All That I Remembered by Michael R. Burch For all that I remembered, I forgot her name, her face, the reason that we loved ... and yet I hold her close within my thought. I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair that fell across her face, the apricot clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan. The memory of her gathers like a flood and bears me to that night, that only night, when she and I were one, and if I could ... I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact each feature, each impression. Love is such a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone before we recognize it. I would crush my lips to hers to hold their memory, if not more tightly, less elusively. Originally published by The Raintown Review Ode to the Sun by Michael R. Burch Day is done... on, swift sun. Follow still your silent course. Follow your unyielding course. On, swift sun. Leave no trace of where you've been; give no hint of what you've seen. But, ever as you onward flee, touch me, O sun, touch me. Now day is done... on, swift sun. Go touch my love about her face and warm her now for my embrace, for though she sleeps so far away, where she is not, I shall not stay. Go tell her now I, too, shall come. Go on, swift sun, go on. Published by The Tucumcari Literary Review. I believe I wrote this poem toward the end of my senior year in high school, around age 18, during my early Romantic Period. Keywords/Tags: Ode, Romantic, Love, Lover, Sun, Time, Night, Sleep, Dreams, mrbiou To the boy Elis by Georg Trakl translation by Michael R. Burch Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest, it announces your downfall. Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness. Your brow sweats blood recalling ancient myths and dark interpretations of birds' flight. Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls; the ripe purple grapes hang suspended as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness. A thornbush crackles; where now are your moonlike eyes? How long, oh Elis, have you been dead? A monk dips waxed fingers into your body's hyacinth; Our silence is a black abyss from which sometimes a docile animal emerges slowly lowering its heavy lids. A black dew drips from your temples: the lost gold of vanished stars. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem. Resemblance by Michael R. Burch Take this geode with its rough exterior— crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ... a diode of amethyst—wild, electric; its sequined cavity—parted, revealing. Find in its fire all brittle passion, each jagged shard relentlessly aching. Each spire inward—a fission startled; in its shattered entrails—fractured light, the heart ice breaking. Originally published by Poet Lore as “Geode” Geode by Michael R. Burch Love—less than eternal, not quite true— is still the best emotion man can muster. Through folds of peeling rind—rough, scarred, crude-skinned— she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale. Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted, in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle; dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell. And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster, as she hints and shimmers, touching those who see, she is not without her uses or her meanings; in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer, till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair. What Goes Around, Comes by Michael R. Burch This is a poem about loss so why do you toss your dark hair— unaccountably glowing? How can you be sure of my heart when it’s beyond my own knowing? Or is it love’s pheromones you trust, my eyes magnetized by your bust and the mysterious alchemies of lust? Now I am truly lost! PLATO TRANSLATIONS These epitaphs and other epigrams have been ascribed to Plato... Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be, But go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato We left the thunderous Aegean to sleep peacefully here on the plains of Ecbatan. Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland! Farewell, Athens, Euboea's neighbor! Farewell, dear Sea! —Michael R. Burch, after Plato We who navigated the Aegean's thunderous storm-surge now sleep peacefully here on the mid-plains of Ecbatan: Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland! Farewell, Athens, nigh to Euboea! Farewell, dear Sea! —Michael R. Burch, after Plato This poet was pleasing to foreigners and even more delightful to his countrymen: Pindar, beloved of the melodious Muses. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Some say the Muses are nine. Foolish critics, count again! Sappho of ****** makes ten. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Even as you once shone, the Star of Morning, above our heads, even so you now shine, the Star of Evening, among the dead. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Why do you gaze up at the stars? Oh, my Star, that I were Heaven, to gaze at you with many eyes! —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Every heart sings an incomplete song, until another heart sings along. Those who would love long to join in the chorus. At a lover's touch, everyone becomes a poet. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato NOTE: I take this Plato epigram to be an epithalamium, with the two voices joining in a complete song being the bride and groom, and the rest of the chorus being the remainder of the wedding ceremony. The Apple ascribed to Plato loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Here's an apple; if you're able to love me, catch it and chuck me your cherry in exchange. But if you hesitate, as I hope you won't, take the apple, examine it carefully, and consider how briefly its beauty will last. Bubble by Michael R. Burch ...…..….........Love ..…......fragile elusive .......if held ... too closely ....cannot............withstand ..the inter..................ruption of its............................…bright ..unmalleable.............tension ....and breaks disintegrates ..…...at the............touch of ....…....an undiscerning .....................hand. 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. Break Time by Michael R. Burch for those who lost loved ones on 9-11 Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel; add artificial sweeteners to conceal the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak: of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance. The TV drones oeuvres of high romance in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal, its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel toward some dark conclusion? Disappear to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here? I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear. Dream House by Michael R. Burch I have come to the house of my fondest dreams, but the shutters are boarded; the front door is locked; the mail box leans over; and where we once walked, the path is grown over with crabgrass and clover. I kick the trash can; it screams, topples over. The yard, weeded over, blooms white fluff, and green. The elm we once swung from leans over the stream. In the twilight I cling with both hands to the swing. Inside, perhaps, I hear the telephone ring or watch once again as the bleary-eyed mover takes down your picture. Dejected, I hover, asking over and over, “Why didn’t you love her?” “Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”) by Günter Grass loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Why have I remained silent, so long, failing to mention something openly practiced in war games which now threaten to leave us merely meaningless footnotes? Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first might annihilate a beleaguered nation whose people march to a martinet’s tune, compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience. Why? Merely because of the suspicion that a bomb might be built by Iranians. But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself to name that other nation, where, for years ―shrouded in secrecy― a formidable nuclear capability has existed beyond all control, simply because no inspections were ever allowed? The universal concealment of this fact abetted by my own incriminating silence now feels like a heavy, enforced lie, an oppressive inhibition, a vice, a strong constraint, which, if dismissed, immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.” But now my own country, guilty of its unprecedented crimes which continually demand remembrance, once again seeking financial gain (although with glib lips we call it “reparations”) has delivered yet another submarine to Israel― this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads capable of exterminating all life where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven, but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence. So now I will say what must be said. Why did I remain silent so long? Because I thought my origins, tarred by an ineradicable stain, forbade me to declare the truth to Israel, a country to which I am and will always remain attached. Why is it only now that I say, in my advancing age, and with my last drop of ink on the final page that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger an already fragile world peace? Because tomorrow might be too late, and so the truth must be heard today. And because we Germans, already burdened with many weighty crimes, could become enablers of yet another, one easily foreseen, and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity. Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy and because I hope many others too will free themselves from the shackles of silence, and speak out to renounce violence by insisting on permanent supervision of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s by an international agency accepted by both governments. Only thus can we find the path to peace for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else living in a region currently consumed by madness ―and ultimately, for ourselves. Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012). Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history." Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch by Michael R. Burch for the Religious Right Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry. You could have saved her, but you were all tied up complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp. Scratch that. You were born after World War II. You had something more important to do: while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a religious tract against homosexual marriage and various things gods and evangelists disparage.) Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure. After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians? Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians. Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions. Love Unfolded Like a Flower by Michael R. Burch Love unfolded like a flower; Pale petals pinked and blushed to see the sky. I came to know you and to trust you in moments lost to springtime slipping by. Then love burst outward, leaping skyward, and untamed blossoms danced against the wind. All I wanted was to hold you; though passion tempted once, we never sinned. Now love's gay petals fade and wither, and winter beckons, whispering a lie. We were friends, but friendships end . . . yes, friendships end and even roses die. Orpheus by Michael R. Burch for and 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. The Quickening by Michael R. Burch for Beth I never meant to love you when I held you in my arms promising you sagely wise, noncommittal charms. And I never meant to need you when I touched your tender lips with kisses that intrigued my own— such kisses I had never known, nor a heartbeat in my fingertips! Ah! Sunflower by Michael R. Burch after William Blake O little yellow flower like a star ... how beautiful, how wonderful we are! Published as the collection "IOU"
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Apr 5, 2020
Apr 5, 2020 at 5:03 AM UTC
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iou by michael r. burch i might have said it but i didn’t u might have noticed but u wouldn’t we might have been us but we couldn’t u might respond but probably shouldn’t Keywords/Tags: iou, chit, debenture, bill, debt, relationship, lovers, impasse, silence, golden, I, owe, you, borrower, lender, Polonius, collectible, mrbiou Passionate One by Michael R. Burch for Beth Love of my life, light of my morning― arise, brightly dawning, for you are my sun. Give me of heaven both manna and leaven― desirous Presence, Passionate One. Talent by Michael R. Burch for Kevin Nicholas Roberts I liked the first passage of her poem―where it led (though not nearly enough to retract what I said.) Now the book propped up here flutters, scarcely half read. It will keep. Before sleep, let me read yours instead. There's something like love in the rhythms of night ―in the throb of streets where the late workers drone, in the sounds that attend each day’s sad, squalid end― that reminds us: till death we are never alone. So we write from the hearts that will fail us anon, words in red truly bled though they cannot reveal whence they came, who they're for. And the tap at the door goes unanswered. We write, for there is nothing more than a verse, than a song, than this chant of the blessed: "If these words be my sins, let me die unconfessed! Unconfessed, unrepentant; I rescind all my vows!" Write till sleep: it’s the leap only Talent allows. Burn by Michael R. Burch for Trump Sunbathe, ozone baby, till your parched skin cracks in the white-hot flash of radiation. Incantation from your pale parched lips shall not avail; you made this hell. Now burn. Burn, Ovid by Michael R. Burch “Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke Sunday School, Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973: I sat imagining watery folds of pale silk encircling her waist. Explicit *** was the day’s “hot” topic (how breathlessly I imagined hers) as she taught us the perils of lust fraught with inhibition. I found her unaccountably beautiful, rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue: adultery, fornication, ************ ****** Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush of her unrouged cheeks, by her pale lips accented only by a slight quiver, a trepidation. What did those lustrous folds foretell of our uncommon desire? Why did she cross and uncross her legs lovely and long in their taupe sheaths? Why did her ******* rise pointedly, as if indicating a direction? “Come unto me, (unto me),” together, we sang, cheek to breast, lips on lips, devout, afire, my hands up her skirt, her pants at her knees: all night long, all night long, in the heavenly choir. This poem is set at Faith Christian Academy, which I attended for a year during the ninth grade. Another poem, *** 101," was also written about my experiences at FCA that year. *** 101 by Michael R. Burch That day the late spring heat steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus crawling its way up the backwards slopes of Nowheresville, North Carolina ... Where we sat exhausted from the day’s skulldrudgery and the unexpected waves of muggy, summer-like humidity ... Giggly first graders sat two abreast behind senior high students sprouting their first sparse beards, their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ... The most unlikely coupling— Lambert, 18, the only college prospect on the varsity basketball team, the proverbial talldarkhandsome swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ... Beside him, Wanda, 13, bespectacled, in her primproper attire and pigtails, staring up at him, fawneyed, disbelieving ... And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her, as she twitched impaled on his finger like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes, I knew ... that love is a forlorn enterprise, that I would never understand it. Styx by Michael R. Burch Black waters, deep and dark and still . . . all men have passed this way, or will. I wrote the poem above as a teenager in high school. The lines started out as part of a longer poem, but I thought these were the two best lines and decided to let them stand alone on the principle that "discretion is the better part of valor." Medusa by Michael R. Burch Friends, beware of her iniquitous hair: long, ravenblack & melancholy. Many suitors drowned there: lost, unaware of the length & extent of their folly. Originally published by Grand Little Things At Cædmon’s Grave by Michael R. Burch “Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula. At the monastery of Whitby, on a day when the sun sank through the sea, and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free, while the wind and time blew all around, I paced those dusk-enamored grounds and thought I heard the steps resound of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede who walked there, too, their spirits freed —perhaps by God, perhaps by need— to write, and with each line, remember the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember, scorched tongues of flame words still engender. Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet. I lay this pale garland of words at his feet. Originally published by The Lyric Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD) loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian, the Measurer's might and his mind-plans, the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord, established earth's fearful foundations. Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof for the sons of men: Holy Creator, mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord, afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty! Cædmon’s Face by Michael R. Burch At the monastery of Whitby, on a day when the sun sank through the sea, and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free, while the wind and Time blew all around, I paced that dusk-enamored ground and thought I heard the steps resound of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede who walked here too, their spirits freed —perhaps by God, perhaps by need— to write, and with each line, remember the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember: scorched tongues of flame words still engender. * He wrote here in an English tongue, a language so unlike our own, unlike—as father unto son. But when at last a child is grown. his heritage is made well-known: his father’s face becomes his own. * He wrote here of the Middle-Earth, the Maker’s might, man’s lowly birth, of every thing that God gave worth suspended under heaven’s roof. He forged with simple words His truth and nine lines left remain the proof: his face was Poetry’s, from youth. Song from Ælla: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch O! sing unto my roundelay, O! drop the briny tear with me, Dance no more at holy-day, Like a running river be: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Black his crown as the winter night, White his skin as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, Cold he lies in the grave below: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note, Quick in dance as thought can be, Deft his tabor, cudgel stout; O! he lies by the willow tree! My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Hark! the raven ***** his wing In the briar'd dell below; Hark! the death-owl loudly sings To the nightmares, as they go: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree. See! the white moon shines on high; Whiter is my true love's shroud: Whiter than the morning sky, Whiter than the evening cloud: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Here upon my true love's grave Shall the barren flowers be laid; Not one holy saint to save All the coolness of a maid: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. With my hands I'll frame the briars Round his holy corpse to grow: Elf and fairy, light your fires, Here my body, stilled, shall go: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. Come, with acorn-cup and thorn, Drain my heart’s red blood away; Life and all its good I scorn, Dance by night, or feast by day: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree. Water witches, crowned with plaits, Bear me to your lethal tide. I die; I come; my true love waits. Thus the damsel spoke, and died. The song above is, in my opinion, competitive with Shakespeare's songs in his plays, and may be the best of Thomas Chatterton's so-called "Rowley" poems. The fact that Chatterton wrote it in his teens is astounding. An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”) by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch As wroten bie the goode Prieste Thomas Rowley 1464 In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen, Then hot upon the meadows cast his ray; The apple ruddied from its pallid green And the fat pear did extend its leafy spray; The pied goldfinches sang the livelong day; 'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year, And the ground was mantled in fine green cashmere. The sun was gleaming in the bright mid-day, Dead-still the air, and likewise the heavens blue, When from the sea arose, in drear array, A heap of clouds of sullen sable hue, Which full and fast unto the woodlands drew, Hiding at once the sun's fair festive face, As the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace. Beneath a holly tree, by a pathway's side, Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent lead, A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide. Poor in his sight, ungentle in his **** Long brimful of the miseries of need, Where from the hailstones could the beggar fly? He had no shelter there, nor any convent nigh. Look in his gloomy face; his sprite there scan; How woebegone, how withered, dried-up, dead! Haste to thy parsonage, accursèd man! Haste to thy crypt, thy only restful bed. Cold, as the clay which will grow on thy head, Is Charity and Love among high elves; Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves. The gathered storm is ripe; the huge drops fall; The sunburnt meadows smoke and drink the rain; The coming aghastness makes the cattle pale; And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain; Dashed from the clouds, the waters float again; The heavens gape; the yellow lightning flies; And the hot fiery steam in the wide flamepot dies. Hark! now the thunder's rattling, clamoring sound Heaves slowly on, and then enswollen clangs, Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drown'd, Still on the coward ear of terror hangs; The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swings; Again the lightning―then the thunder pours, And the full clouds are burst at once in stormy showers. Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain, The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came; His chapournette was drenchèd with the rain, And his pinched girdle met with enormous shame; He cursing backwards gave his hymns the same; The storm increasing, and he drew aside With the poor alms-craver, near the holly tree to bide. His cape was all of Lincoln-cloth so fine, With a gold button fasten'd near his chin; His ermine robe was edged with golden twine, And his high-heeled shoes a Baron's might have been; Full well it proved he considered cost no sin; The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight For the horse-milliner loved rosy ribbons bright. "An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said, "Oh, let me wait within your convent door, Till the sun shineth high above our head, And the loud tempest of the air is o'er; Helpless and old am I, alas!, and poor; No house, no friend, no money in my purse; All that I call my own is this―my silver cross. "Varlet," replied the Abbott, "cease your din; This is no season alms and prayers to give; My porter never lets a beggar in; None touch my ring who in dishonor live." And now the sun with the blackened clouds did strive, And shed upon the ground his glaring ray; The Abbot spurred his steed, and swiftly rode away. Once more the sky grew black; the thunder rolled; Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen; Not full of pride, not buttoned up in gold; His cape and jape were gray, and also clean; A Limitour he was, his order serene; And from the pathway side he turned to see Where the poor almer lay beneath the holly tree. "An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said, "For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake." The Limitour then loosen'd his purse's thread, And from it did a groat of silver take; The needy pilgrim did for happiness shake. "Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care; "We are God's stewards all, naught of our own we bear." "But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me, Scarce any give a rentroll to their Lord. Here, take my cloak, as thou are bare, I see; 'Tis thine; the Saints will give me my reward." He left the pilgrim, went his way abroad. ****** and happy Saints, in glory showered, Let the mighty bend, or the good man be empowered! TRANSLATOR'S NOTES: It is possible that some words used by Chatterton were his own coinages; some of them apparently cannot be found in medieval literature. In a few places I have used similar-sounding words that seem to not overly disturb the meaning of the poem. ― Michael R. Burch ***** Nilly by Michael R. Burch Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? You made the stallion, you made the filly, and now they sleep in the dark earth, stilly. Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? You forced them to run all their days uphilly. They ran till they dropped— life’s a pickle, dilly. Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? They say I should worship you! Oh, really! They say I should pray so you’ll not act illy. Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly? Are You the Thief by Michael R. Burch When I touch you now, O sweet lover, full of fire, melting like ice in my embrace, when I part the delicate white lace, baring pale flesh, and your face is so close that I breathe your breath and your hair surrounds me like a wreath... tell me now, O sweet, sweet lover, in good faith: are you the thief who has stolen my heart? Originally published as “Baring Pale Flesh” by Poetic License/Monumental Moments Children by Michael R. Burch There was a moment suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall, impendent, pregnant with possibility ... when we might have made ... anything, anything we dreamed, almost anything at all, coalescing dreams into reality. Oh, the love we might have fashioned out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos and the rhythms of evening! But we were young, and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss and what is left is not worth saving. But, oh, you were lovely, child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars, and for a day, what little we partook of all that lay before us seemed so much, and passion but a force with which to play. Davenport Tomorrow by Michael R. Burch Davenport tomorrow ... all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun. Now it is always summer and the bees buzz in cesspools, adapted to a new life. There are no flowers, but the weeds, being hardier, have survived. The small town has become a city of millions; there is no longer a sea, only a huge sewer, but the children don't mind. They still study rocks and stars, but biology is a forgotten science ... after all, what is life? Davenport tomorrow ... all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills whispered wonders of long-ago. Dawn by Michael R. Burch for Beth, Laura, and all good mothers Bring your peculiar strength to the strange nightmarish fray: wrap up your cherished ones in the golden light of day. Amen Originally published by The Lyric Twice by Michael R. Burch Now twice she has left me and twice I have listened and taken her back, remembering days when love lay upon us and sparkled and glistened with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze. But twice she has left me to start my life over, and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn: rekindle a fire from ash, soot and cinder and softly it sputters, refusing to burn. Originally published by The Lyric Pale Though Her Eyes by Michael R. Burch Pale though her eyes, her lips are scarlet from drinking of blood, this child, this harlot born of the night and her heart, of darkness, evil incarnate to dance so reckless, dreaming of blood, her fangs―white―baring, revealing her lust, and her eyes, pale, staring ... Vampires by Michael R. Burch Vampires are such fragile creatures; we dread the dark, but the light destroys them ... sunlight, or a stake, or a cross―such common things. Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings, we shrink from his voice. Centuries have taught us: in shadows danger lurks for those who stray, and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs. He has no choice. We are his prey, plump and fragrant, and if we pray to avoid him, the more he prays to find us ... prays to some despotic hooded God whose benediction is the humid blood he lusts to taste. Published by Monumental Moments (Eye Scry Publications), Weirdbook, Gothic Fairy, Dracula and His Kin, NawaZone and Raiders’ Digest The Vampire's Spa Day Dream by Michael R. Burch O, to swim in vats of blood! I wish I could, I wish I could! O, 'twould be so heavenly to swim in lovely vats of blood! This poem was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background. For All That I Remembered by Michael R. Burch For all that I remembered, I forgot her name, her face, the reason that we loved ... and yet I hold her close within my thought. I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair that fell across her face, the apricot clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan. The memory of her gathers like a flood and bears me to that night, that only night, when she and I were one, and if I could ... I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact each feature, each impression. Love is such a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone before we recognize it. I would crush my lips to hers to hold their memory, if not more tightly, less elusively. Originally published by The Raintown Review Ode to the Sun by Michael R. Burch Day is done... on, swift sun. Follow still your silent course. Follow your unyielding course. On, swift sun. Leave no trace of where you've been; give no hint of what you've seen. But, ever as you onward flee, touch me, O sun, touch me. Now day is done... on, swift sun. Go touch my love about her face and warm her now for my embrace, for though she sleeps so far away, where she is not, I shall not stay. Go tell her now I, too, shall come. Go on, swift sun, go on. Published by The Tucumcari Literary Review. I believe I wrote this poem toward the end of my senior year in high school, around age 18, during my early Romantic Period. Keywords/Tags: Ode, Romantic, Love, Lover, Sun, Time, Night, Sleep, Dreams, mrbiou To the boy Elis by Georg Trakl translation by Michael R. Burch Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest, it announces your downfall. Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness. Your brow sweats blood recalling ancient myths and dark interpretations of birds' flight. Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls; the ripe purple grapes hang suspended as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness. A thornbush crackles; where now are your moonlike eyes? How long, oh Elis, have you been dead? A monk dips waxed fingers into your body's hyacinth; Our silence is a black abyss from which sometimes a docile animal emerges slowly lowering its heavy lids. A black dew drips from your temples: the lost gold of vanished stars. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem. Resemblance by Michael R. Burch Take this geode with its rough exterior— crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ... a diode of amethyst—wild, electric; its sequined cavity—parted, revealing. Find in its fire all brittle passion, each jagged shard relentlessly aching. Each spire inward—a fission startled; in its shattered entrails—fractured light, the heart ice breaking. Originally published by Poet Lore as “Geode” Geode by Michael R. Burch Love—less than eternal, not quite true— is still the best emotion man can muster. Through folds of peeling rind—rough, scarred, crude-skinned— she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale. Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted, in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle; dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell. And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster, as she hints and shimmers, touching those who see, she is not without her uses or her meanings; in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer, till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair. What Goes Around, Comes by Michael R. Burch This is a poem about loss so why do you toss your dark hair— unaccountably glowing? How can you be sure of my heart when it’s beyond my own knowing? Or is it love’s pheromones you trust, my eyes magnetized by your bust and the mysterious alchemies of lust? Now I am truly lost! PLATO TRANSLATIONS These epitaphs and other epigrams have been ascribed to Plato... Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be, But go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato We left the thunderous Aegean to sleep peacefully here on the plains of Ecbatan. Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland! Farewell, Athens, Euboea's neighbor! Farewell, dear Sea! —Michael R. Burch, after Plato We who navigated the Aegean's thunderous storm-surge now sleep peacefully here on the mid-plains of Ecbatan: Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland! Farewell, Athens, nigh to Euboea! Farewell, dear Sea! —Michael R. Burch, after Plato This poet was pleasing to foreigners and even more delightful to his countrymen: Pindar, beloved of the melodious Muses. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Some say the Muses are nine. Foolish critics, count again! Sappho of ****** makes ten. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Even as you once shone, the Star of Morning, above our heads, even so you now shine, the Star of Evening, among the dead. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Why do you gaze up at the stars? Oh, my Star, that I were Heaven, to gaze at you with many eyes! —Michael R. Burch, after Plato Every heart sings an incomplete song, until another heart sings along. Those who would love long to join in the chorus. At a lover's touch, everyone becomes a poet. —Michael R. Burch, after Plato NOTE: I take this Plato epigram to be an epithalamium, with the two voices joining in a complete song being the bride and groom, and the rest of the chorus being the remainder of the wedding ceremony. The Apple ascribed to Plato loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Here's an apple; if you're able to love me, catch it and chuck me your cherry in exchange. But if you hesitate, as I hope you won't, take the apple, examine it carefully, and consider how briefly its beauty will last. Bubble by Michael R. Burch ...…..….........Love ..…......fragile elusive .......if held ... too closely ....cannot............withstand ..the inter..................ruption of its............................…bright ..unmalleable.............tension ....and breaks disintegrates ..…...at the............touch of ....…....an undiscerning .....................hand. 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. Break Time by Michael R. Burch for those who lost loved ones on 9-11 Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel; add artificial sweeteners to conceal the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak: of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance. The TV drones oeuvres of high romance in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal, its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel toward some dark conclusion? Disappear to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here? I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear. Dream House by Michael R. Burch I have come to the house of my fondest dreams, but the shutters are boarded; the front door is locked; the mail box leans over; and where we once walked, the path is grown over with crabgrass and clover. I kick the trash can; it screams, topples over. The yard, weeded over, blooms white fluff, and green. The elm we once swung from leans over the stream. In the twilight I cling with both hands to the swing. Inside, perhaps, I hear the telephone ring or watch once again as the bleary-eyed mover takes down your picture. Dejected, I hover, asking over and over, “Why didn’t you love her?” “Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”) by Günter Grass loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Why have I remained silent, so long, failing to mention something openly practiced in war games which now threaten to leave us merely meaningless footnotes? Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first might annihilate a beleaguered nation whose people march to a martinet’s tune, compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience. Why? Merely because of the suspicion that a bomb might be built by Iranians. But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself to name that other nation, where, for years ―shrouded in secrecy― a formidable nuclear capability has existed beyond all control, simply because no inspections were ever allowed? The universal concealment of this fact abetted by my own incriminating silence now feels like a heavy, enforced lie, an oppressive inhibition, a vice, a strong constraint, which, if dismissed, immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.” But now my own country, guilty of its unprecedented crimes which continually demand remembrance, once again seeking financial gain (although with glib lips we call it “reparations”) has delivered yet another submarine to Israel― this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads capable of exterminating all life where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven, but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence. So now I will say what must be said. Why did I remain silent so long? Because I thought my origins, tarred by an ineradicable stain, forbade me to declare the truth to Israel, a country to which I am and will always remain attached. Why is it only now that I say, in my advancing age, and with my last drop of ink on the final page that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger an already fragile world peace? Because tomorrow might be too late, and so the truth must be heard today. And because we Germans, already burdened with many weighty crimes, could become enablers of yet another, one easily foreseen, and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity. Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy and because I hope many others too will free themselves from the shackles of silence, and speak out to renounce violence by insisting on permanent supervision of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s by an international agency accepted by both governments. Only thus can we find the path to peace for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else living in a region currently consumed by madness ―and ultimately, for ourselves. Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012). Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history." Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch by Michael R. Burch for the Religious Right Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry. You could have saved her, but you were all tied up complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp. Scratch that. You were born after World War II. You had something more important to do: while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a religious tract against homosexual marriage and various things gods and evangelists disparage.) Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure. After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians? Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians. Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions. Love Unfolded Like a Flower by Michael R. Burch Love unfolded like a flower; Pale petals pinked and blushed to see the sky. I came to know you and to trust you in moments lost to springtime slipping by. Then love burst outward, leaping skyward, and untamed blossoms danced against the wind. All I wanted was to hold you; though passion tempted once, we never sinned. Now love's gay petals fade and wither, and winter beckons, whispering a lie. We were friends, but friendships end . . . yes, friendships end and even roses die. Orpheus by Michael R. Burch for and 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. The Quickening by Michael R. Burch for Beth I never meant to love you when I held you in my arms promising you sagely wise, noncommittal charms. And I never meant to need you when I touched your tender lips with kisses that intrigued my own— such kisses I had never known, nor a heartbeat in my fingertips! Ah! Sunflower by Michael R. Burch after William Blake O little yellow flower like a star ... how beautiful, how wonderful we are! Published as the collection "IOU"
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