#mutilation
Soul in shreds — fire trembling in my hands,
Heartbeat redlining, chest begins to seize,
Miracle descends from nightly strands,
Star has fallen from its orbit to my palms.
Blinding light was searing through my sight,
Hands are burning — yet I hold the flame,
I believed that star of ancient night
Would inspire me and give my soul a name.
Darkness now — a blind and handless man,
White light of the world is lost to time,
Cradling my stumps as best I can,
Flogged by fate, instead of rivers of rhyme.
May 13
May 13, 2026 at 11:56 PM UTC
Gagged and bound inside my thoughts
Jagged shards of melancholy rage
Frustration strangles pent-up chaos
I plunge a dagger into my face
Ripping fabric caught on thorns
I drag across my paper waist
I turn the key inside my flesh
and puke out my creative angst
Nov 1, 2020
Nov 1, 2020 at 2:59 AM UTC
Supple. Soft.
Bare it. Bare it now.
Tougher. Harder.
That won’t do. Move up.
Seamless. Untouched.
Grab it. Pull it.
Is it ready?
Inspecting for impurities
That will ruin this rare experience.
Drag it. Rip it. Tear it.
But no.
This time it glides.
Smooth. Effortless.
Over. And Over.
So fast.
Grinning wide.
Insides now outsides.
Spillages for someone else to clean.
Jul 5, 2020
Jul 5, 2020 at 5:22 PM UTC
Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch
There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were cannon shots’ soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise . . .
and then . . . annihilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were nights our hearts conceived
untruths reborn as sighs.
To dream was our consolation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood’s salt libations . . .
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Keywords/Tags: Daredevil, love, mutilation, tightrope, high, wire, acrobatic, tumble, bruised, fall, sedation, death, mrbdare, mrbch
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.
My wife Beth has been a Daredevil for Love, sometimes engaging in high-wire acts that defied gravity. At times her acrobatic moves resulted in tumbles, falls, and bruises, but she never stopped loving her family and friends. Thus, the first two poems are related, although the woman in the first poem is imaginary.
In My House
by Michael R. Burch
When you were in my house
you were not free―
in chains bound.
Manifest Destiny?
I was wrong;
my plantation burned to the ground.
I was wrong.
This is my song,
this is my plea:
I was wrong.
When you are in my house,
now, I am not free.
I feel the song
hurling itself back at me.
We were wrong.
This is my history.
I feel my tongue
stilting accordingly.
We were wrong;
brother, forgive me.
Published by Black Medina. This is poem about a different kind of high-wire act, a different kind of tension, and a different kind of fall, bruising and mutilation. At the time I wrote this poem, I had hired two fine young black men as programmers and they had keys to my house, where I was the minority on work days.
Less Heroic Couplets: ****** Most Fowl!
by Michael R. Burch
****** most foul!”
cried the mouse to the owl.
“Friend, I’m no sinner;
you’re merely my dinner!”
the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.
Originally published by Lighten Up Online and in Potcake Chapbook #7. In an attempt to demonstrate that not all couplets are heroic, I have created a series of poems called “Less Heroic Couplets.” I believe even poets should abide by truth-in-advertising laws! Mice are acrobatic little daredevils. ― MRB
Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch
Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron―
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.
And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful―
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea. This is a poem about yet another kind of fall and the kind of bruising that increases with advancing age.
Herbsttag ("Autumn Day" or "Fall Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.
Originally published by Measure. This is one of my favorite Rilke poems, about the feelings of loneliness a fall day can inspire.
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.
I Loved You
by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
translation by Michael R. Burch
I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ...
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.
I loved you ... thus the hopelessness I knew ...
The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain
resulted in two hearts so wholly true
the gods might grant us leave to love again.
Wulf and Eadwacer
ancient Anglo-Saxon/Old English poem, circa 960 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My clan's curs pursue him like crippled game;
they'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.
Wulf's on one island; we're on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens.
Here, bloodthirsty curs howl for carnage.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.
My heart pursued Wulf like a panting hound,
but whenever it rained—how I wept! —
the boldest cur grasped me in its paws:
good feelings for him, but for me loathsome!
Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you
has made me sick; your seldom-comings
have left me famished, deprived of real meat.
Have you heard, Eadwacer? Watchdog!
A wolf has borne our wretched whelp to the woods!
One can easily sever what never was one:
our song together.
Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch
Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.
Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.
When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.
Attilâ İlhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, translator, novelist, screenwriter, editor, journalist, essayist, reviewer, socialist and intellectual.
Ben Sana Mecburum: “You are indispensable”
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you’re like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that I burn within, at the thought of you?
Trees prepare themselves for autumn;
can this city be our lost Istanbul?
Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness
as the street lights flicker
and the streets reek with rain.
You are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...
Love sometimes seems akin to terror:
a man tires suddenly at nightfall,
of living enslaved to the razor at his neck.
Sometimes he wrings his hands,
expunging other lives from his existence.
Sometimes whichever door he knocks
echoes back only heartache.
A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih ...
a song about some Friday long ago.
I stop to listen from a vacant corner,
longing to bring you an untouched sky,
but time disintegrates in my hands.
Whatever I do, wherever I go,
you are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...
Are you the blue child of June?
Ah, no one knows you―no one knows!
Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters ...
Perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy?
Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain
that leaves you blind, beset, broken,
with wind-disheveled hair?
Whenever I think of life
seated at the wolves’ table,
shameless, yet without soiling our hands ...
Yes, whenever I think of life,
I begin with your name, defying the silence,
and your secret tides surge within me
making this voyage inevitable.
You are indispensable; how can you not know?
Fragments
by Attila Ilhan
loose English translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch
**
The night is a cloudy-feathered owl,
its quills like fine-spun glass.
It gazes out the window,
perched on my right shoulder,
its wings outspread and huge.
If the encroaching darkness seems devastating at first glance,
the sovereign of everything,
its reach infinite ...
Still somewhere within a kernel of light glows secretly
creating an enlightened forest of dialectics.
**
In September’s waning days one thinks wanly of the arrival of fall
like a ship appearing on the horizon with untrimmed, tattered sails;
for some unfathomable reason fall is the time to consider one’s own demise―
the body smothered by yellowed leaves like a corpse rotting in a ghoulish photograph ...
**
Bitter words
crack like whips
snapping across prison yards ...
Then there are words like pomegranate trees in bloom,
words like the sun igniting the sea beyond mountainous horizons,
flashing like mysterious knives ...
Such words are the burning roses of an infinite imagination;
they are born and they die with the flutterings of butterflies;
we carry those words in our hearts like pregnant shotguns until the day we expire,
martyred for the words we were prepared to die for ...
**
What I wrote and what you understood? Curious and curiouser!
escape!
by michael r. burch
to live among the daffodil folk . . .
slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . .
suddenly pop out
the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . .
minuscule as alice, shout
yippee-yi-yee!
in wee exultant glee
to be leaving behind the
LARGE
THREE-DENALI GARAGE.
Escape!!
by Michael R. Burch
You are too beautiful,
too innocent,
too inherently lovely
to merely reflect the sun’s splendor ...
too full of irresistible candor
to remain silent,
too delicately fawnlike
for a world so violent ...
Come, my beautiful Bambi
and I will protect you ...
but of course you have already been lured away
by the dew-laden roses ...
Dream of Infinity
by Michael R. Burch
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity... windswept and blue.
This poem was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses. I was paid a whopping $10, my first cash payment. It was subsequently published by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Poetry Life & Times, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse.
Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch
Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .
Quiescent unions . . . thoughts of bliss, of hope . . .
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars . . .
like childhood’s long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions . . . slip and bra . . .
Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.
Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge
Ann Rutledge was apparently Abraham Lincoln’s first love interest. Unfortunately, she was engaged to another man when they met, then died with typhoid fever at age 22. According to a friend, Isaac Cogdal, when asked if he had loved her, Lincoln replied: “It is true―true indeed, I did. I loved the woman dearly and soundly: She was a handsome girl―would have made a good, loving wife … I did honestly and truly love the girl and think often, often of her now.”
Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge
by Michael R. Burch
Winter was not easy,
nor would the spring return.
I knew you by your absence,
as men are wont to burn
with strange indwelling fire―
such longings you inspire!
But winter was not easy,
nor would the sun relent
from sculpting ****** images
and how could I repent?
I left quaint offerings in the snow,
more maiden than I care to know.
Ann Rutledge’s Irregular Quilt
by Michael R. Burch
based on “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie
I.
Her fingers “plied the needle” with “unusual swiftness and art”
till Abe knelt down beside her: then her demoralized heart
set Eros’s dart a-quiver; thus a crazy quilt emerged:
strange stitches all a-kilter, all patterns lost. (Her host
kept her vicarious laughter barely submerged.)
II.
Years later she’d show off the quilt with its uncertain stitches
as evidence love undermines men’s plans and unevens women’s strictures
(and a plethora of scriptures.)
III.
But O the sacred tenderness Ann’s reckless stitch contains
and all the world’s felicities: rich cloth, for love’s fine gains,
for sweethearts’ tremulous fingers and their bright, uncertain vows
and all love’s blithe, erratic hopes (like now’s).
IV.
Years later on a pilgrimage, by tenderness obsessed,
Dale Carnegie, drawn to her grave, found weeds in her place of rest
and mowed them back, revealing the spot of Lincoln’s joy and grief
(and his hope and his disbelief).
V.
Yes, such is the tenderness of love, and such are its disappointments.
Love is a book of rhapsodic poems. Love is an grab bag of ointments.
Love is the finger poised, the smile, the Question ― perhaps ― and the Answer?
Love is the pain of betrayal, the two left feet of the dancer.
VI.
There were ladies of ill repute in his past. Or so he thought. Was it true?
And yet he loved them, Ann (sweet Ann!), as tenderly as he loved you.
Keywords/Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, history, president, love, lover, mistress, paramour, romance, romantic, quilt, Dale Carnegie
Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.
Warming Her Pearls
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Warming her pearls, her *******
gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund...
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.
Published by Erosha, The Eclectic Muse, Muse Apprentice Guild, Nisqually Delta Review, Erbacce, Poetry Life & Times and Brief Poems
Squall
by Michael R. Burch
There, in that sunny arbor,
in the aureate light
filtering through the waxy leaves
of a stunted banana tree,
I felt the sudden monsoon of your wrath,
the clattery implosions
and copper-bright bursts
of the bottoms of pots and pans.
I saw your swollen goddess’s belly
wobble and heave
in pregnant indignation,
turned tail, and ran.
Published by Chrysanthemum, Poetry Super Highway, Barbitos and Poetry Life & Times
Villanelle: 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-stoned.
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-stoned,
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-stoned,
we first proved we had lives of our own).
NOTE: The Natchez Trace is the Nashville bar where I met my future wife Beth. We invented a game called "twister pool" which involved billiards, drinking and a fair bit of physical contortion ...
At the Natchez Trace
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
I.
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.
Beside me stands a woman,
a stanza in the song
that plays so low and fluting
and bids me sing along.
Beside me stands a woman
whose eyes reveal her soul,
whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown,
whose hips and ******* are full.
Beside me stands a woman
who scarcely knows my name;
but I would have her know my heart
if only I knew where to start.
II.
Not every man is as he seems;
not all are prone to poems and dreams.
Not every man would take the time
to meter out his heart in rhyme.
But I am not as other men—
my heart is sentenced to this pen.
III.
Men speak of their "ambition"
but they only know its name . . .
I never say the word aloud,
but I have felt the Flame.
IV.
Now, standing here, I do not dare
to let her know that I might care;
I never learned the lines to use;
I never worked the wolves' bold ruse.
But if she looks my way again,
perhaps I will, if only then.
V.
How can a man have come so far
in searching after every star,
and yet today,
though years away,
look back upon the winding way,
and see himself as he was then,
a child of eight or nine or ten,
and not know more?
VI.
My life is not empty; I have my desire . . .
I write in a moment that few man can know,
when my nerves are on fire
and my heart does not tire
though it pounds at my breast—
wrenching blow after blow.
VII.
And in all I attempted, I also succeeded;
few men have more talent to do what I do.
But in one respect, I stand now defeated;
In love I could never make magic come true.
VIII.
If I had been born to be handsome and charming,
then love might have come to me easily as well.
But if had that been, then would I have written?
If not, I'd remain; **** that demon to hell!
IX.
Beside me stands a woman,
but others look her way
and in their eyes are eagerness . . .
for passion and a wild caress?
But who am I to say?
Beside me stands a woman;
she conjures up the night
and wraps itself around her
till others flit about her
like moths drawn to firelight.
X.
And I, myself, am just as they,
wondering when the light might fade,
yet knowing should it not dim soon
that I might fall and be consumed.
XI.
I write from despair
in the silence of morning
for want of a prayer
and the need of the mourning.
And loneliness grips my heart like a vise;
my anguish is harsher and colder than ice.
But poetry can bring my heart healing
and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling.
And so I must write till at last sleep has called me
and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me.
XII.
Beside me stands a woman,
a mystery to me.
I long to hold her in my arms;
I also long to flee.
Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
more handsome, charming,
chic, alarming?
I hope I never know.
Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
who ever wrote her such a poem?
I know not even one.
Keywords/Tags: Natchez, Trace, love, relationship, relationships, pool, billiards, rhyme, hope, pain, painful, solitude, drink, drinking, enigma, angel, stranger, ambiguity, woman
Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch
He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.
Haunted
by Michael R. Burch
Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.
Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.
Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.
Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.
Published by Romantics Quarterly
Have I been too long at the fair?
by Michael R. Burch
Have I been too long at the fair?
The summer has faded,
the leaves have turned brown;
the Ferris wheel teeters ...
not up, yet not down.
Have I been too long at the fair?
This is one of my earliest poems, written around age 15 when we were living with my grandfather in his house on Chilton Street, within walking distance of the Nashville fairgrounds. I remember walking to the fairgrounds, stopping at a Dairy Queen along the way, and swimming at a public pool. But I believe the Ferris wheel only operated during the state fair. So my “educated guess” is that this poem was written during the 1973 state fair, or shortly thereafter. I remember watching people hanging suspended in mid-air, waiting for carnies to deposit them safely on terra firma again.
Her Preference
by Michael R. Burch
Not for her the pale incandescence of dreams,
the warm glow of imagination,
the hushed whispers of possibility,
or frail, blossoming hope.
No, she prefers the anguish and screams
of bitter condemnation,
the hissing of hostility,
damnation's rope.
hey pete
by Michael R. Burch
for Pete Rose
hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy's dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then you'll be a Superstar.
When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar."
Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch
Nevermore! O, nevermore
shall the haunts of the sea―
the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore―
mark her passing again.
And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.
The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure ...
She sleeps forevermore.
She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely covered
by the restless, surging sea.
And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way!
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.
He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea ...
their skeletal love―impossibility!
This is one of my Poe-like creations, written around age 19. I think the poem has an interesting ending, since the male skeleton is missing an important "member."
Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch
The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue―
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.
The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise―
adagio, the music she now hears;
and we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars’ bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.
And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.
Flight
by Michael R. Burch
It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence ...
Originally published by Hibiscus (India)
in-flight convergence
by michael r. burch
serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city extend
over lumbering behemoths shrilly screeching displeasure;
they say
that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command
here the streetlights that flicker
and those blazing steadfast seem one
from a distance;
descend?
they abruptly
part ways,
so that nothing is one
which at times does not suddenly blend
into garish insignificance
in the familiar alleyways,
in the white neon flash
and the billboards of Convenience
and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance
as we thunder down the enlightened runways.
Originally published by The Aurorean and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, then published by Grassroots Poetry, Unlikely Stories, Bewildering Stories, Scarlet Leaf Review, Famous Poets & Poems and Inspirational Stories
The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch
Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.
Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.
Chit Chat: in the Poetry Chat Room
WHY SHULD I LERN TO SPELL?
HELL,
NO ONE REEDS WHAT I SAY
ANYWAY!!! :(
Sing for the cool night,
whispers of constellations.
Sing for the supple grass,
the tall grass, gently whispering.
Sing of infinities, multitudes,
of all that lies beyond us now,
whispers begetting whispers.
And i am glad to also whisper . . .
I WUS HURT IN LUV I’M DYIN’
FER TH’ TEARS I BEEN A-CRYIN’!!!
i abide beyond serenities
and realms of grace,
above love’s misdirected earth,
i lift my face.
i am beyond finding now . . .
I WAS IN, LOVE, AND HE ******* ME!!!
THE **** TOTALLY!!!
i loved her once, before, when i
was mortal too, and sometimes i
would listen and distinctly hear
her laughter from the juniper,
but did not go . . .
I JUST DON’T GET POETRY, SOMETIMES.
IT’S OKAY, I GUESS.
I REALLY DON’T READ THAT MUCH AT ALL,
I MUST CONFESS!!! ;-)
Travail, inherent to all flesh,
i do not know, nor how to feel,
although i sing them nighttimes still:
the bitter woes, that do not heal . . .
POETRY IS BORING!!!
SEE, IT ***** I’M SNORING!!! ZZZZZZZ!!!
The words like breath, i find them here,
among the fragrant juniper,
and conifers amid the snow,
old loves imagined long ago . . .
WHY DON’T YOU LIKE MY PERFICKT WORDS
YOU USELESS UN-AMERIC’N TURDS?!!!
What use is love, to me, or Thou?
O Words, my awe, to fly so smooth
above the anguished hearts of men
to heights unknown, Thy bare remove . . .
Keywords/Tags: Poetry, writing, chit, chat room, forum, website, social media, workshop, mortal, mortality, grass, multitudes, Walt Whitman, love, awe, serenity, serenities, grace, heights, Parnassus, art, spelling, grammar
Renee Vivien Translations
Renee Vivien was a British lesbian and cross-dresser who wrote poems primarily in French.
Song
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
When the moon weeps,
illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful,
my memories creep
back to you, wrapped in flightless wings.
It's getting late; soon we will sleep
(your eyes already half closed)
steeped
in the shimmering air.
O, the agony of burning roses:
your forehead discloses
a heavy despondency,
though your hair floats lightly ...
In the night sky the stars burn whitely
as the Goddess nightly
resurrects flowers that fear the sun
and die before dawn ...
Undine
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Kim Cherub (an alias of Michael R. Burch)
Your laughter startles, your caresses rake.
Your cold kisses love the evil they do.
Your eyes―blue lotuses drifting on a lake.
Lilies are less pallid than your face.
You move like water parting.
Your hair falls in rootlike tangles.
Your words like treacherous rapids rise.
Your arms, flexible as reeds, strangle,
Choking me like tubular river reeds.
I shiver in their enlacing embrace.
Drowning without an illuminating moon,
I vanish without a trace,
lost in a nightly swoon.
Veronica Franco translations
Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was a Venetian courtesan who wrote literary-quality poetry and prose.
Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (I)
by Veronica Franco
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
"I resolved to make a virtue of my desire."
My rewards will be commensurate with your gifts
if only you give me the one that lifts
me laughing...
And though it costs you nothing,
still it is of immense value to me.
Your reward will be
not just to fly
but to soar, so high
that your joys vastly exceed your desires.
And my beauty, to which your heart aspires
and which you never tire of praising,
I will employ for the raising
of your spirits. Then, lying sweetly at your side,
I will shower you with all the delights of a bride,
which I have more expertly learned.
Then you who so fervently burned
will at last rest, fully content,
fallen even more deeply in love, spent
at my comfortable *****
When I am in bed with a man I blossom,
becoming completely free
with the man who loves and enjoys me.
Here is a second, more formal version of the same poem, translated into rhymed couplets...
Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (II)
by Veronica Franco
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
"I resolved to make a virtue of my desire."
My rewards will match your gifts
If you give me the one that lifts
Me, laughing. If it comes free,
Still, it is of immense value to me.
Your reward will be—not just to fly,
But to soar—so incredibly high
That your joys eclipse your desires
(As my beauty, to which your heart aspires
And which you never tire of praising,
I employ for your spirit's raising) .
Afterwards, lying docile at your side,
I will grant you all the delights of a bride,
Which I have more expertly learned.
Then you, who so fervently burned,
Will at last rest, fully content,
Fallen even more deeply in love, spent
At my comfortable *****
When I am in bed with a man I blossom,
Becoming completely free
With the man who freely enjoys me.
Franco published two books: "Terze rime" (a collection of poems)and "Lettere familiari a diversi" (a collection of letters and poems). She also collected the works of other writers into anthologies and founded a charity for courtesans and their children. And she was an early champion of women's rights, one of the first ardent, outspoken feminists that we know by name today. For example...
Capitolo 24
by Veronica Franco
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
(written by Franco to a man who had insulted a woman)
Please try to see with sensible eyes
how grotesque it is for you
to insult and abuse women!
Our unfortunate *** is always subject
to such unjust treatment, because we
are dominated, denied true freedom!
And certainly we are not at fault
because, while not as robust as men,
we have equal hearts, minds and intellects.
Nor does virtue originate in power,
but in the vigor of the heart, mind and soul:
the sources of understanding;
and I am certain that in these regards
women lack nothing,
but, rather, have demonstrated
superiority to men.
If you think us "inferior" to yourself,
perhaps it's because, being wise,
we outdo you in modesty.
And if you want to know the truth,
the wisest person is the most patient;
she squares herself with reason and with virtue;
while the madman thunders insolence.
The stone the wise man withdraws from the well
was flung there by a fool...
Life was not a bed of roses for Venetian courtesans. Although they enjoyed the good graces of their wealthy patrons, religious leaders and commoners saw them as symbols of vice. Once during a plague, Franco was banished from Venice as if her "sins" had helped cause it. When she returned in 1577, she faced the Inquisition and charges of "witchcraft." She defended herself in court and won her freedom, but lost all her material possessions. Eventually, Domenico Venier, her major patron, died in 1582 and left her with no support. Her tax declaration of that same year stated that she was living in a section of the city where many destitute prostitutes ended their lives. She may have died in poverty at the age of forty-five.
Hollywood produced a movie based on her life: "Dangerous Beauty."
When I bed a man
who—I sense—truly loves and enjoys me,
I become so sweet and so delicious
that the pleasure I bring him surpasses all delight,
till the tight
knot of love,
however slight
it may have seemed before,
is raveled to the core.
—Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
We danced a youthful jig through that fair city—
Venice, our paradise, so pompous and pretty.
We lived for love, for primal lust and beauty;
to please ourselves became our only duty.
Floating there in a fog between heaven and earth,
We grew drunk on excesses and wild mirth.
We thought ourselves immortal poets then,
Our glory endorsed by God's illustrious pen.
But paradise, we learned, is fraught with error,
and sooner or later love succumbs to terror.
—Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
In response to a friend urging Veronica Franco to help her daughter become a courtesan, Franco warns her that the profession can be devastating:
"Even if Fortune were only benign and favorable to you in this endeavor, this life is such that in any case it would always be wretched. It is such an unhappy thing, and so contrary to human nature, to subject one's body and activity to such slavery that one is frightened just by the thought of it: to let oneself be prey to many, running the risk of being stripped, robbed, killed, so that one day can take away from you what you have earned with many men in a long time, with so many other dangers of injury and horrible contagious disease: to eat with someone else's mouth, to sleep with someone else's eyes, to move according to someone else's whim, running always toward the inevitable shipwreck of one's faculties and life. Can there be greater misery than this? ... Believe me, among all the misfortunes that can befall a human being in the world, this life is the worst."
I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience.—"Dangerous Beauty"
I wish it were not considered a sin
to have liked *******
Women have yet to realize
the cowardice that presides.
And if they should ever decide
to fight the shallow,
I would be the first, setting an example for them to follow.
—Veronica Franco, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Yahya Kemal Beyatli translations
Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) was a Turkish poet, editor, columnist and historian, as well as a politician and diplomat. Born born Ahmet Âgâh, he wrote under the pen names Agâh Kemal, Esrar, Mehmet Agâh, and Süleyman Sadi. He served as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, Portugal and Pakistan.
Sessiz Gemi (“Silent Ship”)
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch
for the refugees
The time to weigh anchor has come;
a ship departing harbor slips quietly out into the unknown,
cruising noiselessly, its occupants already ghosts.
No flourished handkerchiefs acknowledge their departure;
the landlocked mourners stand nurturing their grief,
scanning the bleak horizon, their eyes blurring...
Poor souls! Desperate hearts! But this is hardly the last ship departing!
There is always more pain to unload in this sorrowful life!
The hesitations of lovers and their belovèds are futile,
for they cannot know where the vanished are bound.
Many hopes must be quenched by the distant waves,
since years must pass, and no one returns from this journey.
Full Moon
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch
You are so lovely
the full moon just might
delight
in your rising,
as curious
and bright,
to vanquish night.
But what can a mortal man do,
dear,
but hope?
I’ll ponder your mysteries
and (hmmmm) try to
cope.
We both know
you have every right to say no.
The Music of the Snow
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
This melody of a night lasting longer than a thousand years!
This music of the snow supposed to last for thousand years!
Sorrowful as the prayers of a secluded monastery,
It rises from a choir of a hundred voices!
As the organ’s harmonies resound profoundly,
I share the sufferings of Slavic grief.
Then my mind drifts far from this city, this era,
To the old records of Tanburi Cemil Bey.
Now I’m suddenly overjoyed as once again I hear,
With the ears of my heart, the purest sounds of Istanbul!
Thoughts of the snow and darkness depart me;
I keep them at bay all night with my dreams!
Translator’s notes: “Slavic grief” because Beyatli wrote this poem while in Warsaw, serving as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, in 1927. Tanburi Cemil Bey was a Turkish composer. Keywords/Tags: Beyatli, Agah, Kemal, Esrar, Turkish, translation, Turkey, silent, ship, anchor, harbor, ghosts, grief, Istanbul, moon, music, snow
Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch
I.
If I should die,
there will come a Doom,
and the sky will darken
to the deepest Gloom.
But if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.
II.
If I should die,
let no mortal say,
“Here was a man,
with feet of clay,
or a timid sparrow
God’s hand let fall.”
But watch the sky darken
to an eerie pall
and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and cares naught for graves,
prayers, coffins, or roods.
And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.
III.
If I should die,
let no man adore
his incompetent Maker:
Zeus, Jehovah, or Thor.
Think of Me as One
who never died―
the unvanquished Immortal
with the unriven side.
And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.
IV.
And if I should “die,”
though the clouds grow dark
as fierce lightnings rend
this bleak asteroid, stark ...
If you look above,
you will see a bright Sign―
the sun with the moon
in its arms, Divine.
So divine, if you can,
my bright meaning, and know―
my Spirit is mine.
I will go where I go.
And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.
Published as the collection "Daredevil"
Apr 3, 2020
Apr 3, 2020 at 1:05 AM UTC
I've forgotten how to do damage with a pen
All I remember is how to slash these swords against my skin
Crimson drips from the mutilated canvas and,
suddenly,
it becomes interesting
The candyman promised his stuff was the good kind
Guess he forgot to mention with every high comes a goodbye
I'm a ticking time bomb
And I hear the clock ticking
Tick tick tick
But suddenly every tick becomes a good time when I remember
That the end of every goodbye becomes the chance for a new high
Jan 7, 2020
Jan 7, 2020 at 8:07 PM UTC
sometimes
I think of killing myself
how the silence would
be so freeing
and the darkness
to overcome
and I waiting to fulfill its infinite void
Sometimes I wish
to die
my breath to stop
the constant ringing
of the voices
in my head
they no longer
have hold
on my thoughts
sometimes I think
I'm lost
because the people around
don't know me
they don't know
the horrors
that sit
inside my skull
so sometimes
I think of killing myself
then they'll know
i was never fine
my long sleeves
are hiding scars
that appeared on my arms
I don't remember making them
but I know I did
but for now
I'm stuck
a stranger
with strange voices
telling me strange things
and I'm just a prisoner
stuck in my mind
forced to listen
forced to obey
because what happens
when your mind
turns its back on you
Feb 28, 2019
Feb 28, 2019 at 8:31 AM UTC
No people can handle this ****
Barely those who lives through this.
All purpose seems the life in flesh;
Is horrid at its best.
A twisted sitcom show.
That’s no less then cruel jokes.
many times in deepest holes.
eyes glorify the rope.
Or mind glorifies rope.
Who knows anymore.
One realizes loneliness is where the sick is born.
One realizes loneliness is how aching hearts shall mourn.
Yet again these thoughts of red,
beg that one please will tend.
With sharp swords and gore.
Of Blades piercing flesh
Of sharp swords and gore
until limbs be torn.
Surgical mesh be drenched.
This stomach is so sore.
Destruction absorbed.
Self infliction is adored.
........................................
in that wretched mirror.
It is so crystal clear.
This face needs disfigured
This face needs to be Seared
An urge to burn the face,
as well as to cut.
Perform practices precise.
To tame the craves;
for blades
that thrusts.
Fugly as the ugly duckling.
If his feathers he began plucking.
repulsive ravishing disgust.
Spit at reflections for good luck.
Anger and vile succumb as it does.
In all ways that it can be done,
This self harm now one knows and loves.
Black seems white feathers of doves.
...........................................................
Inside black demented places.
Lurk do entities of hatred.
Laugh in masks like a masterpiece painted.
Unfazed as if one is sedated.
Forever this chaos.
in pureness created.
Dead be these roses.
in violet vases.
........................................................
To remain cloaked in magic states.
Still many strife always remains.
At times it seems the blind are divine.
Dilated be these eyes.
Shall needles pierce eyeballs to disdain.
Urning to spray the eyes with mace.
Keep the hArd drugs in the brain. coursing through collapsed and thin veins.
Keeping the *** from being laced.
Without intoxicates still insane.
Only hopelessness and endless pain.
At a young age came,
demented strange days.
Paranoid in fear;
With destructive paths near.
malevolent demeanors have now appeared.
......................................................
For so long felt so helpless.
Life in all forms is selfish.
As despair impairs.
One becomes more selfless.
Remain thy light in darkness black.
While psychosis viciously attacks.
Crack back
Owning a craft.
Obsessed with knives and plastic wrap.
Unorthodox ways.
Leaving blood that rains.
Up for many nights and days
Owning a craft.
This world is sad
left perception oh so mad.
Feb 11, 2019
Feb 11, 2019 at 8:10 AM UTC
She marched on herself
All battle lines and banners
Weapons reflecting one another
Horns howled
So that two sides packed into combat
Crushing, piercing blood splattered blows
Heaps of fallen bodies
And the mounting casualties
Castrated the confidence
Of the two sides of the girl
Who marched on herself
Dec 21, 2018
Dec 21, 2018 at 8:45 PM UTC
I have bad thoughts
Of beautiful things
The color red
Oozing from my pale skin
The simplicity of a clean line
Only to be ruined by smeared blood
Why do these thoughts haunt me?
Am I obsessed with my own pain?
Or simply so ****** up
That I find beauty
In the face of my demons
Jan 23, 2018
Jan 23, 2018 at 12:51 AM UTC
I wanna see the blood
I wanna see the pain
I wanna prove that my body
Is nothing more than a frame
My mind is screaming
Parts of it beg me to bleed
The others demonize those pleas
I just don't want to feel this way anymore
And I suppose it's my own fault
I know how I get
When I start drinking then stop
Maybe that's why I always overdo it
Because then I can get sick and sleep
Before this depression takes its hold
And sets my demons free
Digging and clawing at my mind
Until I do the same to my own skin
Jan 15, 2018
Jan 15, 2018 at 12:39 AM UTC
Peeling scabs from skin
Feel the agony from within.
From the cradle-
To this hell I call life:
Known to well, the edge of a knife.
Opening self-inflicted wounds to
Feel the solemn woe!
Hope.
Something I will never know.
Focus on the misery.
Cutting deeper than before.
Plagued to perish,
With open wounds
That will heal no more.
Dec 4, 2017
Dec 4, 2017 at 2:51 PM UTC
Drugs have left me numb.
My doctor gave me some.
So high I can't believe.
I love it,
I need it,
My doctor says it helps easee me
Their easeeing izzie
Change me , break me
Love me,hate me
Warp my being.
I have fake friends and progamable teachers.
Ordered to do as they do.
Empty of everything especially opinion unless it has with it gods intent.
This is all done to prevent separation
(Once more there is still segregation)
This only incites rebellion in me.
I hate this place so how do I escape.
Do I run or stay and go away in another way.
South parks advice is to just quit twitter.
This world isn't worth it to scaredto **** myself.
So I cut ,cut and cut my wrist
To take away my strife and find bliss.
Nov 17, 2017
Nov 17, 2017 at 1:26 PM UTC
I wake up just in time to watch the sun set on the horizon.
I stay up all night to watch it rise again.
3:00am is when I demons start to roam,
And before I know it my sadness becomes my home.
I self medicate with drugs and alcohol that I know I don't need.
I do it to stop the craving of wanting to watch myself bleed.
I look at the scars that cover my skin.
They mock me, I'm trying so hard not to give in.
I sleep all day so I don't have to fake a smile.
I wish happiness was a mood that stayed for a while.
I wake up just in time to watch the sun set on the horizon.
I stay up all night to watch it rise again.
Nov 12, 2017
Nov 12, 2017 at 9:18 AM UTC
Squeezing out water droplets
Just before bed
I'm reminded of what I miss
The definition of what I called "freind"
Was changed eternally
I ran out of work manic,
Raced to the tatoo shop
And got what I had wanted for so long
A fish fossil right there on my forearm
Coverings for angry cuts
I went home and cleaned it, runned it down with lotion
And I'm reminded of this familiar sting
Flashbacks hit
And I was 14 again
Sitting on the porch with you nursing my wounds
My arms were swollen and sore
Sliced from top to bottom
And you were the only soul I told
You wrapped me up in bandages
And showed me yours
You said "see we're both ******* up!"
8 years later I lie on a mattress in a living room floor
Punched in the gut by the thought of you
And how you could take your own life
..you also took my best freind
Emptiness has this warm subtle sting and I'd rather feel pain than nothing
But it's not self destruction anymore, it's therapy
And it makes me feel close to you.
Jul 20, 2017
Jul 20, 2017 at 12:48 PM UTC
Slow agony but still I cut binds
Blood filling every crevace as I go
If life was meant to be easy God would've made me pretty
I down my medication
And bind myself again
Aug 23, 2016
Aug 23, 2016 at 6:43 PM UTC
Silence
That’s what you wanted
Just accepted silence
Just desired crying
Just no more defience
So why the **** do you want my voice
The ironic song bird wedged down my throat
You just want to hear your name screamed out
Whimpered out
Begged
I’d say **** you but you’d take it the wrong way
That or it won’t even reach past my new blue gloss
You want me to speak up now? Well you’ll get it, yet don’t blame me if my voice goes hoarse. My eyes bleed tears of forgiveness when looking disgusting and captivating as I screech like a banshee . With snot dribbling down my chin. With split ends visible in my wooden mane. With eyes turned muddy the unplanned forecast for blood thirst and depression
Like how about I talk about those long nights at McDonald, or when you sung lullabies that implanted insomnia, or the icy touch of your frostbitten hands looking for warmth and all you found was me. How about those whispered words of , “ I really like you.” Cuz four words are worth so much more than three. Each held more meaning than the last as if they were your last breath as you plunged inside me with dagger-claws. Yet I loved it, ****** I loved it! I loved being your barbie doll.
But were they even true
Were all the nights we stared at one another with clamped together hands just the darkness in your coal eyes wanting my spark. My bite. Was it just so you could see if I could be yours. Only yours. I left so many scars on you and you to me, and you told me you loved them. Your fingers would trace my stories I engraved upon your temple. But none were proof enough of how you ****** my mind up with yourself. Made me worshiped like a false goddess undeserving of your praise and love and soul and eyes and ********* I’m back your your dead ******* eyes even when you blinked to show you lived.
You knew I never loved anyone before you. Never held hands before you. Never had any lips besides your cracked ones trying to imitate a desert to trick others of nothingness that you’d whisper only to me. Never told a man nor woman that they were my first of everything before you. I was a tiger lily and you a **** And you took it all away you ******* hypocrite!
You knew before I could even say wait. And I loved you for it, I still fuckning love you for it cuz I am a ***** My heart never beats when you aren’t around. I never needed to speak, you were the source of my puppeteer voice I used when other’s worried about something.
Yet now you want me to tell you lies. Tell you who hurt me
‘You’
Tell you who used me
‘You’
Tell you who ******* broke me down to a sniveling, worthless pile of ash
‘You’
But instead of telling what was reality I played within your almond flavored fantasies and blamed everyone but you. For no, never you.You, you, you, you, you. Rigamortus won’t stop my hands from grabbing your shirt as I slowly sank to the ninth level of hell.
BECAUSE IT WAS YOU GOD ******* ****** MAN
YOU DID THIS TO ME
I WAS AN AURORA SUNSHINE YET YOU ****** ME DRY
TILL ALL THAT WAS LEFT WERE MONOTONE CLOUDS
YOU'RE THE ONE THAT SHOVED YOUR HAND INSIDE ME
AND REPLACED ORGANS WITH STUFFING
YOU DID IT
YOU DID IT
YOU DID IT
YOU DID IT
You're the reason
I slit my throat
Tied up my vocal cords.
Sewn shut my lips
It's no surprise I was thrown away
Like a broken doll
It's funny you see?
When you're choking you should see the irony
Ain't I the one that needs to hush up
Aug 12, 2016
Aug 12, 2016 at 6:19 PM UTC
*War isn't that fusillade you hear in the distance
betwixt the government troops and the resistance
it's the civilians getting tattered in the crossfire
it isn't the wham of bombardment from airstrikes
by blaring Jet fighters across a shower of black in the sky
it isn't the badonkadonk of a Rocket launcher or Black Mamba
but natives being swept like Safari ants in chunky numbers
War isn't those mines planted in hitherto playing field
but the ignorant innocent children in search for a distraction killed
War isn't the televised scorched homes and gardens with corns
but the consequent drought, scarcity and "famined" and feeble as thorns
War isn't those vehicles and motors torched
it's the blameless owner who in tears the absurdity watched
War isn't that cacophony of politicians on stuffed tables
their speeches filled with hypocritical vocabulary are but fables
speak to the maimed and dead whose voices are never heard
it's those who want the anarchy to end, it's they that are tired
War isn't the nations battling or the parties in contention
it's those set, torn and cast apart...the ones we seldom mention
the parents and siblings forced to say goodbye
while their Breadwinner falls victim to conscription
despondent and despairing as they look on and cry
knowing their brother and Son's like those taken before bound to die
or those refugees wanting to return to their cradle
but having no home and nothing to return to but rubble
those forced to stay in the first world midst racist chants and hate
jeered by the "civilised" like they chose their skin-color and fate
War isn't the famous voices we hear and talk about on the media
but the ****** girls abducted, gagged, ***** and mutilated
War isn't the beautiful monster tanks wrecking
but the historical landmarks and fashioned roads
reduced to nothing, the lives within squashed under their loads
War isn't the glamorous documentary films censored and unreal
but the muffled deadbeat voices from heartbreaks that never heal
It's seeing one's whole life sublime in one moment of savagery
compelling the orphaned and widowed into manacles of *** slavery
for with the loss of their husbands and parents, neighbours, Uncles
comes the tight grasp of inhumane chains and anchors
in those places they are forced to seek refuge
places where they are treated worse when they attempt to refuse
War isn't just being apart from your people by a million a mile
War's learning to wear a weighted mask of a smile
while the heart, Soul, Mind and one's entirety's in Tears
War's knowing all one's "perspirational" toils were but wasted years
fearing to tell one's story because among the presented ears
one can no longer tell one that truly listens from one that just hears
..
whatever's in speech be it poetry or Documentary isn't War
War isn't words, war isn't testimonies, there's more
destruction to War than the eyes, heart can handle
not ever can War fit in the descriptions of words we bundle
War's something humanity never deserve
so unfair for we make war when most can hardly make love.*
Jun 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016 at 9:32 AM UTC
wrists and blades
made mates for life
swallowing painkillers
against self induced pain
mutilated skin
but no one can see
the wounds
that were carved inside of me
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 1:10 PM UTC
Cherry blood is always good, because it's dark and it means no artery was hit. You're still alive. You're living. That's why I sometimes don't understand the big fuss my principal made when I took off the sweatband on my wrist. Or maybe it was the vice principal. Either way, the school counselor was called in, and so were my parents. Looks of shock. Confusion. Why? They all asked. But I had no reasonable answer. I was young and innocent -- a feeling I'd love to regain, but at the time, I wanted the opposite. Maybe I did it for the excitement; the thrill. Some said I was just "a troubled child"; it will pass. Others said I was "disturbed" or "depressed". But these are just words. I know what I was. I wanted the attention; I wanted to get caught, until it actually happened. After my mom paid a psychiatrist $350 three different times, I told her I was okay; I stopped doing it; Please don't make me go back. And she never made me go back. And I never did it again.
Oct 22, 2015
Oct 22, 2015 at 2:46 PM UTC
Angel sits on her bed talking to her boyfriend, they’ve dated for two months and he says that’s enough.
“Ang think about me, think about us, do it for us”.
Angela is hesitant but her gaze remains fixed at the ceiling lamp, a moth in a trance
Keeps bumping into it making audible clinks
Angela opens her mouth slightly, hesitantly
“Where are you, Baby, I’ll come to you right now.”
“You’re gonna do it?”
“I’m ready, yes. I trust you and Love You with my heart Baby.”
“That’s what I wanna hear, I’ll leave the door unlocked. You are the Best.”
The call ends and the screen on her phone goes dim
It was a breezy evening, Angela decided to dress appropriately
One arm through the sleeve, then the other, then one leg through the pant, then the other
Shoes, socks, watch
Appropriate
Lock the door, hop on the bike, which she learned to ride
At nine years old, the crux of her life, a little later than most
She learned to go fast at ten, to catch up
A left at 11th, and straight down three blocks to Baby’s place
Illuminating the whole street at 12:00
The door was unlocked like he said and she entered like she said
“I’m here, are you ready?” “Yes, please go ahead.”
Angela had never done this before but she loved her Baby so much
So, she started with her hands by making a slight incision at the webbing between her thumb and pointer
All it took was a slight tug to peel off an inch of her skin, and then more, and then more and then more
Until her whole left hand was exposed to the elements, to Baby’s great delight
“More”
She nodded with a slight smile on her face, and began to scrape off the rest of her arm
Muscles and tendons revealed themselves, twitching slightly as if surprised by their own existence
“Get it all off! Stop teasing! I love you, I want more!”
Baby laughed and Angela made sure to laugh louder as she tore away to reveal her deltoid and her pectorals across her chest
Next her stomach went, then her crotch, her skin making hollow thuds on the floor whenever they fell
She wasn’t very neat but after all, this was her first time.
The frenzy of the moment left Ang breathless, so this is True Love she thought, blood and mirth
Baby held her all night long and traced his fingers across each strand of tissue, not afraid
Angela could feel every individual filament in her left arm tense and flex and squelch to supply her livelihood, their livelihood
And she smiled for herself, the greatest sacrifice she could give, and all for Baby
tearing herself apart made her feel complete!
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 7:15 PM UTC
Her identity shall remain anonymous /
coz' it is the only way her demons come out from hiding in order to play /
they dance in the darkness and sing in the silence /
then //
they begin capture her /
slowly and discretely /
they cut her up through her notions and they begin to baptize her thoughts/
then they begin to swim towards her emotions /
she weeps with pain /
blood flows from her wrists and her heart begins to cry / her blood flows as the rivers flow into the oceans \\
as each drop falls she begins to loose herself minutely / someone once asked ' why so profound '
she replied why not ?
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 12:43 PM UTC
Once upon a time,
You tossed my emotions in the shredder.
I paid you back in flesh.
Nervous, I grasped the knife.
Pressing it against me,
Right before the puncture.
I freeze. My arm feeling the sting.
I gather myself. Deep breath.
Serated blades saw away,
Breaking skin, tearing muscle.
Then the blood drips.
We exchange wounds,
Cut for cut.
It wasn't love, just pain.
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 8:14 PM UTC
My Mother called my Grandmother a "Dirty Gypsy" a long time ago
I never knew what it meant until I gave that part of my heritage a go
The Romani left India about 1,500 years ago, traveling, running ever since
The White people of the Medieval Ages hated them, at their very presence they took offense...
In some areas of Europe it was a common practice to mutilate the woman, **** and stolen kisses
And they branded the men with hot pokers... Who can understand this?
They were forbidden to speak in their native tongue
Yet their songs of joy and laughter are still sung
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 11:06 AM UTC
The front seat is full
of coffin nails, Bic lighters,
and mutilation.
© Matthew Harlovic
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 12:05 PM UTC
It’s the coldness of the window
That brings arctic winds into my eyes
The pane of glass provides a simple
View of the world which I despised
Shut in my world is perfected misery
Sweet release waiting for its prime
A scarlet hue of liquid rubies
Flowing from the thinnest lines
And I keep
Bleeding out
Even now I can
Still feel myself
I’m saving me but
I keep
Bleeding out
Even though I can’t
Feel myself
I’m losing me
Every line bears little resemblance
To the ones that have crossed before
Only fear keeps this knife moving
Only pain makes me want it more
Stains cover every tile here
From a regressed and spiteful nature
Maybe this desire is deep enough to
Make this the last line I'll endure
But I keep
Bleeding out
Even though I can
Still feel myself
I’m saving me but
I keep
Bleeding out
Even though I can’t
Feel myself
I’m losing me
© 2014
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 6:25 PM UTC