First they came for the Muslims
by Michael R. Burch

after Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.

Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.

Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?

"First they came for the Muslims" was published in Amnesty International’s "Words That Burn" anthology and is now being used as training material for budding human rights activists. My poem was inspired by and patterned after Martin Niemoller’s famous Holocaust poem. Niemoller, a German pastor, supported Adolph ****** in the early going, but ended up in a **** concentration camp and nearly lost his life. So his was a true poem based on his actual life experience. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, genocide, apartheid, racism, intolerance, Jew, Jews, Muslim, Muslims, homosexuals, feminists, apathy, sisters, brothers, Islam, Islamic, God, religion, intolerance, race, racism, racist, discrimination, feminist, feminists, feminism, sexuality, gay, homosexual, homosexuals, LGBT, mrbmuslim, mrbpal, mrbnakba



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere tomorrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels’ white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness―as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now―
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness―time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?―insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask―

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?



I, too, have a Dream ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve their enmity.



My Nightmare ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.



For a Palestinian Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go ...
when lightning rails ...
when thunder howls ...
when hailstones scream ...
when winter scowls ...
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill,
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief’s a banked fire’s glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?

Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Victorian Violet Press (where it was nominated for a “Best of the Net”), The Contributor (a Nashville homeless newspaper), Siasat (Pakistan), and set to music as a part of the song cycle “The Children of Gaza” which has been performed in various European venues by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this―
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...

Published by The Lyric, Promosaik (Germany), Setu (India) and Poetry Life & Times; translated into Arabic by Nizar Sartawi and into Italian by Mario Rigli

Note: The phrase "frail envelope of flesh" was one of my first encounters with the power of poetry, although I read it in a superhero comic book as a young boy (I forget which one). More than thirty years later, the line kept popping into my head, so I wrote this poem. I have dedicated it to the mothers and children of Gaza, who know all too well how fragile life and human happiness can be. What can I say, but that I hope, dream, wish and pray that one day ruthless men will no longer have power over the lives and happiness of innocents? Women, children and babies are not “terrorists” so why are they being punished collectively for the “crime” of having been born “wrong”? How can the government of Israel practice systematic racism and apartheid, and how can the government of the United States fund and support such a barbaric system?



who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of “no Room!”
and Puritanical scorn ...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same―
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame:

“who’s to blame?”

(In the poem "US" means both the United States and "us" the people of the world, wherever we live. The name "jesus" is uncapitalized while "Room" is capitalized because it seems evangelical Christians are more concerned about land and not sharing it with the less fortunate, than the teachings of Jesus Christ. Also, Jesus and his parents were refugees for whom there was "no Room" to be found. What would Jesus think of Christian scorn for the less fortunate, one wonders? What would he think of people adopting his name for their religion, then voting for someone like Trump, as four out of five evangelical Christians did, according to exit polls?)



Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.  

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus



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 *******
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.



Brother Iran
by Michael R. Burch

for the poets of Iran

Brother Iran, I feel your pain.
I feel it as when the Turk fled Spain.
As the Jew fled, too, that constricting span,
I feel your pain, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I know you are noble!
I too fear Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
But though my heart shudders, I have a plan,
and I know you are noble, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I salute your Poets!
your Mathematicians!, all your great Wits!
O, come join the earth's great Caravan.
We'll include your Poets, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I love your Verse!
Come take my hand now, let's rehearse
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
For I love your Verse, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, civilization's Flower!
How high flew your spires in man's early hours!
Let us build them yet higher, for that's my plan,
civilization's first flower, Brother Iran.



These are my translations of Holocaust poems by Ber Horvitz (also known as Ber Horowitz); his bio follows the poems. Poems about the Holocaust and Nakba often bear striking resemblances, especially when written from the perspective of a child.



Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray ...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.

The birds have fled
far overseas;
"Tomorrow I’ll migrate too,"
I said ...

These gloomy autumn days
it rains and rains.
Woe to the bird
Who remains ...



Doctorn
"Doctors"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Early this morning I bandaged
the lilac tree outside my house;
I took thin branches that had broken away
and patched their wounds with clay.

My mother stood there watering
her window-level flower bed;
The morning sun, quite motherly,
kissed us both on our heads!

What a joy, my child, to heal!
Finished doctoring, or not?
The eggs are nicely poached
And the milk's a-boil in the ***.



Broit
“Bread”
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness. Why?
On the hard uncomfortable floor the exhausted people lie.

Flung everywhere, scattered over the broken theater floor,
the exhausted people sleep. Night. Late. Too tired to snore.

At midnight a little boy cries wildly into the gloom:
"Mommy, I’m afraid! Let’s go home!”

His mother, reawakened into this frightful place,
presses her frightened child even closer to her breast …

"If you cry, I’ll leave you here, all alone!
A little boy must sleep ... this, now, is our new home.”

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness all around,
exhausted people sleeping on the hard ground.



"My Lament"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Nothingness enveloped me
as tender green toadstools
lie blanketed by snow
with its thick, heavy prayer shawl …
After that, nothing could hurt me …



Ber Horvitz aka Ber Horowitz (1895-1942): Born to village people in the woods of Maidan in the West Carpathians, Horowitz showed art talent early on. He went to gymnazie in Stanislavov, then served in the Austrian army during WWI, where he was a medic to Italian prisoners of war. He studied medicine in Vienna and was published in many Yiddish newspapers. Fluent in several languages, he translated Polish and Ukrainian to Yiddish. He also wrote poetry in Yiddish. A victim of the Holocaust, he was murdered in 1942 by the Nazis.


Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you—
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

not as you are now,
but as you were then—

eternally present
and Sovereign.



The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Published by Angle and Poem Today



Annual
by Michael R. Burch

Silence
steals upon a house
where one sits alone
in the shadow of the itinerant letterbox,
watching the disconnected telephone
collecting dust ...

hearing the desiccate whispers of voices’
dry flutters,—
moths’ wings
brittle as cellophane ...

Curled here,
reading the yellowing volumes of loss
by the front porch light
in the groaning swing . . .
through thin adhesive gloss
I caress your face.

Published by The HyperTexts



US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)

Published by The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse and Poetry Life & Times

The Unisphere mentioned is a spherical stainless steel representation of the earth constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age and dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." The lines quoted in the epigraph are from W. H. Auden’s love poem “Lullaby.”



Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen.
By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.

With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.
Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.

In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.
I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.

I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no man has sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.

And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing . . .

But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray . . .

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs that I used to climb
when the wind was **** with a taste of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.

Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright.

Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-aged wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.

Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam . . .
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!

It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then . . . what then?

I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach . . .
And then, what then?

Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.
When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.

Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.
The distant cooling clouds.

Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over different lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.

Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that rush into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams . . .
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18, circa 1976-1977. For years I thought I had written “Sea Dreams” around age 19 or 20, circa 1978. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about the poem in my freshman dorm, so the poem must have been started around age 18 or earlier. Dating my early poems has been a bit tricky, because I keep having little flashbacks that help me date them more accurately, but often I can only say, “I know this poem was written by about such-and-such a date, because ...”

The next poem, "Son," is a companion piece to “Sea Dreams” that was written around the same time and discussed in the same freshman dorm conversation. I remember showing this poem to a fellow student and he asked how on earth I came up with a poem about being a father who abandoned his son to live on an island! I think the meter is pretty good for the age at which it was written.

Son
by Michael R. Burch

An island is bathed in blues and greens
as a weary sun settles to rest,
and the memories singing
through the back of my mind
lull me to sleep as the tide flows in.

Here where the hours pass almost unnoticed,
my heart and my home will be till I die,
but where you are is where my thoughts go
when the tide is high.

[etc., see handwritten version, the father laments abandoning his son]

So there where the skylarks sing to the sun
as the rain sprinkles lightly around,
understand if you can
the mind of a man
whose conscience so long ago drowned.



Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds!
by Michael R. Burch

"Bury St. Edmonds—Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, files or surf the Web, absolutely free."—Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.)

Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let
you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet,
commune with nature, interact with hackers,
design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers.

Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs—
four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs,
so your privacy's assured (a *******'s fine)
while invited friends can scan the party line:

for Internet alerts on new positions,
the randier exploits of politicians,
exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!) .
The cybersex is great, it's guaranteed

to leave you breathless—flushed, free of disease
and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees,
the birds, the bench—this product of Our pen.
We won in with an ode to MSN.



Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.

Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.

Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require

the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.


Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway . . .

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

I believe I wrote the original version of this poem in my early twenties.



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.



You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch

You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened . . .

You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching . . .

You paid love no notice,
though she lay in my arms
as the stars rose in swarms
like a legion of poets,

as the lightning recited
its opus before us,
and the hills boomed the chorus,
all strangely delighted . . .



Through the fields of solitude
by Hermann Allmers
translation by David B. Gosselin with Michael R. Burch

Peacefully, I rest in the tall green grass
For a long time only gazing as I lie,
Caught in the endless hymn of crickets,
And encircled by a wonderful blue sky.

And the lovely white clouds floating across
The depths of the heavens are like silky lace;
I feel as though my soul has long since fled,
Softly drifting with them through eternal space.



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound of falling leaves
and the scent of new-mown grass;
I held out my arms to her and she passed
into oblivion ...



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her . . .
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

I believe I wrote this poem around age 20, in 1978 or thereabouts. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky,
and the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some savage ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze,
blown high, upward yearning,
twin spirits returning
to the world of resplendence from which we were seized.

In the whispering night, when the mockingbird calls
while denuded vines barely cling to stone walls,
as the red-rocked rivers rush on to the sea,
like a bright Goddess calling
a meteor falling
may flare like desire through skeletal trees.

If you look to the east, you will see a reminder
of days that broke warmer and nights that fell kinder;
but you and I were not meant for this life,
a life of illusions
and painful delusions:
a life without meaning—unless it is life.

So turn from the east and look to the west,
to the stars—argent fire ablaze at God's breast—
but there you'll find nothing but dreams of lost days:
days lost forever,
departed, and never,
oh never, oh never shall they be regained.

So turn from those heavens—night’s pale host of stars—
to these scarred pitted mountains, these wild grotesque tors
which—looming in darkness—obscure lustrous seas.
We are men, we must sing
till enchanted vales ring;
we are men; though we wither, our spirits soar free.



and then i was made whole
by Michael R. Burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Bowery Boys
by Michael R. Burch

Male bowerbirds have learned
that much respect is earned
when optical illusions
inspire wild delusions.

And so they work for hours
to line their manly bowers
with stones arranged by size
to awe and mesmerize.

It’d take a great detective
to grok the false perspective
they use to lure in cuties
to smooch and fill with cooties.

Like human politicians,
they love impressive fictions
as they lie in their randy causes
with props like the Wizard of Oz’s.



THE KNIGHT IN THE PANTHER’S SKIN

***** Rustaveli (c. 1160-1250), often called simply Rustaveli, was a Georgian poet who is generally considered to be the preeminent poet of the Georgian Golden Age. “The Knight in the Panther's Skin” or “The Man in the Panther’s Skin” is considered to be Georgia’s national epic poem and until the 20th century it was part of every Georgian bride’s dowry. It is believed that Rustaveli served Queen Tamar as a treasurer or finance minister and that he may have traveled widely and been involved in military campaigns. Little else is known about his life except through folk tradition and legend.

The Knight in the Panther's Skin
by ***** Rustaveli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

excerpts from the PROLOGUE

I sing of the lion whose image adorns the lances, shields and swords
of our Queen of Queens: Tamar, the ruby-throated and ebon-haired.
How dare I not sing Her Excellency’s manifold praises
when those who attend her must bring her the sweets she craves?

My tears flow profusely like blood as I extol our Queen Tamar,
whose praises I sing in these not ill-chosen words.
For ink I have employed jet-black lakes and for a pen, a flexible reed.
Whoever hears will have his heart pierced by the sharpest spears!

She bade me laud her in stately, sweet-sounding verses,
to praise her eyebrows, her hair, her lips and her teeth:
those rubies and crystals arrayed in bright, even ranks!
A leaden anvil can shatter even the strongest stone.

Kindle my mind and tongue! Fill me with skill and eloquence!
Aid my understanding for this composition!
Thus Tariel will be tenderly remembered,
one of three star-like heroes who always remained faithful.

Come, let us mourn Tariel with undrying tears
because we are men born under similar stars.
I, Rustaveli, whose heart has been pierced through by many sorrows,
have threaded this tale like a necklace of pearls.

Keywords/Tags: ***** Rustaveli, Georgia, Georgian, epic, knight, panther, skin, queen, Tamar, praise, praises, Tariel, Avtandil, Nestan-Darejan



Final Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

Sleep peacefully—for now your suffering’s over.

Sleep peacefully—immune to all distress,
like pebbles unaware of raging waves.

Sleep peacefully—like fields of fragrant clover
unmoved by any motion of the wind.

Sleep peacefully—like clouds untouched by earthquakes.

Sleep peacefully—like stars that never blink
and have no thoughts at all, nor need to think.

Sleep peacefully—in your eternal vault,
immaculate, past perfect, without fault.



don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved
(like your Heart)
and that even Light is bent
by your Gravity.

I dedicated this poem to the love of my life, but you are welcome to dedicate it to the love of yours, if you like it. The opening lines were inspired by a famous love poem by e. e. cummings. I went through a "cummings phase" around age 15 and wrote a number of poems "under the influence."



Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
by Michael R. Burch

“Evolution’s a Fishy Business!”

1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair
to swim among anemones’ pink frills.

2.
My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk,
a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s
sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk,
to take in this green land on which it gawks.

3.
No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt.
Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic―I’ll take such nice long naps!

The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt
to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.)

4.
I woke to find life teeming all around―
mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds.
And now I cringe at every sight and sound.
The water’s looking good! I look Absurd.

5.
The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap
wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep.
And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure
leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure.

Originally published by Lighten Up Online

Keywords/Tags: amphibian, amphibians, evolution, gills, water, air, lungs, fins, flippers, fish, fishy business


These are my modern English translations of poems by Dante Alighieri.

Little sparks may ignite great Infernos.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Beatrice I beheld the outer boundaries of blessedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She made my veins and even the pulses within them tremble.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Her sweetness left me intoxicated.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love commands me by dictating my desires.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Follow your own path and let bystanders gossip.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The devil is not as dark as depicted.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is no greater sorrow than to recall how we delighted in our own wretchedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As he, who with heaving lungs escaped the suffocating sea, turns to regard its perilous waters.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you nosedive in the mildest breeze?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you quail at the least breath of wind?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midway through my life’s journey
I awoke to find myself lost in a trackless wood,
for I had strayed far from the straight path.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

INSCRIPTION ON THE GATE OF HELL
Before me nothing created existed, to fear.
Eternal I am, eternal I endure.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Ladies of Modest Countenance” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You, who wear a modest countenance,
With eyelids weighed down by such heaviness,
How is it, that among you every face
Is haunted by the same pale troubled glance?

Have you seen in my lady's face, perchance,
the grief that Love provokes despite her grace?
Confirm this thing is so, then in her place,
Complete your grave and sorrowful advance.

And if, indeed, you match her heartfelt sighs
And mourn, as she does, for the heart's relief,
Then tell Love how it fares with her, to him.

Love knows how you have wept, seeing your eyes,
And is so grieved by gazing on your grief
His courage falters and his sight grows dim.



Paradiso, Canto III:1-33, The Revelation of Love and Truth
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That sun, which had inflamed my breast with love,
Had now revealed to me―as visions move―
The gentle and confounding face of Truth.

Thus I, by her sweet grace and love reproved,
Corrected, and to true confession moved,
Raised my bowed head and found myself behooved

To speak, as true admonishment required,
And thus to bless the One I so desired,
When I was awed to silence! This transpired:

As the outlines of men’s faces may amass
In mirrors of transparent, polished glass,
Or in shallow waters through which light beams pass

(Even so our eyes may easily be fooled
By pearls, or our own images, thus pooled):
I saw a host of faces, pale and lewd,

All poised to speak; but when I glanced around
There suddenly was no one to be found.
A pool, with no Narcissus to astound?

But then I turned my eyes to my sweet Guide.
With holy eyes aglow and smiling wide,
She said, “They are not here because they lied.”



Sonnet: A Vision of Love from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To every gentle heart which Love may move,
And unto which my words must now be brought
For true interpretation’s tender thought―
I greet you in our Lord's name, which is Love.

Through night’s last watch, as winking stars, above,
Kept their high vigil over us, distraught,
Love came to me, with such dark terrors fraught
As mortals may not casually absolve.
Love seemed a being of pure joy, and had
My heart held in his hand, while on his arm
My lady, wrapped in her fine mantle, slept.
He, having roused her from her sleep, then made
Her eat my heart; she did, in deep alarm.
He then departed; as he left, he wept.


Excerpts from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri

Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.
Here is a Deity, stronger than myself, who comes to dominate me.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra.
Your blessedness has now been manifested unto you.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps.
Alas, how often I will be restricted now!
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fili mi, tempus est ut prætermittantur simulata nostra.
My son, it is time to cease counterfeiting.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ partes: tu autem non sic.
Love said: “I am as the center of a harmonious circle; everything is equally near me. No so with you.”
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Love’s Thoroughfare” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“O voi che par la via”

All those who travel Love's worn tracks,
Pause here, awhile, and ask
Has there ever been a grief like mine?

Pause here, from that mad race;
Patiently hear my case:
Is it not a piteous marvel and a sign?

Love, not because I played a part,
But only due to his great heart,
Afforded me a provenance so sweet

That often others, as I went,
Asked what such unfair gladness meant:
They whispered things behind me in the street.

But now that easy gait is gone
Along with the wealth Love afforded me;
And so in time I’ve come to be

So poor that I dread to ponder thereon.
And thus I have become as one
Who hides his shame of his poverty

By pretending happiness outwardly,
While within I travail and moan.



Sonnet: “Cry for Pity” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts lie shattered in my memory:
When through the past I see your lovely face.
When you are near me, thus, Love fills all Space,
And often whispers, “Is death better? Flee!”

My face reflects my heart's blood-red dammed tide,
Which, fainting, seeks some shallow resting place;
Till, in the blushing shame of such disgrace,
The very earth seems to be shrieking, “Die!”

’Twould be a grievous sin, if one should not
Relay some comfort to my harried mind,
If only with some simple pitying
For this great anguish which fierce scorn has wrought
Through faltering sights of eyes grown nearly blind,
Which search for death now, like a blessed thing.



Excerpt from Paradiso
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

****** Mother, daughter of your Son,
Humble, yet exalted above creation,
And the eternal counsel’s apex shown,

You are the Pinnacle of human nature,
Your nobility instilled by its Creator,
Who did not, having you, disdain his creature.

Love was rekindled in your perfect womb
Where warmth and holy peace were given room
For this, Perfection’s Rose, once sown, to bloom.

Now unto us you are a Torch held high
Our noonday sun―the light of Charity,
Our wellspring of all Hope, a living sea.

Madonna, so pure, high and all-availing,
The man who desires grace of you, though failing,
Despite his grounded state, is given wing!

Your mercy does not fail, but, Ever-Blessed,
The one who asks finds oftentimes his quest
Unneeded: you foresaw his first request!

You are our Mercy; you are our Compassion;
you are Magnificence; in you creation
Unites whatever Goodness deems Salvation.



THE MUSE

by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My being hangs by a thread tonight
as I await a Muse no human pen can command.
The desires of my heart ― youth, liberty, glory ―
now depend on the Maid with the flute in her hand.

Look! Now she arrives; she flings back her veil;
I meet her grave eyes ― calm, implacable, pitiless.
“Temptress, confess!
Are you the one who gave Dante hell?”

She answers, “Yes.”



I have also translated this poem written by Marina Tsvetaeva for Anna Akhmatova:

Excerpt from “Poems for Akhmatova”
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You outshine everything, even the sun
at its zenith. The stars are yours!
If only I could sweep like the wind
through some unbarred door,
gratefully, to where you are ...
to hesitantly stammer, suddenly shy,
lowering my eyes before you, my lovely mistress,
petulant, chastened, overcome by tears,
as a child sobs to receive forgiveness ...


Dante Criticism by Michael R. Burch

Dante’s was a defensive reflex
against religion’s hex.
―Michael R. Burch


Dante, you Dunce!
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is hell, Dante, you Dunce!
Which you should have perceived―since you lived here once.

God is no Beatrice, gentle and clever.
Judas and Satan were wise to dissever
from false “messiahs” who cannot save.
Why flit like a bat through Plato’s cave
believing such shadowy illusions are real?
There is no "hell" but to live and feel!



How Dante Forgot Christ
by Michael R. Burch

Dante ****** the brightest and the fairest
for having loved―pale Helen, wild Achilles―
agreed with his Accuser in the spell
of hellish visions and eternal torments.
His only savior, Beatrice, was Love.

His only savior, Beatrice, was Love,
the fulcrum of his body’s, heart’s and mind’s
sole triumph, and their altogether conquest.
She led him to those heights where Love, enshrined,
blazed like a star beyond religion’s hells.

Once freed from Yahweh, in the arms of Love,
like Blake and Milton, Dante forgot Christ.

The Christian gospel is strangely lacking in Milton’s and Dante’s epics. Milton gave the “atonement” one embarrassed enjambed line. Dante ****** the Earth’s star-crossed lovers to his grotesque hell, while doing exactly what they did: pursing at all costs his vision of love, Beatrice. Blake made more sense to me, since he called the biblical god Nobodaddy and denied any need to be “saved” by third parties.



Dante’s Antes
by Michael R. Burch

There’s something glorious about man,
who lives because he can,
who dies because he must,
and in between’s a bust.

No god can reign him in:
he’s quite intent on sin
and likes it rather, really.
He likes *** touchy-feely.

He likes to eat too much.
He has the Midas touch
and paves hell’s ways with gold.
The things he’s bought and sold!

He’s sold his soul to Mammon
and also plays backgammon
and poker, with such antes
as still befuddle Dantes.

I wonder―can hell hold him?
His chances seem quite dim
because he’s rather puny
and also loopy-******.

And yet like Evel Knievel
he dances with the Devil
and seems so **** courageous,
good-natured and outrageous

some God might show him mercy
and call religion heresy.



Of Seabound Saints and Promised Lands
by Michael R. Burch

Judas sat on a wretched rock,
his head still sore from Satan’s gnawing.
Saint Brendan’s curragh caught his eye,
wildly geeing and hawing.

I’m on parole from Hell today!
Pale Judas cried from his lonely perch.
You’ve fasted forty days, good Saint!
Let this rock by my church,
my baptismal, these icy waves.
O, plead for me now with the One who saves!

Saint Brendan, full of mercy, stood
at the lurching prow of his flimsy bark,
and mightily prayed for the mangy man
whose flesh flashed pale and stark
in the golden dawn, beneath a sun
that seemed to halo his tonsured dome.
Then Saint Brendan sailed for the Promised Land
and Saint Judas headed Home.

O, behoove yourself, if ever your can,
of the fervent prayer of a righteous man!

In Dante’s Inferno, Satan gnaws on Judas Iscariot’s head. A curragh is a boat fashioned from wood and ox hides. Saint Brendan of Ireland is the patron saint of sailors and whales. According to legend, he sailed in search of the Promised Land and discovered America centuries before Columbus.



RE: Paradiso, Canto III
by Michael R. Burch

for the most “Christian” of poets

What did Dante do,
to earn Beatrice’s grace
(grace cannot be earned!)
but cast disgrace
on the whole human race,
on his peers and his betters,
as a man who wears cheap rayon suits
might disparage men who wear sweaters?

How conventionally “Christian” ― Poet! ― to ****
your fellow man
for being merely human,
then, like a contented clam,
to grandly claim
near-infinite “grace,”
as if your salvation was God’s only aim!
What a scam!

And what of the lovely Piccarda,
whom you placed in the lowest sphere of heaven
for neglecting her vows ―
She was forced!
Were you chaste?



Intimations V
by Michael R. Burch

We had not meditated upon sound
so much as drowned
in the inhuman ocean
when we imagined it broken
open
like a conch shell
whorled like the spiraling hell
of Dante’s Inferno.

Trapped between Nature
and God,
what is man
but an inquisitive,
acquisitive
sod?

And what is Nature
but odd,
or God
but a Clod,
and both of them horribly flawed?



Endgame
by Michael R. Burch

The honey has lost all its sweetness,
the hive―its completeness.

Now ambient dust, the drones lie dead.
The workers weep, their King long fled
(who always had been ****, invisible,
his “kingdom” atomic, divisible,
and pathetically risible).

The queen has flown,
long Dis-enthroned,
who would have given all she owned
for a promised white stone.

O, Love has fled, has fled, has fled ...
Religion is dead, is dead, is dead.



The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

Here I am, talking to myself again . . .

******* at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!

Still, I remember when . . .

planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity

worth a chuckle or two.

Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;

Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;

Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;

Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .

for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,

and they fill the world with their pale derision

of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,

reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all ******.

Keyword/Tags: Muslims, sonnet, Italian sonnet, crown of sonnets, rhyme, love, affinity and love, Rome, Italy, Florence

Published as the collection "First they came for the Muslims"

Consanguinity: A Commissioned Poem
(How Well Do
You
Know Me?)


This request, from wolf spirit aka quinfinn, accidentally hit the spot of what was foremost on my mind.

Cosanguinity:  A relationship by descent from a common ancestor; kinship (distinguished from affinity).  A close relationship or connection.

Poetry, mine, yours,
Ours,
Invades my consciousness.

We write poems on the same subject,
Even the same title,
But a few days apart.

Insanity,
Coincidence,
or
Consanguinity?

Perhaps we are reading each other's stuff
Too much.

But that's crazy,
Or
Consanguinity?

Yet,
And yet,
We see the same things
So incredibly different.

That is the answer.
We see the same thing and I am
Struck down.

A billion sights.
A billion words.
Yet, the human computer,
Sorts, collates, and generates
A billion different writes
In a similar spirit,
Employing the same phraseology.

All right.

Alright.

Malaysia.
Minnesota.
East Coast.
West Coast.
Geographical differences.
Time differences.

No difference.
A billion differences.
The stylistic differences enable,
No, correction,
Ennobles us to coexist,
Value each other,
Learn.

Observable differences.
But more interesting,
More pleasurable,
are the incredible, visible, signs of
Consanguinity.
Mere affinity?
Kinship.

A poem?
Nah.
But at 1:11am in my location,
It's what's on my mind.
Now that I know the meaning of
Consanguinity.

I never wanted to love you,
love happened quite by chance.
I just wanted to be your friend,
not to indulge in a new romance.

But..then. something happened suddenly,
and before my heart and soul could know,
I came to know an amazing side of you
that caused my love to grow.

Now the tender way you touch me
I pray will never end.
You are my rock-star
my lover and my friend.

It's impossible to take my steps back
affection has become deep
I don't  expect you to be mine
but at-least I can have you in sleep.

You and I will go
Inescapable is the pain of separation
let's see what's there in destiny
And how strong is the connection.

I am an old soul
with an open heart
to love like that of a child
It is never really hard

Anyway
We're all but children
Trying to sort chaos
In these adult forms

We're just stuck
In the land of not Neverland.

9 to 5 menial jobs
Whether in the night or day
We take whatever luck
That comes in our way

Life is a circus
We ******* know it
Like an elephant in the pedestal
They beat us to it

Your chest houses a lodestone treasure
It strongly attracts
The every atom in my body
That's the least I can measure

We have an affinity
This is some sort of attraction
You
A darling boy
and I am
Just a girl

Let's get out of this world
Together let's fly away
Be my Peter Pan
I'll be your Wendy

I'm going to go ahead and get this out of the way.

I'm telling you now

A warning, before you drive over the tracks

Into racing-pulse-risktaking land

That you will never be the heart

Thud-thud-thudding in my chest

Pumping my blood and keeping me chugging along

That vessel of a cliche.

I'm not so easy

Predictable

Malleable

Boring

Dumb

Naive

To entrust you with keeping it going

Leaving something so vital

In hands that could stop tick-tick-ticking

At any moment

Like a dead clock.

I'm sorry, my dear

But that particular piece of tissue

Is one that is mine and only mine

Never to be cradled by another.

But before you turn away from the crossing

I'd like to offer another disclaimer.

There are other parts of me

That can be shared

Budding blooms growing every-which-way

Perhaps requiring two sets of hands

In order to be adequately nurtured.

If you truly find it crucial

You might push your way into my being

Become a mark branded onto my existence

Fading at a snail's pace

If I'm ever so lucky

To have it fade at all.

If you wish to cross these tracks without looking both ways

You could find yourself

Close to my heart, if not within it

Swimming in my lonely blue veins

A constant reminder that we're both here

Warm

Safe

Guarded.

You could be my sweet tooth

That impassioned affinity for something that may or may not be around

At any given time.

You could be a fold of my painfully enigmatic brain

Find yourself at home amongst all the love and anger and secrets

Push past the useless facts and fly-away ideas

Hold me tight 'til you squeeze me into a headache.

You could even be part of my oh-so-problematic blood

Nourish me

To love and to cherish

In motion and in rest

Know for sure that

Should one of us rip off the dreaded universal Band-Aid

And bid the other adieu

You'll be sure to leave a dark anemic bruise

A reminder for who-knows-how-many days to come

Of who you are

And what we were.

All precautions aside

I'll let you go on your way

With this one condensed admonition:

You, and every other person to whom I'll ever send a silvery come-hither glance

Will never stake claim

On my heart

Filling and releasing

Constantly reminding me of an identity all my own

Never shaped like a Valentine.

It doesn't mean that you aren't important

When you can, in fact

Find your own empty space in anything else

But remember:

At the end of the day

Blue veins go pale

Bruises fade

And I'm in charge of what's in my own lifeblood.

Even the most grueling marks on my skin and soul

Made by malevolence and cruel intent

Will surely heal

With the help of sweet time

And this trusty heart of mine.

If you're fine with this

By all means

Cross these rickety rails.

I'll see what I can do.

I was awoken from a dreamless sleep
     By a boy with short brown hair,
     Who, with an urgent stare,
Told me to head to the showers!

As my eyes creaked open to recognize,
     The orange glow of this unfamiliar room’s lighting,
     In front of me, in handwritten writing,
A page on the wall showed three in the morning.

When I glanced around a room of shared bunks,
     I saw all sorts of people and things,
     Running around with things to bring
To these showers I had yet to see.

In a winding line down a high ceiling’d hall,
     I stood with so many,
     Who like me, hadn’t any
Idea what was going on.

With a whirlwind flurry of commotion
     Steam crawled from the showers and water sprayed,
     As we were told in a big disarray,
To wash off the place from whence we came.

In a neat little stack, I was handed my clothes
     A tunic, with a sash
     And a captivating mask
To “celebrate our exciting return home.”

Down dark rustic stairways, I watched like a child
     The vibrant light and affinity,
     Radiating with enchanting divinity,
From the otherworldly people and creatures below.

Through that noisy, jolly crowd,
     We were led as a group
     And the boy said with a whoop
That we were all to stand up and dance.

His eyes glinting with excitement,
     The brown haired boy explained
     That our spirits would be ordained
Through a celebration of our inner light.

Onto the stage I was led
     As I stood with my class,
     Nervous amongst the mass
Of silent, numerous spirits before us.

As the boy hit the music
     I felt something from deep inside
     Rush out like a tide
And through tears of joy, I danced.

It was at that gleeful moment
     That my friends and I,
     Realizing we'd died,
Knew we'd returned to the forest.

a t-shirt. one that is a terrible color. 
my mom's least favorite, burnt orange. 
it shares a disgusting likeness to rust. 
and yet my dad would wear it everyday. 
regardless of everyone around him's distrust. 
"no one would dare to wear that in public" 
my mom said, she was wrong. 
perhaps when she married him she was not aware 
of my dad's inexplicable connection to 
this terrible color, or to t-shirts in general i guess
for about six out of the seven days a week regardless 
he would be wearing that same shirt
for the almost 20 years they have been married 
he can be found wearing that same shirt
however, there's a slight misconception
he doesn't have just one shirt 
he has dozens of those nasty burnt orange colored shirts 
and i suppose i forgot to mention that it's to support a football team
which seems shallow in theory but the aforementioned is
non-other than the texas longhorns. 
my dad grew up there and attended college there. 
he wasn't even a part of the team, and yet 
for the last 35 years he's been wearing that same shirt.
i simply can't understand his undying affinity 
i barely recognize the mascot of our own school team. 
there is a certain dedication, a certain love that he must feel towards this place, towards that team. 
however as i'm writing this poem i simply can't ascertain what it's all supposed to mean? 
texas, a place of southern accents, cowboys, and racism. 
not somewhere i typically tend to associate with even
though it was the place where i was born in 
on a Tuesday almost 17 years ago at about 1pm 
and of course i arrive
too early for my own good, 
so i stayed in a hospital in ICU until they said i could
be taken home to a house i barely remember. 
i wouldn't call that place home. 
and yet, my dad wearing another variation of his classic burnt orange t-shirt today 
that reminds me that's where i came from 
i came from burnt orange beginnings. 
and even though i might live in a blue ocean paradise as of now. 
that's not where i started. 
i tell myself that i am so much more that the place my life began in. 
so instead of loving where i started and the color that comes with it. 
i continue to despise that burnt orange color and compare it to rust 
and all other things that fill me with unexplainable disgust. 
but in the spirit of honestness. i don't hate it as much as i contest 
don't ask me about it however because for sure all i’ll do is protest
but even when i was little seeing that orange shirt and ******* car 
arrive in the driveway of my old school was truly the best 
looking for that ugly orange shirt at the end of the day when he always asked me what i had learned
hugging that terrible orange shirt when i'm crying 
after scraping my knee on the concrete
taking car rides with that orange shirt seated beside me 
that seemed as long as a lifetime to go see the turtles on the north shore  
after watching him present himself at a showing of a house we could never afford
watching that orange shirt fumble and stumble teaching me to drive 
fixing my air conditioner with this orange shirt at 2am
after a nightmare session that left me too rattled to sleep
that orange shirt who attends these loud rock concerts that he doesn’t necessarily enjoy simply to watch me be happy
that awful orange shirt that has seen me sad and happy and everything in between.
you know seeing that orange shirt for nearly every day of my life
has conditioned me 
and truly i hate it, the dustiness, the rustiness of it all. 
it’s disgusting, appalling and above all terrible. 
but for some godforsaken reason i also love it. 
i love it with my entire heart,
i truly love that stupid orange shirt for all of its awfulness
and logically i know it's not the shirt but the person inside.
because my dad is one of the most amazing people
i know and i hate to admit
but that color has grown on me, because of him
it's become home to me, 
it's my dad.
and maybe i'll never figure out why 
my dad loves his college football team so much 
maybe i don't need to 
what i know is that while burnt orange may be a truly terrible color, 
it's become home to me.

is a carniverous cemetery,
is a pacifier,
is a ******* on a friday night,
is only enough liquor to get you buzzed,
is a ****** bag cop,
is a church with splintered pews,
is sinners scared shitless,
is a two-year-old with an affinity for violence,
is my ex-girlfriend,
is paranoid,
is a blanket of all your favorite prescription pills,
is worried sorority girls in dark-wash jeans,
is unshaved,
is a cancer,
is a perpetual spell-check,
is lonely,
is my mother
and a god-awful toothache.

optimist - acrostic

Open up the book
Page one, neutralize your thoughts
Turn the page
Induct elation
Make your temperament positive
Idealism
See the prism of sanguinity
Turn the page

============================================

aqua - acrostic

Arid soul washed away
Quietly sinking down
Underneath the waves to stay
Awakening as i drown

========================================

flaw - acrostic

Forget about the way we see
Looking past the shallow grey
Awaken to a deeper degree
We are all beautiful in our own way

=========================================

harm - acrostic

Hurt me, the pain will go away
All anguish is fleeting
Remnants of your words might stay
My heart will go on beating

====================================

wolf pack - acrostic

Wild and free, nature's breed
Out of bounds of any containment
Living off of only what they need
Flourishing in sustainment

Prowling the forests and grass
Attacking only what they eat
Canids from our distant past
Killing only to replete

(i know i didn't use the word sustainment correctly here, but it rhymes)
==================================

jugs - acrostic poem

Jiggle and bounce for me
Underneath a cotton top
Gives me such satisfaction
Seeing them flip and flop

=================================

sympathy and attention - pity party poetry page

with an affinity for sympathy and attention
pity without empathy ends up as an affliction
sitting all alone having fits not fit to mention
depicting his own addiction to his self infliction

distemper words, written with intention
listless visions are a picture of his fiction
his existence isn't gifted within this dimension
it's a senseless decision to befit a contradiction

==================================================­====

discretion

if deception is a threat, i guess it begs the question
does perception get better with less discretion?
can a gesture of conception be answered best with ingestion
by letting down our guards will we fester in suppression?

changing our direction away from our debts of reception
pressed by our expression of protested progression
best bets are guessed and when we collect we learn a lesson
back to the question, is perception better with less discretion?

====================================

rhyme without reason

what is a rhyme without a reason?
it's no feat to beat the drum of no cohesion
it's like planting seeds that aren't in season
or a disease that leaves a bleeding lesion

a decent poet is adept at seeing adhesion
leaving the meaning amounts to being treason
completely missing pieces for completion
not even worth reading, only worth deletion

========================================

everlasting (4 versions)

though i have ran with the rats of cancer
as i craft the ladder to the final chapter
i never planned for crass disaster
abashed by the lasting factor

where the past is passing faster
i ask the lord and await his answer
are my chances granted to live hereafter
i clasp the hand of the everlasting master

---------------------------------------------------------­-

abashed by the lasting factor
i never planned for crass disaster
as i craft the ladder to the final chapter
though i have ran with the rats of cancer

i clasp the hand of the everlasting master
are my chances granted to live hereafter
i ask the lord and await his answer
where the past is passing faster

---------------------------------------------------------­---

abashed by the lasting factor
i never planned for crass disaster
as i craft the ladder to the final chapter
though i have ran with the rats of cancer

where the past is passing faster
i ask the lord and await his answer
are my chances granted to live hereafter
i clasp the hand of the everlasting master

---------------------------------------------------------­-------

(you can also do one of these)

where the past is passing faster
i ask the lord and await his answer
are my chances granted to live hereafter
i clasp the hand of the everlasting master
i clasp the hand of the everlasting master
are my chances granted to live hereafter
i ask the lord and await his answer
where the past is passing faster

The way to measure affinity,
Is not looks or femininity,
Or how she speaks, or what she might say,
But how she makes you feel each day.

For she, who makes you feel alive,
With passion, delight, joy, love, and pride,
Is one who shares your soul's true light,
And she'll always that's kept well in sight.

So do not be fooled by outward show,
For affinity is deep below,
In the heart, where love and light reside,
And where your soulmate'll always abide.

Poems about the Moon and Stars

These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)



Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret...
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once again—
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse


Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!

Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today



Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch

She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...

what do we know of love,
or duty?



Kindred
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark...
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?

Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?

Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?

I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.



Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...

Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.

The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.

Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.

Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.



Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps...

How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded...

They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover's ease idly tracing flesh...

They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen...

Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda...

Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.

Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes syphilitic craters
and veiled by ghostly willows, palely looms,
while 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,
while 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.



Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The night is dark and scary—
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother's love
and your puppy's kisses, doggonit!



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka... if I wished
upon a frozen star... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm...
yet something still not love... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove...

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. I believe this was my first attempt at blank verse.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe's.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace's or Mesopotamia's.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool's gold.



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,

I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.

The end of every man's the same
and every god's as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on

to hope when there's no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.



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.



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.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon's illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.

Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England). I believe I wrote the first version of "Listen" around age 17.

Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, sky, nightfall, tonight, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love

Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"

teal and golden rays
in your eyes
managed, clean-cut hair
presentable, charming
barely a stranger despite
short times together
your company is healing

you're a character, that's for sure
an impressionist, eccentric
convivial like myself
we stand outside and
happily inhale poison
pretending we're awkward
being awkward

good friends we
have become
in such a short time-span
mutual agreement to
enjoy who we are      
together

There is an age old story in a place called middle earth
About Hobbits, Orcs and Wizards all fighting for there turf
It all involved a ******* ring too much for what its worth
Sending all men crazy when its wrapped around their girth
With their finger in the ring who knows where they may surf
Wars began when worlds where new the creation of times birth

So what exactly does it mean by lord of the rings
Is it the golden type or does it mean other things?
Being a lord of a ring who knows what that brings?
Is it a Drawf ,an ugly Orc or an Elf that swings?
Or a Hobbit with hairy feet bouncing on bed springs
Maybe its a Wizard or some ***** Queens and Kings
Something with open ***** spread wide like Dragons Wings
Could it be a merriment of drunken Men or a Bard that sings
A mystical sword detecting Orcs while the blue blade 'Stings'
Or caught inside an arachnids lair when her webbing clings

If the one true ring is reaching out can you hear it call
Is this the case for Hobbitses spread up against a wall
I'm not sure if its all powerful or enough to make you crawl
But its certainly a finger trap when your about to fall
Dont get caught up in a song or a bar room brawl
You'll end up exposing your ring laid out in a sprawl
First there was a fellowship so that explains it all
An Elf, a King, a Warrior and a Wizard that was tall
One Dwarf and Four Hobbits oh so ******* small
A band of miss-matched fellows so too much **** and ball

There wasn't any ladies present none in their vicinity
No big boobed buxom vixens so no sweet femininity
Just a load of sweaty men so too much masculinity
One true ring to rule them all and the loss of their senility
Nine guys on a long quest with the need of strong agility
Half way up a mountain heading for their own affinity
Inside a cave "You shall not pass" Gandalfs grey divinity
With staff in hand the Balrog's Bain both falling to infinity
Frodo's lose and upset the fellowships diminishing ability
With the hope of something more for the lose of their virginity

Just take a look at Bilbo Baggins with his transfixed eyes
With his finger in the ring is what he would visualise
His persona will be changing to what you wont recognize
But he wont want to give up the ring or even compromise
Could it be the feeling he has of the rings sweet tantalize
Or leaving this reality behind under his minds hypnotize
If he does not surrender the ring he will be so unwise
Coz Gandalf will get so ******* with Bilbo's demoralize
An obsessed Bilbo Bagginses he's under a different guise
If the ring then turns him gay it will come as no surprise

So if your in the tavern and you spot old Boromir
And he's got a pewter tankard quaffing froth and beer
If he handles the one true ring who knows which way he'll steer
He'll end up in the cocktail bar the ring will turn him queer
Mr Underhill is waiting with the ring will he ever get gear
Waiting for a stranger while the patrons look and leer
Some people in the tavern they may even laugh and cheer
But I doubt they'd be too happy if they where taken at the rear
Frodo's mistake ******* the ring his invisibility may be severe
Black riders are not far behind so there is something to fear

And if you looking for a man who's name is Strider
But you're not really sure who he is a friend or an insider
For all you know he could be a foe or a even a Black Rider
He is just a lying **** his false name is his divider
At the Prancing Pony Inn he may well be your hider
But it will be a team effort and not a soul provided
Be careful of that ******* ring your tail will get much wider
You don't want any hindrance or a ridicule derider
Don't lose your ring deep in the woods within a ***** slider
That's nothing to what lies ahead when you face a giant spider

Just beware of those Ring Wraiths the nine riders of the black
Cos you don't want to use your ring if your going to be slack
Resist the use of the ring or they'll stab you in the back
The eye of Saurons watching you blades of evil in your crack
If evil gets into your heart you'll become one of their pack
At Elrons river their taunting you cos they are right on track
They will beckon you to Mordor but it's courtesy they lack
So warn them off defeat those Wraiths a sea of horses to attack
Time and pain could have been saved and a hell of a lot of flak
If you went with the Wraiths and it was them that you could hack

And you really don't want to come across the army of the dead
There are far too many of them and you'll run out of lead
You should get out while you can just don't loose your head
Make a bargain with the Dunharrow Dead to avoid bloodshed
The protection of those ****** rings protect your own instead
Is it worth all of the blood spilled when you could have fled
Sam should keep his guard up as he may fear to tread
Cos Gollum's out there stalking you as you lay on your bed
He'll **** to gain "My Precious" filling your heart with dread
Attacking you while your asleep and any of your stead

Smoke rises from the Mountain of Doom and the hour is late
Gandalf The Grey rides to Isengard of this he cannot wait
Seeking council with Saruman but he doesn't know his fate
The lord of Mordor he sees all I'm afraid that is his trait
Sauron's great eye's looming my old friend's fallen for the bait
Reason abandoned for madness the insanity of Saruman's hate
We must join with Sauron but then what would that create
The hour is later than you think are their staffs twisted or straight
A fight within Orthanc tower this was Gandalf's one true date
Escaping the clutches of Saruman's trap his former friend and mate

Have you ever wondered how Gandalf turned from grey to white
The quest began but too their dismay the Balrog came to sight
Deep within the cavern walls the desperation of their plight
No way back on a stone bridge during that hopeless fight
The danger of the crumbling rocks falling a great height
Gandalf will not let it pass the whip of the Balrog's blight
Was it that confrontation when Gandalf turned dark into light
Or when he got tossed of that bridge was his grey cloak getting tight
Is it the strain of whiplash pulling him or the fiery Balrogs bite
Gandalf will return on Shadowfax and the Eagles will take flight

Gandalf and a group of men the Great Eagles they had mastered
So why didn't he take the ring himself the selfish ******* *******  
Those Wars could have been prevented instead of death forecasted
But it seems they'd  rather people die populations maimed and blasted
The burden Sam and Frodo faced too long their quest had lasted
It could have been completed sooner if certain spells where casted
They where to suffer seemingly with rings they should have fasted
Instead of which they shared the pain with others that contrasted
Gandalf could have flown that ring without being flabergastered
But he'd rather smoke his ******* pipe and surprisingly get plastered

Battles ensued that needn't have been so was that really fair?
Gimli will have to get his axe out so you better all beware
He'll team up with Legolas and they'll **** without a care
Keeping score of all their kills cos they are a strange old pair
Aragorn would join them and he'd take on his fare share
But Legolas was a nice boy with his lovely long blonde hair
He liked to score with Gimli perhaps he had that certain flair
I'm not sure which way his arrow went I'd ask but I don't dare
Was it fair on Frodo the heavy burden was his own nightmare
Especially when Gollum leads you into a trap inside of Shelobs lair

The anger of Samwise Gamgee at Gollums treachery and betrayal
Fat Hobbitses don't like Smeagol a defence that was quite frail
With Frodo succumbing to the ring it's to late for him to bail
He wished the ring had not come to him afraid that he may fail
So do all that see such times when you could fall off the rail
Isn't that how its always been with the kings you have to hail
It's bad enough taking the ring when your led right off the trail
And maybe facing certain death not knowing if you'll avail
Don't let the ring take control or you'll end up going pail
Bilbo has already been there and back again in a Hobbits Tale

The great horn sounds attacking Orc's and 100's of their creed
A valiant fight but to no avail when protection takes the lead
The wooded Hill of Amon Hen Boromir died of his last deed
On the grassy ***** near Parth Galen the death of lust and greed
If he didn't want the ring so much there may have been no need
For hordes of Orc's to strike him down with arrows of great speed
Aragorn's comfort of a dying man a confession to take heed
He tried to take Frodo's ring so now his heart will bleed
Men will die and get obsessed the one true ring will breed
Rings will come and rings will go so don't you spread their seed

To gain the power of the ring many battles have been fought
If the ring wasn't so desirable then we wouldn't all get caught
Killing was Smeagol's desire his stressed mind in distraught
Deagol's demise to obtain the ring is what Smeagol sought
A birthday demand a savage rage a strangled death resort
Gladen River's legacy Smeagol's friend killed in a fraught
Downward spirals of sheer desire is what the ring has brought
Gollums years of torment but still nothing has been taught
If you don't resist the ring you'll lose your male support
The power of the ring's too great and far to hard to thwart

A sneaky ******* in our midst the slime was almost dripping
The foulness of this slimy guy Theoden chilled heart ripping
Chief adviser to his feeble king the oldness of poison sipping
Exposed as Saruman's agent and spy allegiances kept flipping
A name like Grima Wormtongue you'd expect a double tipping
Unless he used his wormy tongue for a tonguing and a slipping
A henchmen of the slimiest order his tongue is always dripping
Stabbing Saruman in the back his treachery deserves a clipping
Escaping from their Orc captives good old merry and pippin
Treebeards wooden victories he'll give those Orcs a whipping

The towering strength of fourteen feet and a unique repartee
He Ent stumped and he Ent felled and he's not potpourri
Do not be hasty in times of need take notice of our plea
With Meriadoc and Peregrin they where the power of three
Going to war that mighty oak for cutting down the tree
Branching out coz he's hacked off at Saruman's killing spree
He'll ******* stick one on you so those Orcs they better flee
Cos his wood, timber and leaf are his trunks aristocracy
So don't you ******* Treebeard because you will not foresee
His bark is worse than his bite and his log's his legacy

Death is just another path give me a ******* brake
But being a lord of a ring that is a big mistake
Forging of these ****** rings why are they on the make
The one true ring that ruled them all off this I can forsake
How many wars have been lost how many lost their stake
With people killed and deaths occurred within a battles wake
At helmsdeep Gandalf the White returned from grey opaque
Sword aloft taking a stand making those Orc ******* quake
On the back of Shadowfax the rumbling ground will shake
It would not have happened if the rings where ******* fake

Sharp black mountains up winding stairs was Smeagols secret way
He'll Lead Frodo into a trap he'll make those nasty hobbits pay
The heaviness of stagnant air the darkness consumes the day
Unaware of what awaits when SHE comes out to play
Weaving webs of shadows the dankness of black and grey
Deep inside of that dark lair is where Mr Frodo lay
The Phial of Galadriel's silver light keeping darkness at bay
Sam's glimmer of hope the Elvin blade Shelob he tried to slay
Feeling the 'Sting' of Sam's despair he made that spider sway
Dark defeated by the light but Gollums pleasures gone astray

Arriving at the fires of mount doom the volcano's of Mordor
Destroy the ring throw it in the fire but Frodo wanted more
Just let it go and don't hesitate what are you waiting for
As Sam looks on the ring is mine Frodo's last withdraw
******* the ring is hard enough especially if your not sure
Don't be too obsessed like Gollum was by being the rings *****
The following of footsteps Gollum's foul bite of blood and gore
Frodo's severed finger ring lost from a blooded scarlet claw
The joy of regaining 'My Precious' was Gollums goal and law
Falling in the fires of mount doom his death ended Frodo's chore

With Gollums Demise the ring destroyed our stories nearly told
Mount Doom has fell all things must end including rings of gold
Mordor has crumbled the defeat of Sauron and enemy's of old
Great Eagles came Frodo and Sam saved from Mordors fiery fold
Frodo's fellowship reunion at the bedside of the brave and bald
They'll never be the same again but no longer Orced or Trolled
Cheering crowds the Return of the King Arwen's beauty to behold
The Hobbits bow before the king but they really should withhold
My friends you bow to no one kings honour for the hobbits mould
A kneeling of the whole kingdom bestowed the Hobbits over bowled

Thirteen months to the day our returning to bag end
A familiar sight our home the Shire we left to defend
The beginning of the fourth age Sam's marriage to attend
Sam's choice of bride Rosie Cotton his wife to wed intend
Home at the Shire was too hard to fully comprehend
For Frodo's old threads of life the bonds of a true friend
There is no going back some things time cannot mend
Some hurts they go to deep the book that he now penned
The completion of Lord of the Rings a few pages to extend
Giving the manuscript for Sam to continue the written trend

The galleon is waiting and its time to break the chain
Bilbo's journeys are over the last ship to leave the main
The time of men has come and the end of the rings reign
Gandalf's work was over the brave Hobbits teary strain
True endings of the fellowship seas call us home again
Don't be sad and do not weep but Frodo felt the pain
Not all tears are evil Gandalf knew of Frodo's wane
A departure of emotion the tears they could not retain
The saving of the shire but it isn't quite that plain
Frodo's sad farewell the Gray Heavens don't refrain

The fellowships disbanded but as if that wasn't known
Quests for gold are no more the dead are dust and bone
Elvish has left the building the trolls have turned to stone
The one true ring has been lost so its no longer shown
Hobbits are back in their holes so all of them will groan
Hords of Orcs have now ****** off after lowering the tone
Towers have been toppled, Mount Doom's collapsed and blown
Gollum has lost his precious so he'll have good cause to moan
The Dwarfs are not around no more cos their not all fully grown
Ring bearers have been and gone so they'll be on their own
The king has now returned and he's got his ******* Throne
The story has now ended but you know how far we've flown
So thank you J.R.R Tolkien thanks for your story loan
But it isn't exactly Lord of the rings so its not a ****** clone

Did you whisper a prayer before the roar of the inevitable end?
Should we have listened harder,
held you closer,
and tried so very much more
to persuade your troubled mind
not to let go?

I don't know.

You, in all your lightness
held me so convincingly
in oblivion of your parched spirit.
Too many years of despair, I reckon.
And too little human affinity found.

I will never know, what drove your final decision to meet the vast unknown.
It terrifies me to think
that you felt that was the only choice.
But even if I grieve that you will never
light up the world with your dazzling smile,
gentle touch,
or kindness anymore.
I see you for the brave and wondrous creature that you are.
Brave to live so far.
And brave to end it.

Nothing grows now,
the dry spell hit this summer hard.
And yet...
The gentle fragrance of all blossoms
linger in the air ever since you took your leave.

On its back,
The cockroach,
In a jacket of red wings,
Slender legs,
And bulging abdomen,
Like the tummy of African statesman,
Its legs wallowing in despair,
In the air,
Stamping the spread eagled,
Hind and forelimbs,
Of the poor anthropod,
Kicking and waving,
A cry for the succor,
To be freed from ebola,
Or breaking the *** tether,
Or un-doing strong bonds of poverty,
Three districts under leprosy,
In the domain of the bull’s eye,
Where lesbians and gays swallow raw fate,
Its salient manifestation,
Then the cockroach kicks silently,
Anticipating for salvage,
But when the domain owner comes,
He steps with full weight,
His foot dressed in military boots,
From the previous legacy of Che Gue Vara,
On the belly of the kakerlag at Berlin Wall,
Bursting its stomach but hopscotch,
Spilling the white stuff out,
Of poverty and mental dilemma,
Amid hopelessness in future and history,
As terrorism mires tomorrow,
When China reigns today,
At mercy of contemporary panjandrums,
Moving from white to black
And from black to face book,
Killing those who fall in commercial love,
As if money is the ***** for nuptial night,
But only to go forth ignobled,
Without making momentous affinity,
In the realm of ill fated cockroach   back-dom,
Sending Mafousian Egypt to Swedish table,
Without scorn and regard for true African blood,
Where will I apologize?
If the ****** bug
Enters my head and heart,
To blind my logical eyes,
Only to open wide
The senses that see and feel
Religion and race; O! Al Qaeda!

As a ginger, I'm inclined to say fox. I've always had an affinity for those cunning, red canines.

But if it's just for a day then perhaps something a bit more adventurous. I suppose I would choose to be a cheetah.

Fastest land animal in the world, agile, and speckled.

Nobody messes with a cheetah. Not because they’re so hulking or intimidating— just more fascinating than terrifying.

We travelled to South Africa once, my family and I. As a tribe we chased wild creatures down with cameras in jeeps in a raucous yet hushed thrill.  

The cheetah was one of the few animals that eluded us. Perhaps having never seen one up close is partially what draws me to them.  

Mysterious, as well as evasive, with an "I don't give a ****" attitude.

They only eat every so often because catching food is such a feat. When they do hunt however, it's one of the most spectacular things in the natural world.

It's why places that sell tv's show footage of cheetahs running in slow motion over and over on a dizzying loop; demonstrating how clear the pixels are in the plasmas. It's mesmerizing.

Their feet move too fast and fly over the dirt, honed in on whatever poor gazelle or kudu they're after. If you're a cheetah that is your body, your thin bones, your rapid heart and beating paws that make you move in such a blur.

To be a cheetah for a day is feeling and knowing the difference between machine and muscle. Humans have found ways to fly, and people regularly move faster than a top speed of 75mph.

But how sublime it would be!
To be solely and purely responsible for that unparalleled speed just for one day.

Somewhere along the line
it feels like I lost my poetry.

But I've always had a deep affinity of childhood curious-gaze with the light of a passing car slicing through a slumped drapery in the dead of a powerless October night
like a fumbling mouse with night-vision, glassy eyed, walk, walk, walk
run, run, run
scurry-rubber like an imperial humvee of red-carpet glamor.

Somewhere along the line
the freeze of a less-than-bourgeoise temperature never felt close to Antarctic
until the ring of a cell-phone became my national anthem
and the complacent all-eternity-and-everything-we-are-and-more reflective one-eye of a laptop became my national flag
I waived it with surrender calling to all nation states that 'I don't give a sweet ****,
entertain me.'

watching politics like sports and sports like politics I couldn't help but hear the old Native inside of me scream in suffocated final breaths so I turned up the volume to drown him out
and when I wished to return to his comforting embrace, I found he had drown to death
so all I could do was stand over his wading body in the river of my mind and lax my shoulders in defeat.

I rang the midnight church bell of 'send new message' to tell the world that didn't care
the shaman is dead.

all they said was
'finally, the shaman is dead.'
I nodded, laughed, locked the bathroom door
and cried until the river ran dry
the shamans body so far down creek I could pretend to forget he had ever existed

the ache inside became a masked anonymity with the glare of Dorian Gray
I shrugged and said, 'I could never make time anyways'
and fell right back into my sleepy routine with another cup of coffee.

"What is your talent? Can you show me?" He asked me, obliviously.

"My affinity isn't something that can be seen." I replied. "It isn't a fancy circus trick, like juggling, nor is it the astonishing spectacle of a painting. It isn't the beauty of a voice, or the magnificent sound of music to the ears. My ability is from the inside, from the way one simple sentence could turn your whole life around. It's the way words could understand you like nobody ever can, the way quotes or phrases fill the emptyness of your heart, and the way it awakens a sensation you may have never been able to feel before. So, no, I cannot show you what my talent is, as it is the way I can transfer a set of emotions to you with just the enunciation of a word."

And with that, I, yet again, rendered another soul speechless.

Love illuminates fits of insanity
In that trance soul touches infinity
From heart to heart is real affinity
Love takes to the edge of eternity

Beauty has its own reward to give
To your sweet eyes I am the captive
If I commit an innocent sin forgive
My soul is receptive, heart impulsive

Let celebrate the moments of truth
My sweetheart being in early youth
Forget about the rivals dirt uncouth
Embrace me in entirety let me sooth

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2017 Golden Glow

Dad was a cad
was my uncles brother
and not surprising was his
affinity for my mother.

It all came around full circle
when my dad quite apparently showed
affinity for my Aunt Martha.

They settled all of that quite
preposterously
by having a
family reunion on the
night before Thanksgiving.

I Imagine they all had fun.

Let us find short stories in verse
with words lifting
conflict inside Wholeness..
Such verses are teachers in print
whose words dissolve in our reading..
Opposing poles of experience
challenge and exhaust
the mind's desperate
wish to explain..
At last in surrender
we find affinity  
with the new Light
now revealed...

there is little substance in
affinity marked by proximity.
it is no true measure of
commitment or loyalty but
merely a constant exchange
of fabricated facades. such
is the folly of friendship.

whether nature ever
actually achieved compassion,
it has surely since been corrupted.
emotionally encapsulated,
acting as if not to
affect those in the
evading environment.

selfish must have proven
more efficient than selfless.
the superiority of self priority
and depraved self devotion.

still it doesn't seem sufficient,
at least not to me.

twinkle birds and tessellates, bends my mind to outer space. lands me in infinity of never ending affinity to the universe.
but sweetest ideas were shortly lived at reality slowly sifts away to repeated visions that turn loved faces into panic that glitches me into unbreakable circles of walk away, walk away.
no awareness of a before from this feel the abyss of this helplessness **** me into no ending so I seice to begin.
but as the panic subsides my mind starts to ride the energy that resides in my being from the kingfisher floor to the fish strewn ceiling.
sentient beings **** at the seams, my dream of weightlessness pull the windows to break towards the secrets of simple existence.
invisible water sends the strands of fur swelling and glowing into talk of the polar bear whose hair weaves into the atoms that feed my jumbled dreams.

hands rip through the plaster as the sounds grow louder and faster, helicopters shake the boiler from the pipes but I still feel great.
the tables tremble as I soak up the bass and the treble. sensual overload through my eyes the magic multiplies, angels can hear my sighs as the roof opens to tunnel towards the skies.
geometric patterns that I could never have imagines circle and sweep, creeping my further from sleep.
I have breached something new, an extreme that dares its self to be seen only my the few who ****** it. I grab these new senses and attach it to my masses of emotions, that have been formed my these chemicals. neutrons and protons that explore the breadth oh Pantones schemes, weaving into the atoms that feed my jumbles dreams.

release my mind from the confines of rinse and repeat, out of easy street and onto the sunrise that surrounds me. revelations that never siese to confound me.
destruction was peace pulling my beliefs, daring the world to touch me as the floor tips the cabinets from the walls. I am small. here in this perfect world. my hands make the plants grow as they show me all it takes to break the confines of the human condition is to expand your mind and reposition your nervous system to reach a different supposition.



little lion
please read my other work if you like this one!
http://trivialitesofabusymind.blogspot.co.uk/

Vernarth sequence

Prophecy I -  “Eighth month of sailing in systemic plenitude”

“Since they will not hunt us down in all our Itheoi cycles…
nor in other lapses from where the fine eye could have sewn the buttonholes of the shroud, where there will be life and if there will be a short time without life...
dragged by you for a long time where the sun is melted over the word, staying stored and locked in your pocket to collect it blushing,
tomorrow's jump without a yesterday declining..., without a tomorrow in the heat of a bonfire...
lamb in bait handled being the portal of those who have been slapped inside their cheeks… who will not shorten the cycle that transcends all the oblong sepulchral vaults or who abound in the nonsense of sanitizing nights of ***** despot life having to measure themselves in your flourishing duel by Aiónius of the cleanest dew of its solid stroke and announced delineation of the new one that has been retraced again being more than a brief syllable created again fertile, in the biosphere mouth so as not to see you omnipresent mist, meditating not having you and that dares to meditate on your future that will have to be reserved for yourself by professing it when you are cold in front of you and insinuating if in living followed by letters to be flooded pondering like a paralyzed sleeping part that wants not to be covered with feigned warmth and that does not fit in all the parts of me being who wants to be consul of some shelter with all those who sleep also half dreaming in the company of the lost afternoon that never ends serving Saint John in Katapausis here, perhaps Aiónius del Ibico 1 as a magnificent and net unit that sees the luminous truth when we all come out of a prophecy alive even if it's dark ".

"What a reckless job of losing value,
I am already in Katapausis in the eighth month...,
I entered as the light opened with my hand turned into the light...
being already a katapausis meaning in Sabbatarianism.
Quasi-unit method exhibiting cohesion to the rest motif
With levers in my hands and intra-sabbatism in his dissertation...
of an exegetical and theological nature that has transpired soft insomniac light, We are a people who do not have to fear or air to deposit for a future warehouse above the Sycamore or birds that guard all the Gold above my hands on the Sycamore…”

"Stay in my house, if I don't come back it will be yours
stay at home, it will belong to everyone even in the apocalypse...
that more reckless will be silent as a work of losing value,
Katapausis is the threshold where my life enters and leaves at once,
stay at my house, if I don't come back it will be yours...
Open windows by meekly closing them to that confronted obverse to you...

He comes from a den relativized on reliefs in weathered beads...
they will be soluble mineral beings convened moving away from the most distant and closest to the least distant…, from waters of underground siphons… there we will all be floating… like vertebrate invertebrate animals”

Vernarth, after not entering the grotto not having found Saint John, goes outside where he goes on a campaign for three months before he can be received by God's law. Here he meets with Reader and his pelican, as well as Eurydice.


Prophecy II -  “Seventh, Inter-synergy energy”

“Three months I have waited in the middle of this mountain,
symmetrically arranging the steps to be taken, not going backward
prana of life walking in oceans of life walking…
us and them… how much must separate us to reach us?
what I have not tried to separate…, what I have not been able to achieve…

I think I died early in the worlds that haven't risen yet,
I think I was reborn late among dense curves that overwhelm us with straight lines
soul, principle, matter, and material distinctive ontology
Ghost god of parallelisms beings and activities in affinity...
starvation body of low energy ceasing creatures in embryo
incessant firstborn to infuse other confining souls
trails demons slip where my ashes hands are sore
wounded doctrines to engender and doctrines to ulcerate...

As the prophecy uses the sea carrying messages resolved from shore to shore
close to a Virtual why in the twilight your Faith that must be glandular… matter of soul and body exposed to predisposing theological and chemical, in pursuit of the corruptible whole in vice versa if he does not burst with atheistic impatience.”

Eurydice takes a zither and sings tempting stormy actions to Vernarth, Raeder and Petrobus put their souls in line in the first linear principle, Together with the matter of corporeal fire proceeding to the definition where all the parts are confirmed without distinction dancing next to them creating the greatest bond of faith in body and soul, thus spending the three months in a few words of light of the sated fire.

"In the eighth-month katapausis, eight times your permanent peace must rest in
cited state; once it is translated into Sabbathisms and it will be the same state… When everyone finishes their dance in the cave and enters believing they have the courage to enter eight times in connection with rest…, plus eight times in connection without rest.
In some verses, the urgency of the entrance will be accentuated. The main issue “is that history will be repeating itself exactly where the Israelites were at Kadesh-Barnea. A related term either synonymous with Kadesh or referring to one of two sites, is Kadesh (or Qadesh) Barnea. Various etymologies for Barnea have been proposed, including 'wilderness of travel' but none have produced a broad consensus. What is the consensus? will we stop believing or lean on the shores of a preacher rain of Jehovah or lean on the shores of a preacher sinful waterfall or lean on the shores of a preacher confessing rain or lean on the shores of a preacher wet wind inquisitor...? where ever the aromas of its faithful winds served will go sacred to everything named before and many before the confessing rainy…, waterfalls in favor of the temperamental inquisitor wind”.

Astheneiais”, in Greek is and will be a weakness, in Hebrews a moral connotation and will mean not only physical weakness but a conscious weakness and trembling in temptation. Our Lord also understands us in this weakness because he was tempted in every way as we are. Since he himself was tempted he knows from experience what it means for us to be tempted. He was not tempted in all the particulars of our life, for example, He was not tempted as a husband or father, owner or employer or soldier, because he was none of these things. But he was tempted in all three areas of human susceptibility: body, soul, and spirit.

Prophecy III -  “Sixth, Resilience…”

“They were on the perimeter trying to keep me together at his command,
I go every day for its pantry, food, groceries, bookstore supplies and ink, oils, and other essences for the environment in continuous handwritten obedience, I have to leave for Skalá where some residents are waiting for me who have ordered to bring materials from Gricos and Psili Ammos to project your home,
If this has been written like this, it is because my pleasure in walking has written it, in the company of the one, he has written for the one who walks next to me the god Ibicus!

They always asked me why to mention why I have to do this for them… I will tell you that I used to serve leaders who consolidate the Hellenic geography,
without them, everything would have been invaded by unled foreign hands… in that rest, I have to attend to the verse that precedes it...
which says that we have already entered where I already intend to argue the following…

Resilience and exhortation that from the beginning I have taken since it began... now I will abide by and present your messages in a very predominant note, I was Hoplite Commander of the Falange and Hetairoi, now a Christian who does not dispute living a life of obedience to those who are not and are not without his martyrs...
like those people to whom God swore they will not enter my rest
whose amen will be preached in the passive voice verse!

Remain as the verb indicates with the real facts, the word
independent of the present, independent of who and when…
Saint Gabriel my Abrahamic angel will give me white strength and frolicking lilies like baskets of hermaphroditic lilies procreating only-begotten forests at the altar.

Stand tall over the Abrahamic fire without knuckles or shields,
rethink your beloved woman and take a sudden step to heal your wounds there is so much grass to cut and so much poetry to chew...
up the mountain towards Skalá at night after drinking wine
Epitrapezios Inos setting fire with innocuous saffron atmosphere
lips of fire and bread, for a good offensive fight.
Greek fire naphtha, cinnabar, and anthracite.

Wake up united with the deep disorder
Grant the color that deserves to have your day as a constellation
with the image that rests on your angular and calloused hands.
stopping spaces of loss more than all the centuries that waited for the minimum incense to a good warrior, sweet wine for open bleeding wound not his… the thunder that hides baptisms in all hearts empty of blood...

“While Vernarth was praying in the oracle he felt a thunderous supra sound As if the gates of hell had opened...
As if millions of seconds of angels were to be dispersed from the sky
To reduce more seconds of silence to the thinnest pleading eardrum

A few days ago I saw a ghost that was chopping wood...
I couldn't realize that he was really Him...,
I also saw him cutting thousands of volumes from a library...
Also, not realizing it, I saw several, like more than eighty manuscripts..., of breaths that still did not prosper in the hands of San Marcos...

A gigantic door slam is felt again...!
again it was the angels that came
at the wrong time in his return..., but now in his repatriation
they climbed through and into the Garden of Eden.”

Vernarth, evicted from the habit of the unknown, was apprehended by his craftsmanship of him, he was still attentive to be received by San Juan. The longer he waited to be arranged for an audience, he did not postpone what his memory pointed out to be more than an experience plotting capacities in the face of his own limitations. From that moment on, a gigantic gate slam is felt again! the angels who went back one after another with their polished golden-white cloaks relapsed..., but now making the Garden of Eden their own,... being theirs in what was theirs, that they would be in the house of a wise gardener of Eden perhaps being the same Katapausis manger at once!

Raeder says: hugging him profusely! time has to fly like little angels, having them by your side as companions of the time that is leftover on their wings, giving it all to your enjoyment of living and feeling it lost in you without finding it. ! khaire mi Vernarth!, I have some karidopitas with nuts and yogurt accompanied by baklava with nuts in delicious syrup from Kalymnos. Petrobus jumped for joy and fluttered like a hummingbird to steal a few pieces! Eurydice and Vernarth did the same. That night they told militia stories while they ate the morsels, so they fell asleep as if it had been the first time they had fought such a great menu. Euridice assists in the same with his fresh clean face, creating an atmosphere of conciliation to renew the dream of a day that will dawn close to his waking up far from the criminals. Vernarth takes the staff from him from then on and divides books and manuscripts into two portions so that he has time to take steps to really feel that he can walk close to Saint John.

Prophecy IV -  "Fifth, Nature, Manuscripts and Jophiel"

“Zeus wakes up trembling, full of headaches saturated with Herbs for headaches Jophiel speaking this time with the Kabbalistic language of the Torah...with golden commoner super zone of the Organikon Sorousliston Papadikon….age-old music that supplies Zeus with protein albumin, to make him more human…Zeus accepts Jophiel by placing his head about the house of Jophiel; a divine island to throw cards…brings the second ray to the Sahasrara at the crown of your head, pacifying love that is the suspicious and risky loser of everything risk in the head especially when a feeling is born!

Zeus turns his head and Jophiel twists it to the opposite side
about the ruined zeros that he did not count from the plasma of his dependency, Zeus feared having albumin at risk of human transmutation... happy to be able to cry he imagines slipping into the middle of a lake and he sees that he falls on Hera's poultry harming none, Zeus pours brimstone from his mouth and milks inelegant prose from the scythe…

Trina flame whose son bears glorious her bearer,
thousands of lives being clumsy for the wisest destitute
being what in the present you were more than past trine
when you harbor from Hanael's Blue Sodalite quarry
the imperfect perfects when you listen to your
body how it beats, how it breathes... you realize that it is perfect
as is Jophiel and discerns repairing the wisdom in the decisive punt
where gum rosin myrrh and multi urban frankincense go
towards the soul plane architecture of the human plane.
Hardened Zeus overflows glazed sallow emulsion of war
coagulated exhausting guarantor of everything is well,
books of the silent world of nails that do not sound sheets,
Hanael in massive books divides sounding with her iris gel-colored nails encrypted library manuscript of a thousand years, the voluptuous organism of a thousand years…
flapping unpredictable millennia and wiry hands,
colossal capstans…, annihilated with a thousand years…
a silly propeller that spins like a sickle rolling over a certain holistic tabernacle of the small portion of the next day when Zeus awoke to the diaphanous threatening light with sunless cloud waistband…
His face is seen with frowns and he looks at his face as well
without seeing folds…but in front of the Aiónius.

The geranium appears in the representation of the natural whole kicking the Sickle, much more here lost of our spiritual being
Zeus Jophiel's hardened shoulder heats up only to lean on Him...
light on his shoulders fires on both of them…
how long it takes to save us perhaps twenty times what supports us even tired and much more unwrapped than the treachery of him alone and without being followed without knowing
nothing more than a thousand-year-old shell through which he would drain…perhaps a tortoise-like millennial angel walked up to the omega! joy preparing to give you live hopeful,
that if it would be timely to give you more life...
Here is Aiónius reordering the world together with Zefian…
He shares everything eternal of all your life that floats in the sea,
miserable mix space where capo dastro separates the end
where all the wheres cannonade the hoarse fire...
cement that joins brick wall and plenary adobes
love without nature that castrates your beautiful woman
that hides her face without mascara looking for it...
let's go outside says Vernarth..., we still have a few seconds in his solvent... sensible, full, and arc well-being...
as if you were floating in the air floating more
also needed me to teach you before your limits limit you,
and make you angry from the miserable sense,... Don't listen to me anymore...!!”

Vernarth puts his first three fingers on the capo dastro roosters crow with his skin vibrating beyond the sleep of Raeder and Petrobus. Reader wakes up and says…; My Vernarth I will make fire and heat water. Petrobus runs with his wings to look for sacred wood. Eurydice comments…, I will prepare the praiseworthy sacred breakfast.

When they were preparing to do all this, Jophiel and Hanael appeared to him, joining in the breakfast that would feed all the days and millennia of the world. Unleavened fruit, honey, and milk multiply above all, satiating hunger with satiated satisfaction.

Prophecy V – Fourth, Limbus Necropolis

“From so far away…, so far away that I listen to your sacrosanct cries…!
from the Koumeterium of Messolonghi…, rocking my elbows and hurting myself
moving in rare pleasant crypt upon crypts disconsolate stones
not so far away..., keys held in the eighth cemetery...
Who is to open the heavy door now...?
I come from Messolonghi 555 km in linear figures to Patmos...,
narrowing concave… doubtful in extension, passion princess cloud
He must welcome me benevolently in the night nymph consort...
Limbus N cloud, Cloud Cemetery lofty lofty hypogeum
soul of Limbo, before seeing the nut that girds the face in the graceful Grim Reaper resurrecting restless…, sinning… grail sacrament without Being or being…?
Necropolis Cloud, expectant mortuary technology...
amaze me if there is a byte for me...
narrow conscience, unseemly to amaze me?

Here the lost mist of the Nothofagus God phoneme-photon vanishes with divine mass light to build the Áullos Kósmos. The Sacrament of Limbus will provide spaces and assemblages of meters for thousands of areas of infamous wandering the Ouranos, approaching the Áullos Kósmos to host him and rescue the children of the meter that was missing in the numeral rule of the Megaron acroteria before going up to the Necropolis Cloud. Vernarth, mere body formalizing principle...
extinct delicate evocation of the shadow of Elpenor;
Achaean warrior of Ulysses grandiloquent who even has otitis
and verse where flu spreads influenza
heartbreak from far away reverberating in the elite of lexicons…
arriving equidistant ... the last one arrives threatening with his Kantabroi staying neither divided nor captured, taking refuge in outright failure twilight of megahertz, farce propaganda surrendered fear will not fall even after …

Vernarth falls from the Koumeterium Mesolonghi in the Necropolis cloud privileging his status, he falls from this gloomy digital platform with a high alcoholic degree! from the high heaven after drinking hours he came in the carriage that was from Zilos, with the passion of heaven depriving his understanding stunned on some branches of will of Ziziphus…, stunned on branches of mercy….

Vernarth in a contrite accident with Elpenor, his psyche flies to the realm of the dead, Hades was remaining prisoner in that world taking the form of a Homeric icon or shadow. Vernarth was asleep after his binge, and Elpenor asks him if he wanted to join him with some concoctions. He was with blurred vision, a headache, and still lying down. But in the passionate horror of his drunkenness, he gets up quickly, saying to Elpenor: For me, it was one less pain to drink after having fallen from such a distance without being able to request and have had the grace of my mother's lullaby. For this reason, I hug you! They went together to the Cloud Necropolis to continue in the Limbus trying to alternate their physical body to gaseous liquid. At that moment Eurídice hits her with a piece of wood on her legs so that she wakes up from the bite of that nightmare that overwhelmed her to finally be able to wake up. Raeder had gone with Petrobus to Skalá to seek inputs of gnosis and his own inspiration for accents before the welcome in Katapausis to come in the blink of an eye of San Juan, necessary redaction for licenses and to be admitted to his library.

Prophecy VI - “Third, Rethymnon City and State”

“Vernarth heard the sound of a bouzouki, spoke of a 40-day fast that Greece celebrates before Easter, at the Rethymnon carnival they come from all over Greece to attend as a family during the week with animations, evenings and concerts, dances…theatre, floats with Venetian art in the picturesque old town and modern city, in this ancient city …

Rethymnon Political Ellipsis

“Like territorial extension, past-future organized infamous scene…Vernarth imagines being with Etréstles in immediate predictions
with years and thousands…, clan hobbies, Rethymnon manuscript…
while he thus deliberated…, thus rejoicing in the immaculate extramural grotto thus being as if it were comparable to a Neolithic village; being together lost with eagerness to appear from political power... palaces, kings, pro-organized religions..., rancorous superlative temple, priestly-eucharistic, nationalized sovereign citizen... commanding Parliament of the Hellenic politai people
the competent anti-value entity of the substratum political state…
sedentary-agricultural or nomadic-livestock culture…, vertical Hoplite culture!”

In Thessaloniki street, he would meet his brother head-on...Imagining how he would be...? Well-dressed-shiny, he would be in a passing tavern usually naming himself tradition and terms of questionable validity rather than those of a retro-linguistic family, in the remarkable urban-city dialogue called seditious inns with networks of political territorial extension, reaching the colossal size of multinational ideals of a complex stratification, social meeting place, future ministries to whom to delegate?. They would arrive at the tavern in Rethymnon in Crete, they order coffee, biscuits, and Mosaikó chocolates. In an unexpected moment, he suddenly wakes up from this deep, hallucinating, and futuristic imagination! His brother appears immediately, not in Rethymnon but in Katapausis with the goddess Lepidoptera!

End Ellipsis Rethymnon

“At the moment his imagination breaks just when they were preparing to toast… Etréstles in this same interval appear in Katapausis Reader and Petrobus coming in a singular pilgrimage from Skalá…this is how the syllabic song of the arcane ***** is heard emitting from the grotto…, yellow lights and saffron…. Saint John and the Gospel celebrating the Eucharist…Vernarth would believe for the first time that the hermit would come, but No…!
his brother was to be in the intervening yellow-white light
in front of him nothing more than Etréstles visiting him”

Likewise, they would no longer be in Rethymnon,
but the carnival would already begin in the region of Patmos...
eating delicacies, and the Sousta towards the circle of the Sun in the hands…They have been two months with the sweetened Moon and the Sun posing its mass of light in her… soft palm next to her waiting for him in the proximity of a Hebrew silence

Estretles says Khaire Vernarth! from Piacenza who did not see your joyous lux! I can see now to the sound of yourself the stoic zither...
countenance light, the orbit of your eyes, pale asthenia without photon without light, expectorant suppuration of your sacred Lynothorax, Absent in front of the long and fatal transverse lapse!
Raeder makes a speech to Zeus Photon Child Lux
Fulminant spends time where it remains greater than the minimum...
Patmos is the time of the Messiah…, retrograde years…
polis Helennic city-states.

Culture-state… state time chorus in tune
Philosophical poetic-epic Olympian Aiónius global leader
Homeric poems..., Raeder I am..., a naughty Politai...
you Vernarth are Politai Hetairoi militia
candy wasted by me Raeder… sweetened in my memory
polytheistic, cultured and declined…
theocratic referendum or democratic right,
Exciting porridge of my Kourabiedes cookies
butter, icing sugar, flour, eggs from the icy cliff
vanilla or Mastica resin, ***, Ouzo, mastica liquor…
or other alcoholic beverages…, which bubble on the underside of Aiónius soaked in my mouth with water from petal buds
coated for you with sugar on the tip of my tongue…
reflective cops in a wonderful dialogue of a tasty recipe...
It's time for everyone else to snack too!!

In that second Raerder was choking on a Kourabiede biscuit,
but there was the guardian of the Petrobus who piloted the
throwing hieratic water on the inside of his mouth,
forcing him to take heart from the buttress of his speech
shooing thick crumbs from his skinny dialogue spitted...
Gerakis, ray, tabletop oak bull, scepter for those who rule with him and not...My Zeus friend I invite you to play marbles,
I invite you to tell us that we are friends...
we're both fine… only Space-separated us…?

Raeder runs towards Zeus' thunderbolt from his right hand.
he jumps up and takes it from her, in exchange for this she gives him his marbles...The entire earth tilts over the Aegean..., the earth's axis tilts eight degrees, altering the cerebrospinal fluid of the Hellenic geopolitical conception..., with Zeus poly infarcted over descending magnitudes of inter-politics, millennia and headless governments...

“Apokalypsis lightning restarted, emerged from a New World”
Prophecy VII -. “Second, Alikanto Aion, Quantum”
"Kalymnos, golden tetra steed Alikanto was grazing under the metallic moon...
transiting its quantum physics…, golden legs…, four golden domes
the super host being in Apoika Andros next to the villagers,
commemorating troupe and advent…, Heraklion next period
celebrant anniversary, progeny bearer of Kanti Cretense,
close cycles of the sacred fire, domestic environment, and private zeal...
funerary hidden cult… streets in the hieratic family dwelling
fertile women… totalized and lustful ****…
productive longevity and harvests…, family Apoika
next successor belligerence…, funerary plexus…
culty predecessor…, treatise and imprecation of law, theme and legible religion domestic scene, family civic servant ceremony

Goddess Hestia austere, head with eight sacred candles dressed
Olympus lacking without gods…, only Goddesses embargo!
Feminine Hestia Domestic Goddess, an emanation of the female oval to ovulating…Pritaneo, the central decree of the political harvests… foreign exchange grains to be minted monetary stock exchange of Athens… Pritaneo ford on the rise, ford on increase Aion... hesitant dart swoop into eternity,
Alikanto Perpetual Aion…Speaks with both hands
synchronized and tilted tongue…
stutters and swallows, in six paranasal sinuses
saturated with fiery saliva..., and an Internal voice saying say...
what makes sense to feel and what does not turn off...
sleeping waves in the poison of love igniting
intra-Vernarth love…, billing infected holy blood
methodical coupled time…, Gaugamela the bronze extremity,
of a lost leader…, won leader!

If I had to run to rewrite retro Adhoc poems and chosen trova,
With a shy Trojan verse, I would dare today if I kissed her in front of me… she!
she would jump from the hyperesthetic-Ouranos…, inhuman to the Aion world
aurora celestina, bleeds big and defiant today in your star
In herself Ella…, pestiferous condemnation sweetness and aura between her…she just be, she herself be supported be…, Oh… Goddess Hestia on your opposite leg unbraced arm, meadow and vein braid… assaulted by lost and thirsty love written everything if she tempts…, everything wields darkly if it took you to our Olympus… at night loving you whole..., emptying everything with no inappropriate hand singing don vine fissure and intimate company, may it be exterminated... passion outside with nailed stake..., iron embedding..., nails wounding...exhausted supra lips supra yours…, mid sand writing full to her…
tip of my Xiphos… blood made written with written maiden mythology,
letter sword Spatha…, cyclamen balm made whole if I had you!

“To the loves of the world I say…, cover your ears fungus of boredom, your torn ears squander ignoring more than sordid saying...my blood kills, my blood revives! I **** my blood and I **** everyone, with your blood scattered, ***** blood scattered…!
do not leave me alone until nightfall… I only ask for holy water,
emptied from your mouth goddess Hestia who flies tons over me...
I only ask for a spatha romantic blood sharp, ******, and scattered...
to write to the love wars that I have lost...
to the wars of love that I have won, slicing the jugular of the
treacherous and wicked emperor"

“… Alikantus, he remembered the Hoplite commander in Gaugamela, he remembered when he dodged arrows with his head so that they would not hit his body or his pectoral. From such a present moment falling by surrendering to the evocation of him. He goes down to a stream and confines himself to the vanity quagmire, continues on his path reaching a suspicious lagoon, drinks sacred water, drinking again manages to perceive the effigy of Vernarth in the mirror of Aion's Hydor... calling him from Patmos! Law reminded his master how he died for everyone in the world just as the world would not let him bring more than agonizing for him because there was no more space said Aionius ... "

Alikantus then clenched his jaws too hard, falling out all his molars, he asked the Gods in front of Hestia to restore them fifteen days before arriving at the Ekadashi in Patmos where his master, thus loving all the lives of the world, as well as the hidden cries behind the Dypilons hiding the power of God… or laugh at gagged iris flashes and mummified sighs with lives that subsist!

Vernarth from Patmos called to him so that his eyes looked invigorated like the swarms of green and gray vanadium fire, of mood in the predictive table and close prediction. AlIkantus bids farewell to Kalymnos spraying sorrel and hyper-odoriferous flowers of the Apoika in Kalymnos loving from above, very close, flying, loving everything so much that he forgot to fly. He sometimes fell hard but recovered retried as a baby steed in the womb of a mother new species to be born again in Apoika!


Prophecy VIII -  "First of Aionius, "Eleusis Prophecy of Hamor"
“Aiónius received news of Hamor's prophecy; cosmic orgiastic order
tyrannical snake victim throwing herself into her abyss and purpose..., banishment as an objective void to be decreed, even so ending the world from another world,
discontinuous terse march, slurred arpeggio, speech by Aiónius
there is no world left but if extermination…, undone threshold…, provoke in delicate chaos…!

As a child, I ran to the supreme world herding lions... I called them and they ran to me..., they came alone, some didn't...! Being young, one day Aionius went to the farm and counted the lions... Some came others No... Aionius..., in such a hamorio he was locking an earring from his ears, he hung them again, which happened the next day relaxed..., he saw a maiden who laughed hypnotized…, he sighed when she turned around saying with her poor gestures… Destroy it! The afflicted turned away not knowing what was coming… destroying the desolate world vilifying silky physiognomies, chipped and dandruff face slipping from yours being captive and arid…, tempts to flow libertarian imprint in foreign praxis, origin, and end,
me from the slime being born in my eighth life in nothingness ataxia…

The beloved Victim surrounded by snakes moved the stump of her arms
eaten away by the serpent that took refuge in thorns of forged steel...
she kept walking…, Aiónius pointed at her and kissed her gestures escaping frightened towards the valley in farewells... not fitting itself in valleys that were never anything she paraded with the current of her last word, the beloved again moved her arms following her in front of her the beast was on her, Aiónius buried from fleeing and coming… with fiery phenotype, abrupt vocabulary, says: “Strapping and interludes, after beings of impiety, the world of impiety, Hamor of the first wit… towards other refuges I will depart about a Yes devouring bare ring on it…”
escape curve that cuts the pelvis of my beloved
destructive be your curved world that before had to destroy me...
ultra pre-hellenic nymph Harpé passion spread on me…
Hailed libertarian praise, aristocratic vermilion accent, minority ruling? Overwhelming rigor expended, prophetic Hamor, prophetic expansive arsenal! It must come from all the supreme worlds with strokes and silhouettes conquering...true dream, confused hypothetical oscillate sweeping imploring and contracting popular decision, management and space of my Sickle…, sometimes uncontained… worse avenues in its radius and dark mourning badly wounded shadow! The vertex that finally launches opens the dawn and his Hamada flees... Leaving with the untidy serpent, about touching and causing rangers in the stuck earth.

Demeter and Persephone; based on Eleusis in ancient Greece
mystery myth of the abduction of Persephone daughter of Demeter…
by the king of the underworld of Hades, Abrahamanica's offspring
cabal, life in the descent, the search and the ascent…
Ascent of Indra lightning Vahana and lightning from her right eye,
Persephone to the reunion with her beloved daughter ascending.

Zodiac and mysteries involved, visions and sleight of hand
that of an afterlife, rain of seven trunks, long-lived Airavata
elephant, Eleusis jump psychedelic mystery, incision, and coherent rites, ceremonies and experiences of cold winters and life on earth
plants in gestation under the gift of Elitíaen and beings that
they are about to germinate and be born, beings in a chain of genes...
vegetable running on the earth, vegetable in March in its glory
September in the jaws of the purified phrase and inaccurate acropolis I…

Sacred obscenities, deadly tributes with the death penalty...,
wandering nights without clothes with obese and badly fragrant meats point and taco dances praising the harvest in honor of a dead Thracian bull, libating priestly vessels and bullfighting heads in a deliberately defined and improper triweekly ritual, revealed in Demeter and Persephone.

Only Hamor in his venerable pyx lies locked up knowing he is unable to open inside this lustful bewitching sparkles, the mystery of emancipated disenchantment that awakens from his slow consciousness without knowing how to go on passing in the sum of all happenings of Aiónius. ”

This is how he defined himself from the syncretism of Indra and the mystery of Eleusis, from Demeter and his daughter Persephone from the vile kidnapped underworld. Of the divine Goddess Elitia and the annual records of children born within a year in the germinating seed of the mystery of love that would begin with this prophecy with the initial "H" of the underworld exclaimed Hades and Greek heritage in this event. Vernarth and his companions listened to this prophecy, almost falling asleep, it seemed to them sweet pallor-bitter, love-heartbreak in the previous day before diagnosing having a presence in the hermitage of San Juan Apóstol for the superior company of a later day that was approaching as the greatest daring of all up in the mountains while disposing of Vernarth's Apologist obverse of Aiónius's.

Epilogue Prophecies - “Eleusis, Isadora Duncan to the Parthenon”

“Vernarth and Eurydice indulged in the jargon of agitated diasporas
of inhabitants fleeing the Rite of Eleusis, crossed hands and feet
They dueled on olive trunks with Theban thunder, vague Insurrection of the ancient world, and consonants of barbarian Pleiades,
acclaiming predilection of the Eremita San Juan to appear...
in a breath of peace resurfacing... but seeing that Vernarth was accompanied of Eurydice hid in front of them leaving only her aura near from the stream of a chrysalis!
In the dizzying succession of myths, good news reaches her sacred ears, waking up her trend and her high quarterly price outside the walls... being later received in the grotto of the hermitage in growing expectation and a link of longing that weaves to remind him of being a crusade piece.

The kidnapping of his reverie feared and timid frivolous crushing blizzard, he was walking surrounded by Falangists on horseback pointing at him and threatening him, scrutinizing in the distance loneliness of his past lives,
his regressive life, concerning key to origins of his illustrative Existence, stranded at this moment..., Vernarth makes a pact with himself to detach himself..., of his spirit, detach from their lives under a hypnotic and compelling law..., like a suspended index in the Sistine Chapel, homologous ship Ave Maria Messiah!

From Eleusis Vernarth vanished in aerial horse-dreaming,
he crossed through the pavilions with himself persevering some wake
riding his Alikantus ******* and standing with him to pillage the Empyrium niche Persephone's trace of herself and her ******* ******* them...
with devoted passion, milky way, and milky syrup chin howling...
Vanishing dancer, Athenian acropolis, Dionysian sanctuary of the acropolis… Stepdaughter-patron in the dance of Zeus and Themis lopsided frame of the season's wildness of all creation and defiance of Eleusis looking for her daughter and her children, priestesses safely taking off their corset and their pictures…
raging chastity, oligo blood, Itheoi music, outraged dance complaining, Possessed expressing being seductive but also a native *******... the underworld in darkness, free daughter, and iconoclastic Greek mythologist
inconvenient Victorian mania, a courtesan from Olympus, courtesan undressed! Isadora, Demeter, and Persephone… flooded with Aphrodite foam!

She “prayed songs with plexus and feet, plotting gardens around the world… full of baseboard feet where everything created in brief Apokálypsis was dying! By desolate Parthenons dancing in Muscovite ruins, maenades sweaty enclave and also throwing back his head as if possessed by ecstasy in her Bugatti and Leonidas…, enchanted by Aiónius! intoxicated and exorbitant with beautiful rosy placebo eyes... Hair with headbands vine petioles, her Nebris tight skin was wearing... in her hand's bunches of barberries to Dionysus with torches and live snakes a chaste crook naming Thirsus; rod topped with Kashmar branches wrapped in borders, vines and ivy, allusive link…, morbid ecosystem! covering her crotch in the Temple of her Kopanos dancing from the eternal fire cremated and in a romantic dimension remembering Byron's meritorious…
Hellenic passionate, and of Hölderlin poeticizing together with Aiónius.

Rudiment wound … ruinous on value exciting in those
of the imagined and creative in her perdition, Sicalipsis e impudicias
torn fire in the Metelmi and her ***** we are twisted,
epic worthy of greek tragedy dancing like waves of fire
in the forge in terrifying death of her children Deirdre and Patrick,
submerged and injured in the Seine in Paris in 1913, falling into the
water in the car that was traveling with her wet nurse… before…!
saying goodbye to them in urgent social commitments,
I Aiónius take you to the Empyrium.

What a dire tribulation in the prevailing misfortunes by not postponing it, retain the fate of whose children is quite a story with the kidnapping of theirs and merits of fulfilling commitments committed to solicitous artists... support, crestfallen inside a dresser or Bolshoi dancing statue, dancing empty with bare feet, frigid anemone, frigid Sea…

Arriving at the dawn of her last prophecy, Isadora Duncan accompanies her in full life beyond all limiting borders with the borders of her dance, the flat field of Eleusis receives her presumptuously associating in around for the dressings...
And left-handed dalliance self-indulging…, advanced barefoot to the Parthenon…!naked towards the world and the orb dug out of her before her undressed.

Reader and Petrobus jumped on this steep stone, emulating the meteorites that shone in the sky of Patmos such a party of nocturnal lights, such emery detached from a fleeting planet in the largest Hellenic scene saying: "Well-being to the Hellenic World all calm, dance and immunity to the firmament where Isidora rests in the Kantabroi of Aionius”

I long, like you long for a place to rest my head
You long, like I long for a warm silky bed
I long, like you long for the lights to finally dim
And you know, like I know I do not want to float
I would rather swim

And I know, like you know
I long, like you long

I am tired, like you are tired of the anomie
And I am scared, like you're scared
Of disenfranchise and insanity
I drown, like you drown in a hidden river in the woods
And I frown, like you frown
At how our methods have failed us

I wait, like you wait
And I hate, like you hate
And I regret, like you regret

Like a wildfire in dry hills
Like an animal scratching its cage
Like an exploding light bulb
I run, like you run.

I know I aint much for looks
And you might not disagree when I say
Statues have more substance than this
I know I can’t Stendhal you to a standstill
It doesn’t mean that I can’t make you breathless
Like when I make you laugh

There is so much beauty in your laughter
That while you are wiping tears out of your eyes
Doubled over like you were trying to find your breath on the floor
I forget that I don’t like the way I look when I smile
And I smile

I know the math of aesthetics is lost on me
But you can save your symmetry
For building blocks and butterflies

Bad habits
Scars
And an awkward affinity for lopsidedness
Made me

Come

Balance me out

Because so often I feel like a fat kid
Sitting on a seesaw
Alone

Or a ******
Trying on different sizes of life
In carnival mirrors

Or a Greek artist
Who has chiseled all the wrong parts
To perfection
Before he understood realism

Realism
Is a twin sized bed at 3 am
After the cold seeps through the window pane
It is cobwebs stained black from a house fire
Before
I never realized we had that many
It is a vanity
Reminding me how not to be vain
Unless you mean this poem
This poem is vain

Realism
Is this
It is me
And it is you
Perfectly human
And nowhere near beautiful
Unless beauty is symmetry
And symmetry is when you balance me out
By being the other fat kid on the seesaw
Or the person who makes normal mirrors
So I can see what I look like in my own skin
Not perfect
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have ways
Of making you breathless

Come

Let me make you laugh again
Let me make you breathless

A man may usually be known by the books he reads as well as by the company he keeps; for there is a companionship of books as well as of men; and one should always live in the best company, whether it be of books or of men.
A good book may be among the best of friends. It is the same today that it always was, and it will never change. It is the most patient and cheerful of companions. It does not turn its back upon us in times of adversity or distress. It always receives us with the same kindness; amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and consoling us in age.
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book just as two persons sometimes discover a friend by the admiration which both entertain for a third. There is an old proverb, ‘Love me, love my dog.” But there is more wisdom in this:” Love me, love my book.” The book is a truer and higher bond of union. Men can think, feel, and sympathize with each other through their favorite author. They live in him together, and he in them.
A good book is often the best urn of a life enshrining the best that life could think out; for the world of a man’s life is, for the most part, but the world of his thoughts. Thus the best books are treasuries of good words, the golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our constant companions and comforters.
Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most lasting products of human effort. Temples and statues decay, but books survive. Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author’s minds, ages ago. What was then said and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed page. The only effect of time have been to sift out the bad products; for nothing in literature can long survive e but what is really good.
Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see the as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them, grieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in a measure actors with them in the scenes which they describe.
The great and good do not die, even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which on still listens.

It's a confusing puzzle,
But still holds true:
You can't live with me;
I can't live without you.

Life is but a journey,
I chose to go through with you;
But now that you won't have me,
It's hard for me to continue.

Fate is a bitter cruel harpy,
With her sisters she conspires
For the death of my Love,
As your Love for me transpires!

Hope is a painful therapy,
It burns while nursing Time's stabs;
But the scars strengthen Experience,
As it assists to keep Reason's tabs.

Love and Reason are antithesis,
That can't co-exist;
But their affinity is such
That to be together they persist.

Perfection in Love is when
There is room for Reason;
But when Reason and Logic court,
Love calls it Treason!

Love is unfair and immature,
And still as pure as a dove;
But there's no use of Reason,
With the death of Love.

This poem is an analogy:
Which in life stands true;
It's no use of me loving you,
If there's no hope for you to love me too.

Come and sit with me for a while young boy
I'll tell you of the lives of the people
and how they're just a marketing ploy

Revenue is God in this new world order
(The governments profit through pain)
leave your loved ones dying at the border

Don't be indoctrinated by this mortal coil
(The capitalist beasts wait in the shadow)
given a sense of freedom and brought to the boil

For you see my child, we are already dying
(We're all suffocating from birth)
But that shan't stop thee from trying

Run home now my cherub faced angel
(Steal some bread along the way)
Take your seat and dine at the table
The corn has all been poisoned today

The mask of vengeance is not to be confused
with the seepage of hurt and confusion.
Something to blame, to get in the way
of a blazing fire providing.
Kindle it with substance and truth,
but instead with damp lies and gritty sand.
An effort of competence in place
of the evading truth that sometimes
the idea of affinity diminishes
in the hole of bewitching fruits.
A spell to take hold of the clean,
turning ***** in morality. Excuses
to remain pure at heart, blame to never
feel the pain of rejection.
Darkness.
Pain.
Loneliness.
Desperation.
Anointing the headless children without
a thought of the purpose. Watering a rootless
tree, attempting to make it grow.

Powerful Affinity
Passion comes in many forms in love
An opportunity to meld with someone
It creates a powerful affinity from above
You are going closer for the job undone

A bond of love makes wonderful chain
To cherish, love as a unique way to grow
With love innocent souls dance in rain
And have an experience to glow in flow

My love I can't disclose what all I carry
For you to be my only choice in the world
What a moment of pleasure to marry
And to face a dangerous and loud herald

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2019 Love is Love