I like immigrants, immigration. Legal immigration,
Jane passionately corrects. Actually my goal is a borderless world.
That's a new idea to her.
Gathering the neighborhood like family.
The men discuss sterilizing welfare mothers. I say You're working
      around the edges,
humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet,
even those with jobs. And spouses. And houses.
Yet it's an idyll of an early summer evening, new cut grass,
two baseball teams of children playing in it. Safe from Pakistan.
News photos of Muslim refugees, women in blue robes, biblically
carrying children away from holocaust. The fundamentalist army
not far behind, beheading sinners, sure in its righteousness
as the Holy Roman Empire.

Somehow Joel Osteen the evangelist comes up
while talking about how the Catholic Church is irrelevant in North
      America,
even Latin America and Africa are going evangelical.
Izzi likes Osteen, awesome extemporaneous speaker, no teleprompter,
up from bootstraps message. My wife says he's probably Jewish.
No one wants to go there.
Fortunately no one claims the Holocaust never happened or slavery
      was voluntary.
What is the carrying capacity of the planet? Two children
have replacement value. In China is it each couple or each adult that gets
one offspring? As life expectancy and standards rise,
family size diminishes. We draw together into greener, tighter cities
surrounded by farms surrounded by forests.
The children of three monotheistic religions, atheists and agnostics
play in city streets, work farm fields, explore forests, deserts,
      grasslands, space.

Two ancient female poets: Enheduanna and Sappho
are a revelation. The clarity of their complaints:
lost lover, lost city.

This is the Agnostics Anthem
The Church stole God and asked a ransom
Atheists are too ******* sure for me
So I guess when we’re dead then we’ll finally see

and by the way
there are flies in the basement,
no doubt, the
result of passionless blood-letting and
christ-sharp animalistic screams (that scatter across places)
where ingrown genital hairs take presidence over ionized howls of ecstasy-
where flies buzz around and die, worshiping the patchwork
row of halogen lamps
that get so hot as to scorch the hairy legs that spread apart wide just to touch the
sacred flesh of incandescence
-these that ****** reckless photons into the tepid air like rotting meat
and wants them to **** the last drops of electromagnetic ******* from their poems of illumination.  
meanwhile
i can be found numbing myself into comfort and complacency-
the phosphenes of faustian inadequacy taxing my eyes
with the vaporous waking that seeps through the vacant-
but i knew it was real when you pulled down your tattered jeans, exposing your backside to my interpretations of perfection and
allowing me the liberty of *******.
i have seen you scream.
and breathed your sigh of servitude.
these wet ******* and the tangy juices of anticipation dripping down your thighs becomes reality
and reality consumes.
and the world becomes conscious awareness.
and there is nothing to be known except this.
alleviant zero of the cyclic
and the 60-cycle hum of stagnation-
frustration.
we know that tomorrow
the angel-headed hipsters
will be basking in the instagram-induced solar radiation,
supine on the neatly cut grass,
donning their leather jackets and skin-tight corduroys. thick-rimmed-plastic sunglasses
obscure their frail vision and allow them to distance themselves just enough from the sunsoaked oasis to call themselves "cool"
and i would hardly know to recognize you amongst the candorous chatter about humanity and the existence of love
and i would hardly know to call you god
nor to look you in the face and tell you to dream a thought unthreatened by sanity
or to bring you to tears by means of dexterity.
i like my body for what its worth
but i did not try to stop them when they bound and ***** the waitress.
i stood and watched as those gentle agnostics tore apart her lacy blouse
and pushed thumbtacks through her ******* just to watch her scream
and she liked it.
when they held onto her skeleton ribs and hipless hips
and she liked it,
they tasted the *** with cinnamon tongues,
received the grace of an angel as pierced ******* and clitoral stimulation
listless yelps filled the tender air like howling phantoms-
little ms. misanthropy
with her
disposable epiphany
self-proclaimed teenage sage
with mistakes to make her wise
i try not to understand
and then i dreamt of forgiveness.
my days of holding grudges and killing mice are over
and when we don’t kiss
i can smile.
and did you want me to define you through destruction?
-martyrdom and madness?
her bracelet and studded pieces to decorate
only obliteration of expectation
gives my finger the feel of tendinitis
i have come to love things less
how i long to just let bay, my leaning lip
my wrist bent back, asks, how much more can be done here?
i guess it's a little too late to walk away.
endless mind-numbing repetition,
was it for the retribution?
or perhaps reassurance or the infliction of pain.
misdirected meaning-
bluebirds.
and blue-black bruises on your arms.
wrinkles.
from falling feathers and
do you hear the echoes of chains rattling in the cellar,
or was it just a love song gone wrong
alivient zero.
why do we have to be beautiful rebels
we leaned to love with our shoes on.
listening to the stereo silence-  
runaway gems, poetic outcasts
leaderless young lovers
she was a young poet
but her tv ran out of new channels
idols were made here, dreams shattered, and promises left unbroken
but her *******, not left untouched

unblessed
i can taste it in your tears
i can hear it in your voice

bless these tiny fingertips and her lips are soft.
her skin is a whisper.
i will leave no inch of flesh-

unsacrificed.


her wounds bled with the words,

*you begin
to
understand-
all of me

I ask you poet
Whom do you worship?
Where does your souls eternity stand right now?
Broken? Despaired! Pained? Sorrowful? Burdened? Seeing all the chaos in the world and yet don't know where to turn or whom to turn to, OK you can flip to the next poem if you'd like that speaks of worldiness, *** maybe, lust, hopelessness, a state of being lost. May I ask you? What gives you pleasure in this world? Idols? Things of gold, such as statues? Jewelry? Maybe dope? ***? Maybe video gaming, escaping anyway possible in food? By beating your loved ones? Or abusing those whom love you? Maybe cutting yourself? As many here do, they cut to feel alive. Do you? The thought of not living there where all hope is gone, unseen and lost? Wanting to give up? What you don't know or may have turned a blind eye to by so called ( fake pastors, religious nuts, Jesus freaks whatever you wanna call them.. Yes! There are false pastors for money, and Greed's purpose... As what you may not truly understand is this world isn't just physical, revelation 12:3-4 States Satan and 1\3 Of gods once good angels as Satan him ( Lucifer) was also a high or one of highest angels ruling over other angels.... Revelation 12:3-4 speaks of Satan and one third of the angels who were kicked out of heaven. Satan in other words wanted to play gods role.Luke 10:18 sais this. ( And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” )
King James Bible. There is a literal battle here poet whoever reads this for your soul. God wants you to come to his son Christ who said ( I am the way truth and the life, NO MAN comes to the father but by me) John 14:6 ... Christ offers salvation and hope to the whole world. As there is no life in Islam, nor Buddhism, nor Hinduism, nor all these other false ways and false ideologies of the world. Christ is the only one to have claimed to be gods son. As what you didint know. Christ was sent down to a ****** called mary, scientists now have a word for it where mothers literally have children by miracles of not having a man enter into them sexually at all. God put his son Christ who always was from the beginning before the foundation of this world. That's why us Christians also call God the great I am. Meaning he always was and will always be. God sent his son Jesus Christ. Also called in Hebrew original tongue. Yeshua ha'mashiach-. Meaning Jesus the Messiah or anointed one . Christ came in the flesh in the form of a man. To be sent here to teach everyone to love one another. And that he was the way truth and the life. He literally healed the sick, he healed lepers . opened eyes of those without sight and without hope...he was who he claimed to be . he came to die for me and yours sins... As the gospel in the Bible States..Romans 5:12- 12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: Adam and Eve sinned against God, in the garden of Eden where scientists now know just about the location of the garden... Sin passed down to all mankind. Our bible teaches. Romans 3:23- 3For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; so I tell you friend to friend poet to poet... No good works will get you to heaven as the pope falsely preaches of the Catholic Church. Why works won't get you to heaven? Ephesians 2:8-9 main verses.( 8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast. 10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.) Notice how it sais for by grace you are saved through faith? Meaning by grace of God if you accept Jesus as your Lord and messiah and Savior personal Savior not some far away man. Or myth. A personal Savior you can speak to in prayer and hes always there for you. Also notice it sais ( it is not of yourselves, meaning you can't save yourself neither can works you do good on earth. It also said not of works, that any man should boast??? Boast showing off pridefulness. Buy through christs shedding of blood on the cross, we have redemption through that blood if we accept him or not. I'm sure you've heard from worldly religions and one world together we are all children of God? False lie! Fact is were yes all created by the same God. Though we don't all worship the true God we should be and wonder  why our lives and your lives are haywire? We are children of God ONLY through the adoption of Jesus ( meaning coming to him as your Savior you are adopted as gods chosen and children... Christ btw spoke more on hell then he did heaven. Though here's what he said on heaven. (
1 Corinthians 2:9 - But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. ( meaning in life, and after death in heaven.)
John 14:2 - In my Father's house are many mansions: if [it were] not [so], I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,

11 Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;

12 And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:

13 On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.

14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

15 And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.

16 And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.

17 And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.

18 And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.

19 And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald;

20 The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst.

21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.

22 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.

23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

24 And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.

25 And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.

26 And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.

27 And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

( revelation chapter 21) speaking of the new temple God will literally bring down to earth that's already In heaven until after Armageddon where he brings down a new temple from heaven already ready and made to go for his chosen and believers who accept Christ Jesus.

And many more verses... Which btw just type in near death experiences on youtube see the thousands of REAL results of many whom have died meaning brain dead, heart dead both, no just one issue wrong. Both things dead some people for minutes, some for hour to hour and half. All telling you same things they saw in death. The tunnel of death. One way leading to heavens gates where there are literally pearlescent gates, and a door you pass through into gods throne room and huge place. They all describe how everything's living and alive.. There is pure joy there and peace. ( as bible speaks, the peace of God surpasses all understanding) told by a black man who's story in famous on CBN and world news. As thousands of others who match the same accounts yet may all be different in forms alll conclude who they saw. Jesus Christ, literal angels by thousands who sing and praise God all the day because in heaven there Is no time clock or time in human level. You know not time. For our bible teaches... 2 Peter 3:8 ( 8But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.) Notice how verse also sais God is long-suffering toward us meaning suffering in patience willing that NONE of you should perish in a real hell Christ spoke on dozens of times, but that all ALL should come to repentance. By accepting Christ as Savior and your messiah and turning from your old ways which I'll tell you as a Christian not one Christian is a saint or perfect. Though word tells us we are to be perfected in Lord Jesus meaning working on self to be as Christ was... Holy. I am a sinner like all the rest of human beings in this earth. And daily Christians must work at doing God's will, and yes takes practice patience and work. Though Christ and God his father gets you through any trials you face and tribulations. 2 Corinthians 1-
1/Blessed [be] God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;2- Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. Christ came and was scorned, mocked nby the scribes and Pharisees  of his day even though the Jewish Torah spoke of their coming messiah and the world's coming messiah. Though they rejected him as told in old testament they would do, he came preached love, to forgive another always!!!! Always no matter how many times one wrongs and hurts you. And as all say who die and meet God on his throne in a LITERAL heaven, seeing God on his literal throne, and seeing Christ his son, they always come back to say the same thing from death experiences, people will say I'd watch all hundreds of vids as I have..  Christ either told them to go back to earth thir job wasn't done from stuff needing changed in the person's life... These are accounts from Muslims, atheists agnostics, hateful people. Many ex terrorists from middle East. Many Buddhists , Hindus and people from All backgrounds and beliefs will say same thing... Christ told them to go back to love one another... To change things... That HE is the way truth and life. And no man ones to God but by him. And noone gets to heaven but through Jesus the Messiah... They also say God the father said the exact same to them. To tell humans to love one another...as Christ will tell them in dozens of accounts, dozens!!! Tell my people ( Christians ) I'm coming back soon. Or tell them I'm calling them up soon.... Meaning rapturing up his Christians before the 7 year hell called tribulation on earth! When the Antichrist makes fale peace deal between isreal and Palestine. And the world will cry peace and safety! Peace and safety then will sudden destruction come upon man as a woman with child. Spoken in bible. As antichrists peace deal is mentioned in Daniel 9;27 27(And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.) He shall ( Antichrist will) make a false peace deal giving isreali land over to the Palestinian people who have no claim on that land... As even a Saudi prince cams out to say Palestine doesn't own Israeli Jewish land. But the Jews do through Abraham Issac and Jacob!!! Media mainstream news tells you none of this why? Their ran by 6 elite companies who run all news stations. As Rockefeller ( billionaire elite) has his hands in most politics TV news everything you watch and read is controlled by him, the cia. And false reporting. all for the love of money and greed they lie to the American public and world. I suggest anyone to look up the RFID chips matching Antichrist mark of the beast that will be coming money system, also healthcare info. On one small tiny microchip placed in the forehead or right hand to. Spoken of in Revelation 13 which btw It's already being tested in the forehead in monkey heads in labs. And chips are being bought sold and put into USA soldiers, high officials for money. Ignorant people who have no idea what the chips are are literally PAYING to have them placed in their right hands!!! Continue at bottom....

“What if God was a woman?” Asked Lois undeterred.
Well well well, if God was a woman — she continued —
Perhaps agnostics and atheists, wouldn’t say no with our heads
but we'd say yes with our guts.

Perhaps we would approach to her divine ******
to kiss her feet not of bronze, her pelvis not of stone,
her ******* not of marble, her lips not of gold.

If God was a woman, we would embrace her to steal her from her horizon
and you wouldn’t have to swear “till death do us part”
because it would be already inmortal by antonomasia,
and instead of give you AIDS or panic,
contagious her everlasting life would be.

If God was a woman, she wouldn’t lie far away in the kingdom of heavens,
but she’d live in the vestibule of hell waiting for us,
with her arms not closed, her rose not of plastic, her love not of saints.

My God, my God… — if for ever and from ever you were a woman —
how beautiful scandal it would be, what a fortunate, splendid, impossible,
prodigious blasphemy.

I feel as though I have an obligation,
A duty, you could say, to address something
We ignore almost everyday.
Washington walks on, head high
Strutting around like it owns civil liberties,
Like hearing its name is something so profound.
So I think I’ll ask what gives you the right
To tell my best friend who fights with herself
In the dark, at night, who cries herself to sleep
Because of the hardest decision of her life,
That she can’t make this choice with her own mind?
That it’s wrong when you’re so right, about things
Like pro-life.
And what gives you the final say on my brother
And his boyfriend, and their wedding day?
Oh, the bible does? Really? Okay.
Because you know there is such a thing
As separation of church and state, I’m sure.
And if religion, if God is your problem,
Where is your scorn? Why aren’t atheists and agnostics being burned
At the stake because of your proverbial witch hunt?
Ah, right, because discrimination is against the law,
And law is something you can’t shun in light
Of running a political race, or else have your own medicine
Shoved in your face.
If God is the only thing you can think to use
To your political values that are so terribly flawed,
Did you ever stop to think that I don’t believe in Him,
Your God?
That maybe I like mine better, He accepts us all.
Honestly, tell me please, how in the hell you expect
To get my vote with all your arrogant decrees?
I sincerely hope before you run, you rethink your thesis’s,
Or before you go around telling me who I can and cannot be.
So what if I don’t believe your God,
Your religion or how you live it?
What if I believe in exhibits, or Dr. Seuss?

But that’s not really the point, is it?

Epigrams by Michael R. Burch



Conformists of a feather
flock together.
—Michael R. Burch

(Winner of the National Poetry Month Couplet Competition)



My objective is not to side with the majority, but to avoid the ranks of the insane.—Marcus Aurelius, translation by Michael R. Burch



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.

(Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Super Highway, Poets for Humanity, Daily Kos, Katutura English, Genocide Awareness, Darfur Awareness Shabbat, Viewing Genocide in Sudan, Better Than Starbucks, Art Villa, Setu, Angle, AZquotes, QuoteMaster; also translated into Czech, Indonesian, Romanian and Turkish)



Childless
by Michael R. Burch

How can she bear her grief?
Mightier than Atlas, she shoulders the weight
of one fallen star.



Stormfront
by Michael R. Burch

Our distance is frightening:
a distance like the abyss between heaven and earth
interrupted by bizarre and terrible lightning.



Laughter's Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.

Because death is a mystery, we cry
when one is gone, our numbering thrown awry.

(Originally published by Angelwing)



Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.

(Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, this poem has been translated into Russian, Macedonian, Turkish and Romanian)



Piercing the Shell
by Michael R. Burch

If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we'll discover what the heart is for.

(Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, this poem has been translated into Russian, Arabic, Turkish and Macedonian)



*** Hex
by Michael R. Burch

Love's full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes) .

(Published by ***** of Parnassus and Lighten Up)



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

Black waters—deep and dark and still.
All men have passed this way, or will.

(Published by The Raintown Review and Blue Unicorn; also translated into Romanian and published by Petru Dimofte. This is one of my early poems, written as a teenager. I believe it was my first epigram.)



Fahr an' Ice
by Michael R. Burch

(apologies to Robert Frost and Ogden Nash)

From what I know of death, I'll side with those
who'd like to have a say in how it goes:
just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker) ,
and real fahr off, instead of quicker.



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!
Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Multiplication, Tabled
or Procreation Inflation
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

"Be fruitful and multiply"—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, "WHEN! "



The Whole of Wit
by Michael R. Burch

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity
are the whole of it.

(Published by Shot Glass Journal)



Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch

Abbesses'
recesses
are not for excesses!

(Published by Brief Poems)



Saving Graces, for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

Life's saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.

(Published by Shot Glass Journal and Poem Today)



Skalded
by Michael R. Burch

Fierce ancient skalds summoned verse from their guts;
today's genteel poets prefer modern ruts.



Not Elves, Exactly
by Michael R. Burch

Something there is that likes a wall,
that likes it spiked and likes it tall,
that likes its pikes' sharp rows of teeth
and doesn't mind its victims' grief
(wherever they come from, far or wide)
as long as they fall on the other side.



Self-ish
by Michael R. Burch

Let's not pretend we "understand" other elves
as long as we remain mysteries to ourselves.



Piecemeal
by Michael R. Burch

And so it begins—the ending.
The narrowing veins, the soft tissues rending.
Your final solution is pending.
(A pale Piggy-Wiggy
will discount your demise as no biggie.)



Liquid Assets
by Michael R. Burch

And so I have loved you, and so I have lost,
accrued disappointment, ledgered its cost,
debited wisdom, credited pain...
My assets remaining are liquid again.



**** Brevis, Emendacio Longa
by Michael R. Burch

The Donald may tweet from sun to sun,
but his spellchecker’s work is never done.



Cassidy Hutchinson is not only credible, but her courage and poise under fire have been incredible. — Michael R. Burch



Brief Fling
by Michael R. Burch

Epigram
means cram,
then scram!



To write an epigram, cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
—Michael R. Burch



Fleet Tweet: Apologies to Shakespeare
by Michael R. Burch

A tweet
by any other name
would be as fleet.

@mikerburch (Michael R. Burch)



Fleet Tweet II: Further Apologies to Shakespeare
by Michael R. Burch

Remember, doggonit,
heroic verse crowns the Shakespearean sonnet!
So if you intend to write a couplet,
please do it on the doublet!

@mikerburch (Michael R. Burch)



Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch



Civility
is the ability
to disagree
agreeably.
—Michael R. Burch



****** Most Fowl!
by Michael R. Burch

“****** most foul!”
cried the mouse to the owl.

“Friend, I’m no sinner;
you’re merely my dinner.

As you fall on my sword,
take it up with the LORD!”

the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.

(Published by Lighten Up Online and Potcake Chapbooks)



The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On ...)
by Michael R. Burch

Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts
at “meter,” I crossly concluded
I’d use each iamb
in lieu of a lamb,
bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded.

(Originally published by Grand Little Things)



Midnight Stairclimber
by Michael R. Burch

Procreation
is at first great sweaty recreation,
then—long, long after the *** dies—
the source of endless exercise.

(Published by Angelwing and Brief Poems)



Love has the value
of gold, if it's true;
if not, of rue.
—Michael R. Burch



Teddy Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick;
Donald Trump speaks loudly and carries a big shtick.
—Michael R. Burch



Nonsense Verse for a Nonsensical White House Resident
by Michael R. Burch

Roses are red,
Daffodils are yellow,
But not half as daffy
As that taffy-colored fellow!



There's no need to rant about Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The cruelty of "civilization" suffices:
our ordinary vices.
—Michael R. Burch



Sumer is icumen in
a modern English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

(this update of an ancient classic is dedicated to everyone who suffers with hay fever and other allergies)

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing achu!
Groweth sed
And bloweth hed
And buyeth med?
Cuccu!

Originally published by Lighten Up Online (as Kim Cherub)

NOTE: I kept the medieval spellings of “sumer” (summer), “lhude” (loud), “sed” (seed) and “hed” (head). I then slipped in the modern slang term “med” for medication. The first line means something like “Summer’s a-comin’ in!” In the original poem the cuckoo bird was considered to be a harbinger of spring, but here “cuccu” simply means “crazy!”



The Complete Redefinitions

Faith: falling into the same old claptrap.—Michael R. Burch

Religion: the ties that blind.—Michael R. Burch

Salvation: falling for allure —hook, line and stinker.—Michael R. Burch

Trickle down economics: an especially pungent *******.—Michael R. Burch

Canned political applause: clap track for the claptrap.—Michael R. Burch

Baseball: lots of spittin' mixed with occasional hittin'.—Michael R. Burch

Lingerie: visual foreplay.—Michael R. Burch

A straight flush is a winning hand. A straight-faced flush is when you don't give it away.—Michael R. Burch

Lust: a chemical affair.—Michael R. Burch

Believer: A speck of dust / animated by lust / brief as a mayfly / and yet full of trust.—Michael R. Burch

Theologian: someone who wants life to “make sense” / by believing in a “god” infinitely dense.—Michael R. Burch

Skepticism: The murderer of Eve / cannot be believed.—Michael R. Burch

Death: This dream of nothingness we fear / is salvation clear.—Michael R. Burch

Insuresurrection: The dead are always with us, and yet they are naught!—Michael R. Burch

Marriage: a seldom-observed truce / during wars over money / and a red-faced papoose.—Michael R. Burch

Is “natural affection” affliction? / Is “love” nature’s sleight-of-hand trick / to get us to reproduce / whenever she feels the itch?—Michael R. Burch



Translations

Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!

Raise your words, not their volume.
Rain grows flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, translation by Michael R. Burch

The imbecile constructs cages for everyone he knows,
while the sage (who has to duck his head whenever the moon glows)
keeps dispensing keys all night long
to the beautiful, rowdy, prison gang.
—Hafiz loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An unbending tree
breaks easily.
—Lao Tzu, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Little sparks ignite great Infernos.—Dante, translation by Michael R. Burch

Love distills the eyes’ desires, love bewitches the heart with its grace.―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

Once fanaticism has gangrened brains
the incurable malady invariably remains.
—Voltaire, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.
—Thomas Campion, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No wind is favorable to the man who lacks direction.
—Seneca the Younger, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hypocrisy may deceive the most perceptive adult, but the dullest child recognizes and is revolted by it, however ingeniously disguised.
—Leo Tolstoy translation by Michael R. Burch

Just as I select a ship when it's time to travel,
or a house when it's time to change residences,
even so I will choose when it's time to depart from life.
—Seneca, speaking about the right to euthanasia in the first century AD, translation by Michael R. Burch

Improve yourself through others' writings, thus attaining more easily what they acquired through great difficulty.
—Socrates, translation by Michael R. Burch

Fools call wisdom foolishness.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

One true friend is worth ten thousand kin.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

Not to speak one’s mind is slavery.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

I would rather die standing than kneel, a slave.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

Fresh tears are wasted on old griefs.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch



Native American Proverb
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Before you judge
a man for his sins
be sure to trudge
many moons in his moccasins.



Native American Proverb
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux (circa 1840-1877)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.



Native American Proverb
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us walk respectfully here
among earth's creatures, great and small,
remembering, our footsteps light,
that one wise God created all.



The Least of These...

What you
do
to
the refugee
you
do
unto
Me!
—Jesus Christ, translation/paraphrase by Michael R. Burch



The Church Gets the Burch Rod

The most dangerous words ever uttered by human lips are “thus saith the LORD.” — Michael R. Burch

How can the Bible be "infallible" when from Genesis to Revelation slavery is commanded and condoned, but never condemned? —Michael R. Burch

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

I have my doubts about your God and his "love":
If one screams below, what the hell is "Above"?
—Michael R. Burch

If God has the cattle on a thousand hills,
why does he need my tithes to pay his bills?
—Michael R. Burch

The best tonic for other people's bad ideas is to think for oneself.—Michael R. Burch

Hell hath no fury like a fundamentalist whose God condemned him for having "impure thoughts."—Michael R. Burch

Religion is the difficult process of choosing the least malevolent invisible friends.—Michael R. Burch

Religion is the ****** of the people.—Karl Marx
Religion is the dopiate of the sheeple.—Michael R. Burch

An ideal that cannot be realized is, in the end, just wishful thinking.—Michael R. Burch

God and his "profits" could never agree
on any gospel acceptable to an intelligent flea.
—Michael R. Burch

To fall an inch short of infinity is to fall infinitely short.—Michael R. Burch

Most Christians make God seem like the Devil. Atheists and agnostics at least give him the "benefit of the doubt."—Michael R. Burch

Hell has been hellishly overdone.
Why blame such horrors on God's only Son
when Jehovah and his prophets never mentioned it once?
—Michael R. Burch

(Bible scholars agree: the word "hell" has been removed from the Old Testaments of the more accurate modern Bible translations. And the few New Testament verses that mention "hell" are obvious mistranslations.)



Clodhoppers
by Michael R. Burch

If you trust the Christian "god"
you're—like Adumb—a clod.




If every witty thing that's said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!
—Michael R. Burch



Questionable Credentials
by Michael R. Burch

Poet? Critic? Dilettante?
Do you know what's good, or do you merely flaunt?

(Published by ***** of Parnassus, the first poem in the April 2017 issue)



*******
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy is an illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.



Lines in Favor of Female Muses
by Michael R. Burch

I guess ***** of Parnassus are okay...
But those Lasses of Parnassus? My! Olé!

(Published by ***** of Parnassus)



Meal Deal
by Michael R. Burch

Love is a splendid ideal
(at least till it costs us a meal) . 



Long Division
by Michael R. Burch as Kim Cherub

All things become one
Through death's long division
And perfect precision.



i o u
by mrb

i might have said it
but i didn't

u might have noticed
but u wouldn't

we might have been us
but we couldn't

u might respond
but probably shouldn't




Mate Check
by Michael R. Burch

Love is an ache hearts willingly secure
then break the bank to cure.



Incompatibles
by Michael R. Burch

Reason's treason!
cries the Heart.

Love's insane,
replies the Brain.

(Originally published by Light)



Death is the ultimate finality
of reality.
—Michael R. Burch



Stage Fright
by Michael R. Burch

To be or not to be?
In the end Hamlet
opted for naught.



Grave Oversight
by Michael R. Burch

The dead are always with us,
and yet they are naught!



Feathered Fiends
by Michael R. Burch

Fascists of a feather
flock together.



Why the Kid Gloves Came Off
by Michael R. Burch

for Lemuel Ibbotson

It's hard to be a man of taste
in such a waste:
hence the lambaste.



Housman was right...
by Michael R. Burch

It's true that life's not much to lose,
so why not hang out on a cloud?
It's just the bon voyage is hard
and the objections loud.



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch

after William Blake

O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!



Descent
by Michael R. Burch

I have listened to the rain all this morning
and it has a certain gravity,
as if it knows its destination,
perhaps even its particular destiny.
I do not believe mine is to be uplifted,
although I, too, may be flung precipitously
and from a great height.



Reading between the lines
by Michael R. Burch

Who could have read so much, as we?
Having the time, but not the inclination,
TV has become our philosophy,
sheer boredom, our recreation.



Ironic Vacation
by Michael R. Burch

Salzburg.
Seeing Mozart's baby grand piano.
Standing in the presence of sheer incalculable genius.
Grabbing my childish pen to write a poem & challenge the Immortals.
Next stop, the catacombs!



Imperfect Perfection
by Michael R. Burch

You're too perfect for words—
a problem for a poet.



Expert Advice
by Michael R. Burch

Your ******* are perfect for your lithe, slender body.
Please stop making false comparisons your hobby!



Thirty
by Michael R. Burch

Thirty crept upon me slowly
with feline caution and a slowly-twitching tail;
patiently she waited for the winds to shift;
now, claws unsheathed, she lies seething to assail
her helpless prey.



Biblical Knowledge or "Knowing Coming and Going"
by Michael R. Burch

The wisest man the world has ever seen
had fourscore concubines and threescore queens?
This gives us pause, and so we venture hence—
he "knew" them, wisely, in the wider sense.



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they'll soon conjugate) .

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there's decent *** in jail.
Don't fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We'll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don't make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)



I sampled honeysuckle
and it made my taste buds buckle.
—Michael R. Burch



The Editor

A poet may work from sun to sun,
but his editor's work is never done.

The Critic

The editor's work is never done.
The critic adjusts his cummerbund.

The Audience

While the critic adjusts his cummerbund,
the audience exits to mingle and slum.

The Anthologist

As the audience exits to mingle and slum,
the anthologist rules, a pale jury of one.



Athenian Epitaphs

How valiant he lies tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet Ares cares not, neither does War relent.
by Anacreon, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here he lies in state tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet Ares cares not, neither does War relent.
by Anacreon, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
But go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
Michael R. Burch, after Plato

We who left behind the Aegean’s bellowings
Now sleep peacefully here on the mid-plains of Ecbatan:
Farewell, dear Athens, nigh to Euboea,
Farewell, dear sea!
Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Passerby,
Tell the Spartans we lie
Lifeless at Thermopylae:
Dead at their word,
Obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
Michael R. Burch, after Simonides

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus

They observed our fearful fetters, braved the overwhelming darkness.

Now we extol their excellence: bravely, they died for us.
Michael R. Burch, after Mnasalcas

Blame not the gale, nor the inhospitable sea-gulf, nor friends’ tardiness,
Mariner! Just man’s foolhardiness.
Michael R. Burch, after Leonidas of Tarentum

Be ashamed, O mountains and seas: these were men of valorous breath.
Assume, like pale chattels, an ashen silence at death.
Michael R. Burch, after Parmenio

These men earned a crown of imperishable glory,
Nor did the maelstrom of death obscure their story.
Michael R. Burch, after Simonides

Stranger, flee!
But may Fortune grant you all the prosperity
she denied me.
Michael R. Burch, after Leonidas of Tarentum

Now that I am dead sea-enclosed Cyzicus shrouds my bones.
Faretheewell, O my adoptive land that nurtured me, that held me;
I take rest at your breast.
Michael R. Burch, after Erycius

I am loyal to you master, even in the grave:
Just as you now are death’s slave.
Michael R. Burch, after Dioscorides

Stripped of her stripling, if asked, she’d confess:
“I am now less than nothingness.”
Michael R. Burch, after Diotimus

Dead as you are, though you lie still as stone,
huntress Lycas, my great Thessalonian hound,
the wild beasts still fear your white bones;
craggy Pelion remembers your valor,
splendid Ossa, the way you would bound
and bay at the moon for its whiteness,
bellowing as below we heard valleys resound.
And how brightly with joy you would canter and run
the strange lonely peaks of high Cithaeron!
Michael R. Burch, after Simonides

Having never earned a penny,
nor seen a bridal gown slip to the floor,
still I lie here with the love of many,
to be the love of yet one more.
Michael R. Burch, after an unknown Greek poet

I lie by stark Icarian rocks
and only speak when the sea talks.
Please tell my dear father that I gave up the ghost
on the Aegean coast.
Michael R. Burch, after Theatetus

Everywhere the sea is the sea, the dead are the dead.
What difference to me—where I rest my head?
The sea knows I’m buried.
Michael R. Burch, after Antipater of Sidon

Constantina, inconstant one!
Once I thought your name beautiful
but I was a fool
and now you are more bitter to me than death!
You flee someone who loves you
with baited breath
to pursue someone who’s untrue.
But if you manage to make him love you,
tomorrow you'll flee him too!
Michael R. Burch, after Macedonius



Sunset
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt

Between the prophesies of morning
and twilight’s revelations of wonder,
the sky is ripped asunder.

The moon lurks in the clouds,
waiting, as if to plunder
the dusk of its lilac iridescence,

and in the bright-tentacled sunset
we imagine a presence
full of the fury of lost innocence.

What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame,
brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim,
we recognize at once, but cannot name.



The Greatest of These ...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hands that held me tremble.
The arms that lifted
  fall.

Angelic flesh, now parchment,
is held together with gauze.

But her undimmed eyes still embrace me;
there infinity can be found.

I can almost believe such love
will reach me, underground.



Love Is Not Love
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love is not love that never looked
within itself and questioned all,
curled up like a zygote in a ball,
throbbed, sobbed and shook.

(Or went on a binge at a nearby mall,
then would not cook.)

Love is not love that never winced,
then smiled, convinced
that soar’s the prerequisite of fall.

When all
its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed,
where does Love find the wherewithal
to try again,
endeavor, when

all that it knows
is: O, because!



Stay With Me Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

Stay with me tonight;
be gentle with me as the leaves are gentle
falling to the earth.

And whisper, O my love,
how that every bright thing, though scattered afar,
retains yet its worth.

Stay with me tonight;
be as a petal long-awaited blooming in my hand.
Lift your face to mine

and touch me with your lips
till I feel the warm benevolence of your breath’s
heady fragrance like wine.

That which we had
when pale and waning as the dying moon at dawn,
outshone the sun.

And so lead me back tonight
through bright waterfalls of light
to where we shine as one.

Originally published by The Lyric



Ali’s Song
by Michael R. Burch

They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river, child.
I flung their medal to the river, child.

They hung their coin around my neck; they made
my name a bridle, “called a ***** a *****.”
They say their gold is pure. I say defiled.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.

Ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong
that never called me ******, did me wrong.
A man can’t be lukewarm, ’cause God hates mild.
I flung their notice to the river, child.
I flung their notice to the river, child.

They said, “Now here’s your bullet and your gun,
and there’s your cell: we’re waiting, you choose one.”
At first I groaned aloud, but then I smiled.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.

My face reflected up, dark bronze like gold,
a coin God stamped in His own image―BOLD.
My blood boiled like that river―strange and wild.
I died to hate in that dark river, child,
Come, be reborn in this bright river, child.

Originally published by Black Medina

Note: Cassius Clay, who converted to Islam and changed his “slave name” to Muhammad Ali, said that he threw his Olympic boxing gold medal into the Ohio River. Confirming his account, the medal was recovered by Robert Bradbury and his wife Pattie in 2014 during the Annual Ohio River Sweep, and the Ali family paid them $200,000 to regain possession of the medal. When drafted during the Vietnamese War, Ali refused to serve, reputedly saying: “I ain't got no quarrel with those Viet Cong; no Vietnamese ever called me a ******.” The notice mentioned in my poem is Ali's draft notice, which metaphorically gets tossed into the river along with his slave name. I was told through the grapevine that this poem appeared in Farsi in an Iranian publication called Bashgah. ―Michael R. Burch



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes―
I can almost remember―goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Departed
by Michael R. Burch

Already, I miss you,
though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips.

Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips
and the dishes are all stacked away.

You left me today ...
and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets.



Roses for a Lover, Idealized
by Michael R. Burch

When you have become to me
as roses bloom, in memory,
exquisite, each sharp thorn forgot,
will I recall―yours made me bleed?

When winter makes me think of you,
whorls petrified in frozen dew,
bright promises blithe spring forgot,
will I recall your words―barbed, cruel?



Ibykos Fragment 286, Circa 564 B.C.
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come spring, the grand
apple trees stand
watered by a gushing river
where the maidens’ uncut flowers shiver
and the blossoming grape vine swells
in the gathering shadows.

Unfortunately
for me
Eros never rests
but like a Thracian tempest
ablaze with lightning
emanates from Aphrodite;
the results are frightening—
black,
bleak,
astonishing,
violently jolting me from my soles
to my soul.



Deor's Lament (circa the 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland endured the agony of exile:
an indomitable smith wracked by grief.
He suffered countless sorrows;
indeed, such sorrows were his ***** companions
in that frozen island dungeon
where Nithad fettered him:
so many strong-but-supple sinew-bands
binding the better man.
That passed away; this also may.

Beadohild mourned her brothers' deaths,
bemoaning also her own sad state
once she discovered herself with child.
She knew nothing good could ever come of it.
That passed away; this also may.

We have heard the Geat's moans for Matilda,
his lovely lady, waxed limitless,
that his sorrowful love for her
robbed him of regretless sleep.
That passed away; this also may.

For thirty winters Theodric ruled
the Mæring stronghold with an iron hand;
many acknowledged his mastery and moaned.
That passed away; this also may.

We have heard too of Ermanaric's wolfish ways,
of how he cruelly ruled the Goths' realms.
That was a grim king! Many a warrior sat,
full of cares and maladies of the mind,
wishing constantly that his crown might be overthrown.
That passed away; this also may.

If a man sits long enough, sorrowful and anxious,
bereft of joy, his mind constantly darkening,
soon it seems to him that his troubles are limitless.
Then he must consider that the wise Lord
often moves through the earth
granting some men honor, glory and fame,
but others only shame and hardship.
This I can say for myself:
that for awhile I was the Heodeninga's scop,
dear to my lord. My name was Deor.
For many winters I held a fine office,
faithfully serving a just king. But now Heorrenda
a man skilful in songs, has received the estate
the protector of warriors had promised me.
That passed away; this also may.



Infatuate, or Sweet Centerless Sixteen
by Michael R. Burch

Inconsolable as “love” had left your heart,
you woke this morning eager to pursue
warm lips again, or something “really cool”
on which to press your lips and leave their mark.

As breath upon a windowpane at dawn
soon glows, a spreading halo full of sun,
your thought of love blinks wildly ... on and on ...
then fizzles at the center, and is gone.



The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak and scarred and lone,
for seas reflecting distant suns
and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown,
for waltzes ending in a hush
and rhymes that fade as pages close,
for flames’ exhausted, graying ash,
and petals falling from the rose,
I raise my cup before I drink
in reverence to a love long dead,
and silently propose a toast—
to passages, to time that fled.

Originally published by Contemporary Rhyme



Veiled
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us . . .

tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief . . .

ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered . . .

and if you were to ask her,
she might say:
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,

and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.

Published by Poetry Super Highway and Modern War Poems.



Twice
by Michael R. Burch

Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days

when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.

But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:

rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.

Originally published by The Lyric



Prose Epigrams

We cannot change the past, but we can learn from it.—Michael R. Burch

When I was being bullied, I had to learn not to judge myself by the opinions of intolerant morons. Then I felt much better.—Michael R. Burch

How can we predict the future, when tomorrow is as uncertain as Trump's next tweet? —Michael R. Burch

Poetry moves the heart as well as the reason.—Michael R. Burch

Poetry is the art of finding the right word at the right time.—Michael R. Burch



The State of the Art (?)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has passion been coerced?

Shall poetry fade slowly,
like Latin, to past tense?
Are the bards too high and holy,
or their readers merely dense?



Your e-Verse
by Michael R. Burch

—for the posters and posers on www.fillintheblank.com

I cannot understand a word you’ve said
(and this despite an adequate I.Q.);
it must be some exotic new haiku
combined with Latin suddenly undead.

It must be hieroglyphics mixed with Greek.
Have Pound and T. S. Eliot been cloned?
Perhaps you wrote it on the ***, so ******
you spelled it backwards, just to be oblique.

I think you’re very funny—so, “Yuk! Yuk!”
I know you must be kidding; didn’t we
write crap like this and call it “poetry,”
a form of verbal exercise, P.E.,
in kindergarten, when we ran “amuck?”

Oh, sorry, I forgot to “make it new.”
Perhaps I still can learn a thing or two
from someone tres original, like you.



Haiku Translations of the Oriental Masters

Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
― Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The first soft snow:
leaves of the awed jonquil
bow low
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Come, investigate loneliness!
a solitary leaf
clings to the Kiri tree
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lightning
shatters the darkness―
the night heron's shriek
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

One apple, alone
in the abandoned orchard
reddens for winter
― Patrick Blanche, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The poem above is by a French poet; it illustrates how the poetry of Oriental masters like Basho has influenced poets around the world.

Graven images of long-departed gods,
dry spiritless leaves:
companions of the temple porch
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

See: whose surviving sons
visit the ancestral graves
white-bearded, with trembling canes?
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I remove my beautiful kimono:
its varied braids
surround and entwine my body
― Hisajo Sugita, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This day of chrysanthemums
I shake and comb my wet hair,
as their petals shed rain
― Hisajo Sugita, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This darkening autumn:
my neighbor,
how does he continue?
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Let us arrange
these lovely flowers in the bowl
since there's no rice
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

An ancient pond,
the frog leaps:
the silver plop and gurgle of water
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The butterfly
perfuming its wings
fans the orchid
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The first chill rain:
poor monkey, you too could use
a woven cape of straw
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This snowy morning:
cries of the crow I despise
(ah, but so beautiful!)
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Like a heavy fragrance
snow-flakes settle:
lilies on the rocks
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The cheerful-chirping cricket
contends gray autumn's gay,
contemptuous of frost
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Whistle on, twilight whippoorwill,
solemn evangelist
of loneliness
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The sea darkening,
the voices of the wild ducks:
my mysterious companions!
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Will we meet again?
Here at your flowering grave:
two white butterflies
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Fever-felled mid-path
my dreams resurrect, to trek
into a hollow land
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Too ill to travel,
now only my autumn dreams
survey these withering fields
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch; this has been called Basho's death poem

These brown summer grasses?
The only remains
of "invincible" warriors...
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

An empty road
lonelier than abandonment:
this autumn evening
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Spring has come:
the nameless hill
lies shrouded in mist
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The Oldest Haiku

These are my translations of some of the oldest Japanese waka, which evolved into poetic forms such as tanka, renga and haiku over time. My translations are excerpts from the Kojiki (the "Record of Ancient Matters"), a book composed around 711-712 A.D. by the historian and poet Ō no Yasumaro. The Kojiki relates Japan’s mythological beginnings and the history of its imperial line. Like Virgil's Aeneid, the Kojiki seeks to legitimize rulers by recounting their roots. These are lines from one of the oldest Japanese poems, found in the oldest Japanese book:

While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
― Ō no Yasumaro (circa 711), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Here's another excerpt, with a humorous twist, from the Kojiki:

Hush, cawing crows; what rackets you make!
Heaven's indignant messengers,
you remind me of wordsmiths!
― Ō no Yasumaro (circa 711), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Here's another, this one a poem of love and longing:

Onyx, this gem-black night.
Downcast, I await your return
like the rising sun, unrivaled in splendor.
― Ō no Yasumaro (circa 711), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

More Haiku by Various Poets

Right at my feet!
When did you arrive here,
snail?
― Kobayashi Issa, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Our world of dew
is a world of dew indeed;
and yet, and yet...
― Kobayashi Issa, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, brilliant moon
can it be true that even you
must rush off, like us, tardy?
― Kobayashi Issa, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

A kite floats
at the same place in the sky
where yesterday it floated...
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The pigeon's behavior
is beyond reproach,
but the mountain cuckoo's?
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Plowing,
not a single bird sings
in the mountain's shadow
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The pear tree flowers whitely―
a young woman reads his letter
by moonlight
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

On adjacent branches
the plum tree blossoms bloom
petal by petal―love!
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Picking autumn plums
my wrinkled hands
once again grow fragrant
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Dawn!
The brilliant sun illuminates
sardine heads.
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The abandoned willow
shines
between rains
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

White plum blossoms―
though the hour grows late,
a glimpse of dawn
― Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch; this is believed to be Buson's death poem and he is said to have died before dawn

I thought I felt a dewdrop
plop
on me as I lay in bed!
― Masaoka Shiki, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot see the moon
and yet the waves still rise
― Shiki Masaoka, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The first morning of autumn:
the mirror I investigate
reflects my father’s face
― Shiki Masaoka, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Wild geese pass
leaving the emptiness of heaven
revealed
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Silently observing
the bottomless mountain lake:
water lilies
― Inahata Teiko, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Cranes
flapping ceaselessly
test the sky's upper limits
― Inahata Teiko, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Falling snowflakes'
glitter
tinsels the sea
― Inahata Teiko, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Blizzards here on earth,
blizzards of stars
in the sky
― Inahata Teiko, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Completely encircled
in emerald:
the glittering swamp!
― Inahata Teiko, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The new calendar!:
as if tomorrow
is assured...
― Inahata Teiko, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Ah butterfly,
what dreams do you ply
with your beautiful wings?
― Fukuda Chiyo-ni, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Because morning glories
hold my well-bucket hostage
I go begging for water
― Fukuda Chiyo-ni, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Spring
stirs the clouds
in the sky's teabowl
― Kikusha-ni, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight I saw
how the peony crumples
in the fire's embers
― Katoh Shuhson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It fills me with anger,
this moon; it fills me
and makes me whole
― Takeshita Shizunojo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

War
stood at the end of the hall
in the long shadows
― Watanabe Hakusen, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Because he is slow to wrath,
I tackle him, then wring his neck
in the long grass
― Shimazu Ryoh, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Pale mountain sky:
cherry petals play
as they tumble earthward
― Kusama Tokihiko, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The frozen moon,
the frozen lake:
two oval mirrors reflecting each other.
― Hashimoto Takako, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The bitter winter wind
ends here
with the frozen sea
― Ikenishi Gonsui, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, bitter winter wind,
why bellow so
when there's no leaves to fell?
― Natsume Sôseki, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter waves
roil
their own shadows
― Tominaga Fûsei, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

No sky,
no land:
just snow eternally falling...
― Kajiwara Hashin, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Along with spring leaves
my child's teeth
take root, blossom
― Nakamura Kusatao, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Stillness:
a single chestnut leaf glides
on brilliant water
― Ryuin, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

As thunder recedes
a lone tree stands illuminated in sunlight:
applauded by cicadas
― Masaoka Shiki, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The snake slipped away
but his eyes, having held mine,
still stare in the grass
― Kyoshi Takahama, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Girls gather sprouts of rice:
reflections of the water flicker
on the backs of their hats
― Kyoshi Takahama, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Murmurs follow the hay cart
this blossoming summer day
― Ippekiro Nakatsuka (1887-1946), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The wet nurse
paused to consider a bucket of sea urchins
then walked away
― Ippekiro Nakatsuka (1887-1946), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

May I be with my mother
wearing her summer kimono
by the morning window
― Ippekiro Nakatsuka (1887-1946), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The hands of a woman exist
to remove the insides of the spring cuttlefish
― Sekitei Hara, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The moon
hovering above the snow-capped mountains
rained down hailstones
― Sekitei Hara, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, dreamlike winter butterfly:
a puff of white snow
cresting mountains
― Kakio Tomizawa, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Spring snow
cascades over fences
in white waves
― Suju Takano, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Tanka and Waka translations:

If fields of autumn flowers
can shed their blossoms, shameless,
why can’t I also frolic here —
as fearless, and as blameless?
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Submit to you —
is that what you advise?
The way the ripples do
whenever ill winds arise?
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Watching wan moonlight
illuminate trees,
my heart also brims,
overflowing with autumn.
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I had thought to pluck
the flower of forgetfulness
only to find it
already blossoming in his heart.
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

That which men call "love" —
is it not merely the chain
preventing our escape
from this world of pain?
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Once-colorful flowers faded,
while in my drab cell
life’s impulse also abated
as the long rains fell.
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I set off at the shore
of the seaside of Tago,
where I saw the high, illuminated peak
of Fuji―white, aglow―
through flakes of drifting downy snow.
― Akahito Yamabe, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers,
packed tightly here
despite once repellent hate?
Here weaponless, they stand, in this gentled state.

These arms and hands, they once were so delicate!
How articulately
they moved! Ah me!
What athletes once paced about on these padded feet?

Still there’s no hope of rest for you, lost souls!
Deprived of graves,
forced here like slaves
to occupy this overworld, unlamented ghouls!

Now who’s to know who loved one orb here detained?
Except for me;
reader, hear my plea:
I know the grandeur of the mind it contained!

Yes, and I know the impulse true love would stir
here, where I stand
in this alien land
surrounded by these husks, like a treasurer!

Even in this cold,
in this dust and mould
I am startled by an a strange, ancient reverie, …
as if this shrine to death could quicken me!

One shape out of the past keeps calling me
with its mystery!
Still retaining its former angelic grace!
And at that ecstatic sight, I am back at sea ...

Swept by that current to where immortals race.
O secret vessel, you
gave Life its truth.
It falls on me now to recall your expressive face.

I turn away, abashed here by what I see:
this mould was worth
more than all the earth.
Let me breathe fresh air and let my wild thoughts run free!

What is there better in this dark Life than he
who gives us a sense of man’s divinity,
of his place in the universe?
A man who’s both flesh and spirit—living verse!



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.



Farewell to Faith I
by Michael R. Burch

What we want is relief
from life’s grief and despair:
what we want’s not “belief”
but just not to be there.



Farewell to Faith II
by Michael R. Burch

Confronted by the awesome thought of death,
to never suffer, and be free of grief,
we wonder: "What’s the use of drawing breath?
Why seek relief
from the bible’s Thief,
who ripped off Eve then offered her a leaf?"



Anyte Epigrams

Stranger, rest your weary legs beneath the elms;
hear how coolly the breeze murmurs through their branches;
then take a bracing draught from the mountain-fed fountain;
for this is welcome shade from the burning sun.
—Anyte, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here I stand, Hermes, in the crossroads
by the windswept elms near the breezy beach,
providing rest to sunburned travelers,
and cold and brisk is my fountain’s abundance.
—Anyte, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sit here, quietly shaded by the luxuriant foliage,
and drink cool water from the sprightly spring,
so that your weary breast, panting with summer’s labors,
may take rest from the blazing sun.
—Anyte, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This is the grove of Cypris,
for it is fair for her to look out over the land to the bright deep,
that she may make the sailors’ voyages happy,
as the sea trembles, observing her brilliant image.
—Anyte, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Nossis Epigrams

There is nothing sweeter than love.
All other delights are secondary.
Thus, I spit out even honey.
This is what Gnossis says:
Whom Aphrodite does not love,
Is bereft of her roses.
—Nossis, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Most revered Hera, the oft-descending from heaven,
behold your Lacinian shrine fragrant with incense
and receive the linen robe your noble child Nossis,
daughter of Theophilis and Cleocha, has woven for you.
—Nossis, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stranger, if you sail to Mitylene, my homeland of beautiful dances,
to indulge in the most exquisite graces of Sappho,
remember I also was loved by the Muses, who bore me and reared me there.
My name, never forget it!, is Nossis. Now go!
—Nossis, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Pass me with ringing laughter, then award me
a friendly word: I am Rinthon, scion of Syracuse,
a small nightingale of the Muses; from their tragedies
I was able to pluck an ivy, unique, for my own use.
—Nossis, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Excerpts from “Distaff”
by Erinna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

… the moon rising …
      … leaves falling …
           … waves lapping a windswept shore …

… and our childish games, Baucis, do you remember? ...

... Leaping from white horses,
running on reckless feet through the great courtyard.  
“You’re it!’ I cried, ‘You’re the Tortoise now!”
But when your turn came to pursue your pursuers,
you darted beyond the courtyard,
dashed out deep into the waves,
splashing far beyond us …

… My poor Baucis, these tears I now weep are your warm memorial,
these traces of embers still smoldering in my heart
for our silly amusements, now that you lie ash …

… Do you remember how, as girls,
we played at weddings with our dolls,
pretending to be brides in our innocent beds? ...

... How sometimes I was your mother,
allotting wool to the weaver-women,
calling for you to unreel the thread? ...

… Do you remember our terror of the monster Mormo
with her huge ears, her forever-flapping tongue,
her four slithering feet, her shape-shifting face? ...

... Until you mother called for us to help with the salted meat ...

... But when you mounted your husband’s bed,
dearest Baucis, you forgot your mothers’ warnings!
Aphrodite made your heart forgetful ...

... Desire becomes oblivion ...

... Now I lament your loss, my dearest friend.
I can’t bear to think of that dark crypt.
I can’t bring myself to leave the house.
I refuse to profane your corpse with my tearless eyes.
I refuse to cut my hair, but how can I mourn with my hair unbound?
I blush with shame at the thought of you! …

... But in this dark house, O my dearest Baucis,
My deep grief is ripping me apart.
Wretched Erinna! Only nineteen,
I moan like an ancient crone, eying this strange distaff ...

O *****! . . . O Hymenaeus! . . .
Alas, my poor Baucis!



On a Betrothed Girl
by Erinna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I sing of Baucis the bride.
Observing her tear-stained crypt
say this to Death who dwells underground:
"Thou art envious, O Death!"

Her vivid monument tells passers-by
of the bitter misfortune of Baucis —
how her father-in-law burned the poor ******* a pyre
lit by bright torches meant to light her marriage train home.
While thou, O Hymenaeus, transformed her harmonious bridal song into a chorus of wailing dirges.

*****! O Hymenaeus!



Sophocles Epigrams

Not to have been born is best,
and blessed
beyond the ability of words to express.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It’s a hundred times better not be born;
but if we cannot avoid the light,
the path of least harm is swiftly to return
to death’s eternal night!
—Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Never to be born may be the biggest boon of all.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oblivion: What a blessing, to lie untouched by pain!
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The happiest life is one empty of thought.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Consider no man happy till he lies dead, free of pain at last.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What is worse than death? When death is desired but denied.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When a man endures nothing but endless miseries, what is the use of hanging on day after day,
edging closer and closer toward death? Anyone who warms his heart with the false glow of flickering hope is a wretch! The noble man should live with honor and die with honor. That's all that can be said.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Children anchor their mothers to life.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How terrible, to see the truth when the truth brings only pain to the seer!
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wisdom outweighs all the world's wealth.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fortune never favors the faint-hearted.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wait for evening to appreciate the day's splendor.
—Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Homer Epigrams

For the gods have decreed that unfortunate mortals must suffer, while they themselves are sorrowless.
—Homer, Iliad 24.525-526, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“It is best not to be born or, having been born, to pass on as swiftly as possible.”
—attributed to Homer (circa 800 BC), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Ancient Roman Epigrams

Wall, I'm astonished that you haven't collapsed,
since you're holding up verses so prolapsed!
—Ancient Roman graffiti, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R Burch

There is nothing so pointless, so perfidious as human life! ... The ultimate bliss is not to be born; otherwise we should speedily slip back into the original Nothingness.
—Seneca, On Consolation to Marcia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: elegy, eulogy, child, childhood, death, death of a friend, lament, lamentation, epitaph, grave, funeral, epigram, epigrams, short, brief, concise, aphorism, adage, proverb, quote, mrbepi, mrbepig, mrbepigram, mrbhaiku

Published as the collection "Epigrams"

Agnostic's prayer
By
Jude Kyrie

Let there be orchards
In summer ripe days

Let there be Christmas
And first of Mays

Let there be children singing
In heavenly choirs.

Let there be snowfall
With warm cozy fires

Let there be hopscotch
And childish games

Let there be holidays
With different names

Let there be family
With comforting beds

Let there be mother's
To kiss children's heads

Let there be peaceful
long summer nights

Let there be moonlight
So clear and so bright

Let there be dark skies
With a billion bright stars

Let there be love
As each new day starts.

To be read aloud
To any God you believe in
Jude

.how else? with a variety of histories clinging to the focus and exerting the stamina as coordinator? there's the historiology of Darwinism, there's the historiology of the Big Bang theory (with "god" as a, end of sentence "after-thought", dot, , there's the historiology of scholastic efforts of the study of history of history, then there's the personal history of the individual: as nostalgia, then there's the historiology of journalism... then there's the historiology of your immediate predecessors... at what exact point, are you supposed to begin with, to create a rational creature? i suppose the easiest answer is... ? to have children... and construct a shadow, to hide all these focal points of genesis... never mind the historiological study via the biblical narrative, or archeological historiology; so, as you can see? time is not exactly the replica of space, a beginning a present a past... space is not three-dimensional outside this atmosphere of the grand Orb... because all scientists know that... this, supposed motivational claim of... "thinking" outside, "the" box... at the end... there's no "box" to begin with!

such a recurrent thought,
it stalks me like a shadow,
but i just... never seem to be rid of it...
i was 21, she was 18...
love...
                love...

but an unhinged desire for death
to boot,

******* her for 7 hours one night
in St. Petersburg...
didn't really matter...

a vague similarity to
incubating a cushion...

there was no accident...
if only talk took the place of telling lies...

i could have explored
the latex ***** *** **** outside
the realm of a ******...

sure, i write about Hebrew
theories in terms of phonetics...
but i could never be circumcised...
a caduceus of protruding veins
envelop my *******...
so... no mushroom head
of a phallus to boot...
i'd bleed out...

               but was it so bad of me
to suggest an abortion to
a teenager?
            would she still possess
a masters degree?

she married later,
then "divorced" her husband
and i met her new boyfriend,
when i randomly traveled
back to Edinburgh,
and watched her playing
video games with a slashes
hand...

no... not at the wrists...
along the veins,
from the inner side of the elbow
right down to the wrist...

my ex, my one true decency of
womanhood once said
to me: stop trying to save
these women,
to which i should have replied:
i'm not! i'm trying to
save myself!

sometimes the night creeps in,
and i think of the 21 year old me...
she, taking contraceptive pills,
then stopping,
and then, becoming
pregnant... or at least that's
what it sounded like:

matt, i think i'm pregnant...
it didn't register that well
while on a construction site...
industrial roofing never really
does give you the luxury of
pondering...
i was either about to move
some canadian tar into the boiler,
or cut up a roll of mineral felt,
or transfer some insulation...

she came from a Novosibirsk
oligarchy,
two apartments in St. Petersburg,
one in Moscow,
a mansion in Novosibirsk,
etc. etc....

     just left uni, and was doing
what any son of a manual laborer does,
being utilized in his father's
profession...

but it's not like i could afford
to give her what she expected...
a flat in central Edinburgh...
i might have said:
you might think about getting
an abortion /
you know what you have to
do? get an abortion...

            21?! seriously?
so i'm supposed to drop a job
in London?
the only sort of job i could
get out of uni?
a job i... to be honest...
yes, it was hard... but i enjoyed it!
it would have been a job
that would cover the years
my father went "missing",
from 4 through to 8...

but this Russian lass wouldn't
ever move in with her in-laws,
or to the outskirts for that
matter...

plus... what happened later?
she married...
supposedly divorced,
and there, i met her new boyfriend...

to be honest...
i don't even know if
there was ever a child to begin with...

see...
  hmm...
  the existence of god is not so much
an issue of me that serves
the diligence of plating up a proof...
i have too many personal
certainties in my own life,
to give the concept of god
the "benefit of the doubt"...

agnostics doubt a god,
atheists deny a god...
  big difference...
         i can't do either...
i know so little of my personal life
sometimes, if not all the time,
that... at least:
there's this coordinate
i can focus on...

as ever... it's not the freedom
of speech that bothers me...
i'm more inclined to serve the purpose:
give me the freedom
to think, from what i've said...

and what i have to say?
is found in the comment section...
not here... this is me...
thinking "aloud"...
don't come here expecting me
to be found talking,
you'll only receive a reply
of keyboard clicking...

i can think of a deity,
but, sure as ****: can't pray to one...

deus est cogitatio,
                    non est sermo:

god is thought,
                         isn't talk.

wow... i didn't even shed a tear
writing this...
ah...
               when i once played
my muse... my ex-girlfriend's
younger sister the song
solitude by black sabbath,
and then we washed the dishes together...
it's playing now...
and it's raining...

    a pristine English October.

a conundrum question...
did i chose wisely?
i didn't chose wisely at all...
i made a post-existentialist gamble...
i gambled...
   i simply... gambled...
  although as aversive i am
to casual gambling... on horses...
dogs... football matches...
i made but one gamble,
the result of which,
is confined to me writing, this.

Most never heard the killing shot,
From Bismarck, rend the air.
It landed in Hood’s magazine
and vaporized all there.
H.M.S. Hood rose in the air
The bow and stern were parted.
In ninety seconds she went down-
With her complement, she departed.
The Men aboard the Bismarck cheered,
Though their victory proved hollow:
They could not know, within three days,
The Bismarck was to follow.
The Prince of Wales made smoke and turned
to fight another day.
Torpedo planes from the Ark Royal
made Bismarck lose her way.
Three years of war had hardened hearts
But Hood’s loss caused dismay.
The tragedy in Denmark’s strait
Would make agnostics pray.

The agnostics have gone
Cuckoo.
They have carefully lost their minds!
The profound and the loyal:
God among men.
The citizens and patriots
Are fighting the Devil in Dixie.
And in this world of
Sustained images of hope,
The shamrock and the
Sun-kissed face.
Oh the Sun, that purifies all that it touches
Damns all that it doesn't.

Abraham Horowitz thought he was dead. Maybe this was what death was like, desolate and bleak, no different than his last few years of sheer misery, humiliation and pain.  He already felt he was in Hell, for Buchenwald was a Hell on earth, but what was going on now?  Just where was he exactly? His glasses had been smashed by a **** guard months ago, and now he couldn't understand why he could not make out the hazy figures of the guards barking out orders and smashing the butts of their rifles into the heads and backs of tormented inmates.  All that seemed to exist were walking skeletons aimlessly drifting about in the blowing wind.

His situation was always dire, but today was an indescribably odd day.   It wasn't good or bad. Lately, little aroused Abraham to ponder upon as he had long ago begun to believe that he was an animal and not a man. After all, different walks of life were thrown away like subhuman trash—left for the flies to feast upon—and it had powerfully defined the ghastly surroundings of his disgraceful existence. People who once were somebody to someone had soon become nobody in the world.  The rotting corpses proved that out. Since he was deemed as a beast, Abraham no longer thought or reasoned like a human being. There was no longer any reason to think or to feel or to imagine anything that could inspire his will to thrive.

The inhumanity had taken its toll. Too weak to stand, he had been fading in and out of sleep and consciousness when much of the chaos of forced marches took place. The Nazis were desperately trying to avoid encountering the allied forces that opposed them. They weren't going to give up easily as they'd sooner shake their fists and make all the prisoners suffer to the bitter end. Many of prisoners were moved out as possible, but not all went willingly. The remaining prisoners—those who weren't half dead—now had their chance to resist.

Abraham's back was leaning against the splintered, wooden wall of one of the barracks. He had tried to prop himself up in an attempt to sit up and then stand up. He only succeeded in sitting up in an awkward slouch, much to the discomfort to his bony backside. The sun beat down on him, his only solace to warm up his frail, battered body, his only comfort in his state of wasting away to the shell of the man he once was. Soon the sweet sun was quenched as he was engulfed in the shadows of a soldier standing before him.  

There was nothing left in him, no more will to live. He was done. No more fear flooded his mind, only thoughts of nothingness that gave him an actual period of relief.  If he was still alive—he had thought—the best thing to happen would be that the soldier now in front of him end his miserable life with a bullet to his head. What once was deemed a horrendous fate now seemed like a welcome surrender

"Hey there... sprechen sie Englisch?", the man asked him. It was the worst German accent that he ever heard, but it might as well have been the voice of God.  

Did he speak English? Oh, yes, he did! "Ja…Englisch", he managed to utter, in sheer bewilderment. He struggled for words to say, but they could not leave his mouth.

The man crouched down and said, “It’s okay now. You can say whatever you want, buddy.”

Abraham still struggled to speak. "That is yes...I...I... do....I do...and Hebrew... and Yiddish... German and… a bit... Polish", he answered with a parched, throaty voice.  Abraham had enough strength left to place his quivering hand up to his eyes. He simply cried as the light went on in his mind. The rumors going around the camp were true! The Americans had come!

Tears are for little boys. The image of his father, scolding him for crying as a youth, dashed into mind. Abraham tried to contain himself. Weeping was one satisfaction that the inmates wanted never to give to the Nazis. Only the irrevocably broken ones begged for mercy, wailing uncontrollably as they were laughed at, mocked and scorned by their enemies.  Conditioned to show no emotional response was one up on the Germans, the only control and dignity that a man had left.  Self-restraint meant you were never owned by anyone.  

Soon a slightly cool cup of water was placed upon Abraham’s shaking lips. He slurped at it—getting more on the ground than in his mouth—like a man coming out of years in the desert. Oh, how precious was that water! He could have drunk it by the gallons, splashed in it, played in it—danced in it!  If he could only stand and be given the chance!

"Easy now, buddy”, the American advised. "My name's John, by the way". The young, freckled-face private smiled proudly, stating,”John Dunn from the good, ole USA—from Jersey...New Jersey, that is."

He was only the second soldier that Abraham ever met in this entire ordeal of brutal capture and madness of war that had a heart. The soldier was rare sight in that he showed him even an ounce of kindness. John Dunn reminded him so much of Otto Brumler that he began to weep, again. He didn't know he even had it in him, for he had stopped crying so long ago that it was as if he had forgotten how.  Lately, there just weren't any more feelings left—not even hate. Oh, how he used to hate! There were only numb movements of a dead man walking about. The tears felt cleansing upon his dry and ***** face.

Otto Brumler was a rare anomaly. He just didn’t seem to make sense in this sea of insanity. A **** guard, he liked to talk with some of the inmates, discreetly giving them gifts to pass around—some cigarettes, chocolates, cheese, bread and sausages. How peculiar to be coming from a German soldier!  Some of the inmates were suspicious that he was a spy that was out to trap them and feared him even more than the most loathing of the guards. Abraham was one of them who at first thought the man was purposely trying to get them in trouble.

Trouble abounded in the camps. If the men couldn't work hard enough, they were daily beaten and tortured, so badly beaten down that many could not get back up again. If it wasn't an act of harsh aggression, it was starvation and disease that got them. Herded up like animals, the filth from their ****** fluids and human waste was an ever noxious presence, their ragged clothes soiled in the foul mess. The stench that was once unbearable eventually became to define them as trash to be thrown away, and they had forgotten what a clean existence smelled like.  

Abraham would sometimes wake up in the morning and find the one next to him had not made it through the night. Sometimes, it was on both sides that dead bodies had sandwiched him in-between. If not those succumbing to the horrible conditions, the weaker ones were taken away while alive, never to be seen again. And some would give up the will to live by refusing to press on, passively taking a bullet or a fatal beating. Then there were those who would end their own lives as the only means of escape. It seemed one less triumph for the Nazis, to deny them the sick satisfaction of killing yet another, wretched soul. Yet the Nazis always won the victory of a victim’s life ending.  Regardless of how the death of any of the undesirables occurred in the camps, it fed their ideology of superiority just fine. Many of the prisoners lay awake at night wondering how this barbarism could flourish and go unnoticed.  When would it end? Had the whole world gone mad?  

"We survive and that’s how we win”, one of the Polish prisoners, Jan, encouraged some around him. "We make it to the end because they will be defeated. They cannot last forever. You mark my words!"

"And how do we do that?" “a doubtful Jewish teen, Eli, insisted. He once was so spirited, and he had great plans to travel the world one day. "I lost my whole family. I'm the only one left and it will just be a matter of time before they get me, too. We are all doomed!" His gaunt face and hallow eyes spoke for themselves.

Abraham needed to believe he'd have even a glimmer of hope to be free one day, or he'd have lost the battle by now. His sanity would not hold out. Many already had no hope and that was like a death in itself.  Most of the men knew that to hold on, they'd have to defy logic and hold out for hope. They'd pray with each other, regardless of being a Jew or Christian or even the agnostics, sometimes losing the meager hope that they were had. It grew as scarce as their rations of crusty bread. Nevertheless, they prayed.  

One time, Abraham was grabbed by a guard by the throat and hurled to the ground for being too slow. He had been dumping out human excrement from the campgrounds. The guard berated Abraham as he kicked him over and over again while the poor man curled up into a ball in helpless submission. Protecting his face and head, he soon found himself sheltering his groin, writhing in  pain in that sensitive area that had been attacked by a heel of a boot.

It was Otto Brumler who astounded him. Why wasn't he like the others? As a Jew, the disgust the Nazis had for Abraham was as obvious as the gloom hanging over the camp. Hatred defined Abraham’s world ever since ****** took power and convinced the people that they would be better off without his kind.  Otto was looked upon as being too soft on those he guarded, reprimanded for not being too tough and rough on the prison ****. He did not go above and beyond his duty, nor did he take pleasure in anyone's pain and suffering.

"My best friend was a Jew", he confessed to Abraham one night, sneaking him some salve for his cuts and abrasions from that last beating, providing him some meat to satisfy his longings to fill his stomach.  

Abraham actually showed a real emotion that was a rare sight these days, a slow expression of surprise. "So why are you here at the camp?" he asked him.

Otto puffed on his cigar and passed it to him. He laughed a little, replying, "I think ****** is a little man...but a big bully. I would have gladly be no part of this greedy thirst to devour other nations, but I was forced into it." He looked at Abraham and smiled a bit with sad eyes. It was quite the contradiction of mirth. Otto had a ruddy complexion and dark blonde hair. In his youthfulness, there still an air of innocence about him, a kindness that the ugliness of the war had not killed in him.

"I love my country", he admitted.  "I just hate what they are doing now and how blind we have become. It will be to our ruin."

Abraham admired his honesty. "I guess there are a few good men in this world", he admitted. "My father taught me that it isn't where you come from but who you are that counts."

"That is true, my friend." Otto patted him on the back and added, “My old friend, Avi, had saved my life."  He was speaking of his Jewish friend from childhood. "Many years ago, he rescued me from a lake in my hometown. We went there to cool off from the summer heat.  I couldn't really swim, but I became overconfident and dove in like I was the best swimmer in the world.  There, I found myself in water over my head and didn't end up so well.  I would have drowned without Avi rescuing me. Unlike me, he was fearless."

"So now you know we Jews aren't devils." Abraham remarked, with a hint of a twinkle in his eye.  

"Of course not! Avi was like a prizefighter, a real proud kid. He never backed down from a fight, and there was always a challenge for him..He had to fight off the boys who picked on him for being different from most of us—for being a Jew. So he learned how to stand his ground. I was a fat boy, and Avi would defend me from the bullies who picked on me, too. He was a good friend to me. I know a a bully when I see one, Abraham” He pointed his finger all around, “Bullies everywhere, but they are not men…just weak, little boys who need someone to kick around to feel better”

Abraham knew he had a genuine friend in Otto. “What happened to your friend?”he asked about Avi.

Otto just shrugged his shoulders. “I hope he hasn't lost the fight. I wonder what has happened to him quite often...if he is alive now…if he has made it this far."  

It was nighttime, but it seemed even less secure to come together like this than if mingling in plain sight.  There was never a time where anyone could feel safe, not one minute. Abraham knew this encounter was risky, deadly for sure if caught. He talked about his lovely, young wife, Rivka, and how she felt she was not blessed with having a child. Now it seemed like it was a blessing not to rear up a child, not to have it cruelly ripped away from them and mourn the aching loss and its tragic demise. Rivka was already dead, herself,. Women and children were often the first to go. All Abraham had now was her memory, the image of her sweet face in his mind. Otto talked about his young sweetheart, Gretchen, and his dream of starting a life with her once the war was over. He still believed in a bright future.

That wish would never come true.  It wasn't long before Otto was found out about for his secret encounters with some of the prisoners and shot before a firing squad as a traitor. When Abraham found out, he wanted to weep over the loss but the tears wouldn't come. They couldn’t even come for his lovely Rivka. They only came now when Private John Dunn had given him water, mirroring the same kindness that Otto had once done, redeeming him from an animal to a man  once more.  

Abraham was eventually placed on a truck with other survivors and transported to more humane conditions. Allied soldiers were fully in charge the camp now, and there was no going back to that hellhole ever again. At last, he was truly a free man, though a heartbroken one who was not the same man as he arrived. He had not died—this was not just a dream—but he still was not convinced he would have the will to go on. The breeze on his face felt wonderful, the sun in his eyes, miraculous. That held some shred of promise for him. He passed by trees and mountainous views that he was never convinced he would ever see, again.  No more smell of death, but even the most fragrant flowers could not mask the memory of the horrible stench of his war-torn memories. Some things did just not die away that easily. Memories had a stink of their own that could not be masked by beauty. He had seen things that few could bear, much less go on to tell about it.  He'd never forget being penned up like pigs for the slaughter and made to have no hope. But by the front of the truck, there was Jan, the Pole who once said that the Nazis would be defeated and everyone could mark his words.  

Abraham looked at him until Jan's eyes met his and they both managed a smile. He had come too far to give up. He would not win the victory if he did not survive. He owed it to those who did not make it—to his people, to his fellow inmates, to Rivka, and even to Otto Brumler.  He had no clue, no answers of where to go or how to conduct himself in the world, again, but he would continue to hold onto hope that he would make it.

It suddenly dawned on him that his wife had a few cousins in Chicago that she grew up with. His mind was alerted with the remembrance of Rivka exchanging pictures, postcards and letters throughout the years, All he had of her was robbed from him in the war—everything. To lay eyes on her image—once again—and the possibility of maybe holding her actual words in his hands began to overwhelm him. His imagination could barely contain the thoughts, and he began to weep yet again. As once, crying was weakness to a man, the tears just now meant he was alive. To be counted among the living—to belong somewhere—it was the closest thing to pure joy. Thoughts of America started a small spark within—just enough to start a little fire in his soul—to lead him on to a path with a hopeful purpose. There was no turning back now.

You don't need religion
To understand sin.
It lives you can feel it
Gnawing inside of you.
Eating all the goodness that
you want to last forever.

I sit on the porch of my
house in the city.
Stars glint like lights
from a mirror ball
I see them walking by
Lost abandoned mothers
children lost  tired t and hungry.

They are the reasons I lock my doors.
And click my security codes.
But I wonder sometimes.
Those locks,
those codes.
Those bars
on the windows.

Are they keeping
my sin locked in?
or stopping my
goodness and grace
from leaving
and walking the
needy streets at night.

I'm not in figedty and in perplex manner
whenever thine populace aren't in sync
onto bridging in the gaps
  that's not so befitting--
well-intentioned unique individuals
and somehow finding uniformity,
ways to connect, naturally,
--lies into thinking, sweetly,
of the welfare o' others firstly.

whilst entitled to do as
he pleases with himself
so far as it in no wise,
interferes with one's
rights to live at peace
with himself, otherwise!
in haste o' the modern-day- pressures,
is such a waste
in the Truest deepest sense,
we ought not missed eternal ideals
o' t'is' life's difficulties,
whoso, nonconformist,
mine earthly near at hand.
as we all set ourselves to bite a bit
o ' that and apiece
o' life's lion-shares
alongside pie in sky-
biting the hand that feeds us,
[ so to speak...]
for an average joe,
Suchlike give much thought....
Unbeknownst, waiting and longing
As yet benighted throughout the mooning
darknest and cloudest dilemmas
ALAS, lest alone, coincides
with dread o' e'ery dusk
smothering haziness
in love -when-it melts...
AS nightfall subsides
up the ole buttermilk sky- full o' star's twinkling - sighing and tearing apart..
unyielding enough unto my innermost
along with the falseness o' being trick
partly because o' being majestic
practically - realistic
In life's perpetual wisdom I so carry by far. .
Thereby,  we, but learned the storms o' life:
how anyone conducts-as-antagonistics?.
Pessimistics
Agnostics
solely wound up to grievous lull,
and wish to conquer undesirable
tendencies and kiss o ' death!
UPPERMOSTLY, vastly regained,
moreover, abreast-again
Oh my good gosh, it's therapuetic!
HENCEFORTH unto
picking
myself up after I have
been knocked - down-
TO KEEP on when e'erything seems to be against all odds o' the "blame game"...
back into nothing which spells boundlessly..
so can I right away pick up the pieces?

and overcome these unsettling uncertainties
o ' living life from day in and day out.
truth o ' the matter of - fact- of thine ingratitude world!
People in general get entangled
with busy-nest-web
amidst foreboding fretfulness
that unravels fleeting worries
about to and fro-
uproaring ebbs of tides
o ' the seafaring winds - blowing..
just as it is happening nowadays
up to cold-hearted - shoulders
moment full o' melancholies
thus thou,  one don't reach out
nor canst not care out and about
but just be on their own self
DOOMED himself ungrateful spirit!
seen as egotistical maniacs
contrary to my beliefs
and my faithfulness..
LET alone -Thee bestows
unceasingly triumphs
just because it's okay
not to be okay
to say the least
It's un-manly
and play- decoy
YET LIFE,
moves forward under
DIVINE CONVOY!
INASMUCH,  manipulative PLOY
to mind one's beauty
or disguise chaste morals
for the uttering dews to
injure or harm a'other
in turn to get "square even-steven"
SOWITH holds true with beguilement
think for a moment,
I'll meet that person
halfway between the lines
with patience and its silver linings. .
hasty words that slows any anger
whereforth, oblivion takes over scar!
that's luring to a smiling brood...
Imperfections are what we are made of,
Hey, the noblest prettiest
yeah, at bay with silence
I LOOK within....
First off, God on my side. ..
For He heareth at my bedside..

Within thine foundation
o ' thine goodness
Sure that ne'er fails. .
Hopefully, get rid o' the evil!
While I was dancing with the devil!
So does thereby,
wilst ever bubble up
if thou languish
to each its own rights
to dig his own heels..
and the outright layer of its color, creed,
and value from stern course o ' self-discipline,
such and such a rearrangement o' character
whom stands to live a sane contemplative state o' the mind..
launching anew,
better on higher-end
level o' spiritual
aspirations;
glamouring stance
Bestowing light to others
Sharing - LOVE for others
shouldn't be in rash,
indecisiveness,
rather, intellectually
with good reasonings,
good judgements
passed thine genial compliments,
WHEREIN, thou soled- loving-heart dwells
insofar as mere,
happy-ness-charms,
Mine thy lonesomeness
-the-soul-into - satisfying
at ease the love I deserve
hankering and longingly-
Even tho' forever-waiting
in its stillness-
I'd bewriting it down
and speak my mind
in any shape form,
aforesaid
and done
bewailing free verses,  
thus,
soul-lonest-mine swells
A LA MODE
Essentially,
at my Fervent HAVEN!

written while talking to a dear friend, Irene, who i met on my travels to Paris, and who i'm spotted with, in a photograph, by the Moulin Rouge, hunched in homage to Quasimodo, with Paul the wild haired australian.

i'm always depressed before composition
and the first whiskey to
stop me throwing up anything i might
ingest,
but then the seemingly graceless magpie
with its extended tail flies into eyesight,
then the blackbird, the crow, the seagull (huh?!
30 miles inland and a ****** seagull?)...
and then i open my eyes a second time,
take off the eyes that see lust gluttony colours
and shapes, and put on my x-ray spectacles
of looking at a white page and typing for a while...
and then a song crops up and it bothers me,
mortiis' parasite god from the album *the smell
of rain, if there is such a thing as a parasite god,
we'll be constantly thinking about it,
it will be an ontological implant of ours to
then debate whether we're atheists, theists,
gnostics or agnostics... it would be a burden, indeed
an oversized tapeworm to put it mildly -
but then the other description floating about,
the entitlement of a title, akin to prince, knight,
sir, baron or baroness or even a marquis...
the lord of hosts... and with vain attempt at sounding
in blossom of a magnolia tree attentive of courtesy,
a host is someone who contains a parasite,
why would i want to contain a parasite of thought in
me, that would necessarily sway me from denoting
myself an atheist, theist, etc.?
atheists do indeed uphold the principle stated in this
song i mentioned mortiis' parasite god;
i among the jews a parasite of the host of
ancient egypt;
i mean, they always say they're atheists or whatever,
they want that little sticker at a speed dating gathering
hello, my name is, queue (oh sorry,
Hugh), but when it comes to
defining what sort of thinking defines you as such and
such, it's vaguely satisfying to hear a presupposition label,
followed by a string of even more unsatisfying propositions,
and since i'm not a fisherman in that department,
i think i'll just stick to what i know, or at least what i think i know.

Black lives never mattered huh?

Hating on Asians is doing what for you?

Latino community. I feel your pain even more so still!

Stop stressing me about white privledge when it's all the colors
that bring life to everything that I enjoy and live for!

Never want to admit it.

HATE GOING TO WALMART!

Why we on land?

Living on a rock. Fighting over dirt!?

Whomp whomp whomp.

I probably sound like adult talking to a child

from the Peanut series. If I uninterest you.

Forgive me. My English is not perfect.
All of us were forced to make a place not meant for us home.

I refuse to become conditioned
and confined to a state of mind

Where I should withhold my opinion
or not fight for what I believe in.

Believe in your story. It holds your purpose.


When it comes to any of us.

You can listen to who you want!

Live your life. Have fun and be free!

You should take your own advice!

It's hard to hear you over the fact.

When my ideas crash into thoughts of doubt

My brain constantly screaming at my heart.

" NOBODY listens to me!"

Misunderstandings occur, it's not about what is said, it's the concept.

Our words cast spells. Let your actions take you

to great lengths to succeed and prevail!
Only so much words can do on paper or in text.

What is right?
From taking all that is left?

Holding my composure.
All behind this mask.
I'm better off anonymous
All sides of me must stay dominate
Navigate nicely through the nonsense
It feels that there is no other option but

sneezes


I'm allergic to ******* and ignorance intolerant!

I'm not religious.
I notice there's a war between Christians and Agnostics

What could a God do?
An interference could raise a universal conflict!

I do have faith in the future
Big Brother what is it now?
Our future leaders
What can we do?
Fight the system?
Do we override it?
System error. Time to reboot.
Allow me to just plea the fifth.

I understand the different between polar opposites.

All these people in control
Who's going to be the one
to BREAK THESE CHAINS?!
I'll BREAK A WALL
BEFORE I BURN A BRIDGE!
Abolish child slavery and **** culture
I NEVER SUPPORTED ANY OF THIS!


I prayed for strength and promised my future children

Before life was even given

My inner peace would benefit more than just one life.

Keep living! I'll never jeopardize anyone's security.  

Safety and love. Should be normalized.

Times have changed. People remain the same. We're
still searching for love. When it exist and it's around our essence.
Maybe, it will be our biggest struggle as humans.
==

Why you bicker about having common sense

While it's not even localized or fully utilized.

There are matters, in which myself on any degree

cannot come to terms on offering helpful hands just to compromise!

I will seek the truth in all formalized lies.

We are part of a movement on the rise

I'll live for these babies.

I'll die for these babies!

The evolution is coming.

A new wave of change

The light of a glorious star

lives more than just one!

it's now the time!

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!!!!

Food just fills the stomach
It doesn't make loneliness go away

I overate
I hardly ever do that

Oh the new movie
About "immortality"
Self/Less is out

Oh hooray for another  
Lousy Hollywood movie

I made it halfway through
The trailer

Trash, garbage
All it is

And who would want
To live forever?

Only a psychopath

People who can't
Accept the human condition

Most would be
People with no faith
No spirituality
Or belief in a higher power

I would think most
Atheists and agnostics
Would think the idea is absurd
As well

Hollywood makes garbage
Most all movies
Just plain **** these days

A roster of rotten rogues and rascals
Rapscallions and self-righteous racketeers.
Wrapped themselves in the American Flag,
Like Wicked Witches of the West in drag.
Not a whit of statesmanship in the bunch.
Hearts as black as coal, I have a hunch.
If we go by behavior, the devil is alive;
Queen bees who hate the workers in the hive.


They started with genocide of all those here,
Native Americans before the whites drew near.
They kept it up by importing a million black folks
They owned and ***** and made up ugly jokes.
In time they treated Irish and Italians the same.
Let them come here and then played a sick game.
Promises to those, the non-Europeans, were not kept.
They heaped them with bias while good Christians slept.

It has been going on forever since antiquity.
They make our fine country a den of iniquity;
When not operating from a sense of disdain
They run their show on hatred, death and pain.
They claim they work for the people, but
Most of the people can tell what is really what.
Distressingly disgusting, diabolically divisive
They do their best when citizens are permissive.

In time they decided monopolies were great.
They let those with money put up the gates
And charge those with little to pass through
To get food, water, places to live. Not new.
Old country villainy was given a new face
And soon only a few creeps owned the place.
They cheated and swindled and laughed at those
Who starved, rebelled and fought and died.
Rich children splurged on geegaws far and wide.

Soon the list of enemies grew in the mansions,
They included over half of regular American citizens:
Blacks women and poor people were told shut up.
There was not enough nectar to put into their cups.
Gays, agnostics and atheists were treated as if
They were the living minions of the Christian devil
Liberals and objections to conservatives called evil.
Anyone who had issues to the gathering of massive wealth
Was treated as a criminal who wanted to steal their wealth.

The self-righteous racketeers bought newspapers and lies
All created to be swallowed whole by the lazy and unwise
Who could not see that they bought and sold more crooks
That got into office and wrote evil laws into the books.
This is not a new game, in this computerized info age.
This is an ancient costume covering up the old outrage.
It only takes for most of us to stand by and not protest
When leaders lie, and cheat and steal and call it a jest.

The Sunday paper comes twirling out of a passenger window
Stealthy Deer are watching my Snow Peas with binoculars from a distant terrace
New Hampshire hens announce their morning eggs , Yorkshire piglets attempt to awaken , roll over instead
The Christians are off to early service , the agnostics are
working on their lawn tractors , the atheist are glued to
Good Morning America and the farmers and I have already been
up four hours

The first Holy Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Lennart Lundh, Barbara Marie Minney, and Gabriella Ercolani

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

“This is the original Church of the world's scraps.
The body of the body of the body.
Burning in the sun.
‘Me and my son were born in the sun,’ They say.
He is willing to do it.”
The Man says, in a soothing voice.

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out; filling the space like gas expanding into a cylinder.

Background chatter already fills the room with low whispers before the performance-service,
“I am happy to hear that you are safe”.
“I am not sure that you are”
“You will be missed.”

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

Mama Evil steps forward to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The Word is critiqued, modified, disputed, and changes between its members at each meeting. At any time for no reason, people can interrupt The Man to deny, confirm, suggest, or challenge his statements. The group then decides on the next bit of gospel to be made up on the spot or if what has already been said is still the current phase of perspective. There is no central thought or plan, just a plan for thoughts. We, people, call this Faith. Our membership makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. We are just people. And he, is just a Man. The only interconnecting philosophy among us is, ‘Anything is possible at any time for any reason.’”
“As the recovering Catholic Kevin Smith wrote, ‘It’s not important which faith you are, just that you have faith.’”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”

The Man explains,
“The whole point of The Word is to make up new ones. To defy God’s Word by creating ourselves.”
“Do you see the animal’s asking questions? Wondering who they are. They simply know that they are.
There are no fish in Purgatory. Only us.
The Garden of Eden is colonized by serpents
There was no place for the demons to go, but further in.”

A Hindu Yoga instructor rights himself from walking on his hands and decides to take the first initiative, “Puff the Magic Dragon says, ‘Jesus loves me, but I need to talk to a human.’”
A furry cosplayer responds, "I need to talk to a human."

A Wiccan Princess retorts, "Nature is not as inventive as she thinks she is; Neither is God"

The Man answers,
“We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word (because we question).”

“Heavy is the crown that wears the head,” says the child prince.

The Drag King quotes, “Psalms (chap.):13
You will tread on the lion and the cobra.
You will trample on the great lion and the serpent.”

"...And God teaches the cricket how to play his music," says the bookish-looking woman sitting in the corner, trailing off as she adjusts her literal Coke bottle frames.

A gym rat, wearing a holey muscle shirt, extends arm to point as he says,
“Humans begin as *******.”

“Humans are also stardust.
Which means we are golden,” replies the scientist

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” says the derelict businessman hobo hero,
“God made mud in his own image and we are the leftover **** that rose out of it.
And if all life is really God’s sacred mud, then every **** storm is God’s Wrath.”

The Man quotes T.S. Eliot,
“What are the roots that clutch. What branches grow out of this stony *******. Son of man, you cannot say or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images.”

"The grapes of wrath transmuted into the harvest of imagination,” illustrates the painter

The automaton states, “**** the earth, to make a certain sense of it all.”

The Man attempts to regain control,
“Some future digger after truth,
alien or human, kneeling with
trowel and brush at this grave,
will note in clear, careful script
the wonder that a people would
be so deliberate with the smallest
of their gods' creatures,
and so careless of themselves.”

A soccer Mom asks,
“They say I shouldn’t be so tired.
They say I should get a job.
They say I should get off this couch.
They say I shouldn’t be a blob.”

“It takes but one step to enter the grave,” says The Man.
“So much can be lost in crossing that threshold. How did your grandparents, born in separate countries, meet? Did your mother kiss your father first, or vice versa? These are questions we don't think to pose, but without the asking or other evidence, Death will redact the list of begettings. Are you prepared for that void in memory? Or have you made notes for your children to leave theirs?”

"My Dad keeps their honeymoon receipts in the family Bible,” says the Unknown.
“After Mom moved on, he would take the Bible off the shelf every evening after supper.  He would first stare at it for what seemed forever while pouring himself a huge tumbler of bourbon and lighting a huge cigar that smelled like month old underwear.  Eventually, he would open the gold clasp and raise the deeply cracked leather cover of the Bible and first look at the family history written inside the front cover in the delicate and intricate handwriting of Mom, before pulling out the well worn honeymoon receipts, which he would shuffle through like a deck of cards before spreading them out on the worn and scratched kitchen table like a kind of dead man’s hand.  Sometimes, he would weep quietly.  Other times, he would pound his fists violently on the table shaking the cans of beans and potatoes on the shelves above.  That is when I knew it was time to make myself scarce.  He never ever opened the Bible any further than the front cover, which made me wonder about the nature of the book itself.  I always pondered the same questions over and over.”  
“Is Bible a filthy word? Is it the animal? The Man, The Woman? Should we burn the book?”
“Is the Word filthy?”, asks The Man, “What are the filthy words? What are the power of Words mired in ****? Who do these words define? Who are you?”

Mama Evil commands a presence,
“****? ****? ****? *****? Broad? *****? Are these the words you use to define me? When that which defines me is the holy chalice, life's catalyst, mia figa, my ****: stand us all on our heads and we all look the same. Regardless of our skin color, or the shape of the bones in our face or the skin around our eyes or the texture of our hair, those folds of flesh, that tunnel to the precipice of the universe, that little happy happy joy joy button, these are what we all have in common and what the whole world simultaneously wants and reviles. It has that much power. A lexical reclamation is taking place. One that will lift up the collective feminine spirit instead of dragging it down to the depths of all pejoratives. ****! The taking back of all pejoratives is an essential part of the reclamation of the collective self-esteem of woman kind! She is a Hindu Goddess! She is the Roman Goddess who is the protector or newborn infants. She is cunctipotent. She is all powerful and creates and destroys the world with her blood sugar **** magic. She is the princess and savior of the Mahabharata, renowned for her hospitality, who willingly receives any traveler who requests food and lodging. She is that benevolent. Durvasas bestows upon her a powerful mantra as payment for that hospitality and with it, Princess Kunti has the power to call on any God in heaven to lie with her and she will bear a son then by the next day. When her husband is rendered sterile as punishment for shooting the Stag King as he mated with his queen, Princess Kunti bears three heirs for the kingdom. She saves the kingdom. She saves the day. She is **** magic at its finest hour and she dwells in all of us who have ever been slandered. So go on, you ignorant *******. Call me a ****. Only you in your infinite small stupidity are skint the knowledge that you have just called me a princess and a savior.”

A comic nerd asks, “What of Power? What is power?”

Mama Evil holds up a single flame, spewing from a cheap blue lighter in her hand. She asks, “What is the power of The Word.” Is it in the book? Or in the air.”

She answers, “The power to choose. Do I set the world on fire, or put out
the flames?”

The room goes dark as she abruptly steals The Man’s usual send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”

Hallowed hill birdlife from my bedroom window
My bold , fellow agnostics working hard -
on the ' Sabbath ' like any other day
Warblers and Finches with no time for play
Red headed Woodpeckers tapping away
Orpingtons , Dominiques and New Hampshires -
leading a busy parade
Bathing Geese , scratching Hens , Crows in the corn
An Egret rides the wind while a Robin feeds her young
Bluebirds on the hunt , Thrashers on the run
Jays nabbing Figs in the scorching midday Sun

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and plunder?

For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?

“And I will **** her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” (So much for grace according to Revelation 2:23, where Jesus, or someone speaking for him, vows to personally ****** children for their mother’s sins!)

Published by Lucid Rhythms, Poet’s Corner and translated into Czech by Vaclav ZJ Pinkava

Keywords/Tags: Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Jesus Christ, Bible, Revelation, mass ******, serial ******, homosexuals, harlots, hookers, prostitutes, heretics, atheists, agnostics, nonbelievers, non-Christians

Lords Temple Basement Men
The first Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Dr. Benjamin Anthony, and Ayla Atash

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence.

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

“Come in and be amongst our broken people (pieces).
Mingle with our shards.
See which cut is the deepest”

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out.
The people in the room greet one another, then swarm around one woman,
“You are a good worker.”
“You will be missed.”

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

The woman swarm, Mama Evil, pushes her way to the front to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The (holy) Word is debated, discussed, dissected, compromised, altered, changed, shredded, reused, updated, recreated. It is burnt to cinders, then rises as a phoenix, built out of the broken pieces of all that was said before; what used to be true, but is now casually agreed to be fallacy. We, people, call this Faith. Our membership makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. We are just people. And he, is just a Man.”
“Dual Spirituality is a possibility. In fact, it is encouraged. Multiple realities are possible. Poly-spirituality is acceptable. The only interconnecting philosophy among us is, ‘Anything is possible at any time for any reason’.”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”
The Man explains,
“We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word because we question.”

Let me start with a parable,
“Once upon a time…
There lived a shy little boy and a chatty little girl. Though the two lived really close they never knew each other. That was until one day, the girl entered high school. They met for the first time on the school bus. The boy eavesdropped on her and for the first time spoke to her. Although she was especially irritated, the boy responded. It was with those words that a lifelong love blossomed…
‘You love me, you just don’t know it yet.’

Through the many trials and errors of high school life they grew together. And so, They lived happily ever after.”
“…Except, she didn’t. In this reality, she ran off with a rich older man while taking care of his dying wife, 5 years after those high school sweethearts were married.”
Years later, he would lament,
“It started with a broken heart. Through the crack seeped liquid fire. It engulfed me, burning away all that I was. The flames shall purify me. Boil me down to my base components, and then rebuild me. From the ashes will rise a new entity.
Who am I?”

“What can we learn from this,” asks the Man.

The first interrupter states matter-of-factly, “You are fire. You are love.”
A tie-dyed burnout rants, “Love is fire, Man. It burns. But it also warms and protects… Praise Allah.”
“Amen.”
“Bless you my son.”
“Hail Satan.”

“The last time I hear my heart…” says the bookish-looking woman sitting in the corner, trailing off as she adjusts her literal Coke bottle frames.
Now with ignition to her words, she quotes, “The last time I hear my heart was like a galactic ******. The ****** that made you and touches everything you made. Faith is attempting to live as though we are loved.”

A Drag King high fives her and says, “I liked the galactic ******.”

A torn up, steel-studded, leather clad punk continues, “Promise me you will live…
For nothing…
But the next moment.
No forgiveness, no damnation, only the match I strike on the heel of my boot.”

And then the automaton asks, “What of the devil: the original corruptor, the source of all evil?”

A gym rat, wearing a holey muscle shirt, extends an arm to point as he half sings, “The devil is a wicked man and wears a suit and tie. The devil checked in at noon and asked us, ‘What is the sleep of reason?’ You woke the devil I thought you left behind.”

“The Devil is due; the Devils do,” coos his boyfriend, the semanticist-*******.

The Man answers, “Is not the source of evil the same as the source of creation. Is it not evil to be so selfish as to create, with no concern for how creation will change everything.”

The Wiccan Princess retorts,
“Creation can be bought and sold.
Motherhood is a commodity.
Venus is for sale.
The nativity is shrouded in black.

We've streamlined your desire.
She was only offering an apple anyways.
And filled in that hole in her heart.

Here, we give her to you totally domesticated.
This one is costly, but so worth it.

You never will be worth it.
Earn enough
Be enough

Taste the salt of her tears on your tongue;
the salt of the earth.
She refuses to wear this crown of thorns.

In the eyes of your maker.
You should be ashamed.
To look your Maker in the eyes.”

Mama Evil attempts to chill her blaze, “Dear, the Anger is caged. It is the custom to call children who go to war, men…children of war die like men.”

Their daughter, the littlest girl in the world, coughed. A runny nose explained it, she had the sniffles. Nothing to worry about normally, but here, now? Right now the end of the world was in front of her. Flying saucers were floating down to slaughter the entire world with burning laser jelly. She coughed and picked up a remote with a wheel shaped dial.
“i drank too much pop and i gotta ***.” She said to no one in particular.
She turned the wheel shaped dial and a chorus of voices sounded. The chorus formed itself into an immense wall of sound made of bureaucrats, lawyers and politicians from another dimension. The littlest girl in the world kept turning the dial and saw the bureaucrats wash over the saucers, sending them back into space. The earth was safe, the littlest girl in the world smiled in relief.
And coughed.  

“It seems where demons fail and monsters falter, angels may prevail,” her mothers laughed.

Still incinerated, a goddess queen shouts, “We are the granddaughters of the witches you failed to burn.”

The crowd jostles and pulses like a living being. They are moved by the words they have heard. A chatter rises from them, much like the midnight sounds of the forest. "Who does she think she is?" "She said it. She sure said it." "I'm going to tell Moira all about it." An old woman near the back takes a swig from a bottle of wine she carries under her coat before passing it to a young woman in front of her.
"From fire, new life is born, too," she smiles, a crooked twist of the lips.

Rendered speechless and impotent, The Man abruptly closes this meeting with the usual send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”

Epigrams II

Love is either wholly folly
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch

Civility
is the ability
to disagree
agreeably.
—Michael R. Burch

Death is the ultimate finality
and banality
of reality.
—Michael R. Burch



Original Prose Epigrams

We cannot change the past, but we can learn from it.—Michael R. Burch

Experience is the best teacher but a hard taskmaster.—Michael R. Burch

Time will tell, as it always does in the end.—Michael R. Burch

When I was being bullied, I had to learn not to judge myself by the opinions of intolerant morons. Then I felt much better.—Michael R. Burch

One man's coronation is another man's consternation.–Michael R. Burch

The most dangerous words ever uttered by human lips are 'Thus saith the LORD.' — Michael R. Burch

Hell has been hellishly overdone.—Michael R. Burch

If one burns below, what the hell is "above"?—Michael R. Burch

Teddy Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick;
Donald Trump speaks loudly and carries a big shtick.
—Michael R. Burch

Thanks to politicians like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Donald Trump, we now have a duh-mock-****.
—Michael R. Burch

As a general rule of thumb, ignore naysayers unless you agree with their criticism.—Michael R. Burch

Love is exquisite torture.
—Michael R. Burch (written after reading “It’s Only My Heart” by Mirza Ghalib)

Poetry moves the heart as well as the reason.
—Michael R. Burch



Epigram Translations

Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!

Raise your words, not their volume.
Rain grows flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, translation by Michael R. Burch

The imbecile constructs cages for everyone he knows,
while the sage (who has to duck his head whenever the moon glows)
keeps dispensing keys all night long
to the beautiful, rowdy, prison gang.
—Hafiz loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An unbending tree
breaks easily.
—Lao Tzu, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Little sparks ignite great flames.—Dante, translation by Michael R. Burch

Once fanaticism has gangrened brains
the incurable malady invariably remains.
—Voltaire, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.
—Thomas Campion, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No wind is favorable to the man who lacks direction.
—Seneca the Younger, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hypocrisy may deceive the most perceptive adult, but the dullest child recognizes and is revolted by it, however ingeniously disguised.
—Leo Tolstoy translation by Michael R. Burch

Just as I select a ship when it's time to travel,
or a house when it's time to change residences,
even so I will choose when it's time to depart from life.
—Seneca, speaking about the right to euthanasia in the first century AD, translation by Michael R. Burch

Improve yourself through others' writings, thus attaining more easily what they acquired through great difficulty.
—Socrates, translation by Michael R. Burch

Fools call wisdom foolishness.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

One true friend is worth ten thousand kin.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

Not to speak one’s mind is slavery.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

I would rather die standing than kneel, a slave.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch

Fresh tears are wasted on old griefs.
―Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch



Native American Proverb
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Before you judge
a man for his sins
be sure to trudge
many moons in his moccasins.



Native American Proverb
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux (circa 1840-1877)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.



Native American Proverb
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us walk respectfully here
among earth's creatures, great and small,
remembering, our footsteps light,
that one wise God created all.



The Least of These...

What you
do
to
the refugee
(the least of these)
you
do
unto
Me!
—Jesus Christ, translation/paraphrase by Michael R. Burch



The Church Gets the Burch Rod

How can the Bible be "infallible" when from Genesis to Revelation slavery is commanded and condoned, but never condemned? —Michael R. Burch

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

I have my doubts about your God and his "love":
If one screams below, what the hell is "Above"?
—Michael R. Burch

If God has the cattle on a thousand hills,
why does he need my tithes to pay his bills?
—Michael R. Burch

The best tonic for other people's bad ideas is to think for oneself.—Michael R. Burch

Hell hath no fury like a fundamentalist whose God condemned him for having "impure thoughts."—Michael R. Burch

Religion is the difficult process of choosing the least malevolent invisible friends.—Michael R. Burch

Religion is the ****** of the people.—Karl Marx
Religion is the dopiate of the sheeple.—Michael R. Burch

An ideal that cannot be realized is, in the end, just wishful thinking.—Michael R. Burch

God and his "profits" could never agree
on any gospel acceptable to an intelligent flea.
—Michael R. Burch

To fall an inch short of infinity is to fall infinitely short.—Michael R. Burch

Most Christians make God seem like the Devil. Atheists and agnostics at least give him the "benefit of the doubt."—Michael R. Burch

Hell has been hellishly overdone
since Jehovah and his prophets never mentioned it once.
—Michael R. Burch

(Bible scholars agree: the word "hell" has been removed from the Old Testaments of the more accurate modern Bible translations. And the few New Testament verses that mention "hell" are obvious mistranslations.)



If every witty thing that's said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!
—Michael R. Burch



Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.



Keywords/Tags: epigram humor satire religion politics love poetry hell trump democracy mrbepi mrbepig mrbepigram

Published as the collection "Epigrams II"

a hound stretches on a stoop
frozen, lacking a cadenced pant
sun splaying its last beams against
skin, warm tin and damp rigor mortis

the letch inside stammers,
retches

his yellowed nails scratch scabs
on flaking elbows
dried snakeskin platelet scales

too much residue
of asbestos and mildew, of
burnt gilded pages for heat
'cause they were of little use
to illiterate plainclothe'd sleuths

and the crows outside caw
with anemic splendor as
their ***** broods grovel


the inebriate inside
draws open dingy curtains
for the sun was finally subdued

he opens the window
to a finicky drizzle

and was interrupted by horse & buggy
and the tangling of her rosettes
transfixing voracious, beady eyes
as objects of interest phased out of view

we heard all this through the grey horseshoes
trudging through forgotten alleyways
all too loud and dramatic


we watched from fog outside
the ****** tavern where they drank
blood straight from the stomachs of lampreys
downing life, agnostics proudly clapped, with
death and decay on a parsley'd dinner plate

lingering in the hospital waiting room
for an embellished platter of viscera
to fill vacancies, with burnt rot
with a sterile, surgical tang
and jagged accoutrements
all are gorging lovingly,
already anticipating dessert

each solitary phantasm of a person, slouching in booths, on stools
smirks knowingly at the song that's now playing on the a.m. radio
while positioning their utensils, scooping, filling cavernous maws

and they all smiled
as their eyes gasped
as those outside
chipped their teeth
on rusted forks, and sighed

the dead ounce of liveliness failed to
take hold of its slouching bags of bones
and the coyote howled at the sound of the siren curfew

so listen carefully to the inflection of static hissing
the joyful crackle of disembodied voices

Lords Temple Basement Men
The first Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, John A. Kinney Jr., and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Eli Williams, and Kadie Good

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence.

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

"God not only loves a sinner, he prefers them.”
“Come to my parish. Sinners only”
“The lostness of the found, the blindness of the seeing, the spirituality of the atheist, the silence of the spoken.”
“The Covenant of the Sacred Heart.”

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. Some newbie looks nervously into the stairwell.
From the rear, a maternal voice coos,
“You will be used to the treatments.
Don't worry about it.”
They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out; filling the space like gas expanding into a cylinder.

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

The maternal voice steps up to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The Word is critiqued, modified, discussed, and changes between its members at each meeting. At any time for no reason, people can interrupt The Man to deny, confirm, suggest, or challenge his statements. The group then decides on the next bit of gospel to be made up on the spot or if what has already been said is still the current phase of perspective. There is no central thought or plan, just a plan for thoughts. We, people, call this Faith. Our membership makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. Dual Spirituality is a possibility. In fact, it is encouraged. Multiple realities are possible. Poly-spirituality is acceptable. The only interconnecting philosophy among us is, ‘Anything is possible at any time for any reason’.”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”

The Man explains,
“The whole point of The Word is to make up new ones. To defy God’s Word by creating ourselves.”

The first interrupter asks, “How do you say No to God.”

The Man answers,
“You don’t like The Question. You are The Question.
We are relearning how to get lost, hoping to return to the birth of The Word.
Worship yourself and serve only humanity.
No one made you.
You created yourself.
It’s all the same story. The Story of I.”

“We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word (because we question).”

“How do you say No?
You don’t.
By understanding there is no such thing as,
No, I can’t. Only I won’t.
It was.
It is.”

A torn up, steel-studded, leather clad punk responds,
“we see others as they are
we see ourselves at every age
and all at once”

And the Man once again responds,
“All that we can think. All that we can imagine. All that we can write, paint, create, feel. All of this is real; somewhere. Depends on which universal perspective you are tuned to. Don’t like the current program playing. Change the channel.”

The professor sitting on the floor, shoeless, begins to riff,
“Yes, this is like that piece about imagination being the genesis of other worlds. About how imagination, all thought, is really tapping multiple frequencies from other universes. Our imaginative creations spawn, tap into, and play back all alternate universes in a non-linear time sense. Cause and effect are not in sequence. All that we think, all that we can come up with creates new worlds, but also accesses those already in effect and plays them. We create worlds that already existed by the time we come up with them in our imagination. They were already there and human minds are organic quantum analog receiving-broadcasting devices. We randomly switch channels with nonlinear frequency, simultaneously, and with varying signal strengths of each universe. We receive, but also feedback into a greater signal. So, we unknowingly create these universes, while also being fed from our own creations. Never, in order. We are the Father and the Son. Our own creators and creations. Our words are the genesis of all the other worlds, but also speak the gospel of the programs already in progress. All that we can imagine is as real as we can conjure.”

A black goddess queen asks, “Then, what do you call God?”

The Man retorts,
“You don't need his name, because you remember the man.
The idea of a memory of a man.
Perhaps the idea is better, stronger, more important than the man.
The idea of a man.
Sometimes, people are the absence of themselves.
And the absence of man is God.”

The semanticist-******* unzips its mask and chimes in, “When you name something you separate it and take ownership of it. We never name ourselves. So I ask you, what is your name? What do you own?”

A tie-dyed burnout rallies a battle cry protest chant,
“Who's the Boss?”
“You.”
“Who's God?”
“You.”
“Who are you?”
“I am (me).”

Another voice screams from the crowd, "I'm a monster, I admit it."

Like a rolling wave, the chatter once soft, “I’m a monster” becomes a chant. Faster and faster the adrenaline rises up, the voices rise up, thunderous shouting fills the room, threatening to burst through the walls and escape into the sky. No longer fearing what others might think they raise their fists and beat their chests, unleashing the monster they tried so hard to hide. Shrieks and guttural instinctual roars, animalistic crawling and seething anger, move through the crowd like a pack of wolves ripping apart a coyote.
The screaming voices spill out,
“God has left long ago and has taken no pity on the lonely wanderer.”
“We are not Abraham or Jesus. We are forgotten.”
“We are the forgotten demons pushed out of Heaven.”
“Or maybe we never belonged there in the first place.”

The maternal voice returns, feeling the scorch of the unrequited emotion, seeks to soothe, “Thus mollified she goes, harsh words forgiven, down highways in the dark by demons driven.”

The Man, the original instigator, adds more fuel to the fire,
“And what drive does she possess that we do not?  To seek out, to be blind to the trapping of the darkness within this corridor? We must look and see how we too can move past the shame and blame of others.  To move past the trappings of our own guilt.  To take within ourselves, our demons, true, but take and guide and build the new.  A new life that we can’t ignore, and when we fall, we feel the scorn.  We feel the bad faith and lies that keep us entangled in the want-to-be-with, the fear to be-without. But we also have a fear to be, to exist in the place of a true “self” and live out our dreams. Though time keeps happening, we remain stagnant, we remain in the place of an inauthentic being, a being-for, not a being-with.  We must seek to be-with.  To be-with our demons, our past, and our temptations toward the dark, toward the place in which the I becomes.  To be. To exist. In this.  That is the place where the divine can breathe.  Though we must remember to always embrace change, for everything is temporary, including our own pain.”

Having spent all his feeling and words carelessly and frivolously, The Man abruptly closes this meeting with the usual send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”

A Christmas Carol

the year 35AD

The Romans had crucified him.
But he was just a baby in his mother's arms.
They had gone out to see the spectacle of the man from Judea.
He was to be crucified a horrible death designed to control the people.
It worked there was no worse death known hanging for hours and days
Until the cramp stopped the heart.
He went past them in the crowd
The little boy wept
He stepped and the Roman soldier flogged his naked boy.
But as he got up just before the hill at Calvary
He stopped and dropped the heavy wooden cross
He kissed the baby on his head and pulled a sliver of wood from the heavy bloodstained crucifix he carried.
The whip cut his back but he did not flinch.
You are chosen he said.
My father calls your name.
Take this wood and bring his flock to his home.
The mother took the sliver it was bloodstained.
And sewed it into the baby's cloths.
It was in the leather coat she had made for him
And a light glowed from his head like a halo
Your name is love he said
And then they killed him.


2001
New York
Christmas was around the corner just a few days left
But she had no joy no spirit no belief.
She did not want the miracle for her
It was for the little girl.
At three she was dying
not even the Christmas trees lighting would she see.
They were rich full of modern worldly goods
A big house a rich husband
And cars vacation homes.
You are so lucky her friends said.
But she would have given everything away
To save her baby from the ravages of leukemia.
She held her close
the hospital sent her home
It's days they said just days.
She wrapped the little girl in a soft warm blanket.
And tucked her into the stroller.
Her husband held her arm tight for her support.
They walked to the lighting of the Christmas tree.
Looking for a bright moment to show their child
Before she slipped away from them into oblivion.
They were agnostics non believers of any religion.
Just a cheap way to control the masses said her husband.
She noticed in agreement.
What kind of god allows a beautiful baby to die.
At the center the tree was decorated
But not yet lit.
A boys choir were humming softly
Oh! Holy night it was beautiful.
A young boy his voice still unbroken sang beautifully
In a soprano voice that would pass into oblivion
the next year just like her little girl.
Then she felt someone push against her
It was a very old man.
He looked poor and lost.
She felt in her purse and gave him a hundred dollar bill.
Eat something this Christmas
she said kindly not knowing why.
He pulled a little leather coat
from under his ragged overcoat.
Place this on the child she needs his warmth.
The first snowflakes dropped from heaven
Perhaps to welcome her child to heavens doors.
Seeing no harm she put the coat on her baby.
She saw the child smile her cheeks flushed pink.
She held her arms out
But it was to the old man
He kissed her head?
What is your name
she asked the old man
is Abraham my lady
Abraham Love.
The lights exploded in a mirage of colors.

Fifteen years later she walked to the soup kitchen
The poor were congregated to escape the cold of the new York winter
A poor homeless lady held her baby in her arms she was crying
What's the matter honey the pretty young  girl said
It's my daughter she is dying.
Her heart is not working
and she will be dead by Christmas.
The young woman opened
her large carry all purse
And took out a small jacket
Put this on her she said.
It will keep out the winter's chill.
And it did wonders for me as a child I am told.
The woman looked at girl.
Silent night was playing softly and sweetly
from the salvation army brass band.
Who are you ?
what's your name she asked?
I am Jenny Williams ma'am.
But I changed my name to
Jenny Love.

Christmastime was lurking at
The corner of the street,
Just waiting for the 25th.,
It tried to be discreet.
It didn’t want to force itself
On Muslims or on Jews,
On atheists, agnostics, or
On skepticism views.

It checked on all the homes that hung
Their holly in the hall,
Dressed up their trees with mistletoe
Hung greetings on the wall.
It wants us to be jolly
It’s a giving time of year,
Of gifts of Roses Chocolates,
And cartons full of beer.

For Christmastime is such a gift
To every creed and race,
It doesn’t have the time to check
On every scowling face,
For all of those believers it’s
The birthday of their Lord,
The one and only saviour
With the favour of his word.

So think on Christmas morning
Of the Lord and of his grace,
Watch emerging little children with
A smile on every face,
And kiss all your beloved ones
Standing by the Christmas tree,
So that Christmas won’t be lurking
At the birth of Jesus C.

David Lewis Paget

The first Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, Cat Russell, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Mitch James, Ellie St. Cyr, and Evan Spooner

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence.

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

“But when your empty heart is weighed”
"What are you really worth?
These people call this Faith,
bring them to my table
the next bit of gospel
I wrote on a napkin”

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out.
The people in the room greet one another, then swarm around one woman,
“You will be used to the treatments.”
“I am not sure that you are.”
“You will be missed.”

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

Princess Mommy steps up to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The (holy) Word is debated, discussed, dissected, compromised, altered, changed, shredded, reused, updated, recreated. It is burnt to cinders, then rises as a phoenix, built out of the broken pieces of all that was said before; what used to be true, but is now casually agreed to be fallacy. This Faith makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. We are just people. And he, is just a Man.”
“As the recovering Catholic Kevin Smith wrote, It’s not important which faith you are, just that you have faith.”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”

“I am the mask wearing the man of eternity. In me, you see the face of history. A history we make up as we go.
The God of fallen leaves, leaves us... waiting for eternity to begin.
The Prophet Vonnegut says, ‘The question echoes back through time and disappears.
History. Read it and weep.
Tonight is a verb.”

From the crowd come the First voice, reading from his screenplay, "I was the table of contents, a footnote... running away from the beginning of the book. Perhaps no one knew we were living happily ever after until the book was over."

The Mallrat replies,
“Of all the words of Mice and Men the saddest words are ‘It Might’ve been.’
No need to despair
It was
It has
Somewhere else
Your soul is saved
All that Might’ve has already happened. ‘

“We are charming little liars,” retorts The Man, “We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word.”

The comic nerd slowly whispers, “All is truth, but every man is a liar. Sell me another artificially-derived slow suicide.”

A scientist cleans his glasses as he recites, “A world full of smoke and mirror nonsense -
It’s a religion of smoke and mirror nonsense
Only The Word is true and we make it up as we go.
In Nonsense is strength”

“So it is spoken, so it is true,” The Man energetically agrees.

An alien voice asks choppily, “Touch me
if you want to
believe in me
and the nothing I know”

“Sing the praises of the Holy Unknowing,” croons The Man, “We know nothing, therefore, we know all.”

And then, he drops into a haiku,


A bi-gender beauty asks no one (for permission), “Let me sling a little freestyle verse,

I'm steeple chased because some animal church wants to make me foxtrot in tempo with the braying boy
Pinnochio wants to make me hog its slops like Pigpen McSomething grateful and dead.
A fountain of youthful talent chemically imbalanced.
...with a grey skull full of He-man."

"Look at him!" they say.
"Give him a gun!" says another.
"A bomb!" a third spurts.
"Shows us your trigger finger!" they yell.

"My little boy," Princess Mommy whispers below the rush of gruff voices, her words staccato.

They answer her, "So I CAN taste the infernal darkness,” as the crowd falls silent

Princess Mommy chides them, “We know there is a sweetness in that which we cannot see. We know there is danger in that which we cannot hear.
Our bodies shake, our minds quake in anticipation of his words. It is almost time.”

The Man speaks again.
"Surely it is known, my brethren, that we are the Third Coming, the Breaking of the Seventh Seal that will signal the end of our oppressors. When we emerge victorious from the fires of battle, there will be no value left in the binary. No twos, only two or more. The Old Ways shall perish. We will shake off the chains, pull out the nails from our hands and feet, and the world which rejected us will rise anew under our leadership. Surely, it is known. Surely, it has been spoken. Jesus themself is at our back, and therefore we shall not fail."

“What a wealthy country, but no one’s coming to pay my bail,” sings the rainbow man, “They’re bragging they own my soul.”

"I don't want to bother anyone with my prayers,” prays the bi-gender person, secretly proud of leading the riot.

Sensing it is time to take to the streets, The Man closes the meeting with the same send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”

Revolution now absconded , buried in lies
Period heroes covered in bird **** , cold green copper effigies
D.C. wannabes , robots packin' protected heat , militarized police working the crime scenes , when agents of change patrol the pink
dogwood streets , martial law is thawing in their sink
A bottle of gin to cure the alcoholic
Sun setting pyre for the agnostics
Who's above little me
Who in the **** believes they're commanding
me