Roses fall, silent;
In moonlight, like pouring rain.
On the leaves, dew hangs

you’re a snuggler
a tangler
a logistical link of limbs
that end up intertwining with mine

you kick me over some of the duvet
in the gentlest of gestures
and fester in the filth of your little sister’s linen
as the full moon sheds shame on our backsides.

but as the sun scowls through the window
that frames the four post
you wrap yourself in the sheets
like a sushi roll of biscuited bitterness

you natter to the bedbugs
the only ones who’ll listen to your curses
whilst me?
I’m basking in the warmth of a Sunday scandal.

I must report the passing of a dear old friend today
I'm not sure when it happened, but I felt I had to say
That the Vegas that's in movies, books, and on TV
Is not the one that you will find, it's not the one you'll see
I know your expectations are of glitter and of lights
Of singers in the lounges that play into the night
The lounges now are empty of the singers and the bands
Instead they're full of djs, and bad magicians badly tanned,
The song that was Las Vegas is not one thats in your head
The one you know with Elvis, is now gone, you see it's dead
The old hotels are gone now, It's not like it was before
The new buzzword in Vegas is now just, MORE, MORE, MORE
It's now a culture aimed at being bigger than the rest
For now it seems that bigger, means you're now known as the best
There's hotels full of bedbugs and the service is the *****
But, the casino doesn't care if there are people in the pits
The strip is nearly two miles long, and almost half is blank
It's like the desert opened up and ten casinos sank
At one end is the Stratosphere, it's got a real cool view
But, because of it's location it's not easy to get to
The Sahara was next closest, but now the Lady's gone
And to walk from this tram stop at night, well I cannot say it's fun
It's dingy and it's ***** and it's not a place to be
I wouldn't recommend this part, it's not a place to see
Freemont Street, The Old Vegas is off the beaten path
It's an hour ride upon the bus, and a taxi...do the math
It's just a place to go to once, there's no reason to return
And if you ever visit here, I think that's what you'll learn
The middle part of the strip is glitzy and spread out
It's kind of close to what Las Vegas is about
It's not all geared to people who have childeren all in tow
These ultra cool casinos is where you might just want to go
The other end is busy, but it's full of gloom and doom
And on every single corner, you can get girls to your room
There's people handing out small cards with women with a price
Who'll come up to your room and well....let's say they don't play dice
On every bridge across the strip, there's beggars and there's hawkers
They're selling everything from cds to bottled dollar water
It's tourist town, a fast food mess, it's Disneyland on crack
There's lots of things to do down here, but you must always watch your back
Did The Mirage **** it?, when Steve Wynn said let's go really huge
Hotels like this were ten times larger than the Moulin Rouge
It wasn't when Hughes came to town and bought the Desert Inn
You know the land that's now the new home of the casino known as Wynn?
It didn't die when Elvis left, it sill was full of life
But at someime since the town has died, it has fallen on the knife
The strip itself is two miles long, but you know that that's not all
In the years since Elvis left, it's become a big strip mall
There's stores here selling plastic , and the people shop in streams
I'm not sure, but to me NIKE is not the Vegas in my dreams
Rolling in their graves, I bet the stars who made this town
Are sitting in heaven or hell, saying when did it go down
There's more shows now of tribute acts and hypnotists galore
And you can find a Circus from Quebec through nearly every hotel door
At some point rigor mortis set into this old girl
I wish they could revive her, at least give it a whirl
There's buffets selling fried foods, obesity....my lord
And if you don't go out to Denny's, the restaurants you can't afford
My mind has got an image of Vegas that is cool
It involves going out late and spending daytime at the pool
You dress to go to dinner, maybe dancing and a show
And the concierge at the hotel is someone you should know
But now, you go out shopping to the outlet in the day
The casinos are all empty, since there's no one left to play
Getting dressed to go to dinner, means you switch from shorts to jeans
And the ways some people act now, well it's borders on obscene.
So, today I'd like to ask you all, for you may know more than I
But, can anybody tell me, just when did Vegas die?

In the burning right hand of the bald city,
denizens frame calories and count instagram blessings
while beacons of hope refund inspiration in USADA *** cups.

Abyssinian maids wail over yesterday lovers
who wore Ginsberg’s skirt with less  pizzazz
and watched bedbugs **** blood off knee caps
wondering, what if Jesus Christ drove a Nissan?

As bullets of paragraphs fall Vietnamese pesticides on my head,
The dusts off my breath sing homilies
With letters of broken leather whiskey,
For even in the most dishonest jest,
clandestine toothbrushes are overrated
and every first false lie is the only truth.

There are bedbugs in my head
And they are singin your song.
I don't know if we're dead
So for now I'll sing along.

"Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that festering hole."
Then he bit me in the buttocks and took over my soul.
Fire woman, you of the ancient flame, you
of the Bunsen burner, you of the candle,
you of the blast furnace, you of the barbecue,
you of the fierce solar energy, Mademoiselle,
take some ice, take come snow, take a month of rain
and you would gutter in the dark, cracking up your brain.

Mother of fire, let me stand at your devouring gate
as the sun dies in your arms and you loosen it's terrible weight.



2. ANGEL OF CLEAN SHEETS

Angel of clean sheets, do you know bedbugs?
Once in the madhouse they came like specks of cinnamon
as I lay in a choral cave of drugs,
as old as a dog, as quiet as a skeleton.
Little bits of dried blood. One hundred marks
upon the sheet. One hundred kisses in the dark.
White sheets smelling of soap and Clorox
have nothing to do with this night of soil,
nothing to do with barred windows and multiple locks
and all the webbing in the bed, the ultimate recoil.
I have slept in silk and in red and in black.
I have slept on sand and, on fall night, a haystack.

I have known a crib. I have known the tuck-in of a child
but inside my hair waits the night I was defiled.



3. ANGEL OF FLIGHT AND SLEIGH BELLS

Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll's kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act--that lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the ****.
Angels of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the drreams I prefer,

stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world's bicycle goes by.



4. ANGEL OF HOPE AND CALENDARS

Angel of hope and calendars, do you know despair?
That hole I crawl into with a box of Kleenex,
that hole where the fire woman is tied to her chair,
that hole where leather men are wringing their necks,
where the sea has turned into a pond of *****.
There is no place to wash and no marine beings to stir in.

In this hole your mother is crying out each day.
Your father is eating cake and digging her grave.
In this hole your baby is strangling. Your mouth is clay.
Your eyes are made of glass. They break. You are not brave.
You are alone like a dog in a kennel. Your hands
break out in boils. Your arms are cut and bound by bands

of wire. Your voice is out there. Your voice is strange.
There are no prayers here. Here there is no change.



5. ANGEL OF BLIZZARDS AND BLACKOUTS

Angle of blizzards and blackouts, do you know raspberries,
those rubies that sat in the gree of my grandfather's garden?
You of the snow tires, you of the sugary wings, you freeze
me out. Leet me crawl through the patch. Let me be ten.
Let me pick those sweet kisses, thief that I was,
as the sea on my left slapped its applause.

Only my grandfather was allowed there. Or the maid
who came with a scullery pan to pick for breakfast.
She of the rols that floated in the air, she of the inlaid
woodwork all greasy with lemon, she of the feather and dust,
not I. Nonetheless I came sneaking across the salt lawn
in bare feet and jumping-jack pajamas in the spongy dawn.

Oh Angel of the blizzard and blackout, Madam white face,
take me back to that red mouth, that July 21st place.



6. ANGEL OF BEACH HOUSES AND PICNICS

Angel of beach houses and picnics, do you know solitaire?
Fifty-two reds and blacks and only myslef to blame.
My blood buzzes like a hornet's nest. I sit in a kitchen chair
at a table set for one. The silverware is the same
and the glass and the sugar bowl. I hear my lungs fill and expel
as in an operation. But I have no one left to tell.

Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rose on the rocks of Rockport.
Once I sunbathed in the buff, all brown and lean,
watching the toy sloops go by, holding court
for busloads of tourists. Once I called breakfast the sexiest
meal of the day. Once I invited arrest

at the peace march in Washington. Once I was young and bold
and left hundreds of unmatched people out in the cold.

I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.
It makes me anxious, and it’s not only the chemical interaction.
Somehow, I associate it with “adulthood”—reading the news,
Drinking coffee—I can’t tell you how many days of the last few
Years have been spent entirely in this fashion. The coffee
Growing cold and the news colder still. I don’t even taste the
black, fluid drops. I don’t hear the screams of people I read
about. I just want to hold on to something—so I raise the glass
to my lips. I can’t say

the shocking words when my mouth’s full; I can’t tell

about my experience, my privilege, when I’m drinking it.


The production of the commodity

creates a line from some equatorial region
to central America, and my mouth.
I think about the Autumn I worked in a corn-seed
sorting facility. What a short experience—
and yet,
something that weighs heavy on my imagination.
I was a temp worker.
I chose to work there out of shame and guilt for having
missed the deadline for college enrollment.
I could have done anything else; but there were people
there who wanted nothing more than a job. They needed
to be
there.
And I think of the people involved in producing coffee beans

in much the same way.
Removed
from the thing they’re making, as the raw materials are shipped
to places you pay workers more.
Why shouldn’t I swallow with difficulty when faced with the pro-
spect of a person supporting their entire family with the type
of work
I did
reflexively, as a choice?

Now I sit here, reading about North African riots,
a region, where coffee is produced—
ARABICA COFFEE— and I think about what’s sitting
in my cup, how I have
spent more money than they make in a day
to buy
one container
…
and sit here
for an afternoon
doing nothing but reading about their families’ misery.

I am a human parasite.

And like the bedbugs that have crawled meticulously
between my mattress and bedframe, hiding in a safe spot
until they can come out, undetected, and **** my potency.

I sit here, in the comfort of an apartment furnished
and paid for by my father who grows corn in a highly-
mechanized, agricultural society. I take more and more,
festering to the size of a blistering, red dot
blinking in the dark, in the form of the record light on
my voice recorder.
I expect so much more from myself, simply because of
this position of luxury.

But I don’t take time to think about my reaction to these
stories or how I am involved in them, in shaping their plots.
I’m even eating more now
as I’ve nearly lost my concern with avoiding certain super-
markets.
I smile at the greeters, make small talk with the cashiers
whom I am openly exploiting. But it’s ok, because
I worked for a month at a cornseed manufacturing
facility
and I read Marxist Ideology,
and I know about the Arab Spring
and I was against American intervention in Libya
and I disdain the air strikes from robotic planes
(unauthorized by congress)
and I disdain congress
and I support gay marriage
(I stopped eating chicken).
I don’t drive to the suburbs of my city.
I walk and ride my bicycle as much as I feel like.
I use public transportation at times.
I try to get to know women.
I practiced safe ***, once.
I write poetry.
I tell my mom I love her.
I bought my nieces birthday presents.
I’m not overly nice to people of different
ethnicities.
I voted for Obama.
I’m trying.
All these things make it seem less bad
to smile at the cashier.
But then I think about my black studies Professor
who used a walker to come to class
because she fell
and spelled the word Amendment “Admendment”
on the board when talking about Reconstruction.
I think about the war in Syria.
I think of people dying from cholera in Haiti, in 2012
A.D.
I think about fracking and oil spills and …
irrevocable damage to Indian reservations.
I think about football coaches molesting children
and people eating fried butter.
I read about people
upset
with a movie
who protest in the streets for days.

It makes me realize I shouldn’t smile at anyone.
I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.

If bedbugs become  pets~ is there a possibility~someone is spending to much time in the sack~and not stepping out into what the Real World~ "Offers Up"~even tho the Bedbugs seem more friendly.....   If you Cry over White onions~why cry over the Red one ? ?      Turkeys Trot to a dance taught by man~Pretending to be foxes~always close  to the tail .    A Truly honest man~Would~Not be believed~if it weren't for the Falsehoods that Truly exist ! !   Staples when firmly pressed~Usually hold things together~SO_What makes these staples unworthy of being served up at dinner ?    Ever think about yard sticks? ~  and How Come your neighbors don't have any sticking up~   and your the only one that meets the measure. . .      POE only hinted at the torment of Modern  man~Stories in Stupors don't find the center of the heart~ Unless they are really experienced . .   It's sorta like being poured  into a Landfill~But like a Good Cork~You can't seem to sink all the way~Your head just bobbing above~and continually being that ready target~as additional waste'PILES AROUND ! !    It's like walking into a familiar room~But as you turn on the light switch~you discover~that you are now the "Stranger"~in a strange place. .     Life  is like a Trampoline~casting ones thoughts up and down for review~NOT considering that some may be actually measuring the values presented.  . *The *Broken heart of a man'who loves the woman who opened that door~ May Never be receptive to repair~NOT ENOUGH PARTS LEFT ! !    As the Lights "Come-On"~ it's like being at the Helm of the 'TITANIC" ~ assured that all others are off safely~AND~ the Shaking of Life Begins .......

We are what we think,             are we not what we see, 
  hanging-tight to that which is thought        to be known.
   Remember the span of time before a       Christmas when it is
     spend, spend, spent.    Now home, cooking, but not happily.
      How many, hopeless, long for the clean-up and swallow
        quick, choosing a later *******-of-the-mind
           rather than a mastication in the now.

The happy full of bliss, fooling self and others, 
  the sad grief hidden.                     Grieving a earlier time when all
    felt good only all being false memory.  Nostalgia. Vagueness,
      holding a bad hand, bluffing in dark glasses.  Chips all-in                                      

The trees that fill the Amazon toppling,     animals and humans
  scatter like roaches missing the boat.           Wishing to the last,
    to conquer the earth. Hoping to be the longest living the life
      of riley, imagining a greatness, a false feeling, a well meaning,
        fooling dream.

The motel rented, a mattress, home to blood-******* ticks,
  hitch-hiking home to invest in an I who believe to be blessed to
    travel. Who's the sucker? Who is the free-bird hanging in the air?
      God clothes in love sublime, feeding those bits of spirit eaten
        with chop sticks and plum sauce, the meal sliding down the
          Cross to be met with intestinal fortitude. (if only)
            Wits in terminal tumultuous slavery.
            
I am Blue, I am not so new, I am the 'egg-man', I am me, I am you
striving to come-together over what to do.       I offer to the poor
   deciding who is worthy and them do I bless with coinage or
     paper taking no receipt for taxing relief. Taking no time or
       courage to meet that one God put in my path, in my face.

No time is the right time. No time hung on the pale-blue wall.
  No time clung to the wrist. No time on the bed-side table.
    No time in the machine that queues robotically.
      Compressed time, an eternal 'now' passed over, missed.
        A sad time in want of a glad time. A bad time's visitation in a
          hallow human shell. Cold. Cold and lonely in Winter's dark.

A home-run hit clear out of Fenway Park, bouncing off the
  windshield of the car you had earlier parked. Looted life, stolen
    goods? Goods!        What good are goods if they be more weight
      that  can be carried.

Parading down the narrow street twilling a baton,
  knee action bending, a goose-stepping military follows.
    For the love of a
     God I live in, free me from this charade. Hold up that Holy day,
       when all creation lay at my feet. Dominion missed,
         an ego with a twisting, a devil in those mathematical details.
           Pressed hard in the cranium, controlling a baton, stared upon
             by shivering parents and children rushing,
               gathering candies thrown from floats
          
Insects who would have one day rule the world become food for
animals with a human mind and a weaken soul. Feasting. Recipe's
   abound, bugs for breakfast, bugs for lunch, Haggis eaten in dark
    Wintery five o'clock nights. Insects prepared in the most curious
      ways.

Cockroaches, bedbugs and me.

I've shot a hundred rabbits
Made of a gun of dodgy habits
Saw the sky and couldn't grab it
Made a net and tried to catch it
But like a soaring eagle,
Beauty only wants to be free
So I'll just head on home,
Lay down in my bedroom and sleep

Bed bugs and butterflies
Been stuck inside my eyes
Can't seem to see just why
I haven't learnt to fly
Guess I've just learnt to sleep with
Little creatures blocking my view
Rain droplets drizzle down,
Whilst I still dream of you

I dream of rainy mornings,
Cool clouds and daylight dawning,
Sweet sounds of robins calling
Tip-taps of raindrops falling
I know it's somewhere out there
Like its been waiting for me
I see it in my window,
I see it in the trees

http://youtu.be/RGFytiWwsRo
(this is a link to a video that I created for this poem)
Ridgewood (Where We Wait)
We take the most delicious train
to the Queens-Brooklyn border to get here
Where everything is liminal, uncertain, undecided
Even the foundation, Arbitration Rock, at the house on Onderdonk
Was buried for centuries, dug up, and chucked on another imaginary line
The streets are on a grid, and the border on a diagonal
making a stair-stepping hypotenuse of the confused
A challenge to put your time to good use
even on the oz-like yellow brick road on Stockholm
You hear Poles on the street muttering “Marnowanie mojego
czasu tutaj” through the bachata dripping
from the apartments above the stores on Fresh Pond Road

Two of the best restaurants in the boroughs
Rosa’s pizza and Zum Stammtisch mark
the north and south borders of the hill where we wait  
During the seventy-seven riots, Ridgewood
seceded from her stepsister, broke from Boswijk and Breuckelen
-
There’s racism here like carbon monoxide smoke:
at the Ridgewood Y, a man sweats through his shirt
revealing swastikas pierced through the skin underneath
and the Romanian dentist down the street drilling
says “Cred ca am pierd timpul meu aici”
through the machinery scream and burning enamel
she won’t say this if you understand what she means

Walking past the 99 cent stores and the pharmacies,
remembering that there is good, fast, and cheap
But you can only have two of them at the same time,
Crazy Loretta, under her navy knit woolen hat
in her pink sweatsuit and winter coat, smokes
her shaking hand-rolled cigarettes below the train
trestle grinning with her jaw-jutting through
her inch thick specs.  She waggles her chicken bone fingers
saying, “Hiya honey” when you walk by.
If you are brave enough to stop and talk to her,
she’ll tell you that her nephew plays
for the Texas Rangers and her daughter
is a doctor and she’ll probably give you bedbugs
She’ll tell you, fascinated, like a child: “when you squish them - the blood comes out”
She’ll tell you the same thing tomorrow - Loretta forgets.  
In her mind, a phrase like green smoke from her youth
Ich glaube, ich bin meine Zeit hier

The playgrounds are packed with children
practicing how to swear, the girls huddled
reading Twilight like the Bible, and the boys
huddled reading the girls like the Bible
A woman yells to her son to come home a third time
and mutters “Creo que estoy perdiendo mi tiempo aquí”

Buried in Machpelah Cemetary less than a mile from my house,
is the place Houdini is still staging his greatest escape
He has a wide audience.  Sometimes I think there are more dead
residents of Ridgewood than living ones.  The cemeteries stretch
the borders of the appropriate spilling into Christ
the King high school’s front lawn.  Driving Cypress Hills street,
the Manhattan skyscrapers rise looking tomb-toothed parallaxed and
blurry through ephemeral sepulchres, stones, and cement angels pointing at the sky

On one of the stones it says simply: Videor perdo temporis hic
I think we are wasting our time here.

Well, I'm the real thing, baby
I'm the talk of the town
and I'm the one that you taste
when her tongue's in your mouth
and I'm the dirt on your hands
that will never come clean
I'm the bleach that you drink
I'm the stains on your sheets

Well, I'm the blisters screaming
every time that you touch
and I'm the ache that keeps you up at night
the sick you stomach
caught in your throat, you can smell me
I'm the plaque on your teeth
you know there's something in the way you gag
that says you love me

And I'm your bedbugs, baby
I'm that itch that you scratch
you get me caught under your fingernails
I spread to your mask
I'm your disease now, sugar
sickly sweet on your breath
so sweat me out
I'm the fever that you'll never forget

Well, I'm the real thing, baby
I'm that crutch that you lust
and I'm the limp and the cramp
when you're trying to run
I'm your infection, honey
your point-oh-eight percent
you see, I go down easy
and you won't feel regret

And I'm your fleas now, sugar
crawling under your skin
you watch me hatch, I'm starving
baby, feed me again
I'm the body writhing
in antibiotic
swallow me whole, my darling
take it slow, I'll act quick

I'm the rash on your skin
I'm the dust in your eye
I'm the hole in the ground
you tried to crawl back inside
I'm the womb, I'm the host
a parasite with a twist
I'm the maggots crawling in the wound you cut
I'm the stitch

And I'm the ashes burning
on the soles of your feet
I'm the sliver stuck under your skin
you tried to lick clean
I'm the scars on your back
the needle mark on your vein
I'm every thought you'll ever have
I hope you'll have me again

'Cause I'm your bedbugs, baby
I'm that itch that you scratch
I'm caught up underneath your fingernails
and under your mask
I'm your disease, you chose me
muttered under your breath
so sweat me out
I'm the fever that you'd love to forget

My dad sleeps with A teddybear and i wonder why.  He's a construction worker and a pretty tough guy. He's a real man because I've never seen him cry.

He takes me to my games and when the cheers go up... he's always the loudest one. I was taught that winning is cool...but it's more important to have some fun.

Just me and my dad....I really love that guy. He's my hero and my star.....he said to be successful in life....You must be true to who you are.  I'm a poet/writer....but enough about me.....let's go back to my dad and his teddy.

My friend came over afterschool .....we were playing the game ....doing the things that kids do.  He said I'll be right back I'm going to the bathroom.

Upon his return his face had this worried look.  At first he tried to pass it off as a joke....but he failed the test.  It was obvious that he had something he needed to get off his chest.

On the way back downstairs I passed your father's room and I saw a disturbing sight.  I swore he was clutching a teddybear and holding it tight.....I hope he didn't let the bedbugs bite.  He began to laugh out loud....but i didn't find it funny.  I felt violated like pooh stealing the bees honey.

I tip toed up the stairs because this mission required stealth.....if my dad is awakened this may be harmful to my health.  I peeked into the room and what did i see?  Two beady black eyes with A yellow hat staring right at me.

I let out a gasp due to my surprise.....why the stuffed animal?  An answer was hard to surmise.  I retreated to the stairs and descended the steps.....it was like the walk of shame.....I'm thinking about relocating and changing my whole name.

My friend was smiling and asked "Did you see?" steady stuffing popcorn in his face while I'm dealing with a catastrophe.  A few minutes later my dad magically appears and I can only utter "Dad why?" He's looking confused as he wipes the sleep from his eyes.

The bear that you were holding in your sleep.....What's the reason for that?  You are an adult and way too old for that.  He paused for a few minutes to gather his thoughts.  The response I recieved wasn't what i thought.

Son...although its my business what i do.....I'll explain my situation to you.   Do you know what its like to sleep in your bed alone?  Your mother ....(my wife) is no longer home.  We used to be happy or so I thought .....

The woman I loved for so many years has broken my heart and reduced me to tears.  My greatest gift from her is you.  You are my inspiration and the reason I work the way I do.  I loved her ....but she never loved me.

If something doesn't want to stay.....you have to set it free.  Son...the bear became my form of relief .....it game me comfort and allowed me to sleep.  The perfume that your mother used to wear.....she sprayed the bear with it.  The fragrance reminds me of the love we used to share and......how I would tell her ....."I love you"...and gently stroked her hair.

The bear was given to me by your mother the first time we met.....as i become stronger and the hurt begins to decrease.....me and the bear will be at peace.  Son....I hope you understand that I'm still a strong man....I'm just hurting and allowing God to work his plan.

I got a clear view of my father's heart and i really no longer cared.....He had all the right in the world to sleep with a teddybear.

He catches rats for a living
The fine young, jolly young man
Says if you can't get rid of them
Call me, because I can

I'll trap 'em, drown 'em, poison 'em,
Hit 'em on the head
Failing that I'll fire some shot;
Fill 'em up with lead

Bedbugs, fleas, ants, pigeons in the loft
Squirrels being troublesome
Tell me, I'll stop the lot

Then he handed me a business card
Said this is me as well
So if you fancy tasty burgers
Just give me a bell

Can't save a cowboy
    When he's made of solid sin
Can't save the planet
     Even faster now we spin
Can't save the homeless
     They keep shittin' with their grins
Can't be afraid of it
     A cowboy just takes aim at it

So I'll smile an easy smile
Smile, smile, smile
an easy smile

Temperature yesterday, chili after ten
There is way too much blue rain falling in the ocean
Too much elbow rubbing, bedbugs and disease
I want to clear my mind, I put it at ease

And I'll smile an easy smile
Smile, smile, smile
an easy smile

I loved it all so glad you came to visit
Just wish the springs will work if you can come in
It's anything to please you, won't you please now bring your own stool
If you want to come in to sit


  
And split an easy smile
Smile, smile, smile
an easy smile

I never thought I would feel so alone
lying right next you.
I never thought you would complain and moan,
If I tried to kiss you.

I never pictured I'd feel so much pain,
While you are lying RIGHT there.
I never believed I would go insane,
because you wont hold me after I had a nightmare.

Late at night,
When the stars come out,
I get a huge fright,
Because I suddenly begin to doubt.

It is like I don't know you anymore.
You turn your back on me.
It hurts, it is so **** sore,
Becoming more and more unsteady.

If you think the cold night is dark,
just wait till you see inside.
You lie and break my heart.
Making me want to cry and hide.

Then when morning comes,
I put on a fake smile,
I watch you drive after the sun.
I try to maintain my denial.

But every night, oh so late,
the only thing keeping me company
is the demons I create,
and I let them live with me,

because when I'm scared
I don't feel the pain.
As long as the demons are there,
I never have to be alone again.

“Do I sense
some resistance -
a sense of injustice?”
whispers Life
folding me cold
in her ample python-coil
and she sings me her song


“The flowers bloom
in the fields, sweet love
to be gathered for your bier
Time lingers in the wings
to pull you off stage
at the moment
opportune in its Clasped Book

The worms wait patient
if you choose a burial;
if cremation’s your choice
the fires wait in quiet potential
The musicians practise
to be employed
by the survivors
to deliver you a dirge

And so my sweet love -
Live well
Night night, sleep tight,
don’t let the bedbugs bite"

Lullaby and goodnight
and sleep you sound my love
May angels keep you safe in sleep
as they watch from up above

Lullaby and sweet dreams
and slumber well this night
Soft, sweet sighs as you close your eyes
Don't let the bedbugs bite

Lullaby and don't you cry
the sun returns at dawn
Now to sleep, and do not weep
just listen to my song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKPEOfybQak&feature;=related

Remember his name when you look at the night sky.
                                                           - the Toe-cutter

You are the Night Rider,
a fuel-injected suicide machine,
a rocker, a roller,
a no-controller,
yer a cop killer,
the mighty weird hand of vengeance
come to smite the un-roadworthy.

You, Night Rider,
clearly unaffected
by the state’s urgings
to “yield” and, perhaps,
“soft shoulder”.

You are the Night Rider,
sleeping in on a Tuesday,
performing your masculinity
in unshowered, unshaved machissmo.

Night Rider,
won’t you come to your senses?
Nobody enjoys maniacal laughter
anymore.
It makes us think of ****,
covered in fleas, bedbugs,
whiskey ****,

or Janis,
and the last moments of an American Saigon.


Ahh… Night Rider,
we share your machine lust,
your fetish,
your hard-on for the muscle-*****,
the suped-up hot rod,
the last of the V-8 Interceptors
(1973 Australian Ford XB Falcon GT).
We, too, like a nitrous kit,
a roof and tail spoiler,
we likes our flat black:
………....................our murderous speed
………..........................has driven daddy to drinkin’.


We ride!


Night Rider, we understand.
We get the lurid infatuation,
but, ****, yer a hick-****,
all these roads lead to jail
–how have you not grasped this simple truth?

The highway is not freedom,
but a circular slave song.


Oh, rider of the night,
why all the re-runs of Seinfeld?
And cheese bread?
You’ve grown a belly, N.R.,
and while it might be glam
to be young, dumb
and full of ***,
or all muscle
in ****-less chaps at 21,
you’re 45, Night Rider,
and no-one cares anymore
about your straight-line revolution,
about your road to freedom,
about it,
about what kind of future
you and Floosie would’a made.

The kids are alright
but
they ain’t never heard
of you
nor your last,
wild-eyed flight.

As the Lord Humungous has indicated,
no one
gets out
alive.

Mosquitoes
Pesky little pests
Mosquitoes
*******'s of ******
Mosquitoes
Sucketh out mine blood
Mosquitoes
I'll smacketh them in their ****'s
Mosquitoes
Cometh by the swarm
Mosquitoes
Thine wings art mine, tonight they shalt be torn
Mosquitoes
I hate noone but thee
Mosquitoes
Like bedbugs, roaches, and flea's
Mosquitoes
Taketh all the cruor thou canst tonight
Mosquitoes
Thou hath lived for a few days
Tonight's thy last night
MOSQUITOES!!!!!!!

Die thou little blood ******* devils!!!!!!

My lounges burn.
My body shakes.
My eyes are
                        F
                            A
       ­                           L
                                    ­   L                  
                                            I
                  ­                              N
                                 ­                      G.

**But no longers do my eyes sting from salty tears.
Say goodbye to trembling from neverending nightmares.
Sweet dreams. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.

I love you so much.
I love to touch
You, day and night,
Where the bedbugs bite.

Ashen hair encircles her head,
And a face that could do with a wash.
Yet above the chipped teeth and the grimy brown hands,
Sits, throned, a crown of gold.

A waltzing skirt, trimmed with ribbons of dust,
A bruise of an amethyst hue,
She mutters the stories to ***** grey walls,
The girl with a crown of gold.

The peasants awake, splitting heads, withered throats,
From their bedbugs and blankets and beer.
The princess stands firm, she will not be moved
From her crack-mirrored bathroom seat.

The peasants are worse than usual this morn,
But you have to expect that from them.
The mirror reflects, in its own shattered way
The torn, crushed crown of gold.

There once was a prince, in this faery land.
A baby too brave for his good,
A trip away, up the silent back stairs.
                             -
They can't batter his new crown of gold.

The streets try to drag her back into the world,
But she only sees carpets of red.
In a fairytale land where no evil is seen,
Sometimes paper's more precious than gold.

Weekends fly
Like clouds that float
Across the windy skies.

Tonight I'll bite
The bedbugs back,
Then close my tired eyes.

Come Monday I
May choose to fret
That my own time is spent.

But it is worth
A week of work:
Weekend's Heaven Sent.

My uncle is in a twilight home
for the seriously demented
and he'll never be coming back
from the place he's in
even if he could find the ******* way.

"Dear Edna" (my uncle wrote) "I am feeling low today
mainly because of the diarrheoa
I have had for the past week
although how you could get the runs
from eating pre-mashed milk pudding
is a ******* mystery to yours truly
I blame the African chef
I don't think he washes his hands
after he drops a log or two.

"It has been so long since your Auntie Linda passed
over to what may be a better place
than here because it could hardly be
worse what with the bedbugs
and the Asian nurse who keeps making me
use a bedpan in public as a punishment
for wetting the bed.

"To be frank with you though,
sometimes I can't remember
what I did yesterday or tomorrow either
but on other days everything is clear
and I think there is a Chinaman hiding
in my bedside cabinet and I am worried he might be
some sort of homosexualist after my *******
especially after my weekly bath
when it's relatively fresh.

"And, my dear niece (if that's who you are
I am not two hundred percent sure at the moment),
I don't think I got my breakfast today again
what a ****** surprise but at least
I won't have the runs again
it's because the Filipino nurses are eating it
my breakfast I mean not the other stuff.

"Your auntie my dear late wife was a truly gentle soul
and I am sure she is the only woman I have ever truly loved
the others were just a bit of spare how's-your-father
even though she could be very trying at times
and I remember once she bit someone
from the social security services
when they tried to help her up
off the kitchen floor after one of her attacks
she thought he was trying to cop a quick feel-up
below the waistline on the sly."

There's a rather nasty splodge on the paper
at this juncture, it looks like Uncle Bert
coughed up a lump of something
or other semi-terminal.

*"I've been thinking it over
about the nurse who stole my breakfast
and I might be mistaken.
I think it's quite possible she could be Romanian
now that we are in the European Union
there's a lot of funny people about
and they're taking over everything
you can't get Wagon Wheels in the tuckshop any more
only some beetroot flavoured biscuits.

"I am very worried one fine day I shall wake up
and not remember all the happy times
about my long years with my dear late wife
whose name eludes me for the moment
but I am still worried about the carpet slipper
and breakfast thieves round here.

"I fancied a nice piece of boiled salmon for lunch today
but it will be fish fingers once more this Friday
not that there's any catholics in here
and the staff are muslims in any case
and don't these people know fishes
don't have fingers, but flippers and fins
not that I'd eat a fin but that's another
country in the European Union I think
or it might be Frinton-on- Sea
where I think I once got a bit
of outdoor legover action.

"I wouldn't mind dying but I am scared to do it just yet
because I think I have lost my faith in baby Jesus
in fact I can't remember who she is even
and I hope my Linda (I remembered her name now)
will have gone to heaven in spite of biting
that health worker when he goosed her
the thought of going to heaven and she's not there
would be ******* dreadful
as I fancy a bit of the other.

"I think I can hear someone in the next ward
singing obscene songs in a wavering voice
with a la-la-la for the forgotten words
but remembering all the good bits
the bits they miss out of the Daily Mail.

"Where in God's name is my lunch
and who has got my slippers
how many times must I ask
and where is my bedpan when I need it?
Can you bring me one, Edna,
it would be nice to have a bedpan
all to myself as I hate sharing one
with Mr Ali as his son keeps sending him
cold takeaway curries which means
his motions are very strong indeed
Love from your uncle Bert.
PS I will put you back in my will
if you come up with that bedpan."

Every morning
I wake up in a city
that feels a little more familiar
each time my eyelids bloom daffodils
on a fire escape horizon.
Maybe I’m in love with a Newness
that begins to feel like Home.
Maybe I dream dumpsters
in Flatbush
or shoot Harlem
into my forearms.
Use telephone wires as tourniquets.
Maybe this girl I’ve been seeing has traces
of Paradise in her bloodstream.
                                          

                                           And then I have to remember this city is home to
                                           Pizza Rat, and bedbugs in the metro benches,
                                           and **** Holly Golightly,
                                           she never had to take the F train.


But maybe
she and I can share some unspoken reality,
and I’ll walk down 5th Ave. one day
holding my lover’s hand
as the sun turns sidewalks silver
and we’ll decide to grab a
croissant.

I’ve made sure the windows are painted
That was step one
I have to open my metal door to see
The world, the dying summer
Because it can’t leak into here
                   I am so broken I make myself believe this
And that
Love conquers the weak too

Step two is ignoring the bony girl and her crystal ball eyes holding
The pit-bull with the
Bleeding leg
                    And I believe, because my soul
                     Has been left in some purse or backseat
                     That the dog doesn’t know anything about pain

Step three is admitting that I’ve set fire to sunflowers
Because I thought, I knew, they could take it

Step four is putting God inside of an air-seal jar
For 3 to 6 weeks on my bedside table
While I tear into thin laughs

Step five is pretending to know
                   Pretending there was life in the dead leaves
                         Burnt orange and burnt red

Step six is climbing from under the bed trying
To be oh so quiet
                Because it’s midnight and that
                Glass-cut boy you’re ******* on
                Isn’t making any noise
Step seven is collecting dust

Step eight is sharing a pillow half-heartedly
Reading about bedbugs at night
Trying to chase the visions of your bare neck
    Glowing
Stirring her awake
And go south to fight off winter

Step ten is spitting pesticide on the spring dandelions
   They (you) are flowers, they (you) are sycophants
    They (you) are beautiful, they (you) are weeds

Step eleven is burning the bridge
Where I had to pull off
your dress to
Keep myself on

Step twelve I’m half-awake
In a puddle of my own fake blood, in everyone’s blood
Calling the doctor for blue-black sleeping pills
You won’t come looking for me
You’re busy
Sleepwalking away from misery

Wrecked on the couch,
my victims asked me who I was
or who I thought I was
or who I was trying to be.

I resented them, like most people
who play into my empathy for
some luxury or to **** out a sucker.

I live on a seat of noise.
Everything is deafeningly loud.
Sinking in screams
like a stale mattress
full of bedbugs,
but you need a place to sleep
for at least another night.

I fly on a deranged bird
that knows one word,
and that word is made-up.
Fictional.
I fly by inches, crawl in the sky
crawl towards death with my
head tilted backwards.

I don't even bother asking
many questions anymore,
especially about people.
I'm not so upset that nobody
particularly cares.

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the shack, not a present to be found, because dad was on crack. ***** socks in the corner, nasty stench on the air, with hopes that the dope man would soon be there.

The children were all rolling in their old beds, because of bedbugs chewing on their heads. And mama with her syringe, and daddy smoking crack. They were too strung out to lay down for a nap.

When out in the street there rose such a clatter. Dad sprung to his feet to see what was the matter. When away from the window he flew in a flash. "*******! They're after my stash!"

Happy roses on the parade, he was waiting for the 2 years to arrive
The album cover love the lover's wilting love in on Jesus' daughter in a tree, lovely sails it had
They fell when the autumn had arrived, **** your darling buds
Pygmies digging holes in the soil in their hearts of toil, falling prudently
Like leaves, the red justice, gold *****, in a curlicue of extra circulars

Touch on the washed-up Gurudeva, fixing holes in the faucets, the sunshine shines on our bad news, save us the supernatural darkness
The superstition of the Siamese cat, and the weeping lady
The flow is getting better, make love could we ever escape dark days and escape the midnight shines like good fillers on hydrogen delight, stars in the stare looking for the assets to darkness
Moonchild roses remembering the supermarket in America, that changed them, those who were pleased with the peaches incarnate in the cries of the last radio of the gold heads, buses of the sunflower tin cans
That cried an Eli book of poems, show me in the radiant illuminating blue eyes

I am walrus, I can make these songs okay touch tough but it was right to be alright
Ending a letter to Lennon on the twelfth night, the wrong from my lenience
My liege, my childhood here hath Earth omnipotent in areolar sprayed aerosol cans, we long these round holes and surmise of free prose in the inner moon
Light up the sadness

Album cover acrid as the midnight spoon, feeling sentimental
Tumescent buildings, my cheer, without imagination
You don't deserve possessions, you shot down dead weight
Carry the shine, in the confines of a painless razor of lacrosse, Billy shears brushing your head
I'm shaving my head, with the crowd in an instantaneous hung jury in the situation in the dalliance with the forgotten underwear, ******* my collegiate thumb
I want to write my own stuff with natural ecstasy and alliance of the hung jury in the psychotherapy, and the ******* ministerial preacher, saying please please me

You said you were
Struggling with the bugs, Pam
In your head, and hung bedbugs in your childish core, of faith as a person who loves the sibilant sounds
When I laugh as my head comes out of the plastic nation
Freed and staring into the distance, Ono here in the ballad hearin' sound laughter

Lead your path
To thine light ad thine veritas
There is thy will in every bright thought in
We thought up a bed, filled hat across the new man

We are not scared among the ranged beats, were dreaming style
Derailed from the tabula rasa, and waterfalls and lose our happiness in the morning
And search for the under in our childish souls

Hanging out in rainbows in cyclones  swirling like idiot winds
And they call me dumb, a bad person in studied simplicity
Simplicity is the kind of loving, giving the kindness of taking it gently
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more searchingly

Already finding the end of life's meaning in the puddles of love
Find yourself in mother nature, and you can apply yourself, my friend my water, my shapeshifting friend and left the flower
And leave someone's shadow as we grow fond of the light, we start wondering if the starry skies in patched blackberries

I hunger for your love, my love
But yet you feed me rocks
And other cold hard facts.
I thirst for your affirmation
Yet suffer the tyranny of
Mouthfulls of biast statements
Contradicting my hopes

I want to kiss you and,
Crawl into your bed at night
Listen to your euphoric shrieks
Because like your childhood bedbugs
I also sometime playfully bite.

But your scientific mind is
Veining over my beutiful
Dreams Of guns and roses
And other lucid stimulus.
I love you, okay
Three words not even your
Verbose tongue could complicate.

Maybe that's why.
Maybe love is a concept your
Rational mind feels threatened by
And thus conceals all pulsating
Emotion
By diction and intelectual *******.

I hate you for that.
For killing my cat.
For raising my suspicion.
I hate you for not loving me.
And not acting normally.
Always being formally
... cold and undefined

Upside down She looks like a cockroach
She wiggles her paws with technical grace

Needs help to turn

Back with the paws on the ground
She stops on the precipice of the balcony
Looks motionless at the trees from above

As if She already knew where to go,
Or rather as if she knew where not to stay.


Can Bedbugs Fly High?


And without thinking for a moment more
Between the grates, I watch her go away

Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch

for Vicki

Time unfolds ...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering ...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.

Night and day ...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close ...
You were lovely;
I was lonely.
... a ****** yields herself, but no one knows.

Now time goes on ...
I have not seen you.
... within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged ...
A fire rages;
no one sees it.
... a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain.

Seasons flow ...
A dream is dying.
... within parched clusters, life is taking form ...
You were honest;
I was angry.
... petals fling themselves before the storm.

Time is slowing ...
I am older.
... blossoms wither, closing one last time ...
I'd love to see you
and to touch you.
... a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry.

Time contracts ...
I cannot touch you.
... a solitary flower cries for warmth ...
Life goes on as
dreams lose meaning.
... the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm.

Keywords/Tagss: love, roses, petals, unfolding, lips, spring, ******, dreams, time, seasons, storms, summer, drought



Moore or Less
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

Less is more —
in a dress, I suppose,
and in intimate clothes
like crotchless hose.

But now Moore is less
due to death’s subtraction
and I must confess:
I hate such redaction!



The following translation is the speech of the Sibyl to Aeneas, after he has implored her to help him find his beloved father in the Afterlife, found in the sixth book of the Aeneid ...

The Descent into the Underworld
by Virgil
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The Sibyl began to speak:

“God-blooded Trojan, son of Anchises,
descending into the Underworld’s easy
since Death’s dark door stands eternally unbarred.
But to retrace one’s steps and return to the surface:
that’s the conundrum, that’s the catch!
Godsons have done it, the chosen few
whom welcoming Jupiter favored
and whose virtue merited heaven.
However, even the Blessed find headway’s hard:
immense woods barricade boggy bottomland
where the Cocytus glides with its dark coils.
But if you insist on ferrying the Styx twice
and twice traversing Tartarus,
if Love demands you indulge in such madness,
listen closely to how you must proceed...”



Anna Akhmatova was a great Russian poet, and a personal favorite of mine...

The evening light is broad and yellow
by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The evening light is broad and yellow;
it glides in on an April rain.
You arrived years late,
yet I’m glad you came.

Please sit down here, beside me,
receive me with welcoming eyes.
Here is my blue notebook
with my childhood poems inside.

Forgive me if I lived in sorrow,
spent too little time rejoicing in the sun.
Forgive, forgive, me, if I mistook
others for you, when you were the One.



Our Sweet Ecologist
by Michael R. Burch

Our sweet ecologist —
what will she do with the ants
and the cockroaches, bedbugs and lice
when they want to live in her pants?



bachelorhoodwinked
by michael r. burch

u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly alarming
since all my resolve
dissolved!

u
are
chic
as a sheikh’s
harem girl in the sheets
but my castle’s no longer my own
and my kingdom’s been overthrown!



The Bachelor Spectacular
by Michael R. Burch

One heart? Tossed aside.
The other? A bride’s.
In all his great wisdom, the bachelor decides.

Eeenie, mean-ie, mine-y, mo’,
one gal must stay and one must go.
If she hollers? That’s the show!

No heart can handle such despair!
But hearts get broken, hearts repair.
Next season? The treasoned will rule the air.

Originally published by Light



The Unspectacular Bachelor
by Michael R. Burch

The bachelor is back, he’s black,
and some fair-skinned gals sure want him in the sack!
And, yes, he’s a whole lot smarter
than the previous knights of that peculiar garter.

We can hear the white supremacists stewing:
What the hell are the screenwriters doing?
They know love requires a nice white spark,
and this apprentice is far too dark!



Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
by Michael R. Burch

At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...

But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.

The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more *****-y!



Cut Out the Bachelor Nonsense!
There's a bun in auntie's oven;
now soon you'll have a cousin!
―Michael R. Burch



Time Out
by Michael R. Burch

Time is running out,
no doubt.
Time is running out.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about,
since Time is running out, the Lout!,
and leaving me with gas and gout.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about;
still, it does no good to grouse or pout,
since Time is merely running out,
like quail before a native scout.

’Twill do no good to shout or flout:
Time’s running out,
I have no doubt,
though who knows what the LORD’s about?

No need for faith or even doubt,
since Time is merely running out,
like water from a rusty spout
or mucous from a leaky snout.

Yes, Time is merely running out,
and yet I feel inclined to pout
and truth be told, sometimes to doubt
just what the hell the LORD’s about.



Tr(end)y
by Michael R. Burch

Ain’t it funny how trendy
becomes so dead-endy?
Lava lamps and bell bottoms
soon became “never bought ‘ems.”
While that teenage tattoo
soon’ll have wrinkles too.



This was my first-ever dabble dactyl, my variation of the double dactyl.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #1
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
claiming upside is down!"

Donald Dabble Dactyls must begin with "Piggledy-Wiggledy" in homage to The Donald's oinkerishness and his 'do. References to clowns, gold-plated toilets and/or diapers are a plus but not required.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #2
by Michael R. Burch

Wond’ringly, blund’ringly
Ronald McDonald
asked, “Who the hell
is this strange orange clown?”

“Why should I try to be
funny as Donnie? He
gets all the laughs
from marks who should frown!”

I see that I violated my prime directive, so "never mind."

Donald Dabble Dactyl #3
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
45th president,
or erstwhile manse resident,
perched on a throne

of gold-plated porcelain
matching his orange “tan,”
bombing Iran
from his twittery phone?



Cowpoke
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

Sleep, old man ...
your day has long since passed.
The endless plains,
cool midnight rains
and changeless ragged cows
alone remain
of what once was.

You cannot know
just how the Change
will **** the windswept plains
that you so loved ...
and so sleep now,
O yes, sleep now ...
before you see just how
the Change will come.

Sleep, old man ...
your dreams are not our dreams.
The Rio Grande,
stark silver sand
and every obscure brand
of steed and cow
are sure to pass away
as you do now.

I believe this poem was written around the same time as “Blue Cowboy,” perhaps on the same day. That was probably sometime around 1974, at age 16 or thereabouts.



Blue Cowboy
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

He slumps against the pommel,
a lonely, heartsick boy—
his horse his sole companion,
his gun his only toy
—and bitterly regretting
he ever came so far,
forsaking all home's comforts
to sleep beneath the stars,
he sighs.

He thinks about the lover
who awaits his kiss no more
till a tear anoints his lashes,
lit by uncaring stars.
He reaches to his aching breast,
withdraws a golden lock,
and kisses it in silence
as empty as his thoughts
while the wind sighs.

Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
between the earth and distant stars.
Do not fall; the fiends of hell
would leap to feast upon your heart.

Blue cowboy, sift the burnt-out sand
for a drop of water warm and brown.
Dream of streams like silver seams
even as you gulp it down.

Blue cowboy, sing defiant songs
to hide the weakness in your soul.
Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
and wish that you were going home
as the stars sigh.



Chixiao (“The Owl”)
by Duke Zhou
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Owl!
You've stolen my offspring,
Don't shatter my nest!
When with labors of love
I nurtured my fledglings.

Before the skies darkened
And the dark rains fell,
I gathered mulberry twigs
To thatch my nest,
Yet scoundrels now dare
Impugn my enterprise.

With fingers chafed rough
By the reeds I plucked
And the straw I threshed,
I now write these words,
Too hoarse to speak:
I am homeless!

My wings are withered,
My tail torn away,
My home toppled
And tossed into the rain,
My cry a distressed peep.



The Song of Roland
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

"for spring in retreat"

Rain down,
strange murmurous water...
no, summer is not yet nigh.

Cease your complaining,
for May is,
calling December a lie,
still rocking the high white sky.

Sleep now,
summer hours...
too soon your time shall come.

Softly straining,
the raining
spring begs, "Let me run
one more hour beneath the sun,
for soon I shall be gone."

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

Remember a pyre
of stars blazing higher
upon night’s immense dark sky
unsettling as her eyes,
unregretful, even as you died...

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

I believe I wrote “The Song of Roland” around age 16.



That Not-So-Mellow Fellow, Othello
by Michael R. Burch

Not sure ’bout that fellow, Othello,
was he a “hero” or merely **** yellow?
He killed his poor wife
over a handkerchief!
Thus Iago proved his heart Jello.



Time Out!
by Michael R. Burch

Time is at war with my body!
am i Time’s most diligent hobby?
for there’s never Time out
from my low-t and gout
and my once-brilliant mind has grown stodgy!



Waiting Game
by Michael R. Burch

Nothing much to live for,
yet no good reason to die:
life became
a waiting game...
Rain from a clear blue sky.



*******' Ripples
by Michael R. Burch

Men are scared of *******:
that’s why they can’t be seen.
For if they were,
we’d go to war
as in the days of Troy, I ween.



Untitled Epigrams

Teach me to love:
to fly beyond sterile Mars
to percolating Venus.
—Michael R. Burch

The LIV is LIVid:
livid with blood,
and full of egos larger
than continents.
—Michael R. Burch

Evil is as evil does.
Evil never needs a cause.
Evil loves amoral “laws,”
laughs and licks its blood-red claws
while kids are patched together with gauze.
— Michael R. Burch

Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch



That Mella Fella
by Michael R. Burch

John Mella was the longtime editor of Light Quarterly.

There once was a fella
named Mella,
who, if you weren’t funny,
would tell ya.
But he was cool, clever, nice,
gave some splendid advice,
and if you did well,
he would sell ya.

Shakespeare had his patrons and publishers; John Mella was one of my favorites in the early going, along with Jean Mellichamp Milliken of The Lyric.



Chip Off the Block
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

In the fusion of poetry and drama,
Shakespeare rules! Jeremy’s a ham: a
chip off the block, like his father and mother.
Part poet? Part ham? Better run for cover!
Now he’s Benedick — most comical of lovers!

NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be.

Keywords/Tags: Shakespeare, poetry, drama, poet, light verse, humor, life, death, love, Mars, Venus, Othello, Iago, Duke Zhou, Owl, homeless, cowboy, bachelor, Richard Moore, Anna Akhmatova