Love begets love...hate begets hate....tolerance begets tolerance.....disdain begets....disdain...respect begets respect..........it all depends on how you see things and what you put out comes back to you....every time....

Love brings love

Love begets love...hate begets hate....tolerance begets tolerance.....disdain begets....disdain...respect begets respect..........it all depends on how you see things and what you put out comes back to you....every time....

Tolerance brings tolerance

Love begets love...hate begets hate....tolerance begets tolerance.....disdain begets....disdain...respect begets respect..........it all depends on how you see things and what you put out comes back to you....every time....

Respect brings respect

Love begets love...hate begets hate....tolerance begets tolerance.....disdain begets....disdain...respect begets respect..........it all depends on how you see things and what you put out comes back to you....every time....

Gratitude brings gratitude

Love begets love...hate begets hate....tolerance begets tolerance.....disdain begets....disdain...respect begets respect..........it all depends on how you see things and what you put out comes back to you....every time....

Peace and harmony bring peace and harmony

Love begets love...hate begets hate....tolerance begets tolerance.....disdain begets....disdain...respect begets respect..........it all depends on how you see things and what you put out comes back to you....every time....

The universe is a mirror
Reflect what you want to receive

Believe and light up the world with peace and harmony

love, begets love
in bundles big or small
love, begets love

joy, begets joy
bright dropping jewels
joy, begets joy

hope begets hope
ephemeral, shining light
hope, begets hope.

life, begets life
all encompassing life.
life, begets life

and so the cycle goes....

Forgive and forgo, but never forget
Because in due time, like begets like.
Chaos begets chaos, and
Sorrow begets sorrow,
Hate begets hate, and
Boredom begets boredom, but
most of all - and most poignantly -
Love begets Love.

So in spirit of that credo,
I forgive you. I forgive you
For all you've done.
There's nothing to be done for it.
It's as the law states, and
So in your life will spawn more
Chaos breeding chaos, and
Sorrow breeding sorrow, and
Hate breeding hate, but
Since, through it all,
I still can forgive, but,
More importantly, Love you,
Love will breed and bring more Love to me.

And for that, I am content to know
That I can forgive you,
Because you've been through the Hell of your own Creation enough,
Without help from me.

Rules beget subversion.
Laws beget crime.


A begets Z.
1 begot ∞.

----- begets -----.
--- begot ---.

You fill in the blanks.
Please; i'm curious!

As day begets day begets day
The hornier I get, the less I can wait.

I used to hate your healthy avocados...until I had one
Not that your coffee tasted superior to my tea
But what's taste when you season mine with gun powder?
Yes, In case you did not detect
There is a lot of hate in this one
Call me aggressive and spiteful
Whilst holding your rifle
They say hate begets hate begets hate begets hate
So for you to understand
I put aside my ignorance and try to walk in your shoes

OK, let's start:

A lot of trees
Beautiful sky, delightful breeze
A rich land where tenants are a many and they shun the proprietor
I know I promised to be nice
But let's face it for that white picket fence, someone had to pay the price.

Start again:

Sunny coasts
Bacon, eggs on toast
Walk the dog in the park, life is not all that hectic here.
To make it clear, running out of coffee is my basic fear.

Flat stomachs
In fact, six packs!
Cupboard full of knick-knacks
and plenty of time to kick back and relax
Never-ending supply of niceties

Calm waters
Long walks along the harbor
and perhaps a tall pint of lager at the pub

Throw some juicy ones on the barbie mate!
Who cares if 6.2 mil in Somalia are starving mate?
You say to me:
"survival of the fittest, Darwin mate"
"It's so difficult to fit in" I say; so tiring MATE
Did I say that right?
I'm Mohammad, as James in a play called "Aussie Catch Up"
and I don't know how to play that part

What else can I say? they gave me a voice (although in English)
between the self deprecating migrant and the middle eastern rag head, the gave me a choice

And by the way my boss tried to anglicize my name
Said Sebastian had a nice ‘ring’ to it
Well go ahead, march to your colonial tune and have me sing to it

Oh healthy avocados, you're too ripe for my liking
Maybe I'm just used to a bit of rawness in my diet
To be honest
I have a heavy heart, a dark one
Maybe to reconcile, you should take a step
a very very very very very very long one

She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer

I look out from this little world
with all it's dancers dancing

Mighty trees tickle the sky
The birds in them romancing

If we but stop and listen
we'll hear the music playing

Stop a while and close your eyes
exhale the troubles weighing

Down around your shoulders
Thoughts that cloud your heart

We're only here but for a while
Before we drift apart

Like clouds across the silver moon
we're here and gone far too soon

Then pass into the inky night
Still around, yet out of sight

Some of our clouds stretch for miles
Others stacked in fragile piles

Some full and dark and hanging low
Filled with tears they can't let go

Some so wispy and so light
Their presence a mere oversight

Some whose wrath begets a name
Who form a mighty hurricane

Some who rumble in the night
Hurling lightening left and right

Some dark and brooding, filled with snow
Dumping ice on all below

Some that twist right to the ground
Violently they spin around

Some collide, some drift away
Some prefer night, some prefer day

So let us stop and gaze up high
To find ourselves within the sky

A melancholy ***** we came to adore
in mournful tone, finish the tale abruptly
and sob, uncontrollably;
"Memories of my melancholy ******"
including "Love in the times of cholera"
are now part of our folklore, this land
of cashew groves and banana plantations
in  Indian landscape, far far away from Latin American shores.

Her lascivious days are over
death visits the house of love, blood splattered
and a haunt of dark happenings, that begets children with tails,
shame, honor and secrets creep out of manuscripts.
Gabo is no more, no more"Living to tell the tale"
the Part Two, promised before.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, after three false starts
goes to his final abode for rest, now.

A coded manuscript, written in
in classical Sanskrit,
(the language of all divine texts
of Indian sages of yore)
scripted by the mysterious gypsy,Melquiades
predicts the wipe out of Buendia clan
of five generations

Torrential rain and deluge engulf Macondo,
ends "One hundred years of solitude".
Gabo you point towards east
what is the answer to the conundrum of Buendias?

In Mexico city
they were preparing to take  Gabo to his last ride
to the origin of all magical realism he'd return

In a land far away,
yet exactly the same landscape as Latin Americas
we grieve his death as that of one of our own
Gabo, in past thirty years, you mysteriously taught us
to discern the magical realism of cosmos

Philosophies generalise the feelings of love. Too many people talk about how to feel. Famous people give quotes out like Kleenex and we 'the beloved' faint under the weight of them. Each awakened person seeking the truth from those who have experienced every human fear rationally. Love begets love. Hatred begets hatred. My mind begets my mind.  I am like a heat seeking Labrador, seeking the truffles in the forest. Simple love appears to be simple. Nevermoreso that which a mother can give to a child. Even a child that doesn’t appear to be wanted or loved; the one that hides in the depths of our belittled subconscious. Rejectionment is a term that I have coined from the philosophy of modern society. Abandonment is a drug that we steadily take and fail to acknowledge the buzz of, buying more 'things' to fill a anxious fear filled void. We are the lovers, we are the thinkers, we, are the walkers of this earth; unimaginable freedoms we destroy.

How can one love oneself amongst the unimaginable pathetic existence we carve out, we bleed out and we live? I am because I feel. I follow because I was led, I fall because my feet catch me. I love, I love because this is what Disney stories and fairytales have taught us. I fear the heart that beats so deeply within this body. Detached, I feel from reality, because the stark realisation is too heavy to bear. That some lover will not think i am quite the picture of lover; that i do not feel to love myself equally. Yet I carry my arms; I have ammunition strapped to my chest; those that get clear have to sign treaties and pacts. Linguistics fail me; they speak unapproachable truths. A meaning is much better conveyed in silence, without looking into one another’s eyes.

Heart, passion, love – this is what I have to give – money, reliability, profession, friendship; this is all learnt. True love from ones’ mind is a given. Fear is learnt; hurt is learnt; embarrassment is learnt. Stories I have, tales I can tell, counsel I can give. I am NOT finished. I am NOT done.Thank-ing you. Flying free as a bird in flight; it's inside my soul - but my body is wrapped around capitalist chains – should, must, need, want; pleases, thankyous – a vicious cycle to make oneself feel worthy of the very being we fail to allow ourselves to believe in. We are not pretty, we are not amazing, we are not worthy unless we allow ourselves to be justified by something outside of ourselves.

So what can I do? Having an indomitable tower of strength inside this soul, face the world, against bombardment, against attainment and loss, figures and acceptance, congratulations and detachment. Music clears me, air clears me, understanding clears me. The world clears me. You clear me. Love, blinds me.  See this, these words? This me thinking, this is me feeling, this is me. Love me, just me, I dare......

I want to make the world a better place
but
Poverty is a disease on its own
the prerequisite to depression
U
S
A
only trying to stay
stay rich
and sway
sway money in front of those who are just out of its reach
and then they preach
“If we give handouts they wont know how to work and they will wait for us to do everything for them. it’s not our fault they ****** up their life, theirs.”
it’s their fault
nineteen year old mother
cares for 3 week old baby
“cut loose” for missing two nights on the street corner because she couldn’t handle selling her body when
when years from now
her daughter will call her mommy
and her **** will call her sloppy
and she
will look scrawny
and now as she puts 3 week old baby to sleep in her
cardboard box crib
and think to herself
“this is my fault, I couldn’t find any other work. So I had to sell her mother to nothing more than an object.”
well now that cardboard crib kid is
eighteen
and fresh out of school
fresh on the streets
fresh flesh enmeshed
tangled in the rich mans net
starting the cycle over again because
at eighteen
on her own
she cant afford college
at eighteen
on her own
even if she has the knowledge
at eighteen
living in the streets
at eighteen
pregnant
--------
Mommy wasn’t there when she took teenage boy in the ally for the first time
taught it was okay because they needed money
and she knew no better way
baby had nothing to say
baby just needed the pay
now there is no way
she now is her mother
and baby is now inside her
and poverty has tied her
and the government denied her
mother never to guide her
and as she lied down her her bed all she could think of is
maybe if I wasn’t so poor
the government might care about me
-------
future baby
cradled in the mind of loving mother
regretful for choice of father
hoping
“maybe this will all go away
maybe if I pray
I wont live another day”
Poverty a disease on its own
the prerequisite to depression
because
U
S
A
is the only country who has the
power
freedom and ability to change the poverty rates and chooses
to only offer jobs to those who own a house
instead of those who need them
ignored by those who could help
because they are the ones who need it
poverty is a disease
and you better believe it runs in the family
poverty begets poverty
believe me
I’m not suggesting communism
but when a man can have a ninety dollar glass of wine
but that eighteen year old can’t even afford to buy something to eat
Change is needed
people getting cheated
don’t tell me there is freedom
when I see how the poor are treated
not eating
they are human
and we pass by and ignore them like animals
tangible
pass by graves
candles
people killed by a government disease
leaving parents absent
children abandoned
and don’t tell me
there is nothing we can do
because seeing men live in 100 million dollar mansions
when someone out there
eighteen years old
is left with no more chances
chances are this wont change anything
but to stand by
and allow people to die
is ******
and poverty
is genocide
we can’t hide
the inequality
or when given the affordable health care policy
call it comedy
honestly
its time for an apology
and to stop the hypocrisy
because poverty is commonly
in large quantities
and logically
poverty shouldn’t be an unborn child’s prophecy
just because their a impoverished mothers progeny
doesn’t mean their life couldn’t be quality
so pardon me
while I speak audibly
when I say the government has no monopoly
on poverty

truth begets Truth
trust begets Trust
Life begets seed
seed begets life
Life begets Life
life begets life

like attracts like

there is no versus
no againsts
what is created here
is matched
whether perceived right or wrong

Like attracts Like

as a child grows
and develops
so its soul allows
when guidance is missing
or when it isn’t

like attracts like

give your heart to God
follow His Heartsong
alone
then all the titfers
become only Tats


c. 2024 Roberta Compton Rainwater

Magnets;
lock and key;
and, the unsubtle,
bolt
and *****.
These are things that collide harmoniously and do not dispute

We are not such an archaic, mechanized metaphorical construct.

I feel us as primal,
torrid decadence;
a deliberate impassioned vulnerability:
an animalistic exposé.

Unfocused, infinite black holes
expanding
to be lost within

Quivering circle of solicitous, engorged fuchsia
steaming harsh,
needy
attempts of oxygen recovery

Soft powder snow
melting over olive tree trunks,

quaking with endless echoes resonating from beyond the hills above

A thunderous harbinger centers chaos,
rampaging gust-like vibration through taut roots,

a volcanic eruption.
Lava geyser

blazing till all energy
enthralls the earth.

What I see for us is a metaphor in nature.
I will be the seismic activity
and you
will dance above me.

Your world will collapse against me

in my relentless motions.

And when you stand again,
I will bring you to
your knees

in my aftershock
and show you strength that will move you mountains.

it's true
the revolution will not be televised
but the fascist revival premiered
on all the major networks' corporate channels
in 1080p HD at prime-time hours

with perfect clarity
viewers could see
an oompa loompa
with an orange toupee
a xenophobe
spewing violence and vitriol
peddling snake oil while spitting venom
stirring a bubbling cauldron
spilling over in fear-mongering demagoguery
served like crack candy to the Republican elite
reveling in their privilege
cheering white supremacy

a tyrant
tirading behind a polished wooden podium
flanked by hues of red white blue and gilded gold
like some comic strip super-villain
but this obtuse excuse for human refuse
is not some Saturday morning cartoon
defeated by the heroes after 30 minutes
of selfless feats and epic deeds
a death dirge plays on repeat in the background

you can't always get what you want

meanwhile
we're holding silent vigils back home
carving the sigil of Orlando's skyline into our skin
while a snake slithers into a City Beautiful
bedecked in her $3k pressed pant-suit
leering wolfishly at a local club for LGBTQ+ youth
the downtown heartbeat
of outcasts and misfits
a Pulse
that bigotry and self-hatred couldn't *****

but tragedies are converted to cheap currencies
in the clawed hands of dynastic oligarchs
sporting the support of billionaires and super-PACs
she knows the Establishment has got her back
she'll shed crocodile tears
just in time for the photo-ops

violence begets violence begets violence
humanity's universal language
a tongue shared by despots and presidents
in the wake of stolen sanctuaries
she'll justify razing Syrian children
beneath a barrage of hellfire missiles
and predator drones targeting cell-phone signals
under the pretense of bringing the terrorists
to some sycophantic mirage of justice

we're manufacturing new soldiers
for the Caliphate to brainwash with promises
of dead gods and seventy-two virgins
machine-fed by automatic weapons
to the toothy jaws
that bottomless maw
of endless ******* war
which always vaunts
profit over people

the conceptual construct of gender binarism
becomes an imperceptible selling point
in the incomprehensible and reprehensible rhetoric
issuing from either side of the political aisle
but what will it matter
either way
an egoistic megalomaniac
has his or her finger poised over the trigger
a neoliberal warmonger and hypocritical fraud
or a reality TV star who lauds the KKK on Twitter

our only hope is found in the streets
unchained by compassion's transformative capacity
freed to utilize our minds
humanity's indomitable faculty
nurturing a community that seizes life
in anthems of liberty equality and solidarity
anarchic manifestoes penned in lines
of red and black ink

progressives will insist otherwise
they'll declare emphatically that our only choice
lies in selecting the lesser of two evils
to lead us to the brink of oblivion
but Orwell wrote the future of humanity
looked like a boot crushing our heads
that either way we'd all be dead
and the harsh reality is that the soot-stained sole
curb-stomping this country
fits both the left and right foot

Happenstance to the melancholic gives leave the sin of pride.
Inbound reconnaissance tells not the bearer of influence.
Squeamish at first: a foreshadowing of calamitous bonding.

A space between the mark of corporeal and the ethereal; a stringent hiatus
That which rattles the concrete foundation of morality is scarcely a malleable recourse.
Regret stains the unfounded soul: an enigma of ephemeral perforations.

A separation of the unmitigated humanities; misandry topples the writhing snake.
Impact; a cleansing of the maker's flaws integrated solemnly.
Complacency arrests the administration of the abhorred; unbridled is the autonomy of a guru.  

Ambivalent giftedness burdens the reliant and haughty.
A flick of the tongue brings forth the cinema mortem.
Castaway: alone to wade in the sea of obscenities.

A temporal causality allows no mourning to abscond.
Negligence is not the enemy, but indulgent wrath.
Hesitant: a stroke of qualia begets the end of a maiden.

I
Ribb at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn
BECAUSE you have found me in the pitch-dark night
With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
To those that never saw this tonsured head
Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig,
What juncture of the apple and the yew,
Surmount their bones; but speak what none ha've
heard.
The miracle that gave them such a death
Transfigured to pure substance what had once
Been bone and sinew; when such bodies join
There is no touching here, nor touching there,
Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole;
For the ******* of angels is a light
Where for its moment both seem lost, consumed.
Here in the pitch-dark atmosphere above
The trembling of the apple and the yew,
Here on the anniversary of their death,
The anniversary of their first embrace,
Those lovers, purified by tragedy,
Hurry into each other's arms; these eyes,
By water, herb and solitary prayer
Made aquiline, are open to that light.
Though somewhat broken by the leaves, that light
Lies in a circle on the grass; therein
I turn the pages of my holy book.
II
Ribb denounces Patrick
An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man --
Recall that masculine Trinity.  Man, woman, child (a
daughter or a son),
That's how all natural or supernatural stories run.
Natural and supernatural with the self-same ring are
wed.
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead
begets Godhead,
For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine
Tablet said.
Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind;
When the conflagration of their passion sinks, damped
by the body or the mind,
That juggling nature mounts, her coil in their em-
braces twined.
The mirror-scaled serpent is multiplicity,
But all that run in couples, on earth, in flood or air,
share God that is but three,
And could beget or bear themselves could they but
love as He.
III
Ribb in Ecstasy
What matter that you understood no word!
Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard
In broken sentences.  My soul had found
All happiness in its own cause or ground.
Godhead on Godhead in ****** spasm begot
Godhead.  Some shadow fell.  My soul forgot
Those amorous cries that out of quiet come
And must the common round of day resume.
IV
There
There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
There all the serpent-tails are bit,
There all the gyres converge in one,
There all the planets drop in the Sun.
V
Ribb considers Christian Love insufficient
Why should I seek for love or study it?
It is of God and passes human wit.
I study hatred with great diligence,
For that's a passion in my own control,
A sort of besom that can clear the soul
Of everything that is not mind or sense.
Why do I hate man, woman Or event?
That is a light my jealous soul has sent.
From terror and deception freed it can
Discover impurities, can show at last
How soul may walk when all such things are past,
How soul could walk before such things began.
Then my delivered soul herself shall learn
A darker knowledge and in hatred turn
From every thought of God mankind has had.
Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.
At stroke of midnight soul cannot endure
A ****** or mental furniture.
What can she take until her Master give!
Where can she look until He make the show!
What can she know until He bid her know!
How can she live till in her blood He live!
VI
He and She
As the moon sidles up
Must she sidle up,
As trips the scared moon
Away must she trip:
"His light had struck me blind
Dared I stop'.
She sings as the moon sings:
"I am I, am I;
The greater grows my light
The further that I fly'.
All creation shivers
With that sweet cry
VII
What Magic Drum?
He holds him from desire, all but stops his breathing
lest
primordial Motherhood forsake his limbs, the child no
longer rest,
Drinking joy as it were milk upon his breast.
Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic
drum?
Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly
move his mouth and sinewy tongue.
What from the forest came? What beast has licked its
young?
VIII
Whence had they come?
Eternity is passion, girl or boy
Cry at the onset of their ****** joy
"For ever and for ever'; then awake
Ignorant what Dramatis personae spake;
A passion-driven exultant man sings out
Sentences that he has never thought;
The Flagellant lashes those submissive *****
Ignorant what that dramatist enjoins,
What master made the lash.  Whence had they come,
The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome?
What sacred drama through her body heaved
When world-transforming Charlemagne was con-
ceived?
IX
The Four Ages of Man
He with body waged a fight,
But body won; it walks upright.
Then he struggled with the heart;
Innocence and peace depart.
Then he struggled with the mind;
His proud heart he left behind.
Now his wars on God begin;
At stroke of midnight God shall win.
X
Conjunctions
If Jupiter and Saturn meet,
What a cop of mummy wheat!
The sword's a cross; thereon He died:
On breast of Mars the goddess sighed.
XI
A Needle's Eye
All the stream that's roaring by
Came out of a needle's eye;
Things unborn, things that are gone,
From needle's eye still goad it on.
XII
Meru
Civilisation is hooped together, brought
Under a mle, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought,
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
Ravening through century after century,
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
Into the desolation of reality:
Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!
Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest,
Caverned in night under the drifted snow,
Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast
Beat down upon their naked bodies, know
That day brings round the night, that before dawn
His glory and his monuments are gone.

For certain he hath seen all perfectness
Who among other ladies hath seen mine:
They that go with her humbly should combine
To thank their God for such peculiar grace.
So perfect is the beauty of her face
That is begets in no wise any sigh
Of envy, but draws round her a clear line
Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness.
Merely the sight of her makes all things bow:
Not she herself alone is holier
Than all; but hers, through her, are raised above.
From all her acts such lovely graces flow
That truly one may never think of her
Without a passion of exceeding love.

O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!

Halloween Poetry: Dark, Eerie, Haunting and Scary poems about Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Reanimated Corpses and "Things that go Bump in the Night!"



Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch

Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?

Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound,
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?



The Witch
by Michael R. Burch

her fingers draw into claws
she cackles through rotting teeth...
u ask "are there witches?"
… pshaw! …
(yet she has my belief)



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross ― such common things.

Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.

We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he earnestly prays to find us...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

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

Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the River Styx to their eternal destination, has been portrayed by artists and poets as a vampiric figure.



Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch

The Halloween monsters, incensed,
keep howling, and may be UNFENCED!!!
They’re angry that children with treats
keep throwing their trash IN THE STREETS!!!

You can check it out on your computer:
Google says, “Please don’t be a POLLUTER!!!”
The Halloween monsters agree,
so if you’re a litterbug, FLEE!!!

Kids, if you’d like more treats this year
and don’t want to cower in FEAR,
please make all the mean monsters happy,
and they’ll hand out sweet treats like they’re sappy!

So if you eat treats on the drag
and don't want huge monsters to nag,
please put all loose trash in your BAG!!!

NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams

of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise

to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,

while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies...

it's Halloween!



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell

Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.



All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term “banshee”) and, eventually, to the Druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgan le Fay and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil’s
fen...

if nevermore again.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot

born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,

dreaming of blood,
her fangs ― white ― baring,

revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring...



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels ― winged,
shimmering, misunderstood ―
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.

Their eyes ― hypnotic, alluring ―
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather...
to see, to touch, to feel.

Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s ―
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and while I hear everything,
he says nothing I understand.

The moon shines ― maniacal, queer ― as he takes my hand whispering

Our time has come... And so we stroll together creaking docks
where the sea sends sickening things
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes.
He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine;
my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard, his face bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes ―
the pale dead.
After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
only half-remembered.
Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
blood-engorged, but never sated
since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.

Published by The HyperTexts



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her...

How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast ―
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.



The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch

O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!

The poem above was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.



Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
― the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore ―
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely smothered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea...

their skeletal love ― impossibility!



Dark Gothic
by Michael R. Burch

Her fingers are filed into talons;
she smiles with carnivorous teeth...
You ask, “Are there vampires?”
― Get real! ―
(Yet she has my belief.)



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.


Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)

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


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



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



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire―
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?


Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me―progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically―her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure
to a consuming emptiness.

We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture―
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts
to the first note.

Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.

There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.

There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.

There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.



Duet
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad!
How worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we laughed together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .

Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement―in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us―our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .

Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .

No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .



Horror
by Michael R. Burch

What I ache to say is beyond saying―
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.

No, there are no words for the horror
as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...

What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.



Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch

We are all dying, haunted by life―
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.

With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.

We are the dying, enamored of “life”―
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.

We have only one thought―Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.

We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.



Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch

Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.

But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.

So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!

I lie, pallid vision of man―the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.

I love her beyond and despite even shame.



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone―unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ...



Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson,
the very color of blood,
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers,
men have forgotten it now,
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there,
four horrid dark creatures―chattering, bickering.
Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair;

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

“We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.”
As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm.

“Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
“Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.”

“There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .”

“But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.”
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . .
“Ah, but red is the color of blood!”

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise . . .
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something old and pale and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and with tentacles about it squirming,
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh,
knowing man’s demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.

Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her ...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.

He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.

She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale―
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.



A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.



An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says―“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”



East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch

He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.

Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.

He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.

He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to *****,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch

Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.

At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.

It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause

between odd bites to sniff through the ****,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...

Evil, the rat.



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood . . .
we have that, at least, in common.
And it’s true that I found him,
shriveled with hunger,
shivering in the desert,
skeletal, emaciate,
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it’s true, I believe,
that I offered him something to eat―
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great “temptation”
of which I’m accused.

He was a likeable chap, really,
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God―
how hard He is to know,
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant,
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave,
imploring his “Master” on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun . . .

We are nonplused, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant . . .

We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade―
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . .
Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned,
complaining that I am no longer “pure?”

I threw myself before you, and you frowned,
so full of noble chastity, renowned
for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark

I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips
were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark
to light the cold dominions of your heart.

What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim
upon these territories, cold and dark,
do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light

my heart in death and leave me ashen-white,
as you are white, extinguished by the Night?



Liar
by Michael R. Burch

Chiller than a winter day,
quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams,
eyes wilder than the crystal spray
of silver streams,
you fill my dying thoughts.

In moments drugged with sleep
I have heard your earnest voice
leaving me no choice
save heed your hushed demands
and meet you in the sands
of an ageless arctic world.

There I kiss your lifeless lips
as we quiver in the shoals
of a sea that endlessly rolls
to meet the shattered shore.

Wild waves weep, "Nevermore,"
as you bend to stroke my hair.

That land is harsh and drear,
and that sea is bleak and wild;
only your lips are mild
as you kiss my weary eyes,
whispering lovely lies
of what awaits us there
in a land so stark and bare,
beyond all hope . . . and care.

This is one of my early poems, written as a high school sophomore or junior.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Originally published by The Lyric



Keywords/Tags: Halloween, dark, supernatural, skeleton, witch, ghost, vampire, monsters, ghoul, werewolf, goblins, occult, mrbhalloween, mrbhallow, mrbdark

Published as the collection "Halloween Poems"

while humanity lay sleeping
a subtle sound came creeping
a tiny muffled murmur
of the drums  

it crept into our valley
a quiet distant sally
the reverberating tapping
of the drums

oh the drums drums drums
foretell the things to come
the tapping beat calls
hearts and minds to stir

awakened from dear sleep
we discern the growing creep
the mounting host of warriors
tramping on
      
the fifers next came peeling
the swooning mass was kneeling
the flash of brass and horns
enthralled us all

the salute of rifles thundered
leaving all of us to wonder
what this show of force
would mean for you and me

oh the drums drums drums
the flash and crack of guns
the might and mien of country
on display

yes we howl a raucous cheer
as we shout we raise a beer
the march of shock and awe
is on its way

the thundering timpani                                  
soul of a nation's symphony
united in common purpose
all in step

pressing on to foreign fields
with armies, tanks and shields
we offer sons and daughters
to the lords of war

sleek missiles flew and flashed
buildings crumble and crash
the righteous right of the stronger
proved again

but blood will wash the ground
wails of mourning will sound
dead soldiers and civilians
on all sides

percussive cannon blasts
bursts eardrums kills you fast
the awful smashing and the
bashing of the bombs

the popping flap of flags
assure a profiteers swag
much riches to be made
through the spoils of war

filthy lucre that is earned
the value of life is spurned
hoards of begotten treasure
condemns its lord

so spend it if you must
for your gold will turn to rust
and dust to dust your
soul shall return

oh the drums drums drums
calls our sisters and our sons
to step and march along
a deathly roll

constant war begets a madness
unhealed wounds endless sadness
friends and lovers sadly perish
families destroyed

oh the drums drums drums
once so stirring like a sun
the rattling snare of drumsticks
a hissing asp

oh the drums drums drums
we whistle through our gums
past the midnight graveyards
hallowed for our youth

so listen for the drums
the droning of the guns
stand firm for peace
and walk its blessed way

or you can yell yell yell
marching onward straight to hell
where death will greet you
with the devils kiss

he’ll sing you bitter taps
the music that entraps
and commends the young
to the wretched earth

or play Djembe for peace
witness all conflict cease
bongo bops for peace
may it always increase

yes the drums drums drums
the resounding joyful strums
a mirthful dance of peace
may it always increase

so play Djembe for peace
our song will never cease
our dance will be
a whirling prayer of grace

Music Selection:
Fela Kuti & Afrika 70, Zombie

jbm
3/9/12
Oakland

Stuck in a time long since passed. Heart emptied hopeless. Faces blur along with the days. Nights linger incessantly, haunting all that ever was.  Dreams tease happy.  Sun kills dreams. Time makes scars. Distance allows the fallacy to continue.  The lies turn daily mantra.  The mantra into perceived reality. Reality into dreams, the dreams into nightmares.  Sun cannot **** nightmares.

Hollow glass hearts bleed
Puddle will evaporate
To exist no more

Joy-filled memories leach all hope for future joy.  Heart crushed to powder. Powdered hearts cannot bleed.  Dead hearts cannot feel. Memories, overflow with the shadow of love's embrace. Pain jabs the senses like lightning.  Still, the heart has ceased to exist.  Calluses fill the space that scars cannot.  False emotion permeates the truth.  Future acquaintances see beauty behind dead eyes.  As they close in, icy breath freezes long enough to drain their heart to beat some life into the one lost. Walking away with minimal pulse as their heart is hollowed and bleeding.  Soon too, that puddle with cease to exist.  

**Life's casualties
Joy begets pain begets joy
Hope dies most quickly

As a child he remembered Cardiff as a city with red asphalt roads and yellow trolley busses. On a Saturday morning his grandfather used to take him in his black Sunbeam Talbot to the grand building of the Council of Music for Wales. There Charles Dixon presided over a large office on the third floor in which there were not one but two grand pianos. At seven a little boy finds one grand piano intimidating, two scary. He was made of fuss of by his grandfather’s colleagues and – as a Queen’s chorister – expected to sing. A very tall lady who smelt strongly of mothballs took him into what must have been a music library, and together they chose the 23rd Psalm to Brother James’ Air and Walford’s Solemn Melody. After his ‘performance’ he was given a book about Cardiff Castle, but spent an hour looking out of the windows onto the monkey-puzzle trees and watching people walking below.
 
50 years later as the taxi from the station took him to the rehearsal studios he thought of his mother shopping in this city as a young woman, probably a very slim, purposeful young woman with long auburn gold hair and a tennis player’s stride. He had just one photo of his mother as a young woman - in her nurse’s uniform, salvaged from his grandparents’ house in the Cardiff suburb of Rhiwbina. Curious how he remembered asking his grandmother about this photograph - who was this person with long hair?– he had never known his mother with anything but the shortest hair.
 
He’d visited the city regularly some ten years previously and he was glad he wasn’t driving. So much had changed, not least the area once known as Tiger Bay, a once notorious part of the city he was sure his mother had never visited. Now it was described as ‘a cultural hub’ where the grand Millennium Opera House stood, where the BBC made Doctor Who, where in the Weston Studio Theatre he’d hear for the first time his Unknown Colour.
 
Travelling down on the train he’d imagined arriving unannounced once the rehearsal had begun, the music covering his search for a strategic seat where he would sit in wonder.  It was not to be. As he opened the door to the theatre there was no music going on but a full-scale argument between the director, the conductor and three of the cast. The repetiteur was busy miming difficult passages. The two children sat demurely with respective mothers reading Harry Potters.
 
The next half hour was difficult as he realised that his carefully imagined stage directions were dead meat. They were going to do things differently and he had that sinking feeling that he was going to have to rewrite or at the very least reorganise a lot of music. He was then ‘noticed’ and introduced to the company – warm handshakes – and then plunged into a lengthy discussion about how the ensemble sequence towards the end of Act 1 could be managed. The mezzo playing Winifred was, he was forced to admit, as physically far from the photos of this artist in the 1930s as he could imagine. The tenor playing Ben was a little better, but taller than W – again a mismatch with reality. And the hair . . . well make up could do something with that he supposed. The baritone he thought was exactly right, non-descript enough to assume any one of the ten roles he had to play. He liked the actress playing Cissy the nurse from Cumbria. The soprano playing Kathleen and Barbara H was missing.
 
He was asked to set the scene, not ‘set the scene’ in a theatrical sense, but say a little about the background. Who were these people he and they were bringing to the stage? He told them he’d immersed himself in the period, visited the locations, spoken to people who had known them (all except Cissy and the many Parisienne artists who would ‘appear’). He saw the opera as a way of revealing how the intimacy and friendship of two artists had sustained each of them through a lifetime chasing the modernist ideal of abstraction. He was careful here not to say too much. He needed time with these singers on their own. He needed time with the director, who he knew was distracted by another production and had not, he reckoned, done his homework. He stressed this was a workshop session – he would rewrite as necessary. It was their production, but from the outset he felt they had to be in character and feel the location – the large ‘painters’ atelier at 48 Quai d’Auteuil.  He described the apartment by walking around the stage space. Here was Winifred’s studio area (and bedroom) divided by a white screen. Here was the living area, the common table, Winifred’s indoor garden of plants, and where Cissy and the children slept. As arranged (with some difficulty earlier in the week) he asked for the lights to be dimmed and showed slides of three paintings – Cissy and Kate, Flowers from Malmaison, and the wonderful Jake’s Bird and White Relief. He said nothing. He then asked for three more, this time abstracts –* Quarante-Huit Quai d’Auteuil, Blue Purpose, and ending with *Moons Turning.
 
He said nothing for at least a minute, but let Moons Turning hang in space in the dark. He wanted these experimental works in which colour begets form to have something of the impact he knew them to be capable of. They were interior, contemplative paintings. He was showing them four times their actual size, and they looked incredible and gloriously vibrant. These were the images Winifred had come to Paris to learn how to paint: to learn how to paint from the new masters of abstraction. She had then hidden them from public view for nearly 30 years. These were just some of the images that would surround the singers, would be in counterpoint with the music.
 
With the image of Moons Turning still on the screen he motioned to the repetiteur to play the opening music. It is night, and the studio is bathed in moonlight. It could be a scene from La Bohème, but the music is cool, meditative, moving slowly and deliberately through a maze of divergent harmonies towards a music of blueness.
 
He tells the cast that the music is anchored to Winifred’s colour chart, that during her long life she constantly and persistently researched colour. She sought the Unknown Colour. He suggests they might ‘get to know the musical colours’. He has written a book of short keyboard pieces that sound out her colour palette. There is a CD, but he’d prefer them to touch the music a little, these enigmatic chords that are, like paint, mixed in the course of the music to form new and different colours. He asks the mezzo to sing the opening soliloquy:
 
My inspiration comes in the form of colour,
of colour alone, no reference to the object or the object’s sense,
Colour needn’t be tagged to form to give it being.
Colour must have area and space,
be directed by the needs of the colour itself
not by some consideration of form.
A large blue square is bluer than a small blue square.
A blue pentagon is a different blue from a triangle of the same blue.
Let the blueness itself evolve the form which gives its fullest expression.
This is the starting-point of my secret artistic creation.
 
And so, with his presentation at a close, he thanks singer and pianist and retreats to his strategically safe seat. This is what he came for, pour l’encouragement des autres by puttin.g himself on the line, that tightrope the composer walks when presenting a new work. They will have to trust him, and he has to trust them, and that, he knows, is some way away. This is not a dramatic work. Its drama is an interior one. It is a love story. It is about the friendship of artists and about their world. It is a tableau that represents a time in European culture that we are possibly only now beginning to understand as we crowd out Tate Modern to view Picasso, Mondrian, Braque and Brancusi.

The atheist awoke clutching a nightmare of a new Messiah. This one would invoke terror and burning with such a simple message. Turning water into blood -- all the better to keep them sober -- so that the thickness would bond all men as brothers and all women as equals. And the Old Order would build crucifixes skyscraper tall, collecting clouds at the apex, because centuries of money begets power and power begets self-interest and self-interest begets a ruthless rage.

Galaxies, solar satellites, the very Earth and its plates.
Whatever matter spins the reality, each one rotates.
Every unique universe growing its own ebb and flow,
Same as an ocean shall pummel shores then pull undertow.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Backwater cementing a new variant of tributary,
Friends become fish in this river of machinery.
The roiling rubber current proves to combust with currency.
Success succumbs to numbers as the economist counts me.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Gingko trees employed rats until society's reaction
Assimilated this lineage and reset its traction.
A different dispersal mechanism does not merit lament,
The managed are mute within the worker's woeful testament.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Sometimes a quest of faith begets a set from a cartomancer,
What good would it do to bribe the tarot and fake her answer?
For doctrine to deprive a man of god's hero in himself,
To trial and tribute his death to ascend on our caste shelf.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Your cards at hand, as is any fact of fortune, are from you.
All around are landmarks to map your light, vibration, and hue.
A presence is an action amongst quintessential stage props,
Weathered roles rehearse their sonorous loves watching ripples drop.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Turbid fury has no footholds on the great movement in your mind,
Gears that we hear were once a pursuit to prosper as mankind.
To disarm the victim's rights and loosen all nooses may seem odd,
Yet Devil deviates design and is forgiven by God.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Cities yearn to scrape skies built on products at the world's splendor.
Though trinkets become trite as we glorify a greedy vendor.
How could one commend such a clear farce for the multitude?
Selling milk to children's bones while our livestock store false fortitude.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Lifespans expand within this ****** twilight of barbarism.
History obscures so we light turned pages with euphemism.
Often forgotten is that our memory is amorphous,
Generating our boldest fears and cheers to those beyond us.
When its the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Pessimism or optimism; are not rivals of ones structure
Secular submission denies despair's innate rupture
It is built by the hopeful to share love after given grace
To construct a profound unity above pride's titled race
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

We are taught to worry for unruly folk until weary.
Doctors like leaders treat symptoms not seeing sickness clearly.
They stress the distressed to disseminate imminent spines,
Shattering that last vestige of a will searching between lines.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

The commandments should have demanded there always be one more,
As truth evolves in jollies or follies, being rich or poor.
Always a witness to your lemons that could squeeze a profit.
Limits can be more than second hands surpassing the minute.
When is the time? Are you a counter of clockwork?

Thus old cogs and smog of our familiar faculties rest
On the zealous peals of those who know at the hour of our best.
It is not easy to lift volition past sadness so steep.
As each day would raise a mile, we may grow to smile when we sleep
Now is the time, are you a counter or clockwise?

As I lie on pastures 
Along the grimes of these woods
Breathing in the morning dew
I feel awakened and anew
Past sins washed away like the streaming river
Wondering if I've live till forever.

But then I look up to you. 
Your face looks shiny and 
new. The angels are gathered 
around you with their harps 
and violins. Singing that I’m free 
of my past sins. I think this is 
the beginning of something 
beautiful and not the end. Hand 
me my pallet and set the canvas 
up for I will paint a portrait of us. 
While the winds ruffle through the 
curls of your hair and the leaves of
the big old oak tree. I try to speak 
up words of love but it almost seems 
that the morning dew has set a flood 
from within. Come over dear and rest 
your bones with me while I draw this
portrait using my blood and tears. Oh 
darling won’t you rest your bones over 
here next to me under this big old oak tree.

Your beauty akin to the moon
Forever gleaming in her prowess
Shadows mortify at the thought of you
Your light begets hope thrusting miracles
I've been praying all my life
Stay with me my dear
As these woods as our witnesses 
We vow to be forever rooted from the veins to our beating hearts.
Now come closer dear and dance 
with the ventricles of my heart* ~

He used a nice word for it-
Emulate
"Oh! Look how her imagination glides
From glorious skies to
Eerie depths, no hesitation
Dropping from resounding thunder
To dead silence that shatters asunder
All that is sensate
And that, my friend,
Is what I'm trying to emulate!"

With such shameless eagerness
He shifted styles,
A form-changing, chameleon of a poet
Ever so often devouring a new set of words
Like rich, delicious wine
And fashioning his words into
The poetess' writing style,
And crooning with her tunes
For as long or short a while
As his lecherous dog of a heart pleased,
Then letting himself be afflicted
With yet another poetic disease.

I rolled my eyes, yet silently asked
Him- the Casanova of verse-
*When will you stop falling in love?
When will you stop drowning into
Another woman's words?
Think about me,
Struggling to keep up,
Changing tracks with you,
Climbing up and down
Ballads-Sonnets-Haikus-Epics-and free verse
With you,
Watching you enamoured by her,
Still trying to emulate you
For the most vain of reasons there is-
Hope.

Death,
So cruel,
So kind,
Has taken my worries away;
The ones I wished would stay;
Worries, just memories.
I was left with my three,
So they obliged,
Now worries number five.
We know how worries grow,
They start so small, no worry at all,
Then they start to crawl.
We beget,
From their outset,
Worry.

sound of wilderness
has come to pass

machines of men
have come to age  

children no longer
go outside

it is not safe to
breathe

the traffic is
too much

and streets
are all crowded

old buses are filled
with people who do
not have time to live

there are no
stars in the sky

the sun is masked
by the tall buildings

water is no
longer free

fire is now
expensive

the night is
never dark

pierced by the
screams of a thousand
lights

without hope
or the warm sun

tired and
weary

people watch the
tall buildings

stare them
down

watch the
neon signs
street lights

cars, trees
and music

pass them
by

one by
one

they are
forgotten

placed inside
decaying

old crowded
buses

one by
one

they become
so many

a town
a city
a slum

that speaks of
nothing

not a word

only silence and
more silence

and the silence
becomes so heavy

crushing dreams
of every new born

until the silence
begets a scream

begets a machine
with a hammer

that knocks
on their feeble
doors

flatten their
denude walls

for opulent men living in
the silver clouds

in tall buildings with
neon signs

men who
own

hope

the sun
the buildings
the mountains
expensive cars
diamond rings
salaries
army

old crowded
buses

traffic and
winter smog

birds chirping
by the windows

voices talking
in the room

people tired
and bothered

hunch over in
their despair

coiled up in
corners

waiting for
the batteries
to run out

suffering in
silence

telling their
fractured stories

that speak of
nothing

not a word

only silence and
more silence

until the silence
becomes so heavy

that speaks of
nothing

not a word
only silence  

until the silence
begets a scream

begets a machine
with a hammer

that knocks on
feeble doors

flatten the
rustic walls

to mine the rubble
and mint more sky for
opulent men living in
the silver clouds

men who
own

hope

the sun
the river
the moon
the mountain
summer
spring

golden sunsets
expensive cars
exquisite laughter

each worth more
than a lifetime

of impoverished
daughters and their
sons

angry fathers and
women they beat

mothers and
****** and
beggars and

millions upon
millions

without hope
or the bright sun

silent as
a scream

silent as
a whisper

silent as
violence

and it speaks
of nothing

not a word

only silence and
more silence

passed down
impoverished
malnutritioned

millions upon
millions

such is the
world

without hope
or the bright sun

each laugh as expensive
as an entire lifetime

suffering in
silence.

A vehement deity,
father of a carpenter,
and proprietor of creationism,
looked down upon his work,
both literally and figuratively.
When an ecosystem falls to the
egocentricity of man, a vessel
will be sought, and contained is
the righteousness of a mortal.

Serenity became inclination, and
with loss of the feminine beauty
came regret. For sin masqueraded
as black clouds, and whether
change occurs, torrential rain begets
growth in an environment. Wash over
the sins of the ******; what is current
can only be exposed as a fallacy when
revelation is prevalent,
and save for the innocent:
innocuous.

Even in Hell a cyprus tree would be
surrounded by wildflowers.
Noah knew not of damnation, and
with calloused hands raised to the sky,
a hammer came crashing down.

Not unlike stone tablets
etched with command,
the world lay on granite,
with a universal epitaph.
For Noah to ignore his destiny
would be blasphemous.

Feather painted with gray
by the unlicensed hand of her lover.
She’s the beauty beyond
as his eyes stared longingly at her.
But she’s weary of the gray
and scared of his glare.
Still he painted until
the other colors decayed away.
"Ah, you were so happy, honey,
I just had to give you a little misery.”
And she never turned blue
ever again.

We sat in the overlook above the Serpent Mound
in the heat of that garish July afternoon,
sunlight scorching our pallid skin,
like rays through a magnifying glass,
till we could endure no more and
sought the shroud of skyscraper elms ---
halfway houses of leaf, bark and cellulose.
Minutes before we'd signed our names in the visitors book,
like giddy high-schoolers autographing a yearbook,
recording our wayward lover's sojourn
to a site the Hopewell worshipped in celebration of existence.

For what purpose do we worship this ground?
I wondered as we walked beside the curving icon,
that undulated in rolled earthen coils down the *****,
sine-waves loosed from a colossal oscilloscope.
Are these coils symbolic of our future's meandering relationship?
Her exploring hand upon my ****
drew me from thought to evaluation of this unexpected caress.
But for the heat, I'd have shown her what idle foreplay begets!
Great Serpent, this was not Eden's carnal karma
acted out in a second Genesis! ---
though a symbolic egg spews from your mouth.

Stand up for what?
To collapse back down
my ankles turn to water
whenever you're around
I can't stand up
when i don't know what i stand for
like my brain is in the clouds
but my heart is on the **** floor
or a platform
my face is in a sandstorm
and i can't form words
with my lips between your teeth
our bodies now declare war
and my throat begets a siren
that your backbones can't ignore
your shoulders hold me down
while i beg for
just
a
little
bit
more