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jeffrey conyers Nov 2016
All the bigots came out to vote.
The racist has spoken.
Now comes the horror of that decision.
All because many afraid to see a woman lead.

Don't cry, if wars happen.
Don't regret the error of your mistake.
And you will.

But those that knows truth.
Isn't surprised bigotry lives.
They been pretending too long.
While only fooling themselves.

Bigots like a chameleon changing right back to fit in.
Realize bigots are bigots only truth friends.
But push the wrong group into a corner with it.

Than you find yourself explaining your death to your nearest kin.
Brent Kincaid Jul 2017
If:

There were no people of color, they'd pick on redheads.

If there were no redheads they would pick on people with glasses.

If there were no people with glasses they’d pick on fat people.

If there were no fat people, they’d pick on welfare recipients.

If there were no welfare recipients, they’d pick on non-Christians.

If there are no non-Christians around,  they'll pick on Catholics.

If there are no Catholics around they'll pic on Christians from any denomination except theirs.  

If there are none of those around, they'll pick on college graduates.

Obladee, obladah, yeah! Yadda yeah, the list goes on...

(The same thing applies with Non-Christian bigots. Just change a word here and there.)

Bigots are bigots
No matter what the name
The underhanded tactics
Are all just the same.
They are heartless and evil.
That’s the name of their game.
They are social criminals and
Look for someone else to blame.
Himani Vashishta Jan 2013
Yes, I am an Atheist.
A single word explains it.
I don’t have the popular, visor faith in God.
A little word retorts,
I don’t bend on my knees to pray.
Yes, I question God’s presence, doubt his omnipotence
I choose to think freely, so I am an Atheist!!
A single word may stimulate believers,
They say, I am condemned to hell and deserve damnation.
Egotistical, Arrogant and ‘Witch’ I am called in condemnation.
Still I assert, ‘I am proud to be an Atheist!!’

A Single word explains, I have torn all ties,
No more in mood of listening age-old rhetoric cries.
I have broken all barriers, which divide my own people,
To live my life by the Golden Rule of Humanity & affable.
I dream boundary’s falling, all mankind as one,
Humanity prevailing before any sham religion.
People of different caste and creed dancing-singing together in the bright light of sun.
Not idols rather humanity my religion, so I am proud to be an Atheist!!

A Single word Atheist for me doesn’t mean,
The faith believers preach I totally deny.
But so long as logic is there,
Anything else would be a lie.
I agree no religion asks its followers to become bigot and spread violence and hatred.
I am ready to follow any religion if believers assure no more blood would be shattered.
As far as I feel, they gave me no assurance, so still I am forced to be an Atheist!!

A Single word Brahmin for me explains my caste and religious status,
Even after born in a very religious family events converted me to atheist status.
I opened my eyes in India in year 1984,
The winter season was burning by religious riots, killing Sikhs daily more & more.
The mighty prime minister was assassinated of the county of crore,
Year 1985-86 also witnessed Ahmedabad roar.
Small incidents continued but year 1990 witnessed communal riots more and more.
Burning issue of Ram Janam Bhoomi temple touched this time every door.
Bliss of Childhood with me, I hide in my mother lap and just ignore.
My days filled with play, naps, snacks, beautiful dresses I wore.
Mommy and Daddy smiled at all the adorable things I did; my innocence something I was loved for.
My elder brother was my idol; my best friend remained with me like my shadow every hour.
In my childhood I was the most religious so respected for.
Communal frenzy converted that religious girl to the extent of proud Atheist!!

A little word lovable was apt for me
I started my schooling; mingle with kids of all caste.
My high born parents any how made me understand not to eat and meet with low caste.
That’s when I realized the equation of caste,
I was growing and learning about world very fast.
I found brotherhood my books preached and the scenario existed in society complete contrast.
Minor and some times major violence always outbreak on the name of creed and caste,
In the country which was such a vast.
I noticed my community condemning government policy of reserving for low caste.
This widespread hatred hurt my innocent heart turned me in a proud Atheist!!

A single word love got my all attention as I grow adult,
Yes, I was in love, the most beautiful feeling of this world.
Alas! My first love my true love never fulfilled,
In the midst of caste and creed.
Caste obligations made my life ruined,
God snatched my love and I stopped loving god so I am here a proud Atheist!!

A little word communalism shook the giant country in 2002 again,
The whole Gujarat drenched in blood rain.
All streets burning up to Sabarmati train,
Women *****, Innocent kids crying man dying, made my faith drain.
I wonder when humanity was slain where God remain,
Why faith can’t be questioned again.
Why can’t we see through communal-political equation?
Yes, I use reason and logic, so I am proud to be an Atheist!!

A single word Atheist changed my whole life,
Traditional man refused to make me wife.
My Family Life continuously on strife,
They say Bigots will put me dead by knife.
Believers speak ill for me in disguise,
Hoping quietly for my demise.
Still I dare to follow path of truth, so I am proud to be an Atheist!!

A single word fear I see in all eyes,
Take a deep look, communal worm hollow our society you realize.
Misinformation, falsification bloodshed that Bigots materialize,
God died in my heart since when religion start terrorize.
To save mankind quit all religious difference would be wise,
Otherwise all growth & development would paralyze.
Its High time, only human religion be initialize.
Till Human Religion finalize, I take proud in being an Atheist!!
So Here I am, A Proud Atheist!!

- Himani Vashishta
I woke up, panic attack in full swing. This wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to win. This wasn't supposed to happen!
Morning call to my best friend, we're sobbing into each other's phones. We fear. We fear because we're not cis or heterosexual. We fear for our brothers, sisters, and siblings lacking a title. I fear for what will become of the country I live in.
I promise I wouldn't stand for my country's flag any more as long as he is our "president". I can't respect someone who is accused of ****** a 13 year old girl. He is no man, he was a joke for the Internet to feed off of, until it became too serious and real. Until the day youths of the LGBTQ+ community woke up terrified for their lives because his Vice President would favor having a dead child rather than a gay child, until the day Muslim women questioned if they should wear their hijab anymore because they feared retaliation for their religion from xenophobes, until the day the the chance of hate crimes seemed like a more likely answer for bigots because someone isn't white, until the day laughs of mockery turned into tears of fright.
This monstrosity may only be with us for four years, but a hell of a lot can happen in four years. I don't trust this person to run our country, I don't feel safe. I feel exposed and abandoned by the rights I was promised. I wish to join hands with everyone else who is in my position, and let this sink in until the day in January comes, where he gets his wish, and is finally in control.
I don't understand how America allowed Donald Trump to become president. I really don't. I hope that everyone is safe and please take care of yourself. I'm so sorry for everyone who is scared to death about this election and I just want you to know if you need to talk, hit me up. I'd be happy to talk.
marieLIZ forte Oct 2017
TOBY AND I HAVE TAKEN TO WEARING BINDI
WHICH HAS CAUSED QUITE A STIR
IN OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD
WHERE THERE ARE A LOT OF BIGOTS.
I CALL THEM BIGOTS
BUT TOBY PREFERS MAGGOTS
AND WHEN I SIT AND THINK ABOUT IT  
I AGREE WITH HIM.  
HE'S ONLY A CAT
BUT HE HAS A VERY BIG BRAIN
WHICH SOME PEOPLE THINK MEANS
HE'S EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT

BUT I DON' T
Connor Thomas Sep 2012
I come from New Orleans where the swingers hook up with the singers, and the boxes have a person inside who speak to you through a thick horizontal slot in the door. You come from Minnesota where the most aggressive sentence is “Hi, how are you” and you’ve attended church every Sunday of your life, even though you don’t really believe in god.

We came to the West to skate with the surfer junkies. But then the harbors got bombed and we moved out East to see the hipsters and the artists beggin on the streets. We went to the South with the racists and bigots were dying for a good show. We moved up North to escape from the 70s, and with the 80s on the rise we figured we’d best stay away.

The 70s were rockin’ with **** and LSD in parks and concerts, and on benches on the streets. The smoke in the air was everywhere, from the slums in Wisconsin to the cities of Dallas. Even the poor were lost in the haze.

When the 80s arrived with Rock ‘n’ Roll and techno beats from windowsills upstairs. The music was groovin’ and the ladies were fine. We saw billboards of our names in neon orange lights. The *** was replaced by coke, and the LSD with ****** singing and swinging with delight in our eyes.
When the AIDS broke out we were sick in our beds listening to Pink Floyd and Elton John, and still we were singing. The 70s got us high while the 80s made us die

We lived through wars in Vietnam, and Korea; we fought back the communists with red ink on our hands. We broke down the door into China and got them to arrive in the present and join the world. Although their chairman sits on a chair of lies he leads them with an angry fist in the air pumping “three cheers for Mao”. “Three cheers for Mao”.

When the Soviets launched themselves to the moon we responded with our money and flashed our shiny new machinery in their faces. We marked our territory and claimed triumphantly that “We’re the best”. And we launched our war nukes and pinned them into intimidation. Then the Cubans sought revenge for the death of the Pigs on their Bay. With rifles in hand we stormed the beach and unearthed Castro and his regime.

With our beds soaked in blood, and our dreams covered with fog, hand in hand we lay. We recalled the dances in the backs of old Cafes where the passwords were as simple as three quick knocks and two slow ones. We remembered the guns that pierced the heavenly chorus for the negros in the south. And we thought about the music of the 70s and the death in the 80s and I thought about you for a minute more.
palladia Jun 2013
awkward is a promiscuous word. it flirts unintentionally. it seduces mentally. but most of all it's so disruptionally absurd even the first-come-first-serve basis comes 15 feet behind the typical quota. but it really isn't that serious. it would be awkward plus if i wasn't active right now. does that sound appealing to anyone? well it better. i'm no vanguard when it comes to distribution of emotions. they'll be distributed equally, thank you, and don't worry about getting more 'cause they'll be pieced out safe and fair. lord jesus, we need some sorrow-getter-overs in here! i'm always telling those who ask me for advice to relinquish the suffering and let the good times roll. not that it'll save their hides, i snicker mimically and divert the attention to something inappropriately interesting, like a ***** bumper sticker or a animal corpse on the side of the road. and you are gonna turn into one if you don't stop that crying! man i need some fresh air and i'm not talking about the innocent kind. it's more of the obvious, over-cynical cyanide-soaked air that formaldehyde would blush over. there are two r's in sorrow because the s and the o and w need to be capsized into one rowboat. i never thought i would compromise intimacy with loudspeaker attention-grabbers and then the sailboat does a belly-flop and lands head first in the witches' cauldron. which is like Hamlet's, but a lot less systematic and bunches more pagan. it's synthetically miserable but enigmatically moral. dance of the morals is another program i like. it has to do with the regard of selfish hope and loose pragmatism. pagan! ****** i know it's pagan but it's pigheaded trash like that which gets stuck in the garbage disposal ever so often and we don't have no time to clean it out. i use a fish net that once occupied a corner near the stove which had the net chewed through by ***** rats that inhabit the lower quarters of the bathhaus. it's nothing significant really but more or less a principle in not making leftovers from the unknown trashpile near the barn. attention: entrance alert. "too bad for" who cares. i'm sick of this. "too bad for". that's all said? "let's chat a lot" what? i thought maureen was coming over at 7? who left the cat out again--the dog's gonna have a field day playing cops and robbers, and there are always reallive guns. and i'm stuck back at square/ground one/zero figuring out how i'm gonna get the next day's meal without having to cut off my head or make the microsoft paper clip icon appear with those embarrassing clips telling you how you should appear to your boss on your first interview. and find out that he's a man after all. and ultimately regret what you said every two minutes. wish i had contributed crescents more to the goodness, and not brush over like a stuckist's paintbrush. he's actually using blood instead of acrylics- that's when i get running. wish i hadn't have done that. wish i hadn't. we "hadn't" too much, you know? i wish we had to have "hadn't" before it hadn't have been created. still my emotions are sold and i've cast a mold far too ugly to be a stupid cupid. can we get on with the show, please? no thank i've had enough cranberry pie for right now, maybe buttercup the parrot can have the rest? the cat hates water. then why is he swimming in the dog dish? i'm not complaining, just hesitating to say how i feel when i want it. yeah, i know you're looking at me make a sucker outta myself on your camera. all those poses weren't hard to accomplish but you aggrandize the bad and disregard that i actually have good talent after all. crazy 8s. thought i'd never compromise. thought i'd never make a sport out of tantalizing the shopkeeper's parakeet. yeah, they're playing that game everyone calls a bore cuz it is one. why not roast a marshmallow then find a salamander caught between the chocolate and the *******. and we can't have them crackers anyways cuz there's got gluten in them. can we take a walk, i have something to tell you? i have to tell you about my personal life. i don't care if you're bored. darwin was never bored, fyi. i don't want to hear your juvenile complaints anymore. you're always telling me your problems but you never let me talk. but why would you care? and no way am i gonna share? not there. still. you're still not coming around cuz you're crying and i can't take it anymore. stop the tears, i already told you just take another pill and you'll relax. your life can stop in a heartbeat because some freak told you to stop ******* with the power outlet and make an attempt on making it right. how am i gonna make it right? seems good to me to get up and go and never return. seems right to let it all hang lose and think of excuses as a way to win some money. i'm not the principle breadwinner around here, but i'd bake enough bread to feed an army if i had to. a whole cohort of emotional bigots who don't care anything about their stupid, money-******* societies. it's leveled to the drain again, yeah i know you don't understand. i'm done asking. please? do it for me? don't you know i'm hurting myself because... i'm not listening. don't you want to know i'm cutting my flesh because... i have to water the garden. oh dear what was that? whew! almost another collision with a bee. whew--another close one. what about the spiders in the cabbage bed? what why didn't you tell me? yeah, the cabbage patch has produced more memories than heads, and no not those types of heads. a mashup of what i hate most and what i hate least scourged outta me in a whirl. she's going to take a walk. the radio's on and it's hot in here. those maudy days of summer, but i love every shred of them like i do a coat in the winter. the radio's playing my song: doomsday magnificat! i like leather and metal combinations that are sold in a 60s oz town. you can tie and whip me if you conscience can, but not now. it's another adage gone to the birds. oh no the shopkeeper's parrot is out again and i didn't do it! how come i'm blamed for things i don't do? get over it. another fact of life. another testimonial head my way. dodge! that was a flying saucer that almost razed your head. you wouldn't care though because enough has happened today to make your head spin even faster than it already is. and they're real-live which makes me keeping fumbling my too-short curls disintegrated by sheer chauvinism and belated princeness. that's alright. i know how you feel. i know how the world feels because i am the world. and the world is my canvas. and i may dictate what you are allowed and i may waver onto what laws of principalities are shooting up everywhere, but it's okay 'cause there's a lot more to shoot than good time. and those wacked people can form an alliance and take down the stronghold because in reality, you know that you are wacked yourself to say that. i'm sorry you did. the world will keep spinning, snipers will keep killing, conservatives will keep protesting, parents will keep levitating, children will keep withholding, the days will keep heating, the pool will be more refreshing, and yeah mrs. renttib is still coming over. the world is new. and i am young. but we will all stay safe and good in this empyrean. because and i created it. and i established the surveillance cameras, which are everywhere, but don't feel pressed. yes, i'll forever watch your every move, and even though you've done good, i'll still send you to hell. because you belong there. you may begin now. make your tread strong yet gentle. it's not my expense, the water is cooler out here,
                                                                ­                             anyways.
i've had a rotten day, but i wasn't involved, rather- others force it upon me, for condolence's sake.

ah, you've got plenty to be thankful about so why bother complaining? i often try to analyze this, because my life isn't perfect and i'm often ****** into an uncomfortable state, even when i had nothing to do with it. this was written during (+ after) a family argument about help and those who shouldn't help us, and telling others first, and letting everyone know. i think it's better to keep it to yourself or see a psychologist than starting a whole mess like this again. i know people hate that i don't like opening up and sharing but i'm doing it for the good of everyone. i'm the breadwinner of myself; others will only make me file more tax returns, it seems! so i'm upset and nervous and kind of scared. i want to explore it in a different angle and if i have to be crass and confrontational to do it, i say "full speed ahead!"
ConnectHook Sep 2015
☮ ☮ ☮

Society needs more Social Justice.
Humanity needs peaceworkers.

Peace and Social Justice must be promoted aggressively. There are inequities that must be addressed. Power is not equally distributed. Neither are resources or wealth. Neither are poetic gifts or vision equitably distributed. Unearned privilege is rampant. Poetry must confront this global crisis of capitalist exploitation and manipulation. Poetry must speak to the masses. Poetry must radicalize and inform consciousness to new levels of social change. Marginalized citizens must be empowered. All ******, gender-based, racial, religious, age-based, homophobic, xenophobic, and gynophobic bigots must be brought to see in a new way through our poetry. Community building and local empowerment are of the order. Our poetry must be global in scope – yet rooted and grounded in local community empowerment. Selfless acts of service to promote and increase Social Justice are needed. Lives selflessly devoted to establishing social justice are called for. Our poetic lives must be laid on the altar of the dis-enfranchised and unrepresented. We, as consciously aware poets, must advocate and speak out for those who have no voice.

We, as poets, must, through stirring words of Social Justice, embody through our radical verses the burning hope of a just and sustainable future. This future must become increasingly collective as formerly marginalized consumers become empowered community-builders  –  through our poetry. As poets of the sustainable future we will empower and inform. Our poetry must collectivize, entitle and enslave. We must speak with ONE VOICE: the voice of change and social justice. Our words will rise with healing in their wings and lift whole communities from despair to radicalized self-awareness in communities filled with strident, intolerant and maniacal practitioners of PEACE & SOCIAL JUSTICE. All poets who do not lay their entire creative and lyrical selves on the altar of struggle to bring CHANGE and SOCIAL JUSTICE will be LIQUIDATED by our own EMPOWERED POETRY. IN THE END WE WILL WRITE A PURE POETRY OF SOCIAL CHANGE, ALL IN CAPS, AND THIS POETRY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EMPOWERMENT WILL BE READ OVER THE GRAVES OF ALL SELL-OUT, CORPORATE, FASCIST, SNITCHING, SELFISH, UNEMPOWERED AND UNEMPOWERING TRAITORS AND ENEMIES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE.  IN THE END THERE WILL BE NO PUNCTUATION OR EVEN WORDS ONLY PURE IMAGES OF CHANGE + VISIONARY COLLABORATION IN SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION/MAYBE SLASH MARKS/OKAY MAYBE EXCLAMATION POINTS TOO BUT ONLY THOSE !

WHY? BECAUSE THE ONLY GOOD POET IS A LIVING POET WHO HAS LIQUIDATED EVERY FALSE POET NOT COMMITTED TO THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE !

LONG LIVE POETRY IN ACTION THROUGH CHANGE!
WRITE/SPEAK/AGITATE
FOR  **SOCIAL JUSTICE  & EMPOWERMENT !


POETRY IS STRUGGLE☻
STRUGGLE IS CHANGE☻
CHANGE REQUIRES SOCIAL JUSTICE☻
SOCIAL JUSTICE BRINGS PEACE☻
PEACE BRINGS WAR☻
WAR BRINGS CONFUSION & DEATH☻

(SO DON’T BE CONFUSED)
https://connecthook.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/agitating-the-spin-cycle/

☠☻☭
To be human in a place filled with humanity is to be in constant conflict,
to be human is to be right and wrong,
almost always at the same time,
our ideals are collectively a lie,
to believe in one view is a fallacy,
for truth may lie in the collective,
or perhaps it is simply beyond our reach,
the left is self-righteous,
calling all others bigots,
the right is antiquated,
calling all others fools,
the middle is unsure,
knowing that both sides have merit,
but paying no heed to which pieces are true,
the rest of us don't have a clue,
we are not educated enough to care,
we know nothing and so we do not cast lots,
and truthfully this where the majority of the populous should stay,
and even those who have cast their hands into the mix should retreat,
for to truly know something is difficult,
and far beyond the meager grasp of man's tiny brain.
A.P. Beckstead (2014)
Sacrelicious Mar 2012
Sorry you're a worn out bigot.
I Guess I'll see you when I'm six feet under
or six states South.
We can pretend we're family then
=] .


There are two things I will never comprehend.

1. Why people have to have a bewildered reaction upon finding out someone in their life is gay.
Gay people exist and we're not urban legends.

2. Why people feel the need to call gay guys *******, we know what we are. If you're going to make a quick jab at me, tell me something I don't already know. *******.

Ignorance, fear, hatred and differences are what's ******* up the world.

You can say that everything is fine and that it's just a phase I'm in or even on a larger scale you can say that the blatantly ignored ******* hatred doesn't exist.

** Excuses don't explain anything. I know you have trouble sleeping at night, if I was evil, I would have the same problem.


I use to write for my high school newspaper, but after one year, I got kicked off for writing editorials like this.
Brent Kincaid Jul 2015
You can talk about Jesus
And be instantly heard.
You can call him your Savior
And not mean a word.
You can shout your hosannas
To the people on your street
And few will suspect you
As having pure clay feet.

Holy, holy, Holey Moley,
Things have turned for the worse.
Hiding behind Jesus
Gives our land a ride in a hearse.

When you talk about Jesus
Please be true to the words.
Read what he has said
And not what you heard.
If you read the Holy Bible
And find reason to hate
You’ve been led astray
And it’s not too late.

Holy, holy, Holey Moley,
Things have turned for the worse.
Hiding behind Jesus
Gives our land a ride in a hearse.

So far we’ve noticed
The words that bigots use
Are not from Christians,
But are textual abuse
In that they are from before
Man learned to write
So why are bigots so sure
They got everything right?

Holy, holy, Holey Moley,
Things have turned for the worse.
Hiding behind Jesus
Gives our land a ride in a hearse.
Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,
  Those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove;
Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,
  Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with fantasy glow,
  Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;
From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,
  Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love.

If Apollo should e’er his assistance refuse,
  Or the Nine be dispos’d from your service to rove,
Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the Muse,
  And try the effect, of the first kiss of love.

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art,
  Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove;
I court the effusions that spring from the heart,
  Which throbs, with delight, to the first kiss of love.

Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes,
  Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move:
Arcadia displays but a region of dreams;
  What are visions like these, to the first kiss of love?

Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,
  From Adam, till now, has with wretchedness strove;
Some portion of Paradise still is on earth,
  And Eden revives, in the first kiss of love.

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove—
The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial, the first kiss of love.
W.H.O has poisoned the vaccine
against fertility of African girl
African boy mother and father
it his now hovering around
the third world geographies
using its satellite mouths and arms,
ringing alarms over the coming tetanus
only to trap the ignorant one
into its infernal of injections
for nothing but permanent sterility,

WHO has no sympathy
for the folks in the poor world,
Nicaragua, Mexico and Kenya
being already depopulated
by ills in history
it still goes ahead
to inject sterility
into their bodies
while pretending
to be in war on tetanus,

wars, slavery and deliberate castration
of the captured slaves
for fitness to royal gladiator
has already made Latin America
and her sister Africa
to suffer fate of the times
in the curse of underpopulation
then still WHO is insidious
in her racist moves
to depopulate the poor world
through her imperial arsenals
in the name of vaccinations
against imagined tetanus
is a sly ploy in single,

W.H.O is sterilizing daughters
of Africa and the poor world
in the age width of 15 to 50
a sure bracket for fecundity
for no other reason
but global Afro-phobia
or universal racism,
or who knows the whole deal
other than the orchestrator
of the anti-human orchestra,

Ebola is already foot loose
on its deadly mission
to wipe out the Negroes
as the imperial powers that be
are armed to the teeth
to confine it in Africa
the way they have already done
to confine cancer and impish ***
in poor Africa,

W.H.O leave Africa alone
to sire and sire,
to fill their land
for a half of Africa
is under dearth of emptiness,
five million square miles of Mauritania
has less than ten million people
a thousand square miles of Turkana
has a hundred thousand turkanas,
Sahara desert is sparsely populated
Namibia and Botswana are cursed
with the spell of humanilessness,

the ***** has no other work
but to plant the human seed
the womb has no other work
but receive the human seed
while the ******
has a royal duty
to germinate the human seed
and these are Godly duties
as the breast of a woman
feeds the seedling
at no cost,

W.H.O leave us alone
to be lame and crippled
late us be wounded
with gangrenous wounds
Like the ****** ulcers
that opportune on ***,
for Tetanus you are fearing
is not terrible as ***,
we better have wounds
and children
other than being barren
in danger of foreign reign,

W.H.O you are in arms
with your fellow bigots
to legalize and empower
Homosexuality in Africa
this being a strategy enough
to jab the ribs of African humanity
a deadly sucker punch
off the right pedastle
of tyranny of numbers,

W.H.O have you ever seen
an African burial of the barren?
listen I tell you, I am aware
you know not,
burying of the barren and the sterile
is the most black ritual
most pale in the world,

give birth Africa! give birth
give birth to twins
in the prime of your childhood
before you go to cities
give birth, and give birth,
children and only children
are the glory of our poverty,
children pulled China out of poverty
they are pulling India out of poverty
as France is stranded on which way out
as it gambles and gambols in stupidity
with free money for the second child,

W.H.O! I know you are foolish as a stone
but I will leave you with pearls of wisdom
from the Bukusu people of Kenya,
that; even if you are foolish
Foolish and stubborn like a stone
but I am as hungry as a hyena
i am sure you have heard.
Brent Kincaid May 2016
Where are those killing fields?
They are wherever we see
The Master Race ignoring
Peace, love and equality.

If you’re not white
And your state is red,
Don’t be surprised
If you end up dead.
As maybe some one
Will beat on your head
And demand to know
What goes on in your bed.

If you are any race
But Holy Caucasian
Like African or Inuit,
Mexican or Asian
That includes Islam
And all such nations
The bigots will hate
On every occasion.

Where are those killing fields?
They are wherever we see
The Master Race ignoring
Peace, love and equality.

In World War Two we
Fought against fascism
And now we entertain
An unholy American schism
In which Americans plan
With gleeful fanaticism
To make every effort
To maintain totalitarianism.
For over two centuries
We have sung of equality
And the inalienable rights
Of American humanity.
We continue to fight now
But it has become a calamity
Because now we are fighting
Within each of our families.

Where are those killing fields?
They are wherever we see
The Master Race ignoring
Peace, love and equality.
Aaron Wallis Nov 2012
A man is only half of what he is; always leaning towards the dim
Lacking a flouted need which whorls in the mute within him
A man bigots an ideal and will lark it away at the hold of his routed pith
A smile is not worthwhile if the smile does not have anything to receive or to give

A man is skyless; bound to his back with his dreams fixed on a rapture
He gorges upon tasteless feasts gasping for that sup he hungers to recapture
He does not know nor recall the times that did once befall
Of the lossless suffers and how they ever meant anything at all

He will become the most that he can ever endeavour
Be the creature he needs to be and whichever
Way it may engross him and how it moulds or claims him
It will be still him but leaning not so far in the dim

He would be a whole man who would give himself wholly
Who would be more and only more to her and her solely
His full heart would be tendered for it would not be his own
If it was still partial of the heart that had since budded and grown

A man would be raised and the sky would be without border
A bliss amid clouds where the undiscerning muddle finds order
There would be a sense to the road an approach to the wander
A reason for all a kiss a need to ponder no longer

There would be such rise in his depth and a contest behind bit teeth
To fight for the purposed kiss to hold her and keep her from grief
To offer her all embrace not too tense and not too slack
For her to breathe is to breathe; now half new he would never give it back

To be back upon his back with eyes busy to the sky
His bones broken as her feet glide indifferently by
Over his stare among cloud where she impelled his descent
He’d lay fallen and broken beaten and bent

If Half a man became whole does a whole man not become naught?
If he fights for a dearest never afore dreamt dream then what is left to be fought?
Was it his minds misgivings that would lead to such a trite giving reliving to doubt?
That surfaced more than he knew; the intended whisper instead a floundering shout?

Would it have been his heart that threw him from his felicity?
Could his relish overwhelm and mutate into potent toxicity?
Could it be fact that without thought nor without tact he impelled her?
Either overthought or over loved he would have fallen the hardest and he would not rise
No he would not rise anymore

If there ever was such a man and ever such a she
He would have her for as long as that may be
Her greatest gift is after saying all this to you
Is that after knowing all that you could you would feel the same way too.
Brent Kincaid Sep 2015
We were the ones,
Self-chosen ones,
And we had seen enough.
And we had heard enough
To be tired of the drama;
The games that our mamas
And our Papas played
The plans they laid
That so often did not work.
The pensions and the perks
That so often left them bitter
Mumbling curses about quitters
As they argued over parking spaces
And carefully averted their faces
When people were denied rights
Because they were not white
Or sometimes because Jews
And non-whites could not be
Members of their sororities
And country club amenities.

They demanded no dark skin
And objected to what we dressed in
And wanted us to cut our hair
And go find a decent job somewhere
To start an acceptable career
And get a decent nine to five
To work as long as we were alive.
We knew they were trying to protect
To drive us to the life they projected
That would help us get a salary
And develop the kind of misery
And sense of hopelessness;
The exact kind of mess
They were living
And they weren’t forgiving
When we rebelled and fought
And shunned the trinkets they bought
That they thought would tempt us
To buckle on the harness;
The long-term promise.

We rejected the temptation
To join the workaday nation
And get into the drinking
Nine-to-five way of thinking.
We swapped the whiskey
For something they found risky.
We smoked our marijuana
And talked about nirvana
In our love-beads and batik
We left family homes to seek
And ultimately to find friends
Who wanted the same ends
And would work with us,
And they would walk with us
To the love-ins and protests
And help us pen requests
For marches and gatherings
To demonstrate our misgivings
About who got what
And who did not
And how and when
And which were not seen as men.
But we saw poorly disguised slaves
We knew we wanted to save.

We were going to fix the world
So, we waded into insults hurled
And high-powered fire hoses.
They broke our arms and noses
And trod on our signs
And drew a line
Between us and the public.
We were criminals and suspects
In crimes they invented;
We patchouli oil scented
Hippies wearing Birkenstocks
Without any socks
And jeans with protest patches
Singing our snatches of songs
Like “We Shall Overcome Someday”.
They couldn’t hear a word we would say.
They just cursed us and objected
And made sure we were subjected
To as much stonewalling as the law
Could put up against us all.

We were going to fix the world,
And we got LBJ on our side, like Jack
He went on the attack
And changed things for the better
Still not to the letter of the law
But a bit more spirit
Began to exist in it
Because blacks were acknowledged
And could finally go to college
In white schools
Adhering to the rules
The bigots had always ignored.
And unlike before, the police
Actually kept the peace
Unless it involved demonstrations
Against the crimes of our nation
Against another nation
That never attacked us
Never even threatened us.
These protest made us criminals
And that is what the cops thought of us.

Yes, by the time Nixon was going
After everyone began knowing
What a rat he was and because
He got caught, we saw
Him get on the copter and leave
And without a thought to grieve
We wanted our country to cease
Being some kind of insane police
In an Asian country few of us knew.
To stop what they put our troops through
And bring the people back here
So they could end the killing and fear
That our country was generating.
The debating was through
And the country started anew
By ending that situation.
Peace descended on the nation
And we took credit.
We did do some of it.
Then, we quit.

We started small companies
Selling handmade gifts and soaps
Not becoming the dopes
We fought our parents not to be
But more the people we ought to be
Living in hippie enclaves
That turned into yuppie enclaves
And we got fatter.
But that didn’t matter.
We had our memories
And we had our old war stories
Of marching, and protesting
And they were interesting enough
That we lost the will to be tough
And let the objections slide
And hid inside our mini-farms
And ignored when people were harmed
By many of the same atrocities
That fueled our animosities
Just a generation before.
We decided it was not our war
And sat on our hands.
And drifted like the sands.
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
In Venus' starlight
I see my own dear fright 
I see your reflection
Seeping into the night

In Venus' starlight
Hush, the moon opens its ear
The stars are shy, yet they shine
They'd rather you don't come near

In Venus' starlight
We're breathing all just the same
The stars align their scars
And call you by your last name

Bigots, believers, bovinity
Strike asunder your centrality
Denouncers, dreamers, gazerby
There's so much more than a wispy sky
The starmen await your ears

In Venus' starlight
Look away to lunar dreams
Mineral profit in rocks
An efficient plague, it seems

In Venus' starlight
Forget about notions of greed
Explore on behalf of your race
If escape is of no need

In Venus' starlight
The sand takes a dramatic pose
The trees, deceitful, the cattle are poisoned
The spaceboys are speaking in prose

What you don't believe, is always out there
Until you have felt its absence like air
You've not seen it all, you won't see it then
It’s all you've got, so look, fool, look!
You’ve read it in a book
Brent Kincaid Jul 2017
We are allowed to be unkind
To the sick, the deaf and the blind.
We gladly toss them into a ditch.
They don't matter; They are not rich.
We giggle and count what we’ve got
Laugh uproariously at those who have not.
We call our poor neighbors our inferiors
Because having money makes one superior.

It also works the same with every race.
Supremacy is about the color of your face.
It starts there and moves to include nationality.
Only Caucasian Americans match our reality.
Sure non-whites can pick our cotton for us
But, as for equality, the concept will bore us.
It says in the Bible you have to be from here
And white and Protestant, those words are clear.

And this stuff about **** and lesbians too
Not one word of that civil rights stuff is true.
My preacher told me gay people are abomination.
That’s why us Republicans support segregation.
That's some of what is wrong with our schools
Somebody has been listening to communist fools.
We need to get back to the good way things were
Before all this equality stuff was allowed to occur.

I tell you the truth, this stuff totally makes me burn.
I mean, these college-warped hippies need to learn
That this country is a Christian one, since beginning
So, we don’t want this equality stuff you’re selling.
Just shine our shoes and park our expensive cars
And we’ll tip you a little bit and there you are;
Right there in the place all of you ought to be;
Freedom is for us rich whites, it’s American history.
Brent Kincaid Nov 2016
We all could have equal rights
If the world would only grant them.
We could all sing a brand-new
A truly joyous national anthem.
We could sing about at last
The words of the Constitution
Finally will match with reality
Without another revolution.

This is the tale of the autocrats
And how they got badly out of hand.
They decided they knew more about
Things they could never understand.
They decided they knew better than
The people with proper education.
So they elected their supporters to
Lay waste to their own fine nation.

This is a morality tale about greed
And what it can do to men’s minds;
That turns them to skulduggery
And makes them act as if they’re blind
To reason, decency and even honor
Taking advantage of the weakest
Who then grow weaker by the hour.

As many times in history, they promise
A shopping list of impossible dreams
And the weak think they’ll come true,
Say reality is not quite what it seems.
They think by listening to carpetbaggers
They will all get rich and supported
By each elected lying *******.
But those dreams are soon aborted.

For a while they believe the woes
Are made by their predecessors.
They’l blame the losers, the gays
The blacks and finally the electors.
They won’t question themselves
About the choices they all made.
By then the path of doom and death
Will be almost permanently laid.
Glenn Sentes Feb 2013
Who else in this inhumane edifice
can dance while the suspecting eyes stare
at his moistened armpit?
Pathetically unknowing music uplifts not just the soul but the intellect.

Who else got the fire in imparting?

or …

did theirs even start a single spark since then?

Who else brings out the best in these hopefuls?
It’s all the worse and worst that they see.

And you think San Pedro would be pleased
when you gloat you made all the priests, doctors, and engineers?


Woe to you who humiliate the chair by your indolent butts
while uttering kindergartenous blabbers you claim to be education!
Then you get all you want while tabula rasa remains tabula rasa.

And you
You  seated on the higher chairs!
Why don’t you trample down awhile
and put your cataracting sight to use
before it even brings you to the death of light.

Has anyone of you even heard what your god told to Pontius Pilate?
Ha! The you-have-no-power-over-me’s have always been impervious to you bigots!

And you say to your kin let me handle it.
When it is delayed and their impatience grows
you see they’ll leave.

Did you ever fret about deadlines
of bills, of matriculas, of debts?
What do you feed to your clan? Feeds?

Get Ripley’s here!

Oh how divine to utter all the Fs!




©Glenn L. Sentes
February 20, 2013
Brent Kincaid Apr 2016
I was raised by a pack of fools
Who proclaim Caucasians are the best.
And are glad to fight, at the drop of a hint
To put the whole matter to the test.
They have an entire joke routine
And descriptive names they repeat
In minimizing and insisting that
Their right to decent treatment isn’t real.

There are references to some animals
And unfunny comments about color.
The statements about characteristics
Of body and features always go together
With a special set of gross anecdotes
To cover any kind of non-Christian belief.
And the refusal to consider equality
As a decent attitude stands in bright relief.

Beneath all this horror, not very deep,
Lies a sickening river of hate and fear
That fails to improve as education is
Rejected year after disgusting year.
Pointing out the error of their ways
Might earn you a punch in the eye
But the bigot hangs on to their rage
And never gives fellowship a try.

The American Bigot claims to be
A staunch Christian all the way through
Which forces them to hate and cheat
And lie as much as Jesus would do.
Of course, we know that Jesus was
A preacher of love and acceptance
But it seems that bigots never quite
Made that Jesus’ acquaintance.

So, here we can see we need to add
Some terms to this kind of individual
Whose relationship to peace and love
Is at best slight, scant and residual.
We also need to append to their titles
Of masters of anger fear and prejudice
The unhealthy pallor of indecency,
Dishonesty, inhumanity and cowardice.
Francie Lynch Aug 2018
What's the difference between
Bigots and the POTUS?
(space provided)
_____
grabbing her by throat hair he holds gun barrel to right eye with free hand she edges fingers into boot pulls dagger plunges it into his heart

i didn’t mean to do that i meant to do this

i’m trying to figure out how other people deal with disappointment of old age i guess they arrive at some settlement some settlement that eludes me

very few figure out meaning of their lives until it’s too late then become detectives trying to figure out whys if you wake up tomorrow you’ve got a shot at new day no one in this world knows what might happen

i believe people can do change maybe not their nature but spiritually emotionally intellectually psychologically i recognize change within myself i did could now never commit acts different from who i was more scared sensitive hopeful pure honest longing for love probably i sound corny all i want is mutual love adoration in way it was easier when i was thoughtless i got ***** i don’t know

poet must face every conceivable fear terror no matter how despairing risk walking away from table without chips

there are good people and bad people sometimes good people make bad mistakes sometimes bad people make smart choices

for decades he lived knowing no one valued him except his family collecting his paintings reading his works praising his efforts his entire career an inside job

her graying disheveled hair muddy smudged apron raw arthritic fingers she cooks meal washes dishes a million trillion dishes thankless life mom what’s for dinner

some people see it all coming plan invest i never saw any of it coming i never imagined

the sickly smell of grandpa’s farts lingers in room nauseating family

he held shivering abandoned puppy in arms she whimpered repeatedly he swore in that moment to protect her stood by his promise until he buried her

wild wolf chases him growling snapping nipping at ankles tearing jeans biting drawing blood he runs

pitiable old men everyone knows old men are impotent jokes with no pack to punch just harmless peevish impediments what good are they what purpose do they serve get the ******-freaking out of the road old man

riotous advancing mob overcome military police

sharing yoga class old man attending his skin thin as parchment bled i cleaned his blood from mat every class until he died

after puncturing her maidenhood reaching ****** he strokes head of 8 year old daughter good girl good girl daddy is so proud

skin him alive skin him alive little girl asks what’s different about poetry from standard writing grandpa answers i have no answers

not possible yet happening gradually suddenly amidst bribes bargaining lies government collapses citizenry unleash in anarchy yearning for change

Mom’s fogginess i sense it beginning in myself possibly inherited will i become like Mom there’s no one looking out for me Mom i’m looking out for you

after 30 or 40 years life is over don’t believe what they tell you

when i’m dead what will they unearth in my personal effects writings paintings letters emails bookmarks internet visitations or gossip accusations from those still alive probably allege another selfish decadent fool squandered resources missed opportunities misses the mark

maybe in 5 years i will live in New York City London Paris Tokyo Tahiti  with beautiful wife who will spread her buns want me to **** her grab my ***** at least once a day

there is a star in north sky that shines i understand you looking away when pain gets too great please look into my eyes when throbbing subsides

don’t make it any harder than it has to be please find it in your heart to forgive me i am so sorry

yup i’ve got cash guns friends in Canada Mexico Netherlands France first let’s make a run for the border  then later think about a boat

oh yeah one last remark ******* haters bigots greedy ******* all you big city fat cats small town big fish fearful suburban housewives over-cautious grannies gangsters politicians real-estate lawyers moneylenders fraudulent priests ******* all you movie actor phony smile celebrities cliché skinny jean cowboy boot rock stars all you left-wing right-wing tea-party outer-space inner-space freaks ******* i can’t don’t know how to explain myself ******* all
JW Jun 2015
We’re just peasants can’t you see?
This is our society
They love to keep us dumb and fat
So they can exploit all we have
I’m sick of bigots and their lies
I’ll jump off now and hope to fly
To a place that will show me
All of its sincerity
I see the question before a test
"Mark your ethnicity"
and I think

Who the hell gives you
the right to care about
my skin color?

As if I am proud of my ancestors
putting the Native peoples on reservations
and hissing at innocent school children.

What have we become, America?
We condemn those that
"hop the border"
yet we don't recognize that
we are the aliens.

Bigots that don't step back
and marvel at our
beautiful mosaic of diversity.

Love where you come from,
but NEVER mistake
victory for **degradation.
As a stone falconer, I look for honey where many detest,
I sombrely harvest stones for my food as others bask in orchards
I now salute Adolf ******, not for his adulthood life,
I bow unto him for his youthful love of his fatherland,
In his life of youthful days, dreaming and dreaming
In his struggles of meine Kempf, to wash Germany clean,
And plant social democracy free from the stench of Jews,
His love-hate of Karl Marx redolent of missing link,
In all the humanity where education is made a luxury
And dearest reserve of the rich, the few and powers that be,
Your excellent mental growth defied formality of the times,
You surpassed the schooled and the institutionalized of the time,
Phenomenally accumulating haphazard knowledge and prowess
Of the garrulous leader as beckoned the fashion of politics by then,
Only the best outfit to beguile politics of Europe in the then time,
In your humanity there is both glorious failure and doomsday success
Whence your life failures are fountains of intellectual glory,
You yearned to wash the Jews off a reeking perfume
To offload your fatherland off the burden of exotic poverty,
A normal dream for a normal son, in whatsoever the world,
****** the son of Europe you made your father proud,
No inch of land on earth messes to play with Europe,
Your respect for African military muscle sent a right Signal,
Down in the land of the Negroes to fight for freedom
From the rotten yoke of colonialism that had putrefied
The necks and shoulders of African nationalism,
Hail you ****** in realm of the living dead
History of we the living is a protégé of your soul,
Carry your neck high above all the dead for your role,
Germany is now great and highly spirited above cosmetics,
You were born insignificant but you died significantly,
Eva Braun the lady of your head falling in your arm,
A true man you measured as you died on the nuptial night,
You gave the mantra of historical permanency
On which Europe’s future is embedded in your song
Of need for the breathing space for sons of the Aryan nation,
I admire your spirit towards preservation of your fatherland,
There are million of those that hate you in the day under the light,
But they slavishly worship you in the night with their dim lit candles
Their faces deeply buried in the Meine Kempf, no effort can fickle ‘em
In their voracity for the oeuvre of your soul, the Fuhrer of Germany,
Blessed be Germany the land of your matrix,
Let it sire and sire several like you, now and future
For the spirit of duty with which you were imbued
The sole natural resources menacingly missing
Among the poor countries of the world
Hence their misery in the captivity of poverty,
You are a lesson, a school, and benchmark
For the brave and the cowards but only the bigots
Can refuse to swallow the superb historicity
You gave to the world of your time and beyond.
You nursed and bred Einstein the child of your arm,
In your early Jostle on the verge of nuclear technology ,
While others in the deep slumber snored in crudeness
Of their culture and colonial bliss, totally impairing the vision,
You amassed national wealth in the hands of the *****,
You thinned corruption from the state machinery of Germany,
You combated communism with mighty of a born fighter,
You fought poverty and condemned syphilis away from Aryan race,
In your pure love of Germany your fatherland, pride of your heart,
Or show me normal a man who yearns to breed a weakling nation
And I will take you from the perforated shadow of Leo Tolstoy
And shed you under the umbra of Shakespeare the bard,
To catechize you truly on pearls of morality
Bound in King Lear, that only the weak
None but the weak  who attract the attack.
Written under the impression that the author would soon die.


Adieu, thou Hill! where early joy
  Spread roses o’er my brow;
Where Science seeks each loitering boy
  With knowledge to endow.
Adieu, my youthful friends or foes,
Partners of former bliss or woes;
  No more through Ida’s paths we stray;
Soon must I share the gloomy cell,
Whose ever-slumbering inmates dwell
  Unconscious of the day.
Adieu, ye hoary Regal Fanes,
  Ye spires of Granta’s vale,
Where Learning robed in sable reigns.
  And Melancholy pale.
Ye comrades of the jovial hour,
Ye tenants of the classic bower,
On Cama’s verdant margin plac’d,
Adieu! while memory still is mine,
For offerings on Oblivion’s shrine,
These scenes must be effac’d.

Adieu, ye mountains of the clime
Where grew my youthful years;
Where Loch na Garr in snows sublime
His giant summit rears.
Why did my childhood wander forth
From you, ye regions of the North,
With sons of Pride to roam?
Why did I quit my Highland cave,
Marr’s dusky heath, and Dee’s clear wave,
To seek a Sotheron home?

Hall of my Sires! a long farewell—
Yet why to thee adieu?
Thy vaults will echo back my knell,
Thy towers my tomb will view:
The faltering tongue which sung thy fall,
And former glories of thy Hall,
Forgets its wonted simple note—
But yet the Lyre retains the strings,
And sometimes, on æolian wings,
In dying strains may float.

Fields, which surround yon rustic cot,
  While yet I linger here,
Adieu! you are not now forgot,
  To retrospection dear.
Streamlet! along whose rippling surge
My youthful limbs were wont to urge,
  At noontide heat, their pliant course;
Plunging with ardour from the shore,
Thy springs will lave these limbs no more,
  Deprived of active force.

And shall I here forget the scene,
  Still nearest to my breast?
Rocks rise and rivers roll between
  The spot which passion blest;
Yet Mary, all thy beauties seem
Fresh as in Love’s bewitching dream,
  To me in smiles display’d;
Till slow disease resigns his prey
To Death, the parent of decay,
  Thine image cannot fade.

And thou, my Friend! whose gentle love
  Yet thrills my *****’s chords,
How much thy friendship was above
  Description’s power of words!
Still near my breast thy gift I wear
Which sparkled once with Feeling’s tear,
  Of Love the pure, the sacred gem:
Our souls were equal, and our lot
In that dear moment quite forgot;
  Let Pride alone condemn!

All, all is dark and cheerless now!
  No smile of Love’s deceit
Can warm my veins with wonted glow,
  Can bid Life’s pulses beat:
Not e’en the hope of future fame
Can wake my faint, exhausted frame,
  Or crown with fancied wreaths my head.
Mine is a short inglorious race,—
To humble in the dust my face,
  And mingle with the dead.

Oh Fame! thou goddess of my heart;
  On him who gains thy praise,
Pointless must fall the Spectre’s dart,
  Consumed in Glory’s blaze;
But me she beckons from the earth,
My name obscure, unmark’d my birth,
  My life a short and ****** dream:
Lost in the dull, ignoble crowd,
My hopes recline within a shroud,
  My fate is Lethe’s stream.

When I repose beneath the sod,
  Unheeded in the clay,
Where once my playful footsteps trod,
  Where now my head must lay,
The meed of Pity will be shed
In dew-drops o’er my narrow bed,
  By nightly skies, and storms alone;
No mortal eye will deign to steep
With tears the dark sepulchral deep
  Which hides a name unknown.

Forget this world, my restless sprite,
  Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heaven:
There must thou soon direct thy flight,
  If errors are forgiven.
To bigots and to sects unknown,
Bow down beneath the Almighty’s Throne;
  To Him address thy trembling prayer:
He, who is merciful and just,
Will not reject a child of dust,
  Although His meanest care.

Father of Light! to Thee I call;
  My soul is dark within:
Thou who canst mark the sparrow’s fall,
  Avert the death of sin.
Thou, who canst guide the wandering star
Who calm’st the elemental war,
  Whose mantle is yon boundless sky,
My thoughts, my words, my crimes forgive;
And, since I soon must cease to live,
  Instruct me how to die.
Seán Mac Falls Dec 2015
Each time bigots shine
Crass losers winning at cards
Donald Trump shows hand
Jordan Frances Feb 2014
Who gives a ****
If I live or die?
I have become the one forgotten
And I have fallen into some peculiar space
Now no one remembers the girl who once stood
In my place
She is changed, she has become something unexpected and unforgiving.
Is there a reason to believe in myself anymore?

I have been deemed, by many,
Unlovable.
Perhaps the worst damnation of all
Has come from my inner self.

But how does the rest of the world see me?
My views have been clouded over the years
By some unwarranted opinions
Of hypocrites and bigots
Bullies and ex-boyfriends
Daddy.

Calling me names to this day
Even after some bouts of depression
Cutting
Eating disorders
Even a suicide attempt.

Although these are all in the past
I still fail to hold myself in high regard.
Did they make me hate myself?
No, but they had a weighted hand in its development.

So who could love a creature like me?
A person, or rather, a shell of one,
Plagued by habit
Submerged in guilt

Crippled by a question that has never ceased.
Does being forced into a protective armor,
Being ridiculed
Being unloved
Make someone truly
Unlovable?
Brent Kincaid Dec 2015
May I have your attention?
This information is for you.
Put this in your dictionary,
****** doesn’t mean ‘let’s *****’.
It might do where you come from
But some of us were raised better.
We recognize and accept
The Constitution to the letter.

It guarantees our freedom as
Citizens of this fine nation.
Nowhere does it say nudists should
Be treated with degradation
And blocked from freedom to be
Who they really are at heart.
Denying natural freedoms is
Where fascism gets its start.

If you have been trained in a way
That genitalia is abomination
You’re the one who is indecent
And needs some repatriation.
It’s not like someone naked is
Automatically getting it on.
That’s just inside your mind, so
Only you can make it be gone.

A lot of what you are thinking
And the very thing you are fear
Is not real, it’s irrational
This is what you need to hear;
Some may not find you ****
When they see you naked
But those are not nudists.
They’re unclothed bigots that fake it.

May I have your attention?
This information is for you.
Put this in your dictionary,
****** doesn’t mean ‘let’s *****’.
It might do where you come from
But some of us were raised better.
We recognize and accept
The Constitution to the letter
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Of Tetley's and V-2's
(or, “Why Not to Bomb the Brits”)
by Michael R. Burch

The English are very hospitable,
but tea-less, alas, they grow pitiable ...
or pitiless, rather,
and quite in a lather!
O bother, they're more than formidable!

Keywords/Tags: limerick, light verse, nonsense verse, humor, humorous, England, English, Tetley, tea, milk, crumpets, scones, war, bomb, bombs, V-2, rocket, missile, missiles, formidable, Britain, Brits, defense, military, mrbtet, mrbtetley



This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
when it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything comes to naught.



Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch

. . . qui laetificat juventutem meam . . .
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
. . . requiescat in pace . . .
May she rest in peace.
. . . amen . . .
Amen.

I was touched by this Latin prayer, which I discovered in a novel I read as a teenager. I later decided to incorporate it into a poem. From what I now understand, “ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam” means “to the God who gives joy to my youth,” but I am sticking with my original interpretation: a lament for a little girl at her funeral. The phrase can be traced back to Saint Jerome's translation of Psalm 42 in the Vulgate Latin Bible (circa 385 AD).



How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation 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.



Fowles in the Frith
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fowls in the forest,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!

Sounds like an early animal rights activist! The use of "and" is intriguing ... is the poet saying that his walks in the wood drive him mad because he is also a "beast of bone and blood," facing a similar fate?



I am of Ireland
anonymous Medieval Irish lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am of Ireland,
and of the holy realm of Ireland.
Gentlefolk, I pray thee:
for the sake of saintly charity,
come dance with me
in Ireland!



Whan the turuf is thy tour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
shall be sullen worms’ to note.
What help to you, then,
was all your worldly hope?

2.
When the turf is your tower
and the grave is your bower,
your pale white throat and skin
worm-eaten from within ...
what hope of my help then?

NOTE: The second translation leans more to the "lover's complaint" and carpe diem genres, with the poet pointing out to his prospective lover that by denying him her favors she make take her virtue to the grave where worms will end her virginity in macabre fashion. This poem may be an ancient precursor of poems like Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."



Ech day me comëth tydinges thre
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each day I’m plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my soul:
First, that I must somehow exit this fen.
Second, that I cannot know when.
And yet it’s the third that torments me so,
Because I don't know where the hell I will go!



Ich have y-don al myn youth
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have done it all my youth:
Often, often, and often!
I have loved long and yearned zealously ...
And oh what grief it has brought me!



I Sing of a Maiden
anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless.
The King of all Kings
For her son she chose.
He came also as still
To his mother's breast
As April dew
Falling on the grass.
He came also as still
To his mother's bower
As April dew
Falling on the flower.
He came also as still
To where his mother lay
As April dew
Falling on the spray.
Mother and maiden?
Never one, but she!
Well may such a lady
God's mother be!



Enigma
by Michael R. Burch

O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light
and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night,
or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior ...

Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?

Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love,
this, our reclamation;

fallen wren,
you must strive to fly
though your heart is shaken;

weary pilgrim,
you must not give up
though your feet are aching;

lonely child,
lie here still in my arms;
you must soon be waking.



Floating
by Michael R. Burch

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs ...
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.

Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea ...
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem may have had a different title when it was originally published, but it escapes me ... ah, yes, "Entanglements."



Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of the forming of my soul,
in the dawning of desire, with passion at first bloom,
with lightning splitting heaven to thunder's blasting roll
and a sense of welling fire and, perhaps, impending doom—

that I cried out through the tumult of the raging storm on high
for shelter from the chaos of the restless, driving rain ...
and the voice I heard replying from a rift of bleeding sky
was mine, I'm sure, and, furthermore, was certainly insane.



The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch

Yesterday I saw you
as the snow flurries died,
spent winds becalmed.
When I saw your solemn face
alone in the crowd,
I felt my heart, so long embalmed,
begin to beat aloud.

Was it another winter,
another day like this?
Was it so long ago?
Where you the rose-cheeked girl
who slapped my face, then stole a kiss?
Was the sky this gray with snow,
my heart so all a-whirl?

How is it in one moment
it was twenty years ago,
lost worlds remade anew?
When your eyes met mine, I knew
you felt it too, as though
we heard the robin's song
and the sky was turning blue.



The Children of Gaza

Nine of my poems have been set to music by the composer Eduard de Boer and have been performed in Europe by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab. My poems that became “The Children of Gaza” were written from the perspective of Palestinian children and their mothers. On this page the poems come first, followed by the song lyrics, which have been adapted in places to fit the music …



Epitaph for a Child of Gaza
by Michael R. Burch

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



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

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

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

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



For a Child of Gaza, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

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

Where does the butterfly go?

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

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



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the children of Gaza and their mothers

I pray tonight
the starry Light
might
surround you.

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

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



Something
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Something inescapable is lost―
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone―
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past―
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.



Mother’s Smile
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza and their children

There never was a fonder smile
than mother’s smile, no softer touch
than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than “much.”

So more than “much,” much more than “all.”
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother’s there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.

There never was a stronger back
than father’s back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,

then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother’s tender smile
will leap and follow after you!



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

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

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

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

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



who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

“who’s to blame?”



My nightmare ...

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.
―The Child Poets of Gaza (written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza)



I, too, have a dream ...

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve their enmity.
―The Child Poets of Gaza (written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza)



Suffer the Little Children
by Nakba

I saw the carnage . . . saw girls' dreaming heads
blown to red atoms, and their dreams with them . . .

saw babies liquefied in burning beds
as, horrified, I heard their murderers’ phlegm . . .

I saw my mother stitch my shroud’s black hem,
for in that moment I was one of them . . .

I saw our Father’s eyes grow hard and bleak
to see frail roses severed at the stem . . .

How could I fail to speak?
―Nakba is an alias of Michael R. Burch



Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus thorns;
clouding your eyes
like sandstorms.

Here we shall remain,
like brick walls obstructing your chests,
washing dishes in your boisterous bars,
serving drinks to our overlords,
scouring your kitchens' filthy floors
in order to ****** morsels for our children
from between your poisonous fangs.

Here we shall remain,
like brick walls deflating your chests
as we face our deprivation clad in rags,
singing our defiant songs,
chanting our rebellious poems,
then swarming out into your unjust streets
to fill dungeons with our dignity.

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee,
here we shall remain,
guarding the shade of the fig and olive trees,
fermenting rebellion in our children
like yeast in dough.

Here we wring the rocks to relieve our thirst;
here we stave off starvation with dust;
but here we remain and shall not depart;
here we spill our expensive blood
and do not hoard it.

For here we have both a past and a future;
here we remain, the Unconquerable;
so strike fast, penetrate deep,
O, my roots!



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.

Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of bread warming at dawn,
a woman haranguing men,
the poetry of Aeschylus,
love's trembling beginnings,
a boulder covered with moss,
mothers who dance to the flute's sighs,
and the invaders' fear of memories.

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
September's rustling end,
a woman leaving forty behind, still full of grace, still blossoming,
an hour of sunlight in prison,
clouds taking the shapes of unusual creatures,
the people's applause for those who mock their assassins,
and the tyrant's fear of songs.

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
Lady Earth, mother of all beginnings and endings!
In the past she was called Palestine
and tomorrow she will still be called Palestine.
My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life!



Distant light
by Walid Khazindar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Bitterly cold,
winter clings to the naked trees.
If only you would free
the bright sparrows
from the tips of your fingers
and release a smile—that shy, tentative smile—
from the imprisoned anguish I see.
Sing! Can we not sing
as if we were warm, hand-in-hand,
shielded by shade from a glaring sun?
Can you not always remain this way,
stoking the fire, more beautiful than necessary, and silent?
Darkness increases; we must remain vigilant
and this distant light is our only consolation—
this imperiled flame, which from the beginning
has been flickering,
in danger of going out.
Come to me, closer and closer.
I don't want to be able to tell my hand from yours.
And let's stay awake, lest the snow smother us.

Walid Khazindar was born in 1950 in Gaza City. He is considered one of the best Palestinian poets; his poetry has been said to be "characterized by metaphoric originality and a novel thematic approach unprecedented in Arabic poetry." He was awarded the first Palestine Prize for Poetry in 1997.



Excerpt from “Speech of the Red Indian”
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let's give the earth sufficient time to recite
the whole truth ...
The whole truth about us.
The whole truth about you.

In tombs you build
the dead lie sleeping.
Over bridges you *****
file the newly slain.

There are spirits who light up the night like fireflies.
There are spirits who come at dawn to sip tea with you,
as peaceful as the day your guns mowed them down.

O, you who are guests in our land,
please leave a few chairs empty
for your hosts to sit and ponder
the conditions for peace
in your treaty with the dead.



Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.

You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.

The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice —
until I perceived
your unique radiance.

Then the bleak blackness broke
and in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.

Oh you! Oh you intimate, yet distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of our spirits in the flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.



Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, we’re together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me again,
thanks to life’s cruelty.

The seas will separate us ...
Oh!—Oh!—If I could only see you!
But I'll never know ...
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.

You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal our happiness,
leaving our hands empty.

Tomorrow at dawn you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.

Your scent—your scent!—contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth absorbs the lifegiving rain.

I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.

Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost—lost!—when nothing remains.



Identity Card
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Record!
I am an Arab!
And my identity card is number fifty thousand.
I have eight children;
the ninth arrives this autumn.
Will you be furious?

Record!
I am an Arab!
Employed at the quarry,
I have eight children.
I provide them with bread,
clothes and books
from the bare rocks.
I do not supplicate charity at your gates,
nor do I demean myself at your chambers' doors.
Will you be furious?

Record!
I am an Arab!
I have a name without a title.
I am patient in a country
where people are easily enraged.
My roots
were established long before the onset of time,
before the unfolding of the flora and fauna,
before the pines and the olive trees,
before the first grass grew.
My father descended from plowmen,
not from the privileged classes.
My grandfather was a lowly farmer
neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Still, they taught me the pride of the sun
before teaching me how to read;
now my house is a watchman's hut
made of branches and cane.
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name, but no title!

Record!
I am an Arab!
You have stolen my ancestors' orchards
and the land I cultivated
along with my children.
You left us nothing
but these bare rocks.
Now will the State claim them
as it has been declared?

Therefore!
Record on the first page:
I do not hate people
nor do I encroach,
but if I become hungry
I will feast on the usurper's flesh!
Beware!
Beware my hunger
and my anger!

NOTE: Darwish was married twice, but had no children. In the poem above, he is apparently speaking for his people, not for himself personally.



Passport
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

They left me unrecognizable in the shadows
that bled all colors from this passport.
To them, my wounds were novelties—
curious photos for tourists to collect.
They failed to recognize me. No, don't leave
the palm of my hand bereft of sun
when all the trees recognize me
and every song of the rain honors me.
Don't set a wan moon over me!

All the birds that flocked to my welcoming wave
as far as the distant airport gates,
all the wheatfields,
all the prisons,
all the albescent tombstones,
all the barbwired boundaries,
all the fluttering handkerchiefs,
all the eyes—
they all accompanied me.
But they were stricken from my passport
shredding my identity!

How was I stripped of my name and identity
on soil I tended with my own hands?
Today, Job's lamentations
re-filled the heavens:
Don't make an example of me, not again!
Prophets! Gentlemen!—
Don't require the trees to name themselves!
Don't ask the valleys who mothered them!
My forehead glistens with lancing light.
From my hand the riverwater springs.
My identity can be found in my people's hearts,
so invalidate this passport!



Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

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



Piercing the Shell

for the mothers and children of Gaza

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



Children of Gaza Lyrics

(adapted in places to the music by Michael R. Burch and Eduard de Boer)

World premiere, April 22, 2017, in the Oosterkerk in the Dutch town of Hoorn. Dima Bawab, soprano; Eduard de Boer, piano.

I. Prologue:

Where does the Butterfly go?
I'd love to sing about things of beauty,
like a butterfly, fluttering amid flowers,
but I can't, I can't …

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

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

Where does the butterfly go
when mothers cry
while children die
and politicians lie, politicians lie?

When the darkness of grief blots out all that we know:
when love and life are running low,
where does the butterfly go?

And how shall the spirit take wing
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is flown without a trace?

Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go,
where does the butterfly go?

II. The Raid

When the soldiers came to our house,
I was quiet, quiet as a mouse…

But when they beat down our door with a battering ram,
and I heard their machine guns go "Blam! Blam! Blam!"
I ran! I ran! I ran!

First I ran to the cupboard and crept inside;
then I fled to my bed and crawled under, to hide.

I could hear my mother shushing my sister…
How I hoped and prayed that the bullets missed her!
My sister! My sister! My sister!

Then I ran next door, to my uncle's house,
still quiet, quiet as a mouse...

Young as I am,
I did understand
that they had come to take our land!
Our land! Our land! Our land!
They've come to take our land!

They shot my father, they shot my mother,
they shot my dear sister, and my big brother!
They shot down my hopes, they shot down my dreams!
I still hear their screams! Their screams! Their screams!

Now I am here: small, and sad, and still ...
no mother, no father, no family, no will.

They took everything I ever had.
Now how can I live, with no mom and no dad?
How can I live, with no mom and no dad?
How can I live? How can I live?

III. For God’s Sake, I'm only a Child

For God’s sake, ah, for God's sake, I’m only a child―
and all you’ve allowed me to learn are these tears scalding my cheeks,
this ache in my gut at the sight of so many corpses, so much horrifying blood!

For God’s sake, I’m only a child―
you talk about your need for “security,”
but what about my right to play in streets
not piled with dead bodies still smoking with white phosphorous!

Ah, for God’s sake, I’m only a child―
for me there's no beauty in the world
and peace has become an impossible dream;
destruction is all I know because of your deceptions.

For God’s sake, I’m only a child―
fear and terror surround me stealing my breath
as I lie shaking like a windblown leaf.

For God’s sake, for God's sake, I'm only a child,
I'm only a child, I'm only a child.

IV. King of the World

If I were King of the World,
I would make every child free, for my people’s sake.
And once I had freed them, they’d all run and scream
straight to my palace, for free ice cream!
[Directly to the audience, spoken:]
Why are you laughing? Can’t a young king dream?

If I were King of the World, I would banish
hatred and war, and make mean men vanish.
Then, in their place, I’d bring in a circus
with lions and tigers (but they’d never hurt us!)

If I were King of the World, I would teach
the preachers to always do as they preach;
and so they could practice being of good cheer,
we’d have Christmas ―and sweets―each day of the year!

[Directly to the audience, spoken:]
Why are you laughing? Some dreams do appear!

If I were King of the World, I would send
my couns'lors of peace to the wide world’s end ...
[spoken:] But all this hard dreaming is making me thirsty!
I proclaim lemonade; please [spoken] bring it in a hurry!

If I were King of the World, I would fire
racists and bigots, with their message so dire.
And we wouldn’t build walls, to shut people out.
I would build amusement parks, have no doubt!

If I were King of the World, I would make
every child blessed, for my people’s sake,
and every child safe, and every child free,
and every child happy, especially me!
[Directly to the audience, spoken:]
Why are you laughing? Appoint me and see!

V. Mother’s Smile

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much".

So more than "much", much more than "all".
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother's there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.

There never was a stronger back
than father's back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,
then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother's tender smile
will leap and follow after you ...

VI. In the Shelter

Mother:
Hush my darling, please don’t cry.
The bombs will stop dropping, by and by.
Hush, I'll sing you a lullaby…

Child:
Mama, I know that I’m safe in your arms.
Your sweet love protects me from all harms,
but still I fear the sirens’ alarms!

Mother:
Hush now my darling, don’t say a word.
My love will protect you, whatever you heard.
Hush now…

Child:
But what about pappa, you loved him too.

Mother: My love will protect you.
My love will protect you!

Child:
I know that you love me, but pappa is gone!

Mother:
Your pappa’s in heaven, where nothing goes wrong.
Come, rest at my breast and I’ll sing you a song.

Child:
But pappa was strong, and now he’s not here.

Mother:
He’s where he must be, and yet ever-near.
Now we both must be strong; there's nothing to fear.

Child:
The bombs are still falling! Will this night never end?

Mother:
The deep darkness hides us; the night is our friend.
Hush, I'll sing you a lullaby.

Child:
Yes, mama, I'm sure you are right.
We will be safe under cover of night.
[spoken] But what is that sound?
[screamed] Mama! I am fri(ghtened)….!

VII. Frail Envelope of Flesh

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

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

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live five artless years…
Now your mother's lips seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears…

VIII. Among the Angels

Child:
There is peace where I am now,
I reside in a heavenly land
that rests safe in the palm
of a loving Being’s hand;
where the butterfly finds shelter
and the white dove glides to rest
in the bright and shining sands
of those shores all men call Blessed.

Mother:
My darling, how I long to touch your face,
to see your smile, to hear your laughter’s grace.
Great Allah, hear my plea.
Return my child to me.

Child:
My darling mother, here beyond the stars
where I now live,
I see and feel your tears,
but here is peace and joy, and no more pain.
Here is where I will remain.

Mother:
My darling, do not leave me here alone!
Come back to me!
Why did you turn to stone?
Great Allah, hear my plea.
Please send my child back to me...

Child:
Dear mother, to your wonderful love I bow.
But I can't return...
I am among the Angels now.
Do not worry about me.
Here is where I long to be.

Mother:
My darling, it is as if I hear your voice consoling me.
Oh, can this be your choice?
Great Allah, hear my plea.
Impart wisdom to me.

Child:
Dear mother, I was born of your great love,
a gentle spirit...
I died a slaughtered dove,
that I might bring this message from the stars:
it is time to end earth’s wars.

Remember―in both Bible and Koran
how many times each precious word is used―
“Mercy. Compassion. Justice.”
Let each man, each woman live by the Law
that rules both below and above:
reject all hate and embrace Love.

IX. Epilogue: I have a dream

I have a dream...
that one day all the world
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
a small child, lonely and afraid.

Look at me... I am flesh...
I laugh, I bleed, I cry.
Look at me; I dare you
to look me in the eye
and tell me and my mother
how I deserve to die.

I only ask to live
in a world where things are fair;
I only ask for love
in a world where people share,
I only ask for love
in a world where people share.

Oh, I have a dream...
that one day all the world
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
a small child, lonely and afraid.



hey pete
by Michael R. Burch

for Pete Rose

hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy's dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then you'll be a Superstar.

When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar."



Reflections on the Loss of Vision
by Michael R. Burch

The sparrow that cries from the shelter of an ancient oak tree and the squirrels
that dash in delight through the treetops as the first snow glistens and swirls,
remind me so much of my childhood and how the world seemed to me then,
that it seems if I tried
and just closed my eyes,
I could once again be nine or ten.

The rabbits that hide in the bushes where the snowflakes collect as they fall,
hunch there, I know, in the flurrying snow, yet now I can't see them at all.
For time slowly weakened my vision; while the patterns seem almost as clear,
some things that I saw
when I was a boy,
are lost to me now in my advancing years.

The chipmunk who seeks out his burrow and the geese in their unseen reprieve
are there as they were, and yet they are not; and though it seems childish to grieve,
who would condemn a blind man for bemoaning the vision he lost?
Well, in a small way,
through the passage of days,
I have learned some of his loss.

As a keen-eyed young lad I endeavored to see things most adults could not―
the camouflaged nests of the hoot owls, the woodpecker’s favorite haunts.
But now I no longer can find them, nor understand how I once could,
and it seems such a waste
of those far-sighted days,
to end up near blind in this wood.



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 my eyes 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 although I hear,
he says nothing that I understand.

The moon shines—maniacal, queer—as he takes my hand and whispers
"Our time has come!" ... and so we stroll together along the docks
where the sea sends things that wriggle and crawl
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight in great floods washes his pale face as he stares unseeing
into my eyes. He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine,
and 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 is 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.

Published by Dowton Abbey, Aesthetically Pleasing Vampires, Into the Unknown, Since Halloween is Coming, and Poetry Life & Times



Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

for Nadia Anjuman

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes,
imposing night on one who clearly saw.
Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw–
envenomed, fanged–could swallow, whole, your Awe.
And yet it was not death so much as you
who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing
and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's
white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing!
But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren!
Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.

A poet like Nadia Anjuman can be likened to a caged bird, deprived of flight, who somehow finds it within herself to sing of love and beauty. But when the world robs her of both flight and song, what is left for her but to leave, bereaving it and us of herself and her song?



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite . . .

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast  solitariness  there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you
stall,
spread-eagled, as the canvas snaps
and *****
its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.

Published by Poetry Porch and The Chained Muse



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the lost gold of vanished stars.

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



Published as the collection "Of Tetley's and V-2's"
jeffrey conyers Jun 2015
Listen, listen closely.
Oh, they states, its about their heritage.
And the brave soldiers that fought for their cause.

Listen, listen closely.
Oh, they states their love for the confederate flag.
But say nothing to the bigots standing by.

Shouting negatives to those of various color just driving by.

Oh, stand firm for your view.
Then stand firm against the bigots standing next to you.
They fighting totally for something else.
While you standing there to protest.

Listen closely to some fools.
While you fighting for your flag.
Then you might comprehend the hate you fighting for.

Cause nowhere close to the symbol stands love.

Never one to stand up to your own.
Many of us not surprised bigots feel next to you at home.
Quickly my heart could beat
If the memory returned

One involving the mechanism
And the light and no

No

It fades

Gloria

a tire screech and I wake

Listening to music nearby
canisav
unnamed Dec 2012
My sweet Austin Texas ecstasy, my beloved Guadalupe you
gem of the desert. Your family’s a basket-a-bigots but
******* they drink for miles and how near they are to my
heart. This heat’s a drug I swear it. Let's swim in that hole
in the bedrock between two rivers. That'd be nice: me and
you and mobs of Westlake High sophomores with their
blue-raspberry bikinis, a hundred Teen Vogue magazine
covers lined up on the grass like a set of bad church pews.
Imagine that whitewash of a crowd, you and me so alone in
that big static it's better than private. Let’s punch brick, peel
back our knuckles and watch’em clot in the sun. **** gauze,
we’re goin’ to a punk show. I’m puttin’ on short sleeves,
goin’ on parade, gunna flaunt my cigarette burns like a Cadillac:
I want those dorks at the Mohawk to look and love me like
they love gore. I’m gettin’ my black-eye ribbon tonight.
We’re in the Chaos in Tejas show, darlin’, put on Crazy Spirit
and bring your 2x4: skinheads ain’t jumpin’ themselves.
Let's get medicated, hunny, let's get saved. I love watching
Austin bleed out into the sand every dusk. Love the musicians
sailing out grimy and frothing over what night brings:
what a big sky, Texas, you're almost better in the day all
parched ground and azure azure. I love the glass on the high
buildings here, they’re like mirrors. This is God’s powder room.
This is where God sees himself drugged up and beaming in a
beautiful powder room. This is where God goes to remember
youth. I love how youth hasn’t gotten you yet. That unassailable
capacity for charity, that surging belief in belief shouting out
through your temples, I can’t stand how you make me sick of
making myself sick. You slapped the ******* outta me so quick
I’ve never seen grace move that fast. I thought you'd knock the
grapefruit polish right off your nails you hit me so good.
What a sight you are, kid, so proper and fit, Christ, you could
be therapy: so brunette-in-the-Fall, so full-lipped,
unabashed and Aristotelian, frayed like anything but ****
well stitched, impeccable at the seams.
After Matthew Dickman
Josh Jul 2017
See them rising now, oh England
Heroes of our causes, past and now
Rising, as one, to defend
This beloved democracy of ours
See Britons of all colour, creed, and race
United under one banner, if not one face
To fight the injustice and tyranny
Both perpetuated by, and visited upon, you, and me
Are we not a nation of all values?
United, as a kingdom, in that we are free
Not all the same, how boring it would be
And where in freedom and democracy, is it stated we accept bigotry?
No racism, or slander, shall we have, not in our fair Britain, are you mad?
We are built of all peoples, from all places
A varied hand, to win the long game, is surely better than all early aces
We claimed we wanted freedom, separation
Proclaimed it "the people's liberation"
Yet how can we be trusted? I ask, when we cannot complete one simple task
To love all others no matter their skin
Nor creed, or where their story did begin
Think sadly of the many who are dead
Because we cannot get it into our head
That people, no matter their race, or religion, are certainly, not, better off dead
Young, impetuous souls, raised, often, with the prejudice of old
Do commit a new atrocity, because they cling to age old tyranny
We cannot accept those, other, than ourselves
We cannot learn, are we stone?
Oh no, but stubborn *****, to the bone
But stubbornness is no excuse for hate, if you cannot go with progress, and tolerance
Simply, move out of the way
For ****'s sake, we can barely cope
When someone wears the wrong style of coat
Without offering jibes or mockery
Oh what pitiful wretches, are we?
We, who disdain our own species and kin
All for what? Their language? Their love? The colour of their skin?
I cannot bear the thought, of such regression
To times of such barbarism and repression
Look now, oh, England, to our ranks of rising warriors, see how they are all different?
They are all, unique, to be sure
Yet are united, in a common cause
To rid the country that we love so dear
Of all the bigotry and tyranny and fear
That makes living, so hard, for so many
I ask, racists, bigots, what's the point?
Is there truly any?
Allow a rational person to answer, on your stead, and likely hit the nail on the head
The answer is no, there is not any
But cruelty and evil, I weep for man
For we are supposed to be enlightened, and so much more
Yet we seem not such, for even the worms, or the birds that prey upon them, do not hate, and **** for their uniqueness
So are we truly worthy to say we are, the greatest race on earth?
When we cannot put decency first
Over hatred of those different
Our own base evilness is an affront
To the DNA that grew to be, or so it thought a more evolved form, Is it truly we?
For it seems to me, that we are only truly advanced, in physiology
Our minds seem too small to comprehend, that in our universe, almost without end, there may be, many, vastly, different from we
Look again, oh England, to our heroes rising up, black, white, Latino, Greek, they are no different to you, or me
All came to seek, or were born, free
Their lives taken by human cruelty
I say, nay, I call, I do implore you to open up your door, see the world around you now, and help, not hinder, do you ask how?
Simply, be decent, lend a hand, accept, not, casual bigotry, take a stand
Be a shield, for those who need you
At the core I'm asking you to be human, give a ****
If you see harassment, don't walk by, help your fellow human, justice outcry
If you think rationally, you will see
I do surely ask no more than can be
Expected of any of humanity, fight so that all others may be free
I ask, specifically, the opponents of such, camaraderie, racists, bigots, whomever you may be, why do you protest equality?
Do you think, the colour of your skin, gives you some pedigree? Or immunity to sin?
Do you feel you are more deserving of the world than those who are different? Do you suppose you are superior? You ****** fools
Can you not use humanity's most basic tools?
Love, compassion, these things are given to share, not hoard, you unkind few, fear, for no good reason, those different than you
So, I suppose I'm asking you to say, why you feel the need to be this way, but don't tell me
Admit it to yourself, in stark daylight
And see if it holds the same weight and conviction as it does in dark midnight
When shadows hide your own deep prejudice, your weakness, tell me, what is this?
But a call to wake up and accept the truth, that you are the playground bully of your youth
You bully and hurt someone for who they are, how can we say, humanity has come so far?
If you are as much a racist as someone from centuries back
You cannot accept that we, are moving on
Sad, little, inconsequential, close minded man
Or woman, sadly racism does span, and spread, even to those who were, and are still themselves oppressed, racism is not born, it is deeply, an
and hatefully, bred
To hate our kin, although we all bleed red
Lo, since our fateful vote, I have seen too many, too many, jump aboard the boat
And lay the blame for all our country's woes, upon our, oft, ill chosen foes
We lay the bitter fruit of our own follies, at the feet of those, we already mistreat
And expect, that they will sup on bitter unjust fruit, and thank us as they choke on the juice
The fruit of our evil labours against, progress, and those people we expect to, now why do I say we when I mean you?
These people that you, expect to, sup, and be thankful for what you give, will not, nor should they, for they desire to not just exist, but live
We'll I've likely earned the hatred of racists, truly, I wish, I could say, this upsets me
But I care not, for I know, when, lo, England's heroes rise up, they shall go, and sweep forth, with such a might, and justice, such as all racists, shall be left down in the dust
I do believe that I am done, I bid farewell to everyone
And I hope you do remember, treat as you would be treated, one another, for at our core,  We are sister and brother.
A poem written because I can't stand racism and prejudice.

— The End —