The stars in the night shine so bright
I can see your smile
I reminisce I can feel your lips
as they kissed mine
so young and wild
Together we was inseparable
two hearts intertwined
we was making love more than we was making up
i was yours and baby you was mine
we promised always and forever
together we held onto the night
laying in each mother's arms
I remember back then when it felt so good to be alive
The stars in the night shine so bright
reminding me of the sparkle in your eye
and those hot summer nights
I reminisce I can feel your lips
as they kissed mine
so young and wild
Together we was inseparable
two hearts intertwined
making love holding onto each other tight
we was making love more than we was making up
and sweetheart you gave birth to beautiful lil girl
blonde hair blue eyes so sweet and adorable
we named her Shy
and baby doll ,those was truly the best days of my life
The stars in the night shine so bright
I can see your face
I reminisce I can feel your lips
as they kissed mine
so young and wild
Together we was inseparable
two hearts intertwined
we was making love more than we was making up
i was yours and baby you was mine
we promised always and forever
together we held onto the night
I remember back then when it felt so good to be alive
that one beautiful summer day in June
is like a song we used to play
and just like yesterday I still remember
holding Autumn in my arms
and that song still plays on and on
because when I look in her eyes
they remind me so much of you
and
The stars in the night shine so bright
I can feel your touch
I reminisce I can feel your lips
as they kissed mine
so young and wild
Together we was inseparable
two hearts intertwined
making love holding onto each other tight
I remember back then when it felt so good to be alive
As I sit and write I think about you little guy
our birthdays are one day apart ain't funny
how time fly's but you never left my side
Bubba please just always remember this
you was such a special gift, you was my birthday wish
and I love you.
The stars in the night shine so bright
I can taste your kiss
I reminisce I can feel your lips
as they kissed mine
so young and wild
Together we was inseparable
two hearts intertwined
making love holding onto each other tight
I remember back then when it felt so good to be alive
Tonight when I go to sleep
I will dream of you my little angel
and together you and me will keep the dream alive
because I know your heart
Shanay you miss what used to be a happy family.

****** love, to a sudden jug, rubber hug ****'ger tug .  
When it cover a couple, a bubba, & hundred dollars .
Too her dismissal, she got a missile, pointing' at the whistle .
Toting "AK" up to the forty G, I and all I ever would need .
Carry on with me,

You left
but seeing the blue of your eyes mirrored in the sky
on a hot August day takes me back
to that first summer when the freckles on my skin were as prominent as the seeds in the middle of the sunflowers
your neighbor planted next door a few months back.
The rain hitting the cracked pavement outside the window of my favorite coffee shop
is a constant reminder of the day you told me about heartache
that would never stop hurting no matter how many ice cream cones we ate
in that old tree house we build in the 8th grade.
Seeing waves crash into one another with my toes in the sand
sends flashbacks of that cold, January trip where the wind was so strong
you didn’t even want to get out of the car to show me the spot you ran to
when life was becoming too much to just nod and smile through.
Running the paths along the river where the railroad tracks used to be
makes my muscles ache just like they did that day we avoided all responsibilities
and decided to climb the rock wall because we were too lazy to hike an actual trail
but too ambitious to stay inside and watch a rerun of Saturday Night Live.
Sitting in my car waiting for the train to clear the tracks reminds me of the countless September nights
we spent sitting on my porch snacking and listening to the train three blocks over
wondering and wishing it would pick us up and take us anywhere else.
Bubble gum popping is echos the memory when you popped my huge hubba bubba bubble
at the drive in the night you bribed me into seeing that action movie
you knew I didn’t want to see, but insisted on anyway.
Clowns at the Memorial day parade tossing candy to the kids lining the street
mimic the Skittles you threw at me as you screamed “I told you so”
when I finally admitted to liking that rapper you never shut up about.
Any scary movie haunts me like the Mexican restaurant off the corner of West Main Street
because it was there you told me you were leaving.
I’m sitting here considering burning  my favorite blue and white stripped sweater
you gave me for my 21st birthday because it was the last time
you told me everything was going to be alright.
It didn’t matter that I moved away
because I saw you in the face of strangers passing on the street.
I’ll never get to send you off or give you away
things have changed and both of us have grown
but we live in a world made of each other
so we’ll never be alone.

Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.



East Devon Beacon
by Michael R. Burch

Evening darkens upon the moors,
Forgiveness—a hairless thing
skirting the headlamps, fugitive.

Why have we come,
traversing the long miles
and extremities of solitude,
worriedly crisscrossing the wrong maps
with directions
obtained from passing strangers?

Why do we sit,
frantically retracing
love’s long-forgotten signal points
with cramping, ink-stained fingers?

Why the preemptive frowns,
the litigious silences,
when only yesterday we watched
as, out of an autumn sky this vast,
over an orchard or an onion field,
wild Vs of distressed geese
sped across the moon’s face,
the sound of their panicked wings
like our alarmed hearts
pounding in unison?



Kindred (II)
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



i o u
by Michael R. Burch

i might have said it
but i didn’t

u might have noticed
but u wouldn’t

we might have been us
but we couldn’t

u might respond
but probably shouldn’t



chrysalis
by Michael R. Burch

these are the days of doom
u seldom leave ur room
u live in perpetual gloom

yet also the days of hope
how to cope?
u pray and u *****

toward self illumination ...
becoming an angel
(pure love)

and yet You must love Your Self

If you know someone who is very caring and loving, but struggles with self worth, this may be a poem to consider.


Dancer
by Michael R. Burch

You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,

waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.

Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.

They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled

of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,

of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.

They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh

for ages,
stages
slipping by.

You pause;
applause
is all you hear.

You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.



The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Love among the infinitesimal
flotillas of amoebas is a dance
of transient appendages, wild sails
that gather in warm brine and then express
one headstream as two small, divergent wakes.

Minuscule voyage—love! Upon false feet,
the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep
toward self-immolation: two nee one.

We cannot photosynthesize the sun,
and so we love in darkness, till we come
at last to understand: man’s spineless heart
is alien to any land.
We part
to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears,
amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ...
and still we sink.
The night is full of stars
we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours.

Have we such cells within us, bent on love
to ever-changingness, so that to part
is not to be the same, or even one?
Is love our evolution, or a scream
against the thought of separateness—a cry
of strangled recognition? Love, or die,
or love and die a little. Hopeful death!
Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.



Longing
by Michael R. Burch

We stare out at the cold gray sea,
overcome
with such sudden and intense longing . . .
our eyes meet,
inviolate,
and we are not of this earth,
this strange, inert mass.

Before we crept
out of the shoals of the inchoate sea,
before we grew
the quaint appendages
and orifices of love . . .

before our jellylike nuclei,
struggling to be hearts,
leapt
at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun,
then watched it plummet,
the birth and death of our illumination . . .

before we wept . . .
before we knew . . .
before our unformed hearts grew numb,
again,
in the depths of the sea’s indecipherable darkness . . .

When we were only
a swirling profusion of recombinant things
wafting loose silt from the sea’s soft floor,
writhing and ******* in convulsive beds
of mucousy foliage,

flowering,
flowering,
flowering . . .

what jolted us to life?



Memento Mori
by Michael R. Burch

I found among the elms
something like the sound of your voice,
something like the aftermath of love itself
after the lightning strikes,
when the startled wind shrieks . . .

a gored-out wound in wood,
love’s pale memento mori—
that white scar
in that first heart,
forever unhealed . . .

and a burled, thick knot incised
with six initials pledged
against all possible futures,
and penknife-notched below,
six edged, chipped words
that once cut deep and said . . .

WILL U B MINE
4 EVER?

. . . which now, so disconsolately answer . . .

—————-N-
—EVER.



Annual
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Curled here,
reading the yellowing volumes of loss
by the front porch light
in the groaning swing...

through thin adhesive gloss
I caress your face.



Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed Vijay.

“My family is relatively heavy,
too big even for a pig-barn Chevy;
we need more space,”
spat What’s His Face.

“What does it matter,
dirge or mantra,”
sighed Serge.

“The world will wobble
in Hubble’s lens
till the tempest ends,”
wailed Mercedes.

“The world is going to hell in a bucket.
So **** it and get outta my face!
We own this place!
Me and my friends got more guns than ISIS,
so what’s the crisis?”
cried Bubba Billy Joe Bob Puckett.



The Octopi Jars
by Michael R. Burch

Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels'...

you are beyond all hope
of salvage now...
and yet I would pause,
no fear!,
to once touch
your arcane beaks...

I, more alien than you
to this imprismed world,
notice, most of all,
the scratches on the inside surfaces
of your hermetic cells ...

and I remember documentaries
of albino Houdinis
slipping like wraiths
over the walls of shipboard aquariums,
slipping down decks'
brine-lubricated planks,
spilling jubilantly into the dark sea,
parachuting through clouds of pallid ammonia...

and I know now in life you were unlike me:
your imprisonment was never voluntary.



Consequence
by Michael R. Burch

They are fresh-faced,
not innocent, but perhaps not yet jaded,
oblivious to time and death,
of each counted breath
in the pendulum’s sway
falling unheeded.

They are bright, undissuaded
by foreign tongues,
by sepulchers empty and waiting,
by sarcophagi of ancient kings,
by proclamations,
by rituals of scalpels and rings.

They are sworn, they are fated
to misadventure and grief;
but they revel in life
till the sun falls, receding
into silent halls
to torrents of inconsequential tears . . .

. . . to brief tragedies of tears
when they consider this: No one else sees.
But I know.
We all know.
We all know the consequence
of being so young.



Cycles
by Michael R. Burch

I see his eyes caress my daughter’s *******
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe . . .

And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers . . .

and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again—hard, staring, and silent—
though long-ago forgotten . . .

And I remember conjectures of ***** lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares . . .

Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard—
with a long, ineffectual stare

that years from now, he may suddenly remember.



Confession
by Michael R. Burch

What shall I say to you, to confess,
words? Words that can never express
anything close to what I feel?

For words that seem tangible, real,
when I think them
become vaguely surreal when I put ink to them.

And words that I thought that I knew,
like "love" and "devotion"
never ring true.

While "passion"
sounds strangely like the latest fashion
or a perfume.

NOTE: At the time I wrote this poem, a perfume called Passion was in fashion.



Incommunicado
by Michael R. Burch

All I need to know of life I learned
in the slap of a moment,
as my outward eye turned
toward a gauntlet of overhanging lights
which coldly burned, hissing—
"There is no way back!"

As the ironic bright blood
trickled down my face,
I watched strange albino creatures twisting
my flesh into tight knots of separation
while tediously insisting—

“He's doing just fine!"



An Ecstasy of Fumbling
by Michael R. Burch

The poets believe
everything resolves to metaphor—
a distillation,
a vapor
beyond filtration,
though perhaps not quite as volatile as before.

The poets conceive
of death in the trenches
as the price of art,
not war,
fumbling with their masque-like
dissertations
to describe the Hollywood-like gore

as something beyond belief,
abstracting concrete bunkers to Achaemenid bas-relief.



Litany
by Michael R. Burch

Will you take me with all my blemishes?
I will take you with all your blemishes, and show you mine. We’ll **** wine out of cardboard boxes till our teeth and lips shine red like greedily gorging foxes’. We’ll swill our fill, then have *** for hours till our neglected guts at last rebel. At two in the morning, we’ll eat cold Krystals out of greasy cardboard boxes, and we will be in love.

And that’s it?
That’s it.

And can I go out with my friends and drink until dawn?
You can go out with your friends and drink until dawn, come home lipstick-collared, pass out by the pool, or stay at the bar till the new moon sets, because we will be in love, and in love there is no room for remorse or regret. There is no right, no wrong, and no mistrust, only limb-numbing ***, hot-pistoning lust.

And that’s all?
That’s all.

That’s great!
But wait . . .

Wait? Why? What’s wrong?
I want to have your children.

Children?
Well, perhaps just one.

And what will happen when we have children?

The most incredible things will happen—you’ll change, stop acting so strangely, start paying more attention to me, start paying your bills on time, grow up and get rid of your horrible friends, and never come home at a-quarter-to-three drunk from a night of swilling, smelling like a lovesick skunk, stop acting so lewdly, start working incessantly so that we can afford a new house which I will decorate lavishly and then grow tired of in a year or two or three, start growing a paunch so that no other woman would ever have you, stop acting so boorishly, start growing a beard because you’re too tired to shave, or too afraid, thinking you might slit your worthless wrinkled throat . . .



Salve
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9-11

The world is unsalvageable ...
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as we do,

that our bodies are wise

in ways we refuse
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat,
drink ...
even multiply.

And so we touch ...

touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions

in this night of wished-on stars,

caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.

We are not lovers of irony,

we
who imagine ourselves
beyond the redemption
of tears
because we have salvaged
so few
for ourselves ...

and so we laugh
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.



The Secret of Her Clothes
by Michael R. Burch

The secret of her clothes
is that they whisper a little mysteriously
of things unseen

in the language of nylon and cotton,
so that when she walks
to her amorous drawers

to rummage among the embroidered hearts
and rumors of pastel slips
for a white wisp of Victorian lace,

the delicate rustle of fabric on fabric,
the slightest whisper of telltale static,
electrifies me.



Retro
by Michael R. Burch

Now, once again,
love’s a redundant pleasure,
as we laugh
at my childish fumblings
through the acres of your dress,
past your wily-wired brassiere,
through your *******’ pink billows
of thrill-piqued frills ...

Till I lay once again—panting redfaced
at your gayest lack of resistance,
and, later, at your milktongued
mewlings in the dark ...

When you were virginal,
sweet as eucalyptus,
we did not understand
the miracle of repentance,
and I took for granted
your obsessive distance ...

But now I am happily unbuttoning
that chaste dress,
unhitching that firm-latched bra,
tugging at those parachute-like *******—
the ones you would have gladly forgotten
had I not bought them in this year’s size.



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

This is not what I need . . .
analysis,
paralysis,
as though I were a seed
to be planted,
supported
with a stick and some string
until I emerge.
Your words
are not water. I need something
more nourishing,
like cherishing,
something essential, like love
so that when I climb
out of the lime
and the mulch. When I shove
myself up
from the muck . . .
we can ****.



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

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

Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.
He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.
He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to *****,

grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.



Open Portal
by Michael R. Burch

“You already have zero privacy—get over it.”—Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems

While you’re at it—
don’t bother to wear clothes:
We all know what you’re concealing underneath.

Let the bathroom door swing open.
Let, O let Us peer in!
What you’re doing, We’ve determined, may be a sin!

When you visit your mother
and it’s time to brush your teeth,
it’s okay to openly spit.

And, while you’re at it,
go ahead—
take a long, noisy ****.

What the he|ll is your objection?
What on earth is all this fuss?
Just what is it, exactly, you would hide from US?



Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official—zenlike Art—
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile becomes mock porcelain.

Till in the end, the smile alone remains:
titanium-based alloys undestroyed
with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains
of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed

us most about the corpses rectified
to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.



Revision
by Michael R. Burch

I found a stone
ablaze in a streambed,
honed to a flickering jewel
by all the clear,
swiftly-flowing
millennia of water...

and as I kneeled
to do it obeisance,
the homage of retrieval,
it occurred to me
that perhaps its muddied
underbelly

rooted precariously
in the muck
and excrescence
of its slow loosening
upward...

might not be finished,
like a poem
brilliantly faceted
but only half revised,
which sparkles
seductively
but is not yet worth

ecstatic digging.



They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch

“We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”—George W. Bush

We will not forget ...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment),
still flashing grins they could not quite repent ...
Nor should they—anguish triumphs just an instant;
this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope—the shriveled chrysalis
that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then ***** about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. “Survive”
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s
awakening ... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.

Keywords/Tags: free verse, human, humanity, love, hearts, forgiveness, relationships, solitude, distance, strangers, kin, kindred

So there I was taking a stroll through the woods
Where I go to watch the woodland creatures at play
When the sun gleams off of something shinny ahead
That happens to catch my eye on that day

I tried picking it up but it wouldn't budge
So I went to fetch the shovel from my trunk
I found an old crusty ham sandwich where the spare used to be
So before I dug in the dirt I quickly dug into lunch

When I did start digging it took most of the night
Finally accomplished the task set before me
What it was astonished both, yes both of my eyes
The Legendary Bubba Time Jumping Machine

Bubba was an old moonshiner who had quite a knack
For inventing the oddest of things
Legend has it he took an old still and just for the thrill
Invented the object that now sits before me

I'd heard about this as a youngster in school
But thought it was all just a lie
Now I have a dilemma set before me
Do I go forward, sideways, or backward in time

Well I figured it didn't really matter that much
So I set my **** on the bucket inside
Bungee corded the door shut Duct taped the remaining cracks up
Then spun the rusty bicycle wheel he used as a time dial

The Time Jumping machine started shaking
I hung on for one crazy ride
I blew goodbye kisses to my friends, the squirrels and the robins
Leaving my normal life in a wake far behind

Blithering blather of bothering biting bothers that botherly blather their blantant blatherings of bumbling bemusings brought by bringing blue berries back by blue babaoons bumping beehives behind bubba bears big buggy before biggoted bums braving boorish battles

there you are:
brown mop of hair,
glasses you refuse to keep on,
teal green eyes,
broad smirk,
thin body stretched over 206 bones
a man
not my little brother –
no,
when you were little
you sat in that carriage and I read to you:
hours upon hours of stories you probably don’t remember,
but that I cherish
and when you were little
I would ask if you were a boy or a girl
and because I wanted a sister you would always say the opposite of what you are
and most of all when you were little, I shielded you
I carried you
I picked you up
but now you are a man
trapped inside his head
I see this shell of you, my brother,
but sometimes I can’t find you
sometimes all I see are your teal eyes
and not behind them
and there are moments where I wish I could peel back your skin
layer by layer
and go into your mind and see the chaos
like a busy city,
your mind,
cars honking
smog emanating from the tallest buildings
people milling and shouting and cursing
there is no pause
there is only go
one man in your brain carries in a black briefcase your fears
those worries that stop me from seeing you behind your eyes
and this man with a grey cloud overhead,
cloaked in a hood,
wanders your mind
and passes this fear from one person to the next
until slowly,
and gradually,
your whole brain is filled with grey clouds
and cloaked figures
and black briefcases
and shouting and whispering and laughing
and you disappear
from right here
back into your mind
“come closer”, they say,
“why live in this world when you can live in ours?”
and I hate these men; these people
distributing your fears
when it started, it was simply a fear of food,
but then it was
a fear of the world,
a fear of an illness,
a fear of yourself,
my little brother,
who smiled so brightly and vividly it was distractingly beautiful,
who draws so intensely and maturely and incredibly,
paints pictures of wisdom at sixteen,
who has rules and standards to the depths and validity of music
my little brother is trapped
and my stomach sinks when I ask:
“are you okay?”
and he only replies
“…yeah…”
and I feel so helpless when he looks so tired with his sunken eyes
because those men control him
they take all of him away and leave only a shell of my little brother
my bravest brother
my inspiring brother
my strong brother
whom I wish I could wipe clean of all the briefcases
and cloaked figures
and men
and fill his mind with a string of white lights,
Christmas lights,
and layer it with the smell of brownies baking in the oven,
and screens on which are projected his favourite shows and movies and videos of him,
my little brother,
who fights these men every day
and he deserves a medal of honour
because there is a war in his mind
and he battles incessantly
and I know, very soon,
even if only for a little while,
he’ll get a break from this city of his mind
and he’ll win.

I saw last night
What you did to Ted Cruz,
"A lying baby leaning on a Bible."
That quote is masterful.
Is that why you spent all that time with Bubba?
It just occurred to me you might have learned a thing or two
hanging out with the most naturally gifted living politician in the world?
And maybe that's part of why you cultivated that relationship with the Clintons?
You ****** up some of his skills like a sponge didn't you Donald?
And you were also keeping your enemies close before they knew they were enemies,
You saw them blinded by the bubble,
Bumbling over egos,
And you saw the seas parting,
Left and right drowning beside you as You walked across to the promise land,
Legs of the future spread out in front of you
Weeping with yearning,
Glistening in the light at the end of the tunnel.

You have no idea what it will be like to be President.
And I know you know you might bankrupt the world.
You have failed at easier things, Sir.
We both know this,
And we both know you don't care.
You are going to **** this country one way or another.
Will it be romantic?

I'm guessing it will be more like
gray **** gonzo ****
On a gold plated VHS,
But maybe not.
If you have taught History anything,
And it's clear you are teaching that ***** a lesson,
A crash course in what Nietsche called
"The Will To Power."
If you have taught History anything it's that
You won't let her tell you what to do.

I hate to do it,
but I just got to love you brother,
Or at least let go of my sentimentality,
And admit you will likely win.
your style is so much more tacky and just plain pathetic than you will ever understand,

But your knife is true blue,
Like the spirit of Sinatra.

You trump it up,
**** it,
Bump it and dump it.
Then you take that money
And bake it and shake it.
Baby you were born to run.

(song lyrics)
Verse 1:
Now I can’t go fishin’, ‘cuz ya’ sold my rod and reel
Can’t go snow-racin’, ‘cuz ya’ sold my snowmobile
And I got flaws - that’s for sure - and sometimes run amuck
But the final straw that I can’t take: Ya’ sold my pickup truck

Chorus:
You can burn the house, shoot my dog and stomp my ol’ guitar
But when you sold my pickup truck, well, Honey, ya’ went too far

Verse 2:
I didn’t care when ya’ bought that stuff on TV’s QVC
Or ‘cause ya’ always thought of me as your private Money Tree
Or catalog-orderin’ ever’thing from within ol’ Sears Roebuck
But I’ll be danged if I’ll sit still since ya’ sold my pickup truck!

Chorus:
You can burn the house, shoot my dog and stomp my ol’ guitar
But when you sold my pickup truck, well, Honey, ya’ went too far

Verse 3:
So I went and saw a gypsy gal, and a curse on you imposed
To put sand in your chewin' gum and runners in your ***** hose
And all your clothes and accessories to never, ever match
And chiggers in your bed sheets - so you’ll always have to scratch!

Chorus:
You can burn the house, shoot my dog and stomp my ol’ guitar
But when you sold my pickup truck, well, Honey, ya’ went too far

Verse 4:
I seen ya’ last Saturday night at Bubba’s Bar and Grill
The image of you in stripes and checks remains within me still
And them red chigger welts upon your nose and face
Tells me that the gypsy curse is workin’ ever’ place!

Chorus:
You can burn the house, shoot my dog and stomp my ol’ guitar
But when you sold my pickup truck, well, Honey, ya’ went too far

Mister, take off your fancy business suit
and strip off that tie
put on these overalls

Step right out of those polished expensive shoes
and toss your socks

I wanna make you a barefoot redneck

a dog barks to start a fight with bubba
and he gets
mean like an ant who's
sugars' been stolen and I tell him
             that's an ugly dog
when ugly people populate the planet, I get mad,
but I don't bite their heads off.
                                        He got really calm after that
and I waved at a gardener
as if to say,
                   'It's okay,
                                   it won't happen again.'

Don't you call me Bubba
Don't ever cross that line
I may be somewhat redneck
But, don't you ever cross that line

Don't call my sister Buehla
Don't ever cross the line
My sister, is my sister
And she's on my side of the line

Bubba, Buehla, Bobby Sue
To us they sound the same
You've crossed the line
this time, Bud
Those aren't our ****** names

I may be a redneck from
Below the Mason Dixon Line
But, Bubba is my cousin's name
It sure as hell ain't mine

You may say that  you're sorry
To some that may be fine
But to me, you're only sorry
Cause you got caught across the line

Don't cross the line with me,, no sir
Don't make me hunt you down
Don't cross the line with me, no sir
I'll run you out of town

Bubba, Buehla, Bobby Sue
To us they sound the same
You've crossed the line
this time, Bud
Those aren't our ****** names

Timetable torn in two

Covered in fluff, grit and

Other unidentifiable residue

Instructs you

Where you should be

Weekday between nine and three

If not held together right

You’ll be going to English class

At midnight



A blue pen in hiding

Has blown its cover

Left bendy and limp

Adding its mark to your

Timetable print

But you will struggle on, I know

With tongue stuck out to one side

Concentrating, not daring

To ask for another



The shatterproof ruler

A claim too hard to ignore

Reduced to smaller plastic bits

None of which will measure

Over an inch, I’m sure

But you will have a go

Underlining, shifting, underlining

And shifting

With your bendy limp blue pen



The fallout of wrappers

Of the hubba bubba crew

Shoved in your mouth

One directly after another

Sending your jaw into a

Slow motion, over committed, chew

Breaking down the matter

Of which would

Fill a crack in a nuclear reactor



The tangled and twisted wires

Umbilical cord of twins

Connects to your head

To feed you from a placenta

Of surround sound

Via your ears

It makes you sing so sweetly

Without knowing I can hear



Emptying your blazer pocket

I find you and I feel joy

My beautiful, beautiful boy

To know just where your're going

You must know where you've been

You must respect the history

The things others have seen

It's true in all things relative

Be it music, sports or life

If you don't know where you came from

You're just dancing on a knife

Gherig, Ruth and Robinson

May, and Mantle, Seaver too

Respect their contributions

And don't just say Ruth who?

Respect where things have come from

And the players of the past

Because you learn and make things better

It's what makes the **** game last

Jimmy Foxx, Bob Gibson, Kaline

Nestor Chylak and The Goose

They made baseball special

They gave the game a little juice

Orr, Richard and Gretzky

Gordie Howe and Howie Morenz

You have to know about them

You need the beginning to your ends

Bob Baun and Bill Barilko

Connie Smythe and yeah...the Chief

You have to know their history

They're what it is to be a Leaf

The game has changed immensely

Things can not go back in time

But to me...the old alumni

Made the game I know as mine

Respect the ones before you

The ones who laid the groundwork down

The ones who made it special

The non-pretenders to the crown

Elvis, Buddy, Harrison

Played the songs inside their heart

Lennon, Wilson and the rest

They all played a real big part

Every single generation

should learn from the one before

For if they don't know where they've come from

Then what has it all been for?

Nicklaus, Palmer, Bobby Jones

Sarazen and Hogan too

They pushed the gameright to it's limits

Now the pressure's upon you

The new breed are the teachers now

They're the ones to lead the way

When twenty or so years from now

You'll hear somebody say

"Respect who came before you

The ones who made us so **** proud

LIke  Nash and , Perry and  Taylor Hall

They played the game so loud

Pudge, Jeter, and Verlander

they brought it up a notch

They were there to stretch the limits

Not to just sit by and watch

Rory, Justin Rose and Mahan

Bubba, Dustin and the rest

They are the players of the future

They all respected the games best

So, to know where you are going

You must know where you have been

Respect, past through the future

And all that's happened in between.

I try so hard to be loving
But there are a folks
That I just don’t like.
I mean it, no jokes.
They’re mean and nasty
And loudly unkind.
To like such people means
I would need to be blind
And deaf and mute and
Completely out of my head.
So, I think I’ll just go on
Disliking them instead.

I mean, what the heck?
I’m not all that spiritual.
It’s not like I am a very
Overtly saintly individual.
On a scale of one to ten
I’m probably an eight
And most of my neighbors
Aren’t even that great.
And it’s not really a contest
From the very beginning
So what sense is there
In working hard at winning?

Some believe in heaven
And others believe in hell.
Well, I know both of those
Two places very well.
I used to live in the Midwest;
‘******’ was a polite word.
Just about the nicest version
Ot that epithet I ever heard.
Where gays and Jews
Might just as well go die
Because all good Midwesterners
Would sneer as they went by.

Oh, and if you were a Christian
You had better be the right sect.
Don’t try to pass as godly
If you religion ever genuflects.
And don’t be a Democrat there
Because that is plainly wrong.
And marrying between races
Bubba beats your head like a gong.
I think it might be better
For me to just be who I am.
Trying to act like a Republican
Just gets me into a big jam.

I don’t want to go to heaven
If hypocrites get to go there.
I’d get thrown right out
I’d knock them off the stair.
Of course, if they get in
That means something is awry.
So, maybe Saint Peter
Had better just pass me by.
Anyway, I sort of found heaven
In a chocolate cheesecake.
Just leave me alone with one.
That’s about all it takes.

Exchanging or replacing an old automobile
can be an intensely emotional experience for anyone
I still have the license plate screws from the first car my mom sold
although I didn’t care at all when my dad sold his car first
I remember crying at the dealership when they took my mom’s Toyota
I don’t even remember my dad telling us he got a new Ford
backseat on the left, behind the driver, was my designated spot, still is

I kept them in an empty Hubba Bubba OUCH! Gum tin, the screws
sometimes I’d open it up just to hold them
and wonder why I’d cared so much about that car

I have a bad case of the munchies
Should have took a right
Maybe the next exit on this stoner highway
Will lead to munchville
This 1991 Chevy S10 is Casa de marijuana
Stoners only ride
6 oz of berry white
2 oz of bubba kush
3 1/2 gs of Pineapple Express
I'm ******
Yet I've only had 4 bowls 2 extendo blunts
And 1 braided joint
Lost my touch
Hold on
Let me get right
Alright I'm not even high
Lets smoke another bowl
I'm ready to **** it up all night
Smoke out the western hemisphere
I'm a stoner
Staying ****** in ******* Mexico
So roll you a blunt
Pack a bowl
**** up the night
Get ******* ******

You said I'm a stranger.
That's selective.
We swapped virginities.
I painted your home,
And sat, and sipped
With your RFC Nandad;
Carried he and his Lady to the mausoleum;
Listened to her stories about Eleanor and Henry.
Bubba (a name you gave your Grandmother)
Sold me her car for a dollar.
I couselled your mother back into your heart;
At peril, tried to sneak your nephew back to your sister.
Your great-uncle gave us his Florida condo for a week,
I drank tea from a saucer at your Thanksgiving dinner.
I took the gun out of your father's mouth.
A stranger!
Tell the girls that.
Tell the grandkids Granda is a stranger.
Truth is strange.
Fiction estranges.

how my cell-mate loved me
i miss him now and then
i am finally on the outside
but he's doing five to ten.

i met him in the lunch room
he followed to the yard
and when he brushed against me
i felt something really hard.

don't be shy he told me
i'll treat you right, you'll see
and then he whispered nothings
while making love to me.

how my cell-mate loved me
let me count the ways
i love his big house nickname
they call him Bubba J

Bubba is a big boy
and really hairy too
if **** rugs are what you love
then he's the one for you.

He is a big bad tough guy
until he is alone
and then he is a teddy bear
I love to make him moan.

He is so soft and snuggly
he is my ******* coo
he hates for me to call him that
as a tough guy he'd be thru.

he is like putty in my hands
for sure when i am done
but at the start he is so hard
at least until he ****

if he gives me sass
i smack his *** and send him to his bunk
i am the boss of this sweet pair
and I treat him like a punk.

he stands real tall when free time comes
and fear is felt by all
but he looks up when facing me
and i'm just five feet tall.

i am the tough guy it turns out
and he is just a queen
i love him and he loves me
he's the best i've ever seen.

too bad i'm here and he is there
i think i'll rob a store
then i'll be back in with him again
and have sweet love once more.

My buddies shared stories

When they wanted protection

But the ******* fanatics’

Decisions were static


Used all possible ploys

To manipulate guys

Into blowing their loads

In their pink little holes


These girls might be crazy

They may well be *****

For all we know

They might want a baby


Regardless of risk

My guys fell for their tricks

When one ruse failed

The girls went down their list


They said not to worry

*** and ***** are clean

When they ****** the next day

It burned like lit gasoline


They turned up the heat

Seduction was key

Till all they could think

Was with the head between their legs


It won’t feel as good

Sensitivity reduced

You won’t stay hard

And I won’t stay wet and squirt jets


You should accept my request

I thought we were cool

If you just trusted me…

Be carefree like a hippie baby!


Emotional blackmail

I’ll get mad if you insist

To protect your *****

Resistance is futile *****


They said if we must

Let ME wrap it up

I’ll secretly poke holes

Or slip off before you explode


She’ll have no *** at all

Or she’ll force you down

And stay on top

Making you drop the ****** to the ground


She says she’s on the pill

When she’s definitely not

Even if you pull out

There’s still ***** in your pre-***, no doubt


Either she’ll give you disease

Or steal your seed for a baby

None of that is love

So wear a glove bubba


At the end of the story

They said don’t stick your **** in crazy

She might get too attached

You’ll wake up with your **** and ***** detached

Piles of papers glaring at me.
Signed, stamped, copied, for time and a fee.
Words and no promises, on the bark of a tree.
While you're somewhere else rapidly growing.

Days pass, we punch clocks, adding the time.
As the papers, they sit in the back of my mind.
She thinks wanting to see you is none but a crime.
While you're somewhere else distantly dreaming.

All the jabber and frenzy of what's wrong and right,
While no one observes our rigorous plight,
The lack of your presence haunts him at night.
While you're somewhere else sharing your laughter.

Your room is filled with your toys and your smiles,
Waiting for you to play in it awhile.
Waging war with the enemy goes on for miles.
While you're somewhere else slowly forgetting.

To say sadness is present does not quite explain.
All the stress, anger, longing inside of his brain.
Constantly trying to distract from the pain.
While you're with those who want to restrain you.

I believe there is good in the hearts of the wise,
Yet, some will use pawns to harvest the lies.
While the ones they need dearly are hung out to dry.
While you're somewhere else coloring pictures.

In the end, we will see you again and again.
No matter how many papers or strokes of a pen.
We love you, bubba, and we WON'T give in.
Cause you're somewhere else, incomplete.

The beginning of the beginning stage.

In the patterns that my lack of wisdom supports itself with.
Inside of course of my social blinds; and excuse depraved mind.
Yes locked or latched with what you could picture a key,
which has encrypted in its’ gold textures; certainly not pure gold the words, “Good Luck Son.”
Yes a story of unimaginable setbacks, woes, blows, deception so thick that it doesn’t dwindle to meagerness, but yet modifies like a brain being corrected by an assault on the body.
Yes, in the darkness of these patterns a trust in heroes runs rampant enough to muster conquest, and loss, and redemption soured by lust, and open warfare, and crime in it’s purity, in it’s raw form.
Yes, in these patterns created by lack of youthful imagination crucified if you will out of my conscience behavior tracking skills. A light breaks upon my sins,
and yields itself to a pattering method,
and then there is the plot of guts, blood, spit, tears, sweat, beads of dirt from a worked land,
that seems itself to be more ill-tempered than the folks that share its majestic worth.
These patterns only call out to the insane, and to the loathed, and the forsook, and the poor.
I haven’t caught the demons floundering down the dirt road in East Texas with their tails wagging stirring hot dust particles into the sun light atmosphere.
Now when the description techniques take effect in these patterns; the developed story, yes utterly developed in its’ entirety always in content,
and smiling boisterous to the meek,
and ragged dressed in search for their Sunday school Classroom.
End of the beginning stage
Here we are again in this surreal manner seeing first hand a triumph understood and fabled about in the Southern Grotesque shadows that are still apparent at noon,
at noon my good; well, carry on the well, carry on.

The Beginning of the middle.

The young ****** girl we call her a ***** now a days,
  
cause we had the Scopes Monkey Trial once or twice up in Tennessee I think.

She leaps and bounds and then abides to Christ for an instant, like my speech under oath.

She wrinkles her sections of her lips and blow a kiss to the huge white man lurking in the truck a block back.

The white man loves cigarettes towards abatement and then to City Hall.

The young ****** gal,

fell to a seat like it was grace that fixed the radio in the truck or some last twist or turn or **** from her little decreased hand.

The voice of the white man calling back to her,

singled out her emotional distress,

she always seems as if she has be ***** by this white fellow.

Now well I might have lost some folks by this point,

Now well I got to get to the ****** boy,

Yes well let’s see he carries a cursed burden so bad that every acquaintance felt afterward that this boy had picked a fight…

he moped oblivious to the sowed seeds he made desecrated in all truth. No one every pointed out that there is the place where you are supposed to bleed,

No one said, sonny boy right there is the place where you can be saved,

Nothing was delivered to him at Christmas, and it all went to his ***** sister. So therefore

He came upon the scene with this summer rain gesturing fun, and misery all under this sun.

Now well a thunderous voice came out of the church side windows, which were down,

Actually dismissing the pulpit, now well the bigot thundered, “ I want the fire, I want the praise. Stand up,

I want the fire, I want the praise!” The predicament that willowed the **** in the mouth of the skipping

****** boy, in all his glee and grandeur, caused him to straddled the wired fence on the other side of the truck.

Some would call this a grievance to accolades of vengeances long over due, and over due,

The dogs run free in these parts,

that’s just the simple truth.

But this is the beginning of the middle,

The cotton patch circles the road like a rubber tire on its rim,

And trust was never interracial enough to bide the will of saints on the cusp

Of revenge.

The ****** roared, “Get behind thee satan, or some ****, and some **** it was,

The kiddo trip over himself and tangled his way to the feet of the white man,

Who kindly picked him up, and said,

“not only can your sister **** a good ****, she can fix transistor radios’.”

The church service let out in one small horde to the capture the tensions of one of the old American lime lights befuddling Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam is no pun, he’s a gentlemen to both the North, and the South.

Sos’ with one huge crack the white man fractured the ****** boy’s jaw,

“Good ole boy, get on back to the picking!”

The next stage of the middle

The folklore of shame added to disgrace is looming,
What can one man do when beaten, left for this effect,
“Bubba can’t walk no either,” said a white eyed spectator,
Angels have no trace here,
no trepidation here,
in my lack luster,
Thoughts,
edges of justice tampered torn by impatience at God,
At the Good Lord.
Let’s see I am the son of a clerk,
A nerd to salvation, and more so a nerd in general.
I called for nerves,
In the nerves that were yet,
to be nerves,
and for that fire on the water,
“where’s the,
Hearkening cries that shudder the barns with frantic frolicking of fire men,
and police men,
The, law say psst, where’s the ******* laws!” I laughed to myself I wasn’t in cahoots with the ******,
or the ***** girl who had began to come back for her brother,
but I wasn’t asking a soul to come in and take my place,
if ya, if ya, if ya get my drift hood wink!
Whoa ay,
my indignant monologues must have jived and then shook,
I was to cool for this,
I was to ready to step up in the world,
lo,
behold,
a pale rider,
“The sheriff, from the south, beware Isaac,” I told myself, “beware.”
The girl slithered like snakes to her bother;
her souls bearings were now plastic, and latched under the arms of the fallen boy.
The rain hastened,
then came stronger,
and then the congregation split as the Sheriff took ground.
I scurried like the rodents, and joined the congregation.
The white man, pulled his gun, and shot the sheriff in the stomach.
“It will heal,” the sheriff hands ******.
The truck was gone,
both ******* and all.

The Middle Stage of the Middle.


The river winds and brings enriches through the earth first,
and second in humanly attributes,
Frankness took to front face of the town,
and the outskirts wailed like someone had burned their property,
Dogs still ran free,
cause that is what happens around here,
and I played a harmonica,
and steel guitar,
Serenity which found facets to seep regardless of where the kidnapped traveled,
and the kidnappers force,
spelled a gearing up for a manhunt,
and even possibly a trial.
The mother of the two kiddos that were gobbled out of the town,
worked for a shyster,
and crook keeping his sanctuary wooden like,
and contemporary.
She had the knack that clings to most maidens middle aged and nudged by bouts of,
Grace.
Like a parasite,
which is the whistling you hear,
some hymn,
hymns,
from passed down relics,
called family.
The crime that spindled like the pap she knew setting down to slumber without meaning to,
Was a embezzlement crisis,
piped from the corner store,
to a small methamphetamine lab,
harboring the man Ms. Clawdy worked for,
until the cops were scarce it was hard to grasp for the town,
and anyway the sweet anyway of my sigh as my mother,
and the preacher were in my bedroom making love when I came in from the lake.
It sounded like she was faking it,
I am pretty sure,
but I am so badly endowed that its hard to believe that,
well,
I hadn’t my father say,
“alright.”
I hadn’t heard the word alright,
in ages!
It was poignant,
and disgruntling in the same instant.
By the way,
my mother was having a seizure,
worse than the tiny ones the ****** girl has.
My father a bank manager is his past life,
and a decent accountant,
shut the door on them.
I haven’t whimsical atrophy or empathy at what happens in jail,
what happens to criminals,
what happens to evil persons once exposed pretty well by children of the Lord.
I am old enough to know better,
I let the dog in,
and lead him into the room,
and shot the dog.
My hopes were,
That my ma would snap out of it,
the drugs spilled to the floor,
and I ran out to the tractor,
And got back to work.
I rhetorically thought to myself,
I wonder why I ever attempt to date a girl,
From these here parts of East Texas.
My parts were to be made ***** quite yet….


The later middle stage of the middle.

The Texas Rangers came in cars,
and the blood hounds met and mingled with the townspeople,
This part in the story is delicate,
and stubborn in its youth,
mainly for the dramatic irony I try to forge.
The character of the father of the two kiddos who were kidnapped and battered takes to drinking,
and lays down like that dog in my room.
The sweet corner store elderly sold him a round of beers in a few quarts,
and he says,
“we sure appreciate, you heard.”
“Now Leroy that was a good boy,
and that Vivian was a sweet child.”
“Still is, you’ll see!”
“Our prayers to the saints our with Mr. Clawdy.”
“Yeah ok,
thank you much,
have a good one!”
The Texas Rangers weren’t as captivated by the alcoholic rampage.
They infiltrated my house right off there beaten path….
The fire and praise replaced the preacher and the Texas Rangers ****** him up,
and **** like the chalk coming off the hands.
Ya mean, ya mean!
They spun a tale that half the gang searching for the ******* as they put it,
well two got snake bitten,
and once they thought they had him cornered a tornado mustered up,
Then it was nothing.
How is it nothing?
I wanted to say,
I saw,
how is it nothing,
my mother straightened up,
and wiped her nose,
and put on some make up,
and the preacher or my father didn’t rat her out, for the drugs.
That is when I guess the prejudice, or injustice, or just the wanting,
the yearning to be grown,
or the despair and weird hormones towards women….
I let it out in front of God, and country,
“Tell it like it is ma, ******* it, tell it like it is, that dog will haunt you, in a heart beat,
more than he is going to haunt me,
God dang, tell it like it is, you high, and skipping, cheating, lying, I hate you!
I hate you!”
“Now son,
we are handling this,
seems this little fella needs some restraint from his parents.”
A quid pro quo was in the midst, I knew I wasn’t speaking in vain.
I knew my father was madder than any of them Texas Rangers.
Yes Texas Rangers eww,
I cried,
and search for something more in me,
but there wasn’t anymore to come,
just another day,
and of course the little man in me pretending to be a sheriff like the one a saw get shot,
that I came to know as a piece a fraction of manhood coming of age.
The men later,
sat my mother down,
and she lied time and time again,
and they went to the other streets,
and to the corner store,
and eventually to the ****** side of town.
I came into contact with a passenger of a greyhound,
who was blind,
and his cane tattled,
and ratted,
towards me like the end of time.
“Protect your name, yes, protect your name, and then some!”
“Bless you.”
“Whose that?”
“Yellow belly.”
“Yellow haired.”
“Ah Good man.”
“Two got bitten, you the new sheriff?”
“Sheriff, think again guy, I am the Preacher.”
The crossing cars slowed and crept in splendor and curiosity,
where and who penetrated the ideology of the passers.
“Two steps, and curb, and the name’s Isaac.”
“How do you do. Preacher ***.”
The deception that I spoke about,
and the turmoil that I so to speak promised echoes in the neighborhoods nearby.
I realized he smelled of pickles, and relish like stenches,
but repellant of mosquitoes came out of his jacket,
and immersed us both in a whirlwind of effort.
Gamblers,
ramblers,
antlers,
all part of the commerce spared themselves the grief,
spared themselves the haphazard and soon what was left was lovers,
and bad men.
And Texas Rangers.
The Texas Rangers flooded the countryside,
and snapped me back at the dinner table,
“take us to the house where the drugs are, or draw us a map!”
“A map, gees you guys don’t need no map,
heck,
take a right on Granger,
a left on Tempest,
and it’s the fourth house on the left.
Say the mans name is Jim.
If ya, if ya, if ya catch my drift! Hood wink!


The End of the Middle Stage.

With the Texas Rangers half crazy,
like the people I know,
and the inner thoughts that have came to become an awareness more or less,
the thought that I will never reproduce,
and the thought that I was fallen,
by the actions that broke my wings,
sank beneath my garnered wretched existence,
the lawmen arrested as the heroes,
and the villains came without a fight,
including my mother,
and Mr. Jim.
And Mr. and Ms. Clawdy got into the station with delight,
and exercising emotions about the missing persons,
by the way of a white man.
I don’t ever get dialogue out of this station sequence but I imagine somewhere,
the words we have a lead into finding the whereabouts of your children.
The drug house was linked to other drug house in this jurisdiction and they didn’t stutter in my dialect. Repentance is unlike amending past fights, and arguments.
The harvest was futuristically here,
and danger was trampled by the lawmen,
and peace and order was restored nicely now.
The shyster was quarreled,
and the commercial trucks picked up the slack,
and the Sunday school classes proceeded.
Ms. Clawdy sat one night about a week after the event involving her children,
and she realized that no one could help her, I
n the place where she needed help the most,
and no one would pardon her anger in the night with her husband drinking so heavily.
I went to their place,
and I took the preacher with me,
and I finally felt what it was like to be in cahoots,
or what a partnership is truly like,
short sided to say the least.
I knocked the flap,
and pounded my feet,
and pounded my feet,
like the fire man told me,
once,
“beat feet bub,”
well I did,
and finally Ms. Clawdy answered the door.
“What’s y’all going to do about getting your kids back?”
“We leaving tonight!”
“In the dark?”
“That’s right!”
“I know where they might be kid.”
“Good deal.”
“That’s right.”
“Is he going with you?”
“Yup, yup, now come on let’s go!”
“***** I ain’t going with you any place.
***** I am drinking my sorrows away!”
“Not going huh.”
She was gone into the night like usual circumstances take people away from their homes in the midst of great trusts wedged between wisdom and fault, and to the great beyond murmured as truth.
“He ain’t going with her.”
“Maybe we should leave Isaac.”
But I was already wound,
the good luck key had already been turned in my spine,
and twisted in my blood,
and I watched Mr. Clawdy throw another quart against the wall crashing down in pieces.

The Beginning of the End stage.

Cliché is a muse in the common man,
or if it isn’t well my mind is to thwarted by degradation,
and much to much pride and jealousy to see love work in the most excellent ways,
so excellent it even would make a mother fly out towards danger,
and attempt to rescue her young.
I read about the Scopes evolution trial,
in the tribune,
and bugles sounded at the death of William Jennings Bryan,
and I thought of him disparagingly…
I gulped and supped,
and wanted to bolt in the dark living room,
and tear a piece out of the ole Clawdy for what he really was,
the blind man cause that what he was now,
stopped me,
pulled me back,
“you want a turn,
you want a turn at this mess,
all day,
this whole time you been wanted a turn.
I know,
now I know for the good, so as to end it.
It isn’t anybody place here now!”
And that was it,
we retreated back to the tractor we road in on,
Failure I blamed my mother for,
retribution was only heard by the croaking frogs,
and crickets.
I had seen enough weddings,
and funerals,
and signed enough books,
I was ready to shoot another dog at least.
But we waited.
My father never peered his or reared his head once,
and the morning came the fields were tilled,
and re tilled,
before noon,
and soon the blind man said,
I need to ***.
Yes,
and so we went into the pasture,
and urinated.
When we came back we were confronted

Gum is another tongue in your mouth,
taste-bud studded with sugar and pink

Hubba Bubba Double Bubble

Your jaw feels like expanding bread
when you rest from chewing
flatten it into a saucer and
let it balloon from your mouth,

it distends like an internal *****
or the full stomach of a frog
spilling from your lips

(When he stretches, you see veins
******* across his amphibian chest)

It hooks itself on your nose
and wilts into a pink tangle.

A flitter, a flutter, whats a few quid on a bet
the folly broke its leg on that run, better call that final vet
much like the creature that ran its last race
there are certain things in this life that I cannot face

Her high pitched scream of a laugh is almost a squeal
such a pretty face but her mannerisms and depth I cannot deal
I laughed, tagged along, at first it all seemed so great
but it ends up so weary, solemn yet teary, its day has had its final fate

She had her ups, I had my downs, to be away was my final curtain
had to leave the house, crept to the bookies like a sneaky woodlouse, that divorce was almost certain
but I prefer a bet to her hair, and to always be there, hold the phone, there's a tip at the 3:30 in Ripon
my friends said I must be mad, to leave that beauty, oh so bad, well yes, I must be ****** trippin

But that's life i'm afraid, we all have plans that must be laid, some leading wholly in the wrong direction
she's with some other man now, almost the size of a baby cow, I'm sure their bubba will be perfection

So the bookies it still calls, if its horses to Saturdays goals, those dice will always for me be thrown
for it is what it is, a life as a quiz, what will tomorrow bring, as it really is,

nobody's fault but my own

JJB

I wake up but, bubba, I don't wanna.
Put on my cleanest ***** shirt.
Smoke some marijuana.
Brush my teeth.
Got nothin to eat.
Head on to school,
So I won't be a fool.
I'm at the top of the list.
I have the best GPA.
But I still feel worthless,
At the end of the day.
Hello Poetry,
Let's you read my thoughts.
I'm even one of your favorites.
But still, I feel lost.
I'm good at everything,
But I get nothin' done.
In the face of danger,
I get up and run.
Where am I going?
Where have I been?
Get me out of this slum.
That I'm livin' in.
So I can put on my pants.
One leg at a time.
Put on a clean shirt,
And get on my grind.
Its time to buckle up.
The ride ahead is rough.
It's time to buckle down.
Stop actin' a clown.
So next time you see me
I'll be on my high horse
On my pedestal, I shine
Can you come?
But, of course.
Just as long as you were there.
At rock bottom with me,
While I trekked through the mud,
And the dirt and debris.
If when I was down,
You got up and left.
Get off my high horse.
And go **** yourself.

Come closer won't you, Dear
my loving friend
you're always out there hanging on the
fringe of my heart
it's that white knuckled fear
surely Freedom stands near
and you dare not even tell her you're afraid.

She's your favorite pillow on a double wide recliner
or your front porch Adirondack with your early evening stogie
peace and quiet is the theme of your real life day-dream
the only noise you want to hear is from your 60 inch flat screen
with surround sound and remote, watching oldies you old goat,
Twilight Zone and Walking Dead, you've got Stooges in your head, and all the talkshows and the news  is in between

you're not hangry, you're not mean, Freedom understands your bean
with your crockpot full of chili you've been full since you've left Philly
and don't really need a maid around in fact the thought seems silly
you can cook and you can clean, you can work from home and preen
occupied  with daily orders and you like to clean your quarters
you've got all the latest gadgets you're not wanting for a house guest
since deliveries come daily  thank the UPS guy, Bailey
and by now you're feeling quite blessed
'cause the shipping on your stuff is mostly free.

Come closer won't you, Dear
my loving friend
you're always out there hanging on the
fringe of my heart
it's that white knuckled fear
surely Freedom stands near
and you dare not even tell her you're afraid.

On those days you're feeling needy, there's that lady at the counter
who knows you by your first name and the waitress with her smile
and the few words back and forth let's you know she recognizes you
remembers how you like your coffee since you come for breakfast weekly
and it's so nice to chat with Kathy for a while.

Who could blame you, loving freedom since she doesn't seem to take
but will fill your heart with pleasure never make your head to ache
never needing any comfort, never waiting at the table
after cookingup your favorite, never asking you to come home
from wherever else you're hanging never asking any questions
always free from expectations who could measure up to Freedom's wit and charm?

Come closer won't you, Dear
my loving friend
you're always out there hanging on the
fringe of my heart
it's that white knuckled fear
surely Freedom stands near
and you dare not even tell her you're afraid.

So called friends there on your Facebook clinging to your every word
as if coming from a guru when you're feeling like a nerd.
they applaud your sense of humor, all the items you are SHARING
and they LIKE the way you're looking and the way you that you respond
for your intellect is hooking and you're forming a close bond
over politics and reason, like your thoughts on this election
and the president and treason or the stuff that you've been cookin'
yeah, you've got a wife named freedom and I know, if you can't beat 'em
I'd be wise to choose my freedom over you.

Come closer won't you, Dear
my loving friend
you're always out there hanging on the
fringe of my heart
it's that white knuckled fear
surely Freedom stands near
and you dare not even tell her you're afraid.

Now you've filled up all your neediness without a real lover
hey there now but that's your business between you and Freedom's cover
as for women, you don't need 'em cause you've sworn off love for living
and for sure you love your Freedom and to these ends you watch your giving.
Now you're turning up the music and then you're surfing through your favorites
and flipping through the channels and those periodic moments
gotta catch up on your reading,organize your book collection
get your Ebay up and running you can do without direction
or distraction or attention

do the laundry
mow the lawn
fix what's broken
nothings wrong

Come closer won't you, Dear
my loving friend
you're always out there hanging on the
fringe of my heart
it's that white knuckled fear
surely Freedom stands near
and you dare not even tell her you're afraid.

maybe you go and take a shower and then shave for like an hour
don't forget to flush the toilet, boil an egg and eat some yogurt
top if off with some granola plan your week out, date with Lola
watch the leaves fall and then scatter,
rake 'em up
'cause these things matter,
crack a beer and catch a rerun
never mind the stuff that's undone...

Somewhere deep inside you, you are still the same old lonely
as you were the other year, never mind that second beer
think you realize you miss me, bet sometimes you'd like to kiss me
holding hands while watching TV, maybe someone just to talk to
and to laugh at all your old jokes and to share a little something
that you whipped up in your crockpot, glass of wine, latte or mocha
never mind, let's dance the polka, right that tightness in your shoulder
like John Lennon and his Yoko...

You decide to dial my number  
I usually don't usually like to answer
on the first ring  but by chance, you're
  saying something, wait a second
'cause I gotta turn my sound down
oh you're singing something funny,
and I like your phone voice honey
it's this old familiar tune I wrote for you

"Come closer to me, Dear
my loving friend
you're always out there hangin'
on the fringe of my heart
with your white knuckled fear
for our freedom stands near
and we dare not even tell her we're afraid"

For my dear old friend, a confirmed bachelor, who goes by Poppy, or Bubba.

I feel mean and nasty.
I cuss out everyone I talk to behind their backs, saying
                                  'That *******!'
Or,
      'What a *****!'

For no reason but that the caffeine wears me thin.

My only child-friend is Bubba the dog, who gives me those eyes,
      'I've never tried watermelon  before, please Jilly can I try it!?'

And, of course I say yes.

Dogs love you even when their food comes late.

He's a pit bull. I feel someone of importance when I walk down the street with him, you know,
       'Move it, coming through with my friend the tan pitbull with the sad eyes! We don't have all day! We have to eat watermelon!'

He lays in the sun and I think of things.

'Why is he afraid of water?

Why does he step so daintily over obstructions in his path?

What does he really think of those
cats he chases...does he want them to sit down and eat watermelon with us?'

I want someone to eat watermelon with us.

Danny is at work, and the sun is high in the powder blue backdrop it calls home.

We want a watermelon friend.

Prose Poems and Experimental Poems
by Michael R. Burch

These are prose poems (is that an oxymoron?)  and experimental poems that begin with the first non-rhyming poem I wrote as a teenager...



Something
―for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
by Michael R. Burch

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, which finality swept into a corner, where it lies... in dust and cobwebs and silence.

This was my first poem that didn't rhyme, written in my late teens. The poem came to me 'from blue nothing' (to borrow a phrase from my friend the Maltese poet Joe Ruggier) . Years later, I dedicated the poem to the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba.


briefling
by Michael R. Burch

manishatched, hopsintotheMix, cavorts, hassex (quick! , spawnanewBrood!) ; then, likeamayfly, he's suddenly gone: plantfood.



It's Hard Not To Be Optimistic: An Updated Sonnet to Science
by Michael R. Burch

"DNA has cured deadly diseases and allowed labs to create animals with fantastic new features." ― U.S. News & World Report

It's hard not to be optimistic when things are so wondrously futuristic: when DNA, our new Louie Pasteur, can effect an autonomous, miraculous cure, while labs churn out fluorescent monkeys who, with infinite typewriters, might soon outdo USN&WR's flunkeys. Yes, it's hard not to be optimistic when the world is so delightfully pluralistic: when Schrödinger's cat is both dead and alive, and Hawking says time can run backwards. We thrive, befuddled drones, on someone else's regurgitated nectar, while our cheers drown out poet-alarmists who might Hector the Achilles heel of pure science (common sense)  and reporters who tap out supersillyous nonsense. [Dear U.S. News & World Report Editors: I am a fan of both real science and science fiction, and I like to think I can tell the difference, at least between the two extremes. I feel confident that Schrödinger didn't think the cat in his famous experiment was both dead and alive. Rather, he was pointing out that we can't know until we open the box, scratchings and smell aside. While traveling backwards in time is great for science fiction, it seems extremely doubtful as a practical application. And as for DNA curing deadly diseases... well, it must have created them, so perhaps don't give it too much credit! While I'm usually a fan of your magazine, as a writer I must take to task the Frankensteinian logic of the excerpt I cited, and I challenge you to publish my "letter" as proof that poets do have a function in the third millennium, even if it is only to suggest that paid writers should not create such outlandish, freakish horrors of the English language.―Somewhat irked, but still a fan, Michael R. Burch]



bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch

u are charming & disarming, but mostly! ! ! ALARMING! ! ! since all my resolve dissolved! u are chic as a sheikh's harem girl in the sheets, but now my bed's not my own and my kingdom's been overthrown!



Starting from Scratch with Ol' Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh went to the ovens. Please don't bother to cry. You could have saved her, but you were all *******: complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp. Scratch that. You were born after World War II. You had something more important to do: while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a religious tract against homosexual marriage and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)  Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I'm quite sure that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure. After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians? Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians. Scratch that. You're one of the Devil's minions.



Prose Poem: The Trouble with Poets
by Michael R. Burch

This morning the neighborhood girls were helping their mothers with chores, but one odd little girl was out picking roses by herself, looking very small and lonely.

Suddenly the odd one refused to pick roses anymore because she decided it might "hurt" them. Now she just sits beside the bushes, rocking gently back and forth, weeping and consoling them!

Now she's lost all interest in nature, which she finds "appalling." She dresses in black "like Rilke" and says she prefers the "roses of the imagination"! She mumbles constantly about being "pricked in conscience" and being "pricked to death." What on earth can she mean? Does she plan to have *** until she dies?

For chrissake, now she's locked herself in her room and refuses to come out until she has "conjured" the "perfect rose of the imagination"! We haven't seen her for days. Her only communications are texts punctuated liberally with dashes. They appear to be badly-rhymed poems. She signs them "starving artist" in lower-case. What on earth can she mean? Is she anorexic, or bulimic, or is this just a phase she'll outgrow?



escape!
by michael r. burch

to live among the daffodil folk... slip down the rainslickened drainpipe... suddenly pop out the GARGANTUAN SPOUT... minuscule as alice, shout yippee-yi-yee! in wee exultant glee to be leaving behind the LARGE THREE-DENALI GARAGE.

escape! !

u are too beautiful, too innocent, too inherently lovely to merely reflect the sun's splendor... too full of irresistible candor to remain silent, too delicately fawnlike for a world so violent... come, my beautiful bambi and i will protect you... but of course u have already been lured away by the dew-laden roses...



Children's Prose Poem: The Three Sisters and the Mysteries of the Magical Pond
by Michael R. Burch

Every child has a secret name, which only their guardian angel knows. Fortunately, I am able to talk to angels, so I know the secret names of the Three Sisters who are the heroines of the story I am about to tell...

The secret names of the Three Sisters are Etheria, Sunflower and Bright Eyes. Etheria, because the eldest sister's hair shines like an ethereal blonde halo. Sunflower, because the middle sister loves to plait bright flowers into her hair. Bright Eyes, because the youngest sister has flashing dark eyes that are sometimes full of mischief! This is the story of how the Three Sisters solved the Three Mysteries of the Magical Pond...

The first mystery of the Magical Pond was the mystery of the Great Heron. Why did the Great Heron seem so distant and aloof, never letting human beings or even other animals come close to it? This great mystery was solved by Etheria, who noticed that the Great Heron was so large it couldn't fly away from danger quickly. So the Heron was not being aloof at all... it was simply being cautious and protecting itself by keeping its distance from faster creatures. Things are not always as they appear!

The second mystery was the mystery of the River Monster. What was the dreaded River Monster, and did it pose a danger to the three sisters and their loved ones? This great mystery was solved by Sunflower, who found the River Monster's footprints in the mud after a spring rain. Sunflower bravely followed the footprints to a bank of the pond, looked down, and to her surprise found a giant snapping turtle gazing back at her! Thus the mystery was solved, and the River Monster was not dangerous to little girls or their family and friends, because it was far too slow to catch them. But it could be dangerous if anyone was foolish enough to try to pet it. Sometimes it is best to leave nature's larger creatures alone, and not tempt fate, even when things are not always as they appear!

The third mystery was the most perplexing of all. How was it possible that tiny little starlings kept chasing away much larger crows, hawks and eagles? What a conundrum! (A conundrum is a perplexing problem that is very difficult to solve, such as the riddle: "What walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs during the day, then on three legs at night? " Can you solve it? ... The answer is a human being, who crawls on four legs as a baby, then walks on two legs most of its life, but needs a walking cane in old age. This is the famous Riddle of the Sphinx.)  Yes, what a conundrum! But fortunately Bright Eyes was able to solve the Riddle of the Starlings, because she noticed that the tiny birds were much more agile in the air, while the much larger hawks and eagles couldn't change direction as easily. So, while it seemed the starlings were risking their lives to defend their nests, in reality they had the advantage! Once again, things are not always as they appear!

Now, these are just three adventures of the Three Sisters, and there are many others. In fact, they will have a whole lifetime of adventures, and perhaps we can share in them from time to time. But if their mother reads them this story at bedtime, by the end of the story their eyes may be getting very sleepy, and they may soon have dreams of Giant Herons, and Giant Turtles, and Tiny Starlings chasing away Crows, Hawks and Eagles! Sweet dreams, Etheria, Sunflower and Bright Eyes!



Fake News, Probably
by Michael R. Burch

The elusive Orange-Tufted Fitz-Gibbon is the rarest of creatures―rarer by far than Sasquatch and the Abominable Snowman (although they are very similar in temperament and destructive capabilities) . While the common gibbon is not all that uncommon, the orange-tufted genus has been found less frequently in the fossil record than hobbits and unicorns. The Fitz-Gibbon sub-genus is all the more remarkable because it apparently believes itself to be human, and royalty, no less! Now there are rumors―admittedly hard to believe―that an Orange-Tufted Fitz-Gibbon resides in the White House and has been spotted playing with the nuclear codes while chattering incessantly about attacking China, Mexico, Iran and North Korea. We find it very hard to credit such reports. Surely American voters would not elect an oddly-colored ape with self-destructive tendencies president!



Writing Verse for Free, Versus Programs for a Fee
by Michael R. Burch

How is writing a program like writing a poem? You start with an idea, something fresh. Almost a wish. Something effervescent, like foam flailing itself against the rocks of a lost tropical coast...

After the idea, of course, there are complications and trepidations, as with the poem or even the foam. Who will see it, appreciate it, understand it? What will it do? Is it worth the effort, all the mad dashing and crashing about, the vortex―all that? And to what effect?

Next comes the real labor, the travail, the scouring hail of things that simply don't fit or make sense. Of course, with programming you have the density of users to fix, which is never a problem with poetry, since the users have already had their fix (this we know because they are still reading and think everything makes sense) ; but this is the only difference.

Anyway, what's left is the debugging, or, if you're a poet, the hugging yourself and crying, hoping someone will hear you, so that you can shame them into reading your poem, which they will refuse, but which your mother will do if you phone, perhaps with only the tiniest little mother-of-the-poet, harried, self-righteous moan.

The biggest difference between writing a program and writing a poem is simply this: if your program works, or seems to work, or almost works, or doesn't work at all, you're set and hugely overpaid. Made-in-the-shade-have-a-pink-lemonade-and-ticker-tape-parade OVERPAID.

If your poem is about your lover and ***** up quite nicely, perhaps you'll get laid. Perhaps. Regardless, you'll probably see someone repossessing your furniture and TV to bring them posthaste to someone like me. The moral is this: write programs first, then whatever passes for poetry. DO YOUR SHARE; HELP END POVERTY TODAY!



Prose Poem: Litany
by Michael R. Burch

Will you take me with all my blemishes? I will take you with all your blemishes, and show you mine. We'll **** wine out of cardboard boxes till our teeth and lips shine red like greedily gorging foxes'. We'll swill our fill, then have *** for hours till our neglected guts at last rebel. At two in the morning, we'll eat cold Krystals out of greasy cardboard boxes, and we will be in love. And that's it? That's it! And can I go out with my friends and drink until dawn? You can go out with your friends and drink until dawn, come home lipstick-collared, pass out by the pool, or stay at the bar till the new moon sets, because we will be in love, and in love there is no room for remorse or regret. There is no right, no wrong, and no mistrust, only limb-numbing ***, hot-pistoning lust. And that's all? That's all. That's great! But wait... Wait? Why? What's wrong? I want to have your children. Children? Well, perhaps just one. And what will happen when we have children? The most incredible things will happen―you'll change, stop acting so strangely, start paying more attention to me, start paying your bills on time, grow up and get rid of your horrible friends, and never come home at a-quarter-to-three drunk from a night of swilling, smelling like a lovesick skunk, stop acting so lewdly, start working incessantly so that we can afford a new house which I will decorate lavishly and then grow tired of in a year or two or three, start growing a paunch so that no other woman would ever have you, stop acting so boorishly, start growing a beard because you're too tired to shave, or too afraid, thinking you might slit your worthless wrinkled throat...



Sweet Nothings
by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, will you whisper me a sweet enchantment? We'll take my motorcycle, blaze a trail of metallic exhaust and scorched-black sulphuric fumes to a ****** diner where I'll slip my fingers under your yellow sun dress, inside the elastic waist band of your thin white cotton *******, till your pinkling lips moisten obligingly and the corpulent pink hot dog with tangy brown mustard and sweet pickle relish comes. Tonight, can we talk about something other than ***, perhaps things we both love? What I love is to go to the beach, where the hot oil smells like baking coconuts, and lie in the sun's humidor thinking of you, while the sand worms its way inside your **** little pink bikini, your compressed ******* squishy with warm sweet milk like coconuts, the hair between your legs sleek as a wet mink's... Tonight, can we make love instead of just talking *****? Sorry, honey, I'm just not in the mood.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes―the pale dead. After they have fled the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise. Once they have become a cloud's mist, sometimes like the rain they descend; ... they appear, sometimes silver, like laughter, to gladden the hearts of men. Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift unencumbered, yet lumbrously, as if over the sea there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift. Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies only half-remembered. Though they lie dismembered in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies, yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust, blood-engorged, but never sated since Cain slew Abel. But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch

Desire glides in on calico wings, a breath of a moth seeking a companionable light... where it hovers, unsure, sullen, shy or demure, in the margins of night, a soft blur. With a frantic dry rattle of alien wings, it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato... and flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight. And yet it returns to the flame, its delight, as long as it burns.



Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

"Burn Ovid"―Austin Clarke

Sunday School, Faith Free Will Baptist,1973: I sat imaging watery folds of pale silk encircling her waist. Explicit *** was the day's "hot" topic (how breathlessly I imagined hers)  as she taught us the perils of lust fraught with inhibition. I found her unaccountably beautiful, as she rolled implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue: adultery, fornication, *******, ******. Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush of her unrouged cheeks, by her pale lips accented only by a slight quiver, a trepidation. What did those lustrous folds foretell of our uncommon desire? Why did she cross and uncross her legs lovely and long in their taupe sheaths? Why did her ******* rise pointedly, as if indicating a direction?

"Come unto me,
(unto me) , "
together, we sang,

cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,

my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:

all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.



*** 101
by Michael R. Burch

That day the late spring heat steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus crawling its way up the backwards slopes of Nowheresville, North Carolina... Where we sat exhausted from the day's skulldrudgery and the unexpected waves of muggy, summer-like humidity... Giggly first graders sat two abreast behind senior high students sprouting their first sparse beards, their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections... The most unlikely coupling―Lambert,18, the only college prospect on the varsity basketball team, the proverbial talldarkhandsome swashbuckling cocksman, grinning... Beside him, Wanda,13, bespectacled, in her primproper attire and pigtails, staring up at him, fawneyed, disbelieving... And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her, as she twitched impaled on his finger like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes, I knew... that love is a forlorn enterprise, that I would never understand it.



Veiled
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief without comprehension, and in her crutchwork shack she is much like us... Tamping the bread into edible forms, regarding her children at play with something akin to relief... Ignoring the towers ablaze in the distance because they are not revelations but things of glass, easily shattered... Aand if you were to ask her, she might say―sometimes God visits his wrath upon an impious nation for its leaders' sins... And we might agree: seeing her mutilations.



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then, and give them my meaning, so that their teeming streets become my city. Bring back a pretty flower―a chrysanthemum, perhaps, to bloom, if but an hour, within a certain room of mine where the sun does not rise or fall, and the moon, although it is content to shine, helps nothing at all. There, if I hear the wistful call of their voices regretting choices made, or perhaps not made in time, I can look back upon it and recall―in all its pale forms sublime, still, Death will never be holy again.



The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Love among the infinitesimal flotillas of amoebas is a dance of transient appendages, wild sails that gather in warm brine and then express one headstream as two small, divergent wakes. Minuscule voyage―love! Upon false feet, the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep toward self-immolation: two nee one. We cannot photosynthesize the sun, and so we love in darkness, till we come at last to understand: man's spineless heart is alien to any land. We part to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears, amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres... and still we sink. The night is full of stars we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours. Have we such cells within us, bent on love to ever-changingness, so that to part is not to be the same, or even one? Is love our evolution, or a scream against the thought of separateness―a cry of strangled recognition? Love, or die, or love and die a little. Hopeful death! Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.



Longing
by Michael R. Burch

We stare out at the cold gray sea, overcome with such sudden and intense longing... our eyes meet, inviolate... and we are not of this earth, this strange, inert mass. Before we crept out of the shoals of the inchoate sea... before we grew the quaint appendages and orifices of love... before our jellylike nuclei, struggling to be hearts, leapt at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun, then watched it plummet, the birth and death of our illumination... before we wept... before we knew... before our unformed hearts grew numb, again, in the depths of the sea's indecipherable darkness... when we were only a swirling profusion of recombinant things wafting loose silt from the sea's soft floor, writhing and ******* in convulsive beds of mucousy foliage,

flowering,
flowering,
flowering...

what jolted us to life?



Memento Mori
by Michael R. Burch

I found among the elms
something like the sound of your voice,
something like the aftermath of love itself
after the lightning strikes,
when the startled wind shrieks...

a gored-out wound in wood,
love's pale memento mori―
that white scar
in that first heart,
forever unhealed...

and a burled, thick knot incised
with six initials pledged
against all possible futures,
and penknife-notched below,
six edged, chipped words
that once cut deep and said...

WILL U B MINE
4 EVER?

... which now, so disconsolately answer...

----------------N
-- EVER.



Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

"We will walk taller! " said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

"Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster, "
cried glib Punjab.

"After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway, "
flamed Vijay.

"My family is relatively heavy,
too big even for a pig-barn Chevy;
we need more space, "
spat What's His Face.

"What does it matter,
dirge or mantra, "
sighed Serge.

"The world will wobble
in Hubble's lens
till the tempest ends, "
wailed Mercedes.

"The world is going to hell in a bucket.
So **** it and get outta my face!
We own this place!
Me and my friends got more guns than ISIS,
so what's the crisis? "
cried Bubba Billy Joe Bob Puckett.



They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch

"We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning..."―George W. Bush

We will not forget...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above "hush! "-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment) ,
still flashing grins they could not quite repent...
Nor should they―anguish triumphs just an instant;

this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope―the shriveled chrysalis

that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then ***** about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. "Survive"
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa's
awakening... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.



chrysalis
by Michael R. Burch

these are the days of doom
u seldom leave ur room
u live in perpetual gloom

yet also the days of hope
how to cope?
u pray and u *****

toward self illumination...
becoming an angel
(pure love)

and yet You must love Your Self

If you know someone who is very caring and loving, but struggles with self worth, this may be a poem to consider.

Keywords/Tags: prose poem, experimental, free verse, freedom, expression, silence, void, modern, modern psalm, Holocaust


To Have Loved
by Michael R. Burch

"The face that launched a thousand ships ..."

Helen, bright accompaniment,
accouterment of war as sure as all
the polished swords of princes groomed to lie
in mausoleums all eternity ...

The price of love is not so high
as never to have loved once in the dark
beyond foreseeing. Now, as dawn gleams pale
upon small wind-fanned waves, amid white sails, ...

now all that war entails becomes as small,
as though receding. Paris in your arms
was never yours, nor were you his at all.
And should gods call

in numberless strange voices, should you hear,
still what would be the difference? Men must die
to be remembered. Fame, the shrillest cry,
leaves all the world dismembered.

Hold him, lie,
tell many pleasant tales of lips and thighs;
enthrall him with your sweetness, till the pall
and ash lie cold upon him.

Is this all? You saw fear in his eyes, and now they dim
with fear’s remembrance. Love, the fiercest cry,
becomes gasped sighs in his once-gallant hymn
of dreamed “salvation.” Still, you do not care

because you have this moment, and no man
can touch you as he can ... and when he’s gone
there will be other men to look upon
your beauty, and have done.

Smile―woebegone, pale, haggard. Will the tales
paint this―your final portrait? Can the stars
find any strange alignments, Zodiacs,
to spell, or unspell, what held beauty lacks?

Published by The Raintown Review, Triplopia, The Electic Muse, The Chained Muse, The Pennsylvania Review, and in a YouTube recital by David B. Gosselin. This is, of course, a poem about the famous Helen of Troy, whose face "launched a thousand ships."
Keywords/Tags: Helen, Troy, Paris, love, war, gods, fate, destiny, portrait, fame, famous, stars, Zodiac, Zodiacs, star-crossed, spell, charm, potion, enchantment, Greece, Greek, mythology, legend, Homer, Odyssey, accompaniment, accouterment, eternal, eternity, immortal



EPIGRAM TRANSLATIONS BY MICHAEL R. BURCH



NOVELTIES
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.



Nod to the Master
by Michael R. Burch

for the Divine Oscar Wilde

If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!



A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This is love: to fly toward a mysterious sky,
to cause ten thousand veils to fall.
First, to stop clinging to life,
then to step out, without feet ...
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



To live without philosophizing is to close one's eyes and never attempt to open them. – Rene Descartes, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



Stage Fright
by Michael R. Burch

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



I test the tightrope
balancing a child
in each arm.
—Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Brief Fling
by Michael R. Burch

“Epigram”
means cram,
then scram!



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

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.



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



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.



Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch

Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.



Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch

I’m not looking for someone to save.
A gal has to do what a gal has to do:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

How many highways to hell must I pave
with intentions imagined, not true?
I’m not looking for someone to save.

Fools praise compassion while weaklings rave,
but a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Some praise the Lord but the Devil’s my fave
because he has led me to you!
I’m not looking for someone to save.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave,
a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Every day without meds becomes a close shave
and the razor keeps tempting me too.
I’m not looking for someone to save:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.



She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

There’s a light about her
like the moon through a mist:
a bright incandescence
with which she is blessed

and my heart to her light
like the tide now is pulled . . .
she is fair, O, and bright
like the moon silver-veiled.

There’s a fire within her
like the sun’s leaping forth
to lap up the darkness
of night from earth's hearth

and my eyes to her flame
like twin moths now are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.




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



Viral Donald (I)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

Donald Trump is coronaviral:
his brain's in a downward spiral.
His pale nimbus of hair
proves there's nothing up there
but an empty skull, fluff and denial.



Viral Donald (II)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

Why didn't Herr Trump, the POTUS,
protect us from the Coronavirus?
That weird orange corona of hair's an alarm:
Trump is the Virus in Human Form!

a dog barks to start a fight with bubba
and he gets
mean like an ant who's
sugars' been stolen and I tell him
             that's an ugly dog
when ugly people populate the planet, I get mad,
but I don't bite their heads off.
                                        He got really calm after that
and I waved at a gardener
as if to say,
                   'It's okay,
                                   it won't happen again.'