Hotrod
Verse I

Wrenches clanging, knuckles banging
A drop of blood the young man spilt
A new part here, and old part… there
A hotrod had been built!
A patchwork, mechanical, quilt

Feeling good.  Head under a raised hood, hands occupied, the job nearing completion.  Sometimes the good feelings would dissipate though, as quickly as they came, as he cursed himself for stripping a bolt, or cursed someone else for selling him the wrong part, or the engineer whose design goals obviously did not consider “remove and replace”.
He cursed the “gorilla” that never heard of a torque-wrench, the glowing particle of **** that popped on to the top of his head as he welded, the metal chip he flushed from his eye, and even himself for the burn he received by impatiently touching something too soon after grinding. 
 He, and his type, cursed a lot, but mostly to their selves as they battled-on with things oily, hot, bolted, welded, and rusty – in cramped spaces. One day it was choice words for an “easy-out” that broke off next to a broken drill bit that had broken off in a broken bolt, that was being drilled for an easy-out. 
  Despite the swearing, the good and special feelings would always return, generally of a magnitude that exceeded the physical pain and mental frustration of the day, by a large margin.  
Certifiably obsessive, the young man continued to toil dutifully, soulfully, occasionally gleefully, sometimes even expertly, in his most loved and familiar place, his sanctuary, laboratory… the family garage.

And tomorrow would be the day.
With hard learned, hard earned expertise and confidence - in this special small place, a supremely happy and excited young man commanded his creation to life.

Threw a toggle, pressed a switch
Woke up the neighbors with that *******

The heart of his machine was a stroked Chevy engine that everyone had just grown sick hearing about.  Even the local machine shop to which the boy nervously entrusted his most prized possession had had enough.  “Sir, I don’t want to seem disrespectful, but from what I’ve read in Hot Rod Magazine, you might be suggesting a clearance too tight for forged pistons…” then it would be something else the next day.  
One must always speak politely to the machinist, and even though he always had, the usual allotment of contradictions and arguments afforded to each customer had long run out – and although the shop owner took a special liking to the boy because, as he liked to say, “he reminds me of me”, well, that man was done too.  But in the end, the mill was dead-on.  Of course from the start, the shop knew it would be; that’s almost always the case; it’s how they stay in business - simply doing good work.  Bad shops fall out quickly, but this place had the look of times gone by.  Good times. 
 Old porcelain signs, here and there were to be found, all original to the shop and revered by the older workers in honored nostalgia.  The younger workers get it too; they can tell from the co-workers they respect and learn from, there is something special about this past.  One sign advertises Carter Carburetors and the artwork depicts “three deuces”, model 97’s, sitting proudly atop a flathead engine, all speeding along in a red, open roadster.  Its occupants, a blond haired boy with slight freckles (driver), and a brunette girl passenger, bright white blouse, full and buttoned low. They are in the wind-blown cool, their excited expressions proclaim… "we have escaped and are free!" (and all you need is a Carter, or three).  How uniquely American.

The seasoned old engine block the boy entrusted to the shop cost him $120-even from the boneyard.  Not a bad deal for a good high-nickel content block that had never had its first 0.030”overbore.  In the shop, it was cleaned, checked for cracks by "magnafluxing", measured and re-measured, inspected and re-inspected.  It was shaped and cut in a special way that would allow the stroker crankshaft, that was to be the special part of this build, to have all the clearance it would need.  The engine block was fitted with temporary stress plates that mimic the presence of cylinder heads,  then the cylinders were bored to “first oversize”,  providing fresh metal for new piston rings to work against.  New bearings were installed everywhere bearings are required.  Parts were smoothed here and there.  Some surfaces were roughened just so, to allow new parts to “work-into each other” when things are finally brought together.  All of this was done with a level of precision and attention far, far greater than the old “4- bolt” had ever received at the factory on its way to a life of labor in the ¾ ton work van from which it came, and for which it had served so dutifully.  They called this painstaking dedication to precision measurement and fit, to hitting all specifications on the mark, “blueprinting”, and it would continue throughout the entire build of this engine.  The boy remained worried, but the shop had done it a million times.

After machining, the block was filled with new and strong parts that cost the young man everything he had.   Parts selected with the greatest of effort, decision, and debate.   You can compromise on paint and live with some rust,  he would say, wait for good tires, but never scrimp on the engine.  Right on.  Someone taught the boy right, regardless of whether or not he fully understood the importance of the words he parroted.  His accurate proclamation  also provided ample excuse for the rough, unfinished, underfunded look of the rest of his machine.  But it was just a look, his car was, in fact, “right”.   And its power plant?  Well the machine shop had talked their customer into letting them do the final engine assembly - even cut their price to do it.  To make that go down easy, they asked to have two of their shop decals affixed to the rod on race-days.  The young man thought that was a fair deal, but the shop was really just looking out for the boy, with their herring of sorts.  
The mill in its final form was the proper balance of performance and durability; and with its camshaft so carefully selected, the engine's “personality” was perfectly matched to the work at hand.   It would produce adequate torque in the low RPM range to get whole rig moving quickly, yet deliver enough horsepower near and at red-line to pile on the MPH, fast.  No longer a polite-natured workhorse, this engine, this engine is impatient now.  High compression, a rapid, choppy idle - it seems to be biting at the bit to be released.  On command, it gulps its mixture and screams angrily, and often those standing around have a reflexive jump - the louder, the better - the more angry, the better.  If it hurts your ears, that’s a good feeling.  If its bark startles, that’s a good startle.  A cacophony?  No, the “music” of controlled explosions, capable of thrusting everything and everyone attached, forward, impolitely, on a rapid run to the freedom so well depicted in the ad.  

This is the addictive sound and feel that has appealed to a certain type of person since engines replaced horses, and why?  A surrogate voice for those who are otherwise quiet?  A visceral celebration of accomplishment?    Who cares.  Shift once, then again - speed quickly makes its appearance.  It appears as a loud, rushing wind and a visually striking, unnatural view of the surrounding scenery.  At some point, in the sane, it triggers a natural response - better slow down.    

He uncorked the headers, bought gasoline, dropped her in gear, tore off to the scene
Camaros and Mustangs, an old ‘55
Obediently lined-up, to get skinned alive!

Verse II (1st person)

I drove past the banner that said “Welcome race fans” took a new route, behind the grandstands
And through my chipped window, I thought I could see
Some of the racers were laughing at me

I guess rust and primer are not to their taste
But I put my bucks mister in the right place

I chugged/popped past cars that dealers had sold
Swung into a spot, next to something old

Emerging with interest from under his hood
My neighbor said two words, he said, “sounds good”

The Nova I parked next to was “classic rodding” in its outward appearance.  The much overused “primer paint job”.  The hood and front fenders a fiberglass clamshell, pinned affair.  Dice hanging from the mirror paid homage to days its driver never knew, but wished he had.  He removed them before he drove, always.

If you know how to peel the onion, secrets are revealed.  Wilwood brake calipers can be a dead giveaway. Someone needs serious stopping power - maybe.  Generally, owners who have sprung the bucks for this type gear let the calipers show off in bright red, to make a statement, and sometimes, these days, it’s just a fashion statement.  Expensive calipers, as eye candy, seem to be all the rage.  What is true, however, is very few guys spend big money on brakes only to render them inglorious and seemingly common with a shot of silver paint from a rattle can - and the owner of this half fiberglass racer that poses as a street car had done just that.  I'll glean two things from this observation. One, he needs those heavy brakes because he’s fast, and two, hiding them fits his style.  
Really, the message to be found in the silver paint, so cleverly applied to make your eyes simply slide across on their way to more interesting things, was “sleeper”.   And sleeper really means, he’s one of those guys with a score to settle - with everyone perhaps.   The list of “real parts” grew, if you knew where to look.  Looking was something I had unofficial permission to do since my rod was undergoing a similar scrutiny.  
“Stroked?”, I asked.  That’s something you can’t see from the outside. “ No”, my racer friend replied.  
“Hundred shot?”  (If engines have their language, so do the people who love them).   Despite the owner’s great efforts to conceal braided fuel and nitrous lines, electrical solenoids and switches, I spied his system.  The chunks of aluminum posing as ordinary spacers under his two Holly's were anything but.   “No”, was his one-word reply to my 100- shot question.  I tried again; “Your nitrous system is cleanly installed, how much are you spraying?”  “Two hundred fifty” in two stages, he said.  That’s more like it, I thought, and I then figured, he too had budgeted well for the machine shop – if not, he was gambling in a game that if lost, would soon fly parts in all directions.   Based on the overall neat work on display, I believed his build was up to the punishment planned. 
  I knew exactly what this tight-lipped guy was about, seeing someone very familiar in him as it were, and that made the “sounds good” complement I received upon my arrival all the more valuable.  I liked my neighbor.  And I liked the fact of our scratch-built rods having found each other - and I looked forward to us both dusting off the factory jobs.  It was going to be a good day.

The voice on the loudspeaker tells us we’re up.

Pre-staged, staged, then given the green
The line becomes blurred between man and machine

Bones become linkage
Muscle, spring
Fear, excitement

Time distorts ….
Color disappears …
Vision narrows…
Noise ---  becomes music
Speed, satisfaction

End

You were born five years before the Spanish Civil War that would see your father exiled.
Language came later to you than your little brother Manuel. And you stuttered for a time.
Unlike those who speak incessantly with nothing to say, you were quiet and reserved.
Your mother mistook shyness for dimness, a tragic mistake that scarred you for life.

When your brother Manuel died at the age of three from meningitis, you heard your mom
Exclaim: “God took my bright boy and left me the dull one.” You were four or five.
You never forgot those words. How could you? Yet you loved your mom with all your heart.
But you also withdrew further into a shell, solitude your companion and best friend.

You were, in fact, an exceptional child. Stuttering went away at five or so never to return,
And by the time you were in middle school, your teacher called your mom in for a rare
Conference and told her that yours was a gifted mind, and that you should be prepared
For university study in the sciences, particularly engineering.

She wrote your father exiled in Argentina to tell him the good news, that your teachers
Believed you would easily gain entrance to the (then and now) highly selective public university
Where seats were few, prized and very difficult to attain based on merit-based competitive
Exams. Your father’s response? “Buy him a couple of oxen and let him plow the fields.”

That reply from a highly respected man who was a big fish in a tiny pond in his native Oleiros
Of the time is beyond comprehension. He had apparently opted to preserve his own self-
Interest in having his son continue his family business and also work the family lands in his
Absence. That scar too was added to those that would never heal in your pure, huge heart.

Left with no support for living expenses for college (all it would have required), you moved on,
Disappointed and hurt, but not angry or bitter; you would simply find another way.
You took the competitive exams for the two local military training schools that would provide
An excellent vocational education and pay you a small salary in exchange for military service.

Of hundreds of applicants for the prized few seats in each of the two institutions, you
Scored first for the toughest of the two and thirteenth for the second. You had your pick.
You chose Fabrica de Armas, the lesser of the two, so that a classmate who had scored just
Below the cut-off at the better school could be admitted. That was you. Always and forever.

At the military school, you were finally in your element. You were to become a world-class
Machinist there—a profession that would have gotten you well paid work anywhere on earth
For as long as you wanted it. You were truly a mechanical genius who years later would add
Electronics, auto mechanics and specialized welding to his toolkit through formal training.

Given a well-stocked machine shop, you could reverse engineer every machine without
Blueprints and build a duplicate machine shop. You became a gifted master mechanic
And worked in line and supervisory positions at a handful of companies throughout your life in
Argentina and in the U.S., including Westinghouse, Warner-Lambert, and Pepsi Co.

You loved learning, especially in your fields (electronics, mechanics, welding) and expected
Perfection in everything you did. Every difficult job at work was given to you everywhere you
Worked. You would not sleep at night when a problem needed solving. You’d sketch
And calculate and re-sketch solutions and worked even in your dreams with singular passion.

You were more than a match for the academic and physical rigors of military school,
But life was difficult for you in the Franco era when some instructors would
Deprecatingly refer to you as “Roxo”—Galician for “red”-- reflecting your father’s
Support for the failed Republic. Eventually, the abuse was too much for you to bear.

Once while standing at attention in a corridor with the other cadets waiting for
Roll call, you were repeatedly poked in the back surreptitiously. Moving would cause
Demerits and demerits could cause loss of points on your final grade and arrest for
Successive weekends. You took it awhile, then lost your temper.

You turned to the cadet behind you and in a fluid motion grabbed him by his buttoned jacket
And one-handedly hung him up on a hook above a window where you were standing in line.
He thrashed about, hanging by the back of his jacket, until he was brought down by irate Military instructors.
You got weekend arrest for many weeks and a 10% final grade reduction.

A similar fate befell a co-worker a few years later in Buenos Aires who called you a
*******. You lifted him one handed by his throat and held him there until
Your co-workers intervened, forcibly persuading you to put him down.
That lesson was learned by all in no uncertain terms: Leave Felipe’s mom alone.

You were incredibly strong, especially in your youth—no doubt in part because of rigorous farm
Work, military school training and competitive sports. As a teenager, you once unwisely bent
Down to pick something up in view of a ram, presenting the animal an irresistible target.
It butted you and sent you flying into a haystack. It, too, quickly learned its lesson.

You dusted yourself off, charged the ram, grabbed it by the horns and twirled it around once,
Throwing it atop the same haystack as it had you. The animal was unhurt, but learned to
Give you a wide berth from that day forward. Overall, you were very slow to anger absent
Head-butting, repeated pokings, or disrespectful references to your mom by anyone.    

I seldom saw you angry and it was mom, not you, who was the disciplinarian, slipper in hand.
There were very few slaps from you for me. Mom would smack my behind with a slipper often
When I was little, mostly because I could be a real pain, wanting to know/try/do everything
Completely oblivious to the meaning of the word “no” or of my own limitations.

Mom would sometimes insist you give me a proper beating. On one such occasion for a
Forgotten transgression when I was nine, you  took me to your bedroom, took off your belt, sat
Me next to you and whipped your own arm and hand a few times, whispering to me “cry”,
Which I was happy to do unbidden. “Don’t tell mom.” I did not. No doubt she knew.

The prospect of serving in a military that considered you a traitor by blood became harder and
Harder to bear, and in the third year of school, one year prior to graduation, you left to join
Your exiled father in Argentina, to start a new life. You left behind a mother and two sisters you
Dearly loved to try your fortune in a new land. Your dog thereafter refused food, dying of grief.

You arrived in Buenos Aires to see a father you had not seen for ten years at the age of 17.
You were too young to work legally, but looked older than your years (a shared trait),
So you lied about your age and immediately found work as a Machinist/Mechanic first grade.
That was unheard of and brought you some jealousy and complaints in the union shop.

The union complained to the general manager about your top-salary and rank. He answered,
“I’ll give the same rank and salary to anyone in the company who can do what Felipe can do.”
No doubt the jealousy and grumblings continued by some for a time. But there were no takers.
And you soon won the group over, becoming their protected “baby-brother” mascot.

Your dad left for Spain within a year or so of your arrival when Franco issued a general pardon
To all dissidents who had not spilt blood (e.g., non combatants). He wanted you to return to
Help him reclaim the family business taken over by your mom in his absence with your help.
But you refused to give up the high salary, respect and independence denied you at home.

You were perhaps 18 and alone, living in a single room by a schoolhouse you had shared with Your dad.
But you had also found a new loving family in your uncle José, one of your father’s Brothers, and his family. José, and one of his daughters, Nieves and her
Husband, Emilio, and
Their children, Susana, Oscar (Ruben Gordé), and Osvaldo, became your new nuclear family.

You married mom in 1955 and had two failed business ventures in the quickly fading
Post-WW II Argentina of the late 1950s and early 1960s.The first, a machine shop, left
You with a small fortune in unpaid government contract work.  The second, a grocery store,
Also failed due to hyperinflation and credit extended too easily to needy customers.

Throughout this, you continued earning an exceptionally good salary. But in the mid 1960’s,
Nearly all of it went to pay back creditors of the failed grocery store. We had some really hard
Times. Someday I’ll write about that in some detail. Mom went to work as a maid, including for
Wealthy friends, and you left home at 4:00 a.m. to return long after dark to pay the bills.

 
The only luxury you and mom retained was my Catholic school tuition. There was no other
Extravagance. Not paying bills was never an option for you or mom. It never entered your
Minds. It was not a matter of law or pride, but a matter of honor. There were at least three very
Lean years where you and mom worked hard, earned well but we were truly poor.

You and mom took great pains to hide this from me—and suffered great privations to insulate
Me as best you could from the fallout of a shattered economy and your refusal to cut your loses
Had done to your life savings and to our once-comfortable middle-class life.
We came to the U.S. in the late 1960s after waiting for more than three years for visas—to a new land of hope.

Your sister and brother-in-law, Marisa and Manuel, made their own sacrifices to help bring us
Here. You had about $1,000 from the down payment on our tiny down-sized house, And
Mom’s pawned jewelry. (Hyperinflation and expenses ate up the remaining mortgage payments
Due). Other prized possessions were left in a trunk until you could reclaim them. You never did.

Even the airline tickets were paid for by Marisa and Manuel. You insisted upon arriving on
Written terms for repayment including interest. You were hired on the spot on your first
Interview as a mechanic, First Grade, despite not speaking a word of English. Two months later,
The debt was repaid, mom was working too and we moved into our first apartment.

You worked long hours, including Saturdays and daily overtime, to remake a nest egg.
Declining health forced you to retire at 63 and shortly thereafter you and mom moved out of
Queens into Orange County. You bought a townhouse two hours from my permanent residence
Upstate NY and for the next decade were happy, traveling with friends and visiting us often.

Then things started to change. Heart issues (two pacemakers), colon cancer, melanoma,
Liver and kidney disease caused by your many medications, high blood pressure, gout,
Gall bladder surgery, diabetes . . . . And still you moved forward, like the Energizer Bunny,
Patched up, battered, scarred, bruised but unstoppable and unflappable.

Then mom started to show signs of memory loss along with her other health issues. She was
Good at hiding her own ailments, and we noticed much later than we should have that there
Was a serious problem. Two years ago, her dementia worsening but still functional, she had
Gall bladder surgery with complications that required four separate surgeries in three months.

She never recovered and had to be placed in a nursing home. Several, in fact, as at first she
Refused food and you and I refused to simply let her waste away, which might have been
Kinder, but for the fact that “mientras hay vida, hay esperanza” as Spaniards say.
(While there is Life there is hope.) There is nothing beyond the power of God. Miracles do happen.
 
For two years you lived alone, refusing outside help, engendering numerous arguments about
Having someone go by a few times a week to help clean, cook, do chores. You were nothing if
Not stubborn (yet another shared trait). The last argument on the subject about two weeks ago
Ended in your crying. You’d accept no outside help until mom returned home. Period.

You were in great pain because of bulging discs in your spine and walked with one of those
Rolling seats with handlebars that mom and I picked out for you some years ago. You’d sit
As needed when the pain was too much, then continue with very little by way of complaints.
Ten days ago you finally agreed that you needed to get to the hospital to drain abdominal fluid.

Your failing liver produced it and it swelled your abdomen and lower extremities to the point
Where putting on shoes or clothing was very difficult, as was breathing. You called me from a
Local store crying that you could not find pants that would fit you. We talked, long distance,
And I calmed you down, as always, not allowing you to wallow in self pity but trying to help.

You went home and found a new pair of stretch pants Alice and I had bought you and you were
Happy. You had two changes of clothes that still fit to take to the hospital. No sweat, all was
Well. The procedure was not dangerous and you’d undergone it several times in recent years.
It would require a couple of days at the hospital and I’d see you again on the weekend.

I could not be with you on Monday, February 22 when you had to go to the hospital, as I nearly
Always had, because of work. You were supposed to be admitted the previous Friday, but
Doctors have days off too, and yours could not see you until Monday when I could not get off
Work. But you were not concerned; this was just routine. You’d be fine. I’d see you in just days.

We’d go see mom Friday, when you’d be much lighter and feel much better. Perhaps we’d go
Shopping for clothes if the procedure still left you too bloated for your usual clothes.
You drove to your doctor and then transported by ambulette. I was concerned, but not too Worried.
You called me sometime between five or six p.m. to tell me you were fine, resting.

“Don’t worry. I’m safe here and well cared for.” We talked for a little while about the usual
Things, with my assuring you I’d see you Friday or Saturday. You were tired and wanted to sleep
And I told you to call me if you woke up later that night or I’d speak to you the following day.
Around 10:00 p.m. I got a call from your cell and answered in the usual upbeat manner.

“Hey, Papi.” On the other side was a nurse telling me my dad had fallen. I assured her she was
Mistaken, as my dad was there for a routine procedure to drain abdominal fluid. “You don’t
Understand. He fell from his bed and struck his head on a nightstand or something
And his heart has stopped. We’re working on him for 20 minutes and it does not look good.”

“Can you get here?” I could not. I had had two or three glasses of wine shortly before the call
With dinner. I could not drive the three hours to Middletown. I cried. I prayed.
Fifteen minutes Later I got the call that you were gone. Lost in grief, not knowing what to do, I called my wife.
Shortly thereafter came a call from the coroner. An autopsy was required. I could not see you.

Four days later your body was finally released to the funeral director I had selected for his
Experience with the process of interment in Spain. I saw you for the last time to identify
Your body. I kissed my fingers and touched your mangled brow. I could not even have the
Comfort of an open casket viewing. You wanted cremation. You body awaits it as I write this.

You were alone, even in death alone. In the hospital as strangers worked on you. In the medical
Examiner’s office as you awaited the autopsy. In the autopsy table as they poked and prodded
And further rent your flesh looking for irrelevant clues that would change nothing and benefit
No one, least of all you. I could not be with you for days, and then only for a painful moment.

We will have a memorial service next Friday with your ashes and a mass on Saturday. I will
Never again see you in this life. Alice and I will take you home to your home town, to the
Cemetery in Oleiros, La Coruña, Spain this summer. There you will await the love of your life.
Who will join you in the fullness of time. She could not understand my tears or your passing.

There is one blessing to dementia. She asks for her mom, and says she is worried because she
Has not come to visit in some time. She is coming, she assures me whenever I see her.
You visited her every day except when health absolutely prevented it. You spent this February 10
Apart, your 61st wedding anniversary, too sick to visit her. Nor was I there. First time.

I hope you did not realize you were apart on the 10th but doubt it to be the case. I
Did not mention it, hoping you’d forgotten, and neither did you. You were my link to mom.
She cannot dial or answer a phone, so you would put your cell phone to her ear whenever I
Was not in class or meetings and could speak to her. She always recognized me by phone.

I am three hours from her. I could visit at most once or twice a month. Now even that phone
Lifeline is severed. Mom is completely alone, afraid, confused, and I cannot in the short term at
Least do much about that. You were not supposed to die first. It was my greatest fear, and
Yours, but as with so many things that we cannot change I put it in the back of my mind.

It kept me up many nights, but, like you, I still believed—and believe—in miracles.
I would speak every night with my you, often for an hour, on the way home from work late at
Night during my hour-long commute, or from home on days I worked from home as I cooked
Dinner. I mostly let you talk, trying to give you what comfort and social outlet I could.

You were lonely, sad, stuck in an endless cycle of emotional and physical pain.
Lately you were especially reticent to get off the phone. When mom was home and still
Relatively well, I’d call every day too but usually spoke to you only a few minutes and you’d
Transfer the phone to mom, with whom I usually chatted much longer.

For months, you’d had difficulty hanging up. I knew you did not want to go back to the couch,
To a meaningless TV program, or to writing more bills. You’d say good-bye, or “enough for
Today” and immediately begin a new thread, then repeat the cycle, sometimes five or six times.
You even told me, at least once crying recently, “Just hang up on me or I’ll just keep talking.”

I loved you, dad, with all my heart. We argued, and I’d often scream at you in frustration,
Knowing you would never take it to heart and would usually just ignore me and do as
You pleased. I knew how desperately you needed me, and I tried to be as patient as I could.
But there were days when I was just too tired, too frustrated, too full of other problems.

There were days when I got frustrated with you just staying on the phone for an hour when I
Needed to call Alice, to eat my cold dinner, or even to watch a favorite program. I felt guilty
And very seldom cut a conversation short, but I was frustrated nonetheless even knowing
How much you needed me and also how much I needed you, and how little you asked of me.  

How I would love to hear your voice again, even if you wanted to complain about the same old
Things or tell me in minutest detail some unimportant aspect of your day. I thought I would
Have you at least a little longer. A year? Two? God only knew, and I could hope. There would be
Time. I had so much more to share with you, so much more to learn when life eased up a bit.

You taught me to fish (it did not take) and to hunt (that took even less) and much of what I
Know about mechanics, and electronics. We worked on our cars together for years—from brake
Jobs, to mufflers, to real tune-ups in the days when points, condensers, and timing lights had Meaning, to rebuilding carburetors and fixing rust and dents, and power windows and more.

We were friends, good friends, who went on Sunday drives to favorite restaurants or shopping
For tools when I was single and lived at home. You taught me everything in life that I need to
Know about all the things that matter. The rest is meaningless paper and window dressing.
I knew all your few faults and your many colossal strengths and knew you to be the better man.

Not even close. I could never do what you did. I could never excel in my fields as you did in
Yours.  You were the real deal in every way, from every angle, throughout your life. I did not
Always treat you that way. But I loved you very deeply as anyone who knew us knows.
More importantly, you knew it. I told you often, unembarrassed in the telling. I love you, Dad.

The world was enriched by your journey. You do not leave behind wealth, or a body or work to
Outlive you. You never had your fifteen minutes in the sun. But you mattered. God knows your
Virtue, your absolute integrity, and the purity of your heart. I will never know a better man.
I will love you and miss you and carry you in my heart every day of my life. God bless you, dad.

I buttoned you into a grave,
you were finally a queen with a crown.
I’ve never seen you that brave.

The telephone lines brought a heat wave.
I painted over our names in brown.
I buttoned you into a grave.

There wasn’t much left to save,
just your faded evening gown.
I’ve never seen you that brave.

Everything about you was concave,
your eyes, your back and your frown.
I buttoned you into a grave.

I promised to behave
and I’m sorry I let you down.
I’ve never seen you that brave.

Dusted with smoke and aftershave,
the car drove out of town.
I buttoned you into a grave,
I’ve never seen you that brave.

There’s a film by John Schlesinger called the Go-Between in which the main character, a boy on the cusp of adolescence staying with a school friend on his family’s Norfolk estate, discovers how passion and *** become intertwined with love and desire. As an elderly man he revisits the location of this discovery and the woman, who we learn changed his emotional world forever. At the start of the film we see him on a day of grey cloud and wild wind walking towards the estate cottage where this woman now lives. He glimpses her face at a window – and the film flashes back fifty years to a summer before the First War.
 
It’s a little like that for me. Only, I’m sitting at a desk early on a spring morning about to step back nearly forty years.*
 
It was a two-hour trip from Boston to Booth Bay. We’d flown from New York on the shuttle and met Larry’s dad at St Vincent’s. We waited in his office as he put away the week with his secretary. He’d been in theatre all afternoon. He kept up a two-sided conversation.
 
‘You boys have a good week? Did you get to hear Barenboim at the Tully? I heard him as 14-year old play in Paris. He played the Tempest -  Mary, let’s fit Mrs K in for Tuesday at 5.0 - I was learning that very Beethoven sonata right then. I couldn’t believe it - that one so young could sound –there’s that myocardial infarction to review early Wednesday. I want Jim and Susan there please -  and look so  . . . old, not just mature, but old. And now – Gloria and I went to his last Carnegie – he just looks so **** young.’
 
Down in the basement garage Larry took his dad’s keys and we roared out on to Storow drive heading for the Massachusetts Turnpike. I slept. Too many early mornings copying my teacher’s latest – a concerto for two pianos – all those notes to be placed under the fingers. There was even a third piano in the orchestra. Larry and his Dad talked incessantly. I woke as Dr Benson said ‘The sea at last’. And there we were, the sea a glazed blue shimmering in the July distance. It might be lobster on the beach tonight, Gloria’s clam chowder, the coldest apple juice I’d ever tasted (never tasted apple juice until I came to Maine), settling down to a pile of art books in my bedroom, listening to the bell buoy rocking too and fro in the bay, the beach just below the house, a house over 150 years old, very old they said, in the family all that time.
 
It was a house full that weekend,  4th of July weekend and there would be fireworks over Booth Bay and lots of what Gloria called necessary visiting. I was in love with Gloria from the moment she shook my hand after that first concert when my little cummings setting got a mention in the NYT. It was called forever is now and God knows where it is – scored for tenor and small ensemble (there was certainly a vibraphone and a double bass – I was in love from afar with a bassist at J.). Oh, this being in love at seventeen. It was so difficult not to be. No English reserve here. People talked to you, were interested in you and what you thought, had heard, had read. You only had to say you’d been looking at a book of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings and you’d be whisked off to some uptown gallery to see his early watercolours. And on the way you’d hear a life story or some intimate details of friend’s affair, or a great slice of family history. Lots of eye contact. Just keep the talk going. But Gloria, well, we would meet in the hallway and she’d grasp my hand and say – ‘You know, Larry says that you work too hard. I want you to do nothing this weekend except get some sun and swim. We can go to Johnson’s for tennis you know. I haven’t forgotten you beat me last time we played!’ I suppose she was mid-thirties, a shirt, shorts and sandals woman, not Larry’s mother but Dr Benson’s third. This was all very new to me.
 
Tim was Larry’s elder brother, an intern at Felix-Med in NYC. He had a new girl with him that weekend. Anne-Marie was tall, bespectacled, and supposed to be ferociously clever. Gloria said ‘She models herself on Susan Sontag’. I remember asking who Sontag was and was told she was a feminist writer into politics. I wondered if Anne-Marie was a feminist into politics. She certainly did not dress like anyone else I’d seen as part of the Benson circle. It was July yet she wore a long-sleeved shift buttoned up to the collar and a long linen skirt down to her ankles. She was pretty but shapeless, a long straight person with long straight hair, a clip on one side she fiddled with endlessly, purposefully sometimes. She ignored me but for an introductory ‘Good evening’, when everyone else said ‘Hi’.
 
The next day it was hot. I was about the house very early. The apple juice in the refrigerator came into its own at 6.0 am. The bay was in mist. It was so still the bell buoy stirred only occasionally. I sat on the step with this icy glass of fragrant apple watching the pearls of condensation form and dissolve. I walked the shore, discovering years later that Rachel Carson had walked these paths, combed these beaches. I remember being shocked then at the concern about the environment surfacing in the late sixties. This was a huge country: so much space. The Maine woods – when I first drove up to Quebec – seemed to go on forever.
 
It was later in the day, after tennis, after trying to lie on the beach, I sought my room and took out my latest score, or what little of it there currently was. It was a piano piece, a still piece, the kind of piece I haven’t written in years, but possibly should. Now it’s all movement and complication. Then, I used to write exactly what I heard, and I’d heard Feldman’s ‘still pieces’ in his Greenwich loft with the white Rauschenbergs on the wall. I had admired his writing desk and thought one day I’ll have a desk like that in an apartment like this with very large empty paintings on the wall. But, I went elsewhere . . .
 
I lay on the bed and listened to the buoy out in the bay. I thought of a book of my childhood, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome. There’s a drawing of a Beach End Buoy in that book, and as the buoy I was listening to was too far out to see (sea?) I imagined it as the one Ransome drew from Lowestoft harbour. I dozed I suppose, to be woken suddenly by voices in the room next door. It was Tim and Anne-Marie. I had thought the house empty but for me. They were in Tim’s room next door. There was movement, whispering, almost speech, more movement.
 
I was curious suddenly. Anne-Marie was an enigma. Tim was a nice guy. Quiet, dedicated (Larry had said), worked hard, read a lot, came to Larry’s concerts, played the cello when he could, Bach was always on his record player. He and Anne-Marie seemed so close, just a wooden wall away. I stood by this wall to listen.
 
‘Why are we whispering’, said Anne-Marie firmly, ‘For goodness sake no one’s here. Look, you’re a doctor, you know what to do surely.’
 
‘Not yet.’
 
‘But people call you Doctor, I’ve heard them.’
 
‘Oh sure. But I’m not, I’m just a lousy intern.’
 
‘A lousy intern who doesn’t want to make love to me.’
 
Then, there was rustling, some heavy movement and Tim saying ‘Oh Anne, you mustn’t. You don’t need to do this.’
 
‘Yes I do. You’re hard and I’m wet between my legs. I want you all over me and inside me.  I wanted you last night so badly I lay on my bed quite naked and masturbated hoping you come to me. But you didn’t. I looked in on you and you were just fast asleep.’
 
‘You forget I did a 22-hour call on Thursday’.
 
“And the rest. Don’t you want me? Maybe your brother or that nice English boy next door?’
 
‘Is he next door? ‘
 
‘If he is, I don’t care. He looks at me you know. He can’t work me out. I’ve been ignoring him. But maybe I shouldn’t. He’s got beautiful eyes and lovely hands’.
 
There was almost silence for what seemed a long time. I could hear my own breathing and became very aware of my own body. I was shaking and suddenly cold. I could hear more breathing next door. There was a shaft of intense white sunlight burning across my bed. I imagined Anne-Marie sitting cross-legged on the floor next door, her hand cupping her right breast fingers touching the ******, waiting. There was a rustle of movement. And the door next door slammed.
 
Thirty seconds later Tim was striding across the garden and on to the beach and into the sea . . .
 
There was probably a naked young woman sitting on the floor next door I thought. Reading perhaps. I stayed quite still imagining she would get up, open her door and peek into my room. So I moved away from the wall and sat on the bed trying hard to look like a composer working on a score. And she did . . . but she had clothes on, though not her glasses or her hair clip, and she wore a bright smile – lovely teeth I recall.
 
‘Good afternoon’, she said. ‘You heard all that I suppose.’
 
I smiled my nicest English smile and said nothing.
 
‘Tell me about your girlfriend in England.’
 
She sat on the bed, cross-legged. I was suddenly overcome by her scent, something complex and earthy.
 
‘My girlfriend in England is called Anne’.
 
‘Really! Is she pretty? ‘
 
I didn’t answer, but looked at my hands, and her feet, her uncovered calves and knees. I could see the shape of her slight ******* beneath her shirt, now partly unbuttoned. I felt very uncomfortable.
 
‘Tell me. Have you been with this Anne in England?’
 
‘No.’ I said, ‘I ‘d like to, but she’s very shy.’
 
‘OK. I’m an Anne who’s not shy.’
 
‘I’ve yet to meet a shy American.’
 
‘They exist. I could find you a nice shy girl you could get to know.’
 
‘I’d quite like to know you, but you’re a good bit older than me.’
 
‘Oh that doesn’t matter. You’re quite a mature guy I think. I’d go out with you.’
 
‘Oh I doubt that.’
 
‘Would you go out with me?’
 
‘You’re interesting.  Gloria says you’re a bit like Susan Sontag. Yes, I would.’
 
‘Wow! did she really? Ok then, that’s a deal. You better read some Simone de Beauvoir pretty quick,’  and she bounced off the bed.
 
After supper  - lobster on the beach - Gloria cornered me and said. ‘I gather you heard all this afternoon.’
 
I remembered mumbling a ‘yes’.
 
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘Anne-Marie told me all. Girls do this you know – talk about what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. What could you do? I would have done the same. Tim’s not ready for an Anne-Marie just yet, and I’m not sure you are either. Not my business of course, but gentle advice from one who’s been there. ‘
 
‘Been where?’
 
‘Been with someone older and supposedly wiser. And remembering that wondering-what-to-do-about-those-feelings-around-*** and all that. There’s a right time and you’ll know it when it comes. ‘
 
She kissed me very lightly on my right ear, then got up and walked across the beach back to the house.

In the stands, down 35-3 with two minutes left in the fourth,
Fred Carson picks at the sticky, white remnants of a Coke bottle's label.
He leans over to me,
"Do you mind if I talk to you again?"
I don't, and haven't since kickoff.

"You know, I played running back on this same field."

"Oh yeah?" I say, allowing the story to commence.

"Started all four years. Rushed 1,000 yards as a freshman."

"Wow."

"It took five guys to bring me down by my senior year."

"That's insane."

"I probably still hold the record for most rush yards,
but I doubt they keep up with things like that."

He takes a sip from his drink. It's half empty.
His hair -- greasy, most likely on its third unwashed day --
parts to the left and clings to his skull.
He's wearing a long sleeve, plaid dress shirt.
The shirt is buttoned to the top.

"Hell, that was back in 1968," slows, "I graduated in 19-68. Jesus."

Fred retired from the post office six years back.
He claims he's never missed a game of Blue Jay football since 1970.
The high school band starts playing in the section next to us --
a misshapen cover of "Louie, Louie".
Fred raises his voice,

"You know, I've been to every football game since 1970."

"Yeah, you mentioned that last week."

"I apologize. Yeah, if it wasn't for that first year of college.
I got a scholarship to play ball at Florida State.
Couldn't be there and here at the same time, you know? Kinda hard."

He runs his big-knuckled right hand along his khaki'd thigh, checking his pocket.
He checks the left thigh -- nothing.
Reaches into his shirt pocket and reveals a lighter.
Then a soft pack of Marlboro Lights emerge.

"You know, I ran the fifty in less than five seconds."

To the dismay of cheerleader moms sitting behind us,
he lights the cigarette.
He stares at the Bic lighter with some NASCAR driver -- number 88 --
I don't recognize.
The cutout of the NASCAR driver's scraggly face
sits atop a navy blue and spiraling purple backdrop.
He starts to scratch at the label on the lighter.
A screech from a clarinet rises above the rest of the band,
Fred grimaces, takes a drag, continues,

"The coach at Florida State said I was the fastest boy he'd ever seen.
He said I was going to go pro. Sure thing, he said. I rushed for nearly
300 yards in the first game my freshman year. After the game,
the coach was like, see boy, I told you. You are going to tear it up
this season."

The NASCAR decal comes completely off. Under that purple and blue label,
Fred uncovers a white lighter.

"Would you look at that. I wouldn't have bought the **** thing if
I knew it was a white lighter. That's bad luck, you know. Hendrix and
that--uh--Janis Joplin lady both died with a white lighter in their hand.
Bad luck. A white lighter is bad luck."

"What happened at Florida State?" I ask.

"Well, we were playing Notre Dame during the second game that season.
Down by five with three seconds left on the clock.
We were on our own thirty, and the coach of Florida State was like,
run the hail mary play. But in the huddle, I look the quarterback
square in the eyes, and I say to him, captain -- he was team captain --
I say, captain, I'm hungry for that ball. He knew I could do it.
He took the snap, the receivers rushed down field, and I bolted toward
that line of scrimmage, took the handoff and I was gone, baby."

The crowd begins to cheer as the Blue Jay quarterback throws a long pass
to a wide open receiver. Fred freezes mid-story.
The cheer blurs into a silence, as each person in the bleachers
watches the ball ascend.

For the first time all night, the band lowers their instruments from their lips.
Just a ball floating.
The buzz from the stadium lights becomes audible.
One person gasps.
Then like dominoes the stadium follows suit.

The high arc of the ball betrays the distance,
and the pigskin plummets sharply.

"Interception!" the announcer cries through the speakers.

"That's a **** shame. I thought he was going to have it.
What were we talking about?" Fred asks as he drops his
finished cigarette into the nearly empty, naked Coke bottle.

"You were talking about Florida State. You were down five and--"

"That's right. So, I break up the middle. I dust that noseguard.
I stiff arm a linebacker. I looked like a Heisman trophy in motion.
I travel 69-yards down the field. I'm slowing down at the endzone,
thinking nobody is around, and sure enough -- plow -- the cornerback
dives right into my leg. I broke all kinds of bones and tore all kinds
of muscles. The doctor told me, he'd never seen anything like it."

The band plays the fight song as the clock winds down and the Blue Jays lose.
I try to disappear in the sea of blue and silver exiting t-shirts,
but Fred slows me down,

"It sure was good talking to you. I'll have to tell you more about Florida State
next week. Be sure to sit by me."

"I will," I say as the band director, Mr. Morton, steps in front of me.

"Hey, Fred," Mr. Morton says. He looks at me, then back to Fred.
He's trying to decide whether or not I'm of relation.
"Son, I went to Seminole State Junior College with Fred here
when we got out of high school."

"Really? Did you guys play football together?" I ask with innocent inquisitiveness.

"No, we weren't really into that. Though, we were at all the games.
We were in band together. Until Fred's wild streak got the best of him,"
Mr. Morton laughs, "am I right, Fred?"



The fight song came to a close.
With a lowered head, Fred walked into the silver, blue crowd
with a plaid dress shirt buttoned to the top.

Seven or eight people lounged about in a small back room. I had no expectations before arriving so I’m neither surprised nor disappointed by what I discover.  I find myself sat in one of those reclining gaming chairs and think “This must be the best chair in the room”.

Just playing it cool. I don’t know anyone here. There’re a few guys playing the Xbox. I eye them over, none of them look to challenge my presence, either too engrossed in the screen, or intimidated in some way. To my left sit the women in the place. I have their attention. Relief that the journey here wasn’t in vein, I give them all a nod and a smile. I casually introduce myself, and then find myself playing on the Xbox. I know I can’t play, but that’s the act. I ask what buttons to press, and laugh at my own hopelessness, eventually relinquishing the controller. It soon finds its way back into my hands. By this time, some bird is sat up on the arm next to me. She’s watching my actions, how I take command of the situation. Why don’t I take command of her? Sitting and waiting has never been a good tactic. I pass the controller over to her and say a few words in an attempt to get the conversation rolling. The drink clouds my thoughts and I forget that I’m talking to her. In the distance I hear them remark, “He’s a cool guy.”

I sit, reclined, legs outstretched, coat open revealing buttoned collar, slicked back hair, that look of pure relaxation in ones surroundings. She’s diggin’ it. I know she’s digging it. Her leg starts to press into my arm, and then her hands are down by my side. Commotion in the room. Some fat ***** needs to make her presence known. Everyone chilled. She obviously wants the attention. Not my type. She leaves for an upstairs room, and moments later, a spliff finds its way into my hands, courtesy of the girls to my left. I take a few drags, telling myself not to get too high; too late for that. I pass it on and fall back into the chair. Forgot I hadn’t smoked in a month.

Still a laid back guy, although not sure if it’s a choice anymore. I know it’s taking me over now. Slowly, I find myself entering that zone where weeds been taking me lately. Thoughts of everything; no filter; the need to verbalize things. Suddenly I’m Mr Charismatic, and you are all my audience, whether you like it or not. I stopped caring or stop noticing people’s reactions and forget about myself. I let my ego out to play, unregulated by the discipline of consciousness.

There are people in the room. Pretty sure they weren’t here earlier. One of them says something to me. “Is he been aggressive?” I think to myself. Judging from the tone of my reply, I obviously felt the need to establish my position. Taking no **** from these guys it seems; I’m still the Don in the room. Remember myself, remember the girl. Mr Cool again.

Filling up water in the kitchen, find myself chatting to random guys. Banter flying around the place. She’s watching me. Some powder is under my nose. “Kind of you to offer, but that better not be ket.” Turns out it was Mandy. Can’t say no to a bump. Pretty sure I’m the most ****** in the room right now, but I’m riding it well. Door frame seems like a necessity to keep me upright. Don’t want to brave the assault course back to the recliner, plus, I’m talking to the guys in the kitchen, don’t want to walk away.

We’re meeting J’s bird in thirty minutes. Twenty minutes. Five minutes ago. “We’ll go in five minutes.” She’s there again. Her presence known to me. She's up against me, but time is also against me. Too ****** up to keep playing this game. We’re leaving now. Out the door, I attempt to say a few words as we leave. My eloquence abandons me and leaves me in the ****. Flag a taxi; turns out we’ve booked one. Send him on his way. Tip the driver more than I can afford.

A Tale of Two
Her Story>>>>
Today was my free day and I longed for some soothing nature time. I had my picnic basket with some food and wine. I wanted to enjoy my afternoon alone. I was just standing there, waiting for the cars to pass me so I could cross the street to the park. He walked by me and the wind blew his scent right to me. He smelled like heaven on earth.
I am very familiar with many scents and this one was new to me. I watched him walk past me. He was hansom with dark hair are mysterious eyes. His hair blowing in the breeze just as mine was. I love that feeling, being caressed by the wind. Before I knew it he was out of sight. I did not see where he had gone, for I had been day dreaming of what he would be like to kiss.
I continued on my way to the park and found a nice quiet place to read my book. I laid out my blanket and flung off my shoes. I wanted to lay there under the fading sun and enjoy the wind flirting with my dress while I read. It’s a warm windy day and its perfect. I had been reading for 30 minutes before I was warmly surprised by the smell that came to me. It was the smell of the man who had passed me. I looked up and saw him; he was standing over me with a poetry book in his hand. I smiled and invited him to sit down.

He smiled and introduced himself as a fellow nature lover. He didn’t tell me his name and at this point I was so surprised by his presence that it didn’t matter. I sat up and I asked him if he would join me in a glass of wine. He comically answered that he is sorry but we both cannot fit in that glass! I laughed and poured two classes of BlackStone red. He accepted with a smile. I lay back down on my stomach with my book half-open. My heart was beating so fast, he was right here with me and I could smell him, it was wonderful. We were strangers and I had no idea how he found me or why.
"What brings you to the park today?" I asked. He didn’t answer me, he just looked into my eyes for the longest time and then slowly bent down and kissed me. I thought my heart was going to be heard for miles. Surely he could hear it! It was a very long sweet kiss, perfect in every way, as if we had been kissing each other for years. I broke my lips free reluctantly and asked him once again, "who are you?" He opened his mouth and he said, "I came to the park today because you are here" I was speechless, I didn’t know what to say.

I turned over and lay on my back ready to question him again. He was right next to me, a man out of a dream, just appearing from no where. My mouth opened to ask once again who he was and as soon as I did his lips fell to mine in a long wet kiss. He was pure heaven to touch tongues with. I was enjoying myself too much to ask him anything. I dropped my book and heard the pages flapping in the wind while we kissed. My hands made their way to his dark hair and I could not help myself, I pulled him closer to me. There was no one around; we were in no danger of being seen. He moved closer to me and held me tight. I could not brake away from his kiss, nor did I want to.
He left my lips on his own, kissing my neck. He whispered in my ear "I have been watching you for a while now". I suddenly felt a little frightened. I do not know this man at all and yet he is kissing me. He reached past me and into my picnic basket. He pulled out the strawberries and nibbled on one while staring at me. I couldn’t speak, I was staring right back and it was like he had my mind engulfed with thoughts.
He then fed me a strawberry very slowly; juice ran down the side of my mouth. He reached down and licked it off with his tongue. I whimpered, I wanted him so bad. He picked up another berry and took a big bite, the juice feel on my chest between my *******. I looked him in the eyes, smiled and closed my eyes and waited for him to lick it off me. And he did, very slowly lick it off and trailed his tongue down the length of the opening of my blouse.
He began unbuttoning me, my hand went to stop him, and he reached out and held my hand. He kissed my fingers and said, "abandon all fears". I let my hand fall to the grass and let him unbutton me. I was wearing nothing under my shirt, no bra. I felt his breath touch me on my ******, and I felt it rise to a stiff peak. He took a bite of a strawberry and left half of it on the stem. He kissed me once again, and at the same time I felt the chill of the cold half strawberry touching my ******.
This was heaven, my god I felt a trickle of my own juice run from my *****. I was whimpering while he was kissing me. He touched me so slowly and with such care. The cold berry circling my ****** and the kiss at the same time was driving me wild. He moved and began ******* the strawberry mess of my ******. I held his head to my ****** for a moment, it felt so good. I felt his hand reach for my thigh, soft and warm hand just caressing me. He found my wetness and was surprised by it.
I smiled and giggled, what could I say. He looked right in my eyes and told me I was about to get a licking I would never forget. He was very right! He knew what he was doing, and he made me *** so fast I couldn’t believe it. I was in heaven. Still quivering and whimpering I rolled over on top of him. I kissed him like he was my long lost love. I quickly unbuttoned his pants while a stared at him with glazed satisfied eyes. I moved lower and found his throbbing **** staring at me. I took him into my mouth while I stared into his eyes. I saw the thrill he was having as the moistness from my mouth mixed with the wind as I moved up and down. He tasted and felt wonderful and I couldn’t stop myself from wanting all of it for myself.
I heard the noise of pleasure comes from him and suddenly he stopped me and laid me down in the grass next to the blanket. He wanted me as much as I wanted him. He joined me and made love to me in the grass. The breeze blowing over our bodies, the currents within exploding. He stayed on top of me and started kissing me again.

I broke the kiss and I whispered to him, "Who are you?" He simply reached for the wine and smiled. He filled my glass and placed the cup in my hand while he buttoned my blouse and smiled. I sat up and looked into his eyes, why do I feel is if I know him! He bit my thigh and I jumped spilling the wine on my skirt. I ran to the water fountain to rinse it off and when I looked back he was gone. There was no way he could have left without passing me! I was stunned. I went back to my blanket and collected my things. My book was gone, he taken it. And he had also replaced it with the book of poetry he had brought with him. There was no name written in it, no sign of who he was. Just a book of poetry and a note slipped into a fitting page of love for a moment and it read ‘Meet me in the moon light tomorrow night, I will be waiting" and it was signed no longer a secret admirer.

His Story>>>>
I saw her again yesterday. This time when I went past, she seemed to notice me. Like so many days recently, she took my breath away. I remember the first time I saw her; she was wearing a **** black dressed that crossed at the front. Today, she was carrying a picnic basket.
I ducked behind a corner and watched. Who was this woman? And more important, whom is she going to have a picnic with? I followed at a safe distance and watched her unpack & prepare a picnic for one. She started reading a book and I knew she would be there for a while. I don’t know why, but I decided to backtrack and bought collection of Emily Dickinson poems before making my way back to the park. When I got back, my heart pumped hard in my chest. I could feel a throbbing in my head as the blood coursed through my brain.

Suddenly, I was only aware of our immediate surroundings. The sun caressing my face, the wind lapping at my hair. And her. She looked radiant in the dappled light of the afternoon, her hair flowing over her shoulders. Her sensuous mouth twitched every now and again as she read. Something caught her attention and she looked up at me. I was a mess. All I could come up with was that I was a fellow nature lover. I just stood there until she invited me to sit down.
Worse still, when she asked me to join her in a glass of wine, I blurted "I’m sorry, but we both cannot fit in that glass". At least she laughed and when she handed me the wine she asked why I was there. Having made a fool of myself already, I decided that actions would speak louder than words and surprised both of us by leaning forward and kissing her.
Her mouth was beautiful- soft, full lips. I could taste the wine on her lips and as my tongue gently parted them. Her mouth opened to greet mine and I took her lower lip between my lips.
She was reluctant at first but warmed to me and I felt her hand on the back of my head pulling me to her. I was no longer aware of anything but her. Nothing else mattered.
At one point she asked me again why I was there. I couldn’t believe it when I heard myself say that I had been watching her. "Great", I thought. "Don’t worry about looking foolish because now you look like a psychopath". Deciding for the second time that silence was golden, I kissed her again. Our tongues explored each other’s mouths.
I could feel her warm breath on my face and I pressed my body firmly against hers. My leg found its way between her legs as I used it to press on her *****. Reaching for some of her strawberries, I took one in my mouth and fed her the rest. I put a strawberry half in my mouth and lent forward to give her the rest. She bit into it and our lips caressed as she swallowed it. When some juice escaped her mouth and ran down her cheek, I licked it off, running my ******* trail from the base of her neck up to her mouth.
She was now irresistible; I had to have her. I undid her dress button by button. I licked berry juice from her ****** as I felt it harden under my tongue. I ran my tongue around and around her ******, then from the base of it to the tip. I felt her back arch towards me as my hand wandered down her body. The leg, which had been pressing against her *****, was damp. Her ******* were completely soaked and I was astonished to find her completely shaven as my fingers slipped under the waistband.
She opened her legs as my fingers slipped inside her. As I let my fingers caress her ****, I kissed and nibbled my way down her body. The further I moved down, the stronger her scent became. It was intoxicating and I knew that I must have her juices flowing over my tongue. My fingers slipped under her ******* and I gently pulled them down, very slowly. She lifted herself off the ground, inviting me to take them off completely. It felt like I was 6 years old and opening a Christmas present. When they slipped off her ankles, I brought her ******* to my face and inhaled deeply.
The scent hit my nostrils and went straight to primitive parts of my brain. I dropped them and immediately ran my tongue up her inner thigh towards her *****. I stopped before my tongue reached there and let her feel my breath. I enjoyed the smell while I could as I plunged my tongue between her lips and straight into her *****, the sharp tang of her juice stimulating my taste buds.
She tasted as good as she smelled. I made my tongue rigid and slid the tip of it along her ***** up to her ****. My tongue broadened as I delicately licked her **** like it was a melting ice cream. My wet fingers found her ****** and I caressed it to the same rhythm as my tongue on her ****. I felt her ****** build up and a gush of her *** soaked my chin and my chest.
I was aroused to the point of unconsciousness when she suddenly pushed me on my back and straddled me. She was quick to free my **** and took it in her mouth and looked up at me. Our eyes met in a moment that I will never forget. We both knew what was to come. Releasing my ****, she straddled me and lowered herself onto my ****. We both gasped as she opened up and slipped over my head and down the shaft, her **** grinding against my ***** bone. We kissed deeply as our bodies united and we tasted each other’s juices. When I first saw her, I thought how much I would love to **** this angel. But we were not *******, we were making love.
At last, our bodies climaxed as we ****** hard at each other, my **** slamming hard, my ***** slapping against her *******.
We lay on the soft grass in ******* bliss and she asked me again "Who are you?". I avoided the question by biting her thigh, which made her spill her wine. I took my opportunity and left, but not before swapping books with her. I left a note for her asking her to meet me tonight. Such unimaginable beauty and sensuality can only be enhanced by the moons pale light.

1
The other day I saw a picture of you.
Shirt buttoned up to your throat,
Pants cutting off the blood circulation in your pelvis,
Shoes shining brighter than the north star,
And a smile being pulled across your cheeks
Like an archer pulling a bow string.
I smiled back at my computer screen.

2
I’ve listened to this album at least 30 times.
I own three versions of it.
UK deluxe, US deluxe, Target Deluxe.
Everything about you is deluxe.
Your eyes, your voice, your breath
As it passes through the microphone and into my ears.

3
I believe in fate
But not so much in destiny.
I don’t scream at my reflection anymore
And I’m described as independent.
For the most part.
I’m a pretty trustworthy person
And I promise I’m not that desperate.

4
The music ripples through my veins
As I whip my curls at the mirror.
The hairbrush pressed against my mouth
And I repeat the lyrics that roll past your lips so smoothly.

5
I can almost feel your arms
Wrap around my waist before I go to sleep.
I had a dream
You and I were together
And you were happy
And I was happy
And everyone was happy.
But I know if my dream became reality
No one would be happy.
Jealousy would taint the spit on other girls’ tongues
And the distance between
New Jersey and Australia is too much.
Even for me.

5
I can almost feel your arms
Wrap around my waist before I got to sleep.

5
I can almost feel you.

5
We have the same eye color.

6
We have the same hair color.

7
I am just an insecure girl.
You are taking over the world.
You are stepping in the soil of every state.
And you won’t look at me
Longer for three seconds in the New York City heat.

8
I never thought I would be one of those girls.
One of those girls
Who latch onto a boy’s identity,
Not knowing his soul
But knowing his spirit.
I’ve seen you three times.
You don’t even realize.
I try too hard and I’m convinced you notice this.

9
You are nine months older than me.
In your eyes I am just a baby.
My cocoon of pictures of you is the womb
I am being baked in.
You won’t follow me back on twitter.

10
You are just my celebrity crush
But you have such an impact on me.
Go back home.
Let me rest.
Go back to bed.
I’ll have that dream again
And I won’t speak of it
And no one has to know of this
Pathetic excuse for love I carry in me like a dead fetus.

10
You are just my celebrity crush.
It was never supposed to go this far.

10
You are just my celebrity crush.

10
You can never love me
The same way I love you.

Crisp crunches of thoughts leaves inside my mouth
Gum stuck to my shoe
You stuck on my mind but
I want you there tight holding
I hiked you up to my hips buttoned you there comfortable and still
Skirts falling and shirts riding up
Underwear that I won’t call ******* because they’re not cute enough
And you
Nestled in a metal button marking patterns into the skin red red bone *****

EDNA:  I believe you recently had a gay little adventure, Vladimir. So why don’t you tell me all about it? I can see you are simply dying to get it off your chest…

VLADIMIR:  Well, Edna, it happened like this. I hadn't cruised the ***** toilet in the park for months and I was ******* randy, absolutely dying for a really good session, so I thought I'd go along here after the pub shut and see what was up, see if there was any ******* ******* action. I wore some **** ****** under my jeans, you know the sort of stuff: red open crotch *******, suspenders and black fishnet stockings. My **** kept dribbling as I was in the pub, just thinking of what might happen down the toilet.  At closing time, I left the pub, my carrier bag in my hand, with a big anticipatory bulge in my pants.

EDNA [gulp]  And then what happened, Vladimir, dear?

VLADIMIR:  Once I got to the toilet, I was surprised there was no one inside, but there were a few nearby shadows in the park, people smoking cigarettes, walking round, looking for it.  Once in the toilet, I selected the cleanest cubicle and took off my jeans and shirt and put them into the carrier bag. I replaced my normal shoes and socks with the white high heeled women's shoes I had waiting in the carrier. Then I waited in the cubicle for someone to come into the toilet.

After only a few moments, I heard footsteps and I looked under the door to see who was there at the ******.  It was a short muscular looking man wearing jeans and Doc Martens. I could see he wasn't *******, but just standing there, though I couldn't see his face. I opened the cubicle door and he turned around to see who was there, so I opened the door wide open so he could see me standing there in the stockings, suspenders and silk ******* with my stiff **** sticking out of the hole in them.

He was about forty and very butch looking with close cropped hair and I could see his **** hardening as he looked at me.  I went over to him and took his **** in my hand and he grabbed hold of mine and started rubbing it.  I got down on my knees and took his short, fat, uncircumcised **** in my mouth; it tasted salty and ******* gorgeous. He grabbed hold of the back of my head and forced his **** deep down my throat nearly making me gag.  I could smell the odour of his ***** hair and I loved it.  He said, "Keep ******* it, you ***** ****, or I'll pull your ******* head off." I loved him talking ***** like that to me.

EDNA [getting a bit excited]  That seems very bold of you both.  What happened next?

VLADIMIR:  In what seemed no time at all, I felt him tense and then I got an enormous mouthful of his hot *****.  I'd never known anyone come so much, he must have had a week's worth in his *****.  After he'd come, he took his **** out of my mouth, put it away and zipped himself up.  I started to get to my feet, but he pushed me backwards onto the filthy floor.  ‘You're lucky I don't knock your face in, you ****,’ he said as he went out.  I love my men to be a bit rough with me, so I was very excited by this.  I half hoped he would punch me but he didn't.

EDNA: [wiping forehead] Well, that’s really very interesting. Did you go home then, dear, or were you still up for it, as the expression goes, Vladimir?    

VLADIMIR:  I got up and dusted myself down.  I could taste his come in my mouth, it was ******* delicious.  I was still incredibly excited, my **** was absolutely rigid and I knew I just needed to give it a couple of rubs and I'd shoot my ***, but I wanted more ***, and I knew once I came, I would just feel like going home.  So I went back into my cubicle and waited to see if anyone else came in.

After about five minutes I heard footsteps, followed by more footsteps again and I looked under the door a second time.  There were two men standing there and, by straining my neck, I could see they were groping each other.  One had one hand on the other's **** and his other hand on his **** and the other man was working on the first man's **** as well.  

I let the door open and they both swung round as they hadn't known there was anyone else in the toilet.  They saw me and looked relieved it wasn't a policeman lurking in there.  One was quite young, about twenty or twenty five, but he was a bit skinny and effeminate-looking.  The other one was much older, about fifty, but he was much better looking and I could see he had a huge **** on him.  I walked over to them in my **** rigout and joined in with the wanking.  They both started feeling my **** under my *******.

I turned round and bent over, my hands on the toilet cubicle doorposts, stuck my **** out invitingly and pulled my ******* down to my knees.  ’Why don't you **** me?’ I said, bold as brass.  The older man, the one with the big ****, left the young skinny guy and took up the offer I had made.  He undid his trousers and pulled his underpants down to reveal the full length of his enormous **** and his big hairy *****.  He spat on his hand and rubbed it on his ****, but he needn't have bothered because I had already lubed my **** when I was waiting in my cubicle.  

He slipped his big **** up my moist ******* without much difficulty and then started ******* me gently.  I told him to **** me harder, to **** me harder than he had ever ****** anyone in his life, so he started to really ram it up my hole.  God, I loved it.

EDNA [sweating with mounting excitement and unable to resist touching herself down there]  Mmmmm. I wish I’d been there to see that, I really, really do.  But don’t let me disturb your narrative flow, darling….

VLADIMIR:   Then the young skinny guy got down on his knees in front of me and took my **** in his mouth.  Each time the man who was giving it to me ****** hard into me, I jolted forward and rammed my **** deep into the skinny guy's mouth.  I was moaning with ecstasy as I got ****** and ****** by two complete strangers.  The guy with the big **** couldn't last long and soon shot his load up my **** and as he did it he said, ‘O Christ, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm shooting my ***** up your ******* *******.’  This made me incredibly excited and I came off in the younger man's mouth.  The skinny youngster was wanking his own **** as he knelt in front of me and I know he came as I felt the ***** splashing on my stockinged legs.

As he removed his still fat **** from my gaping hole, a stream of the older man's ***** ran down my legs.  He said he wished his wife would let him **** her in the ******* like that.  I went to kiss him but when he smelled the ***** on my face from the butch one I'd ****** off earlier, he wasn't having any of it and left with a mumbled goodbye.

The younger man had now got to his feet and was standing in front of me as he buttoned himself up.  He said ‘We can wait a few minutes and then we can do it again if you like.  I'd love you to **** me, you've got a lovely ****.’  But it was no good, the magic had passed and I told him to ****** off.

So I went back into the cubicle, got changed back into my ordinary clothes and left the toilet.  I could feel ***** oozing out of my ******* and I could taste the first load in my mouth still.  I had a smile on my face. It had been a great night out.

EDNA:  [removing her hand from inside her ******* as unobtrusively as possible and trying to disguise the fact she has just had a cataclysmic ******]  Wow, that’s really a very exciting story. It’s made old Edna quite hot and bothered. You really are a very naughty boy, Vladimir.

VLADIMIR: Would you like me to tell you about what happened to me in the old cinema down by the docks?

EDNA: [still throbbing a bit] No, dear, that will be the subject of another interview. We don't want to over-excite our readers, do we?

*THE END

One Winged Angel


Dec 10, 2011, 7:39:29 PM by ~OmegaWolfOfWinter
Journals / Personal




It was very late, and Lucian had just gotten back from his assignment. he unlocked the door to his house and set his things down on the bed. he removed his shirt and removed the bandages on his chest. that demon put up quite a fight... he put on a robe and decided to get some rest. he set his things down on the floor next to him and hung his sword by the bed. he exhaled deeply and relaxed, finally back in the comfort of his own home. sleep quickly enveloped him and he began to dream.
******
Lucian was woken from a deep sleep by the sound of his door breaking down. Two massive angels shrouded in black cloaks stepped inside his room as Lucian scrambled to his feet, feeling a sudden chill beneath his simple white robe. One of the angels spoke, "Lucian, Elite Angel number 373-14, you are under arrest for high treason, grand theft, and ******."
Lucian was dumbfounded at the accusation. "What on heaven are you talking about?!"
the guard-angels grabbed the warrior-angel and dragged him out of his house and onto the streets where a small crowd had gathered. They escorted him to the capitol, which wasn't far away. Lucian gazed up at the massive black monolith before him.
He was immediately sent to the rooftop, where the Punisher was waiting.
Lucian desperately tried to explain. "I've been set up!! Please let me go! I've done nothing wrong!!"
The angel to his left looked at Lucian in disgust. "Quiet, you."
He reached to Lucian's throat and he felt a massive bolt of electricity course through his body. He collapsed in their arms and blacked out for a moment.
He couldn't say anything; he had a sign of silence on his throat. He blacked out again and when he woke he was on his knees in front of the punisher. His hands were bound behind his back and he was held by a multitude of chains and braces. The guard-angel touched his throat and the seal of silence was removed. "elite angel Lucian, number 373-14, you are charged with high treason against the holy city, grand theft of a holy artifact and the murders of 7 holy officials, as punishment-"
"I didn't do any of those things!!!"
"SILENCE!! There is evidence that places you at the scene."
"What-"
"your punishment, you will lose your wings," Lucian gasped and tears formed in his eyes. "...and will be given the Mark of Eternal torture."
"No! Not the Mark!! Please no!!"
The punisher stepped forward and drew his slender sword. As he stepped forward, Lucian squirmed and fought against his bindings but to no avail. "God help me!"
"How dare you speak the lord's name, criminal!" the punisher slashed at Lucian's throat, grazing it and leaving a long, bleeding cut. Lucian groaned and said, "No... No... Please..."
the punisher stepped to Lucian's side and raised the sword. Lucian's tears came and began hyperventilating. "No, NO, NOO!!!"
The punisher brought the sword down and Lucian screamed in agony as one of his wings fell to the ground. Lucian was in so much pain, he wished he could die right then, right there. He was crying now, tears of sorrow and pain. "No, please, I beg you! Have mercy!"
For some reason the punisher then sheathed his sword. "Fine, you may keep your remaining wing."
"th-thank-" he was cut off as the punisher knelt down and grabbed Lucian's throat. He screamed again as he felt an intense burning. He continued to cry out as the punisher released him but the burning remained, slowly spreading over his entire body with such intensity that he lost consciousness multiple times. after an excruciatingly long torture, the burning ceased, and Lucian saw that it had etched runes and twisting lines over his whole body, almost his whole body, it had left his head and hands untouched. His voice had turned into a hiss and he tried to speak. he was unbound and he reached back to touch where his left wing had been, there was only a stump left.
"Lucian, you are hereby renounced of your warrior status. Get him out of my sight." Lucian was escorted outside, where the guardians left him stranded in the street. He blacked out and felt himself being picked up and carried somewhere else.
************
"he's heavy" thought the angel. He carried the limp body off the streets and through alleys, to an abandoned complex not far away. "Melinda!" he called. A slender young angeless came from the shadows.
"Who on heaven is this, Ven?!"
Ven looked around and said, "not here... Let's get inside."
he carried the angel inside and set him down on the dimly lit bed. He was still out cold. Ven sighed and said, "Remember that trip I took to the holy city?"
"Yes of course."
"Things happened there... the Network had me do some things..."
she narrowed her eyes. "What type of things?"
"i-i had to steal some artifacts...and some officials got killed."
"WHAT?!?!"
"i didn't get caught! But... i-i panicked, i blamed it on... On him..."
melinda was speechless," i-i cant..."
"melinda... Please..."
"no, i cant deal with this anymore, i'm leaving."
"wait!"
"no, ven. Figure this out on your own." and she disappeared.
Ven sighed and looked over at the one-winged angel.
"i'm sorry"
the angel stirred slightly but didnt wake. Ven looked at the stump where the angel's wing should have been, and the scars that lined his body.
"i need to take him to the Network... Maybe, maybe then i can finish what i started... And give this angel what i stole from him... I have to take him to the Holy One..."
he closed his eyes for a moment, then,"i promise, you will get your wing back." and he fell asleep.
**********
Lucian woke up as parts of his body burned fiercly. He cried out and writhed in pain. Soon the burning became a simmer, but it still hurt. lucians heart was beating rapidly and he was exhausted. He replayed last night's adventure. He glanced over his shoulder and as expected, he didnt see his wing. he could feel the blood caked on his back and he felt weak when he tried to get up. He fell and caught himself on the table. "wait a moment... Where am i?!" he frantically looked at his surroundings. He saw another angel asleep in a chair and a doorway behind him. The door looked weak but lucian wasnt sure he could do anything in his weakened state. "i have to try..." he ran, or rather stumbled toward the door and managed to break it down. He fell down outside and was temporarily blinded by the sunlight. He managed his way into the street, where the angels looked on in confusion. "i'm... this
is my street..." he hobbled over to his house and stepped inside. nothing had been touched since last night. "i'm not going to be able to find work... I'm not going to be able buy food.. agh! What am i going to do!" he sat on the bed, his head in his hands. he looked over to the wall, where he had his warrior blade hanging just in case. He grabbed his bag and packed some clothes. He changed into his finer dress clothes that he used on formal occasions. He grabbed his bag and put the sword on his belt. "i wish it didnt have to come to this..." he pushed on a spot on the wall and it slid away. Inside the compartment were his warrior armor and weapons. He took off the suit jacket and grabbed his vest. he put various weapons in their spots and shut the wall. He put the suit-jacket back on and buttoned it to conceal the vest. He felt energized and ready for anything. That was until he turned and saw the angel from the complex.
"where do you think You're going?"
"who are you?"
the angel looked amused and said, "you can call me Ven."
"well, Ven, i'm going to find the one who set me up, and i'm going to do what he did to me."
ven looked frightened. "why dont you come with me."
lucian didnt trust this ven. "i'm not going with anyone." and he dove through the window. He sprinted down the street, the bag and his sword held firmly in his hands. "i need money, i need food... I need to find him."
***********
after all these years of loyal service, after all he'd done, he'd been thrown out without trial, revoked his warrior status, and now Lucian was going to find whoever had done this to him, and he was going to make him pay. he was a fallen angel, and he had nothing to lose.
lucian was perched on the top of the church spire, contemplating where to start his search. *the evidence.. what evidence...?
"i'll start with the judges chambers..."
lucian looked to the north, where the monolith towered over the city. he jumped from roof to roof as he neared the building. i'll do whatever i have to... anything to clear my name. different parts of his body started to burn, and the others began to cool off.
the mark... its burning, it's going to keep burning...
he cried out and fell from the roof he was on. he hit the alley hard enough to break bone, but he happened to land on his wing, cushioning his fall, only a little bit though.
this mark is going to **** me someday... he checked his wing and brushed off the dirt. he folded the wing flat against his back and sat up. he got back on his feet and continued to the monolith.
will i have to live with this mark forever?
*************
(one day later)
"GET BACK HERE!!! STOP THAT MAN!!!" lucian was on the run. he found exactly what he was looking for, now he needed to find more information concerning the artifacts and the theif. but first he had to get away. he was turning corners and sprinting like a madman, but he couldnt escape the Detainers. then he heard a voice, "One Wing! over here!"
lucian looked towards where he heard the voice and saw an Angeless beckoning for him to come. "follow me!"
lucian reluctantly followed, winding through abandoned buildings and finally ducking behind an old counter. after a few minutes of silence, the woman said, "okay, we're clear. i'm Elora."
"lucian."
"oh... you're THE One-wing-angel..."
lucian looked down at the ground. "yeah... that's me."
"you were an elite, a warrior angel, weren't you?"
"yeah, but then i was set up and now i'm an outcast..."
"you were set up?"
"yeah, i was. i had everything i ever wanted, why would i need to commit those crimes? i was loyal, and trusted by everyone. and i swear that i will find whoever set me up..."
"and then what?" elora seemed to be waiting for something.
"i'm going to do to him what he did to me."
"what did he-" elora was cut off by lucian as he cried out. "what's wrong?!"
"the mark.... of eternal torture..."
"oh my gosh... i didnt know..."
"its nothing... i'm used to it..."
he took off his suit jacket and elora gasped when she saw his scars. she didn't seem to notice the vest of weapons or the sword at his side. "this is..."
"...the Mark..."
she grimaced as she saw them and said, "i'm sorry..."
"but why?"
"because, i was going to turn you in..."
lucian was on his feet immediately. "what?!"
"wait!! i'm not going to... not after seeing what they did to you..."
"how can i be sure i can trust you?!"
elora looked down at her feet and said, "you cant... but i can get you out of the city..."
"you can?"
************
Lucian was still finding it hard to trust Elora, but he stuck with her anyway. She took him away from the city and was about to turn back. Something inside Lucian wanted her to stay. "Wait! Don't leave. Come with me to the holy city."
She seemed hesitant but willing, "i-ive never been to the holy city...."
"It's an amazing place, quite a sight to see."
She took a moment to think and nodded, "I'll go with you."
Lucian smiled and walked forward. After long hours of relentless walking, Elora asked," how far do we have to travel?"
"A few more hours of walking..."
Elora sighed and said, "Alright..."
Lucian glanced over at her and saw that she was tired. "We should rest."
Elora and Lucian got off of the path ad took shelter beneath some gild-trees. "Elora, go ahead and rest up."
she reluctantly slept, but she was glad to, they had been traveling all day.
Lucian sharpened his blades and meditated while she slept.
Lucian prayed, like he had always done every morning. He had vowed not to let his becoming an outcast interfere with his routine. After he was finished, he sighed and glanced over at Elora; she was fast asleep. He then glanced at the sky and saw dark clouds quickly closing in. Lucian didn't want to wake Elora but he wanted to get her out of the rain. He set his suit jacket and weapons vest next to her and he extended his wing over her just as the rain began to fall. he was pleased to see that the rain would not touch the sleeping angel. On the other hand, Lucian was vulnerable, but he didn't mind. He would rather shelter Elora than himself. Lucian ignored the rain and decided to doze for a while.
***********
Elora woke up as a cold wind blew. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and saw the millions of raindrops in front of her. it took her a moment to realize that she was dry. she glanced over and saw that Lucian was soaking wet and had his wing extended over her. "You should have woken me, Lucian." she extended one of her wings over him as he shivered.
"th-thanks, e-elora." she could tell he was freezing because even the feather's  above her were shivering. she decided to do something to repay his kindness.
"come closer, we can share body heat." suddenly the feathers stopped shivering, they became rigid, as if lucian was surprised... apparently he was.
"really?"
"yeah, its the least i can do." she sat closer to him and put an arm around him. his skin was cool to the touch and his muscles were tense, but they soon relaxed, as did the feathers above her. he soon stopped shivering and the rain stopped falling.

We chanced in passing by that afternoon
To catch it in a sort of special picture
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees,
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass,
The little cottage we were speaking of,
A front with just a door between two windows,
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black.
We paused, the minister and I, to look.
He made as if to hold it at arm’s length
Or put the leaves aside that framed it in.
“Pretty,” he said. “Come in. No one will care.”
The path was a vague parting in the grass
That led us to a weathered window-sill.
We pressed our faces to the pane. “You see,” he said,
“Everything’s as she left it when she died.
Her sons won’t sell the house or the things in it.
They say they mean to come and summer here
Where they were boys. They haven’t come this year.
They live so far away—one is out west—
It will be hard for them to keep their word.
Anyway they won’t have the place disturbed.”
A buttoned hair-cloth lounge spread scrolling arms
Under a crayon portrait on the wall
Done sadly from an old daguerreotype.
“That was the father as he went to war.
She always, when she talked about war,
Sooner or later came and leaned, half knelt
Against the lounge beside it, though I doubt
If such unlifelike lines kept power to stir
Anything in her after all the years.
He fell at Gettysburg or Fredericksburg,
I ought to know—it makes a difference which:
Fredericksburg wasn’t Gettysburg, of course.
But what I’m getting to is how forsaken
A little cottage this has always seemed;
Since she went more than ever, but before—
I don’t mean altogether by the lives
That had gone out of it, the father first,
Then the two sons, till she was left alone.
(Nothing could draw her after those two sons.
She valued the considerate neglect
She had at some cost taught them after years.)
I mean by the world’s having passed it by—
As we almost got by this afternoon.
It always seems to me a sort of mark
To measure how far fifty years have brought us.
Why not sit down if you are in no haste?
These doorsteps seldom have a visitor.
The warping boards pull out their own old nails
With none to tread and put them in their place.
She had her own idea of things, the old lady.
And she liked talk. She had seen Garrison
And Whittier, and had her story of them.
One wasn’t long in learning that she thought
Whatever else the Civil War was for
It wasn’t just to keep the States together,
Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both.
She wouldn’t have believed those ends enough
To have given outright for them all she gave.
Her giving somehow touched the principle
That all men are created free and equal.
And to hear her quaint phrases—so removed
From the world’s view to-day of all those things.
That’s a hard mystery of Jefferson’s.
What did he mean? Of course the easy way
Is to decide it simply isn’t true.
It may not be. I heard a fellow say so.
But never mind, the Welshman got it planted
Where it will trouble us a thousand years.
Each age will have to reconsider it.
You couldn’t tell her what the West was saying,
And what the South to her serene belief.
She had some art of hearing and yet not
Hearing the latter wisdom of the world.
White was the only race she ever knew.
Black she had scarcely seen, and yellow never.
But how could they be made so very unlike
By the same hand working in the same stuff?
She had supposed the war decided that.
What are you going to do with such a person?
Strange how such innocence gets its own way.
I shouldn’t be surprised if in this world
It were the force that would at last prevail.
Do you know but for her there was a time
When to please younger members of the church,
Or rather say non-members in the church,
Whom we all have to think of nowadays,
I would have changed the Creed a very little?
Not that she ever had to ask me not to;
It never got so far as that; but the bare thought
Of her old tremulous bonnet in the pew,
And of her half asleep was too much for me.
Why, I might wake her up and startle her.
It was the words ‘descended into Hades’
That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth.
You know they suffered from a general onslaught.
And well, if they weren’t true why keep right on
Saying them like the heathen? We could drop them.
Only—there was the bonnet in the pew.
Such a phrase couldn’t have meant much to her.
But suppose she had missed it from the Creed
As a child misses the unsaid Good-night,
And falls asleep with heartache—how should I feel?
I’m just as glad she made me keep hands off,
For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
So desert it would have to be, so walled
By mountain ranges half in summer snow,
No one would covet it or think it worth
The pains of conquering to force change on.
Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly
Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk
Blown over and over themselves in idleness.
Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew
The babe born to the desert, the sand storm
****** mid-waste my cowering caravans—

“There are bees in this wall.” He struck the clapboards,
Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted.
We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows.

Buttoned up
with no where to go

1) We might have met with a hello, and I might have brushed it off by saying "later", but you were patient and waited for me. That's how I came to know of and learned to love you.
2) You keep telling me I was a carat in your diamond, that when I'm with you, you shine brighter and become stronger. Up to this day, you still make me feel so appreciated, needed and worthy, that I have learned to value what it means to live.
3) You adored me so much, that even with dried lips, you never failed to make my day with you smiling so wide at me, telling me over and over again that I'm the one you love, despite me telling you to stop because it was getting a little too cheesy.
4) And when you raised your hands up in the air, cheering me on, I  felt so much support, energy and positivity to get me through the hell days of life. "Long live us," you said. And I cling on to those special three words for the hope of future.
5) To win a race in life, you pushed me on, endlessly shouting "Ah yeah!" with every accomplishment and dream I fulfilled.
6) Being a risk-taker, you beckoned me to venture out with you to experience new things, moments, feelings and places. I never knew I could jam into myself so much in one day, but I did because you were there to help carry it all.
7) Even from our teens, into and past the twenties, I know we'll be here for each other. We've waited for each other for so long; finally we have a chance to be the mornings and nights we dreamed of.
8) When we grow up all the more, we'll understand each other more, and the both of us will change. But wouldn't it be true love already if our love for our changed selves still stay the same?
9) When you danced and took my hand in yours, I swear that was the time when you entered my heart with admiration bursting out of me, feeding my five senses alive.
10) And you were both a bliss and pain of mine. Whatever bad or good you've been through, I felt it all because we belong to each other.
11) Sometimes you fool around, but I love how you can be such a gentleman. Telling me to cover my knees, wear buttoned shirts all the way to my neck to prevent my collarbones from peeking out. But you don't know sometimes I like to see your collarbones, or neck veins. You're only human and I just stare in awe at your jawline, with my jaws dropping so in an unladylike fashion.
12) Who could forget February 14th? The first day you called me yours. I love how smart it was of you to do that; every Valentine's will be our anniversary. You were far away on that day, but you sent me flowers. Polaroids of you holding flowers, to be exact. I love how you were funny like that.
13) And chocolate. I love chocolate. You sang me songs about chocolate. Sweet, rich and just the right texture-- both your voice and chocolate.
14) The time you've spent staying up all night for me and my happiness; honestly was sometimes making me sad to see you weren't getting enough sleep or rest. You sacrificed so much for me, but all I can do is just love you more and more each day. Tell me, how can I make up for it? Appreciating every talent you have and every single thing and detail you created, was not enough. Even this writing is not enough.
15) There are countless times where you danced for me. Til now, you have never failed to sweep me off of my feet. Literally. But that's okay, if I fall. I know you'll be there to catch me.
16) And here is a new era. In the past, no matter how many times you complimented how good I look, I never really took you seriously or believed such words. Who knew a song about calling me pretty changed my viewpoint? At times, I don't get myself too for changing my thinking so quickly, but you still accept and love me anyways.
17) I may have been here since day one or not, I may have been here since the fourteenth or not, but rest assured, I promise you: I will be here until the end. And as cliche as it sounds, or as overused as it is, I'll always say the most raw and barest line of affection: I love you.

He was a water sign.
You could tell by his ocean cool,
his balmy breeze,
his gently rolling tides.
He touched my skin like the sun and his kiss stung like sea salt on my chapped winter lips. 

But all seas see their storms.
He could be a riptide, pulling me deeper and deeper
until I was choking on salt water
and he was pushing me
further and further from what I knew. And he could come crashing down
like a tsunami,
ripping everything apart in his wake. 
But he was a Cancer.
Cancers carry our homes on our backs, so we choose to avoid
tumultuous weather
and brackish waves.
We prefer low tides.
So even when my northern winds
tore through his hot summer,
even when I snowed him in
and froze him out,
he kept his waters still,
not for my sake,
but for his.

the front door open.
the dogs not barking,
slapping some wet skinned faces in front of everyone,
wishing i was a broken bottle
or something.
there's want of a forest in my yard
-the whole world softing out:
action dust; to the girl that screams:
there's no such thing as sinners, there's no such thing as love, there's just people and what people do,
whole forests of paper feel your words.
           sincerely,
                            we're all just crazy.
sweet dharma dewdrops fell off the tongue of the clean-cut kid.
he had soapy teeth and no shame to speak of
and when he spoke to us, his fingers glowed
because.
did you think that words could do more than arms-
and that anything else alone could do more for you than a full bodied embrace.
and
i looked at the rose you had buttoned on your blouse and i tore it off and dashed it upon the ground
because of
the mist
and the yellow billboard
lit up softly like a wheatfield
and frost was setting onto the long blades of crisply dying vegetation.
and there is the matter of those ghosts in the parkinglot
unaware of the cars that skid by full of people, all with capacities to know and be known-
sometimes i wish i could tell them
that it's okay to reach out with soft red fingers, wet from running water, warm from hot running water rinsed
over our hands to bleed out the chill that leaches into our too-thin fingers on cold nights such as this.
meanwhile-whole forests of bright white paper
i think that if i ever found you,
it would be walking on a road next to blueberry blossoms-and close, dry
thicket branches that crunch swiftly sometimes-and slowly, others- behind our heels
and hands shaped like mantras gesturing towards us from trees- telling us to go this way, and that,
welcoming us with their imperfect notions of morality and telling us that everything was going to be.
light a match on the bathroom window,
take one step closer to breathe in the bad-handwriting of the graceless morning. put one foot forward on the floor-
one hand on your temple.
only time will tell
if this is hell or just a special hell for me and you
choke me in the white-noise drone
of the shower.
push against the vitalities of my neck-
offer your hands around my faltering voice.
tell me about the pharaoh.
and the legless learners of passion.
tell me that you need to fall forward onto your face just to remind yourself that you're alive.
drum against my chest imperfectly with your
fingertips.
the unskillfully applied paint on your nails already chipping off- (you do this thing with your thumb and
forefinger as a nervous habit and always ruin them.)

the sun come

i trace over my neck with cartridge-blade razors
-rip away the stubble like peeling off snakeskin shadows.
snow falls
dusting my eyes with the harpsichord sounds of porcelain.

there is no longer bitterness nor sorrow.

A visit was due.
It had been a while since our last one.
I buttoned up my coat,
for winter had come.

The walk was short,
my father at the lead.
He held the bouquet and cake
and he moved with speed.

We came together to celebrate,
Each of us bringing something to the feast.
It was her day.
Yet he sat in his seat, uncaring at the least.

I had to be civil,
so I walked on in,
and shook his hand,
I wished him well, though I think I lied. Was it a sin?

No, then I realised I meant it.
Not for him, but for her,
to ease her worries and cares,
because I cared for her, she was my grandmother.

The room was full.
We were together as planned.
The fire blazed.
Cake in our hands.

Her favourite show came on,
but he called for a change as his attention drifted.
It was her day, I thought,
and she deserved to do what she wanted, to do something different.

It was getting late,
and he wanted to go and rest.
But as she helped him up, he produced something,
A necklace of silver, pure and brilliant, and whispered, ''You're the best''.

Then as he exited the room,
I wished him well once again.
He nodded.
I nodded back with love this time, not disdain.


I realised then they were from a different age,
An age of hidden emotion,
but it was theirs,
and they loved each other through the quiet and the unwanted commotion.

how do I tell what we’ve long ignored
the bell in the heart
the knock at the door
how do I speak with tongue too raw
to severed ears like nails from claw?

like tooth from bite
like eyeball from sight
yeah atom from bomb
yet all buttoned up
with Enlightened Aplomb?

all Buttoned Up
so suave and swift
dashing your slash
with riposte in fist?

like butcher dressed
in Sunday best
drips unseen fat on
his stained undervest
you chomp at the shells
of my words,
spit the rest.

Keep your nose to the grindstone
echo and boom.
Tucked in shirt and buttoned blue collars.
Coffee, no milk, no sugar.
Pagans in a pageant
lifting slabs with slack hands.
Old muscles knotted and torn
a drone sound, stillborn as the childless playground.
Mocking and mundane
the bell rings and shatters the silence
leaving tools on the floor and empty parking spaces.
Nothing left but the weep of pigeons in the rafters
and the breeze that arrives
only after the workers departure.

We wore torn blue jeans,
the holier the better,
pearl-buttoned shirts
& pointed Justin's
rounded out
our tough-guy
wardrobe.

We guzzled whiskey
& Crown
& told most folks
to kiss our *****,
even the coppers.

The pretty lasses loved us
& some had bigger ***** than us,
they tried to capture our hearts
& make real men out of us.

Sometimes
they succeeded
& sadly,
sometimes not,
our common sense
clouded
by alcohol-laced
testosterone.

I lost a lot of precious time
trying to be cool.

Who still remembers how he looks like?
No, it's his cousin who's always in red,
asking everyone to keep calm, and...
He still keeps silent in spite of the fact
that he's fading away in our mind.
(A dangling strand of curly hair
a buttoned up, and earrings which never come at a pair.)

Either traffic or time washes him away,
as no one has ever noticed now his shadow under the sunset
is even longer than the toss-and-turn we once had at nights.
He’s the only one who will be quiet when listening to others
but we just snub/phubs him, and keep passing by.

She reads Neil Gaimen
by the light through the window,
a facing forward seat on the only train in Greater Anglia
without any heat,
yet still she peruses the pages with
a flick and a ****** and her eyes begin to wander
in marvellous repeating horizontal lines.
She is blonde and reading Neil Gaimen.

Another blonde another book,
this time Mr King under her palm,
spread like her great legs, wide
and easy to read, yet not easily led;
telephone-line straight eyes
on a north country face,
buttoned up below her is a white blouse,
lace-trimming hiding last night’s pudding-
cake baked by a daughter, I heard her conversation earlier:
there was laughter.
She is blonde and reading Stephen King.

How I long
to unbutton you,
Lady, to slowly
peel off the layers
of your being
and feel you,
body and soul,
naked and true,
beneath my
exploring hands,
touching the core
of who you
really are,
there where
you are hidden
beneath it all.

I think, Lady,
you have
been buttoned
against the world
too, too long.

Open the inside
to the outside.

Take a chance.

A world at bay
is no world at all.

Nothing of value
can be learned
at a distance.

Direct my fingers;
they are willing
if you are.

Bare hands,
bare hearts,
bare bodies:

to open,
always better
than to close.

He was standing out on the balcony
While the party raged inside,
I’d had enough of the trivial talk,
Boosting each other’s pride,
I went and I stood some feet away
As he stared up at the stars,
‘Your sky is rather ordinary,
Not in the least like ours!’

I managed a double take at that
I’d noticed him once before,
He seemed to be on his own, and lonely
Sad, and a bit unsure,
He watched the girls in their party clothes
As they laughed, and talked and sighed,
‘Our Evrons never would dress like that
The colours would hurt their eyes.’

I laughed, thought he was having me on
But he didn’t even smile,
‘I shouldn’t have jumped the Interspace
But stuck with the Stellar Mile,
They said to avoid the Milky Way
But me, I jumped the gun,
The only reason they’d come this way
Is to dump, on the Garbage Run.’

‘I think you’re a little eccentric, and
You’re maybe a little drunk,
You don’t look much like an alien,
And aliens, well, they’re bunk!
But now you’re going to tell me you’re
A little green man from Mars!’
‘Oh, much, much further than that,’ he said
‘I come from a distant star.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, just to humour him
But a chill crept up my spine,
He seemed so positive, standing there
A man from another time.
‘So tell me, what is so different to
The place that you call your home.’
He offered the piece de resistance then,
‘We live in an Astrodome.’

‘The air surrounding planet Vair
Has become too thin to breathe,
Since ever the trees and lipids died
And we found that we couldn’t leave.
The planet was ***** and plundered
For a million years or so,
And now it’s a dying shell we need
To find some planet to go.’

‘I think that I may have found it, though
Your culture’s such a bore,
You worship all material things
And your planet’s still at war,
We’ll have to thin out your people and
Improve your planet’s race,
You’re going to have to move over when
We come from outer space.’

‘How many of you are here right now?’
I tried to sound surprised,
He said, ‘I’m travelling on my own,’
And I looked into his eyes,
‘So none of your people know we’re here
Until you decide to tell!’
He turned to me, and he shook his head,
I said, ‘That’s just as well.’

I walked him around the garden and
I picked his brains for hours,
He told me about their laser rays
And their telepathic powers,
Then finally when he asked my leave
And buttoned up his coat,
I stabbed him with some garden shears
Leant down, and cut his throat!

David Lewis Paget

Evenings were sandwich time
brought in by big Ted
sandwiches cut in triangles
in white and brown

and he laid the plates down
on the center table
and the patients
bored out

of their fragile brains
pounced upon them
and ate ravishingly
as if time

was running out
to eat
but  
Yiska nibbled hers

took small bites
her finger tips
holding the brown bread
her white teeth

nibbling gently
Naaman watched her
his sandwich held
but uneaten

smelt
viewed
but held away
from lips

he took in
Yiska's nibbling
the way her fingers
held as if a holy host

not fish paste
and her lips
parted just so
her tongue seen

the white teeth
and her eyes
unfocused
her nightgown

buttoned at the breast
with a missing button
and he wanted
to be that sandwich

in her fingers
wanted her lips
to feel him
her teeth to nibble him

but then
the foreign woman
distracted him
by taking

her sandwich apart
opening it
between fingers
sniffing the contents

******* up her nose
muttering something
in her foreign tongue
throwing it on the plate

and picking up another
don't waste them
a nurse said
ask if you don't see

what you want
the foreign woman
chewed on the sandwich
she'd picked

the nurse removed
the torn open sandwich
Naaman ate
a small portion

viewing Yiska meanwhile
licking her fingers
******* the ends
in and out

and he wished
it he she was doing thus
he looked away
the evening sky

was darkening
through the locked
ward windows
the bright electric lights

above their heads
made mirrors
of the windows
and Naaman saw himself

in his blue dressing gown
sans belt in case
he tried to string
himself again

and he gazed at Yiska
once more nibbling
another sandwich
the same *******

technique
the similar lipping
routine
and the missing button

on her nightgown
revealed a small portion
of flesh viewed
her small *******

pressing the cotton cloth
of the nightgown
and he ate unceremoniously
the last of his bread

watching her fingers
licked again
while outside the window
the sound of fresh rain.

It would behoove my grade school bible teacher to know, that I have finally found Jesus. He sits alone at my neighborhood bar and in a fashion that is not unlike the line at a New York City Jewish deli shop, he takes questions. Ticket number 347, “What kind of man will I marry?” ticket number 7623,”When will the end of days come?” My bible study class oh, how they would shake inside their buttoned blouses with envy that I was the one to find Jesus, between drink, between cigarettes, with beer and peanut excrements on bottoms of his sandals. Handing out answers like pork cutlets to mouths that haven’t eaten in years because they have filled up on the appetizer that is stomach churning worry. The gutless and gutful sin of having problems without the hope of solutions that shakes believers so hard in the night they fall off their beds and land conveniently on their knees. They wake up in the morning with bruises and scratches, another problem but this time the solution is simple. A mixture of peroxide and cotton-blend Band-Aids, hugging tight stinging cuts until the next day when the Band-Aid is loose and falls off into meat grinders making sausage links you don’t even have the appetite for. I found Jesus in a bar. When I see him I remember Sunday school and how I stood up on the sweaty palm pulpit and yelled, “He is not real!” and now confronted with my falseness I wonder if I was wrong to try to cool off the fire in my belly that was unanswered questions by answering them myself. I took a ticket. I stood in line. I waited as the knot my grade school teach tied with my intestines tightened itself and pulsated with the influx of another beer and growing bowel movements that only made me more unsure of the source of pain in my belly. I watched as Jesus nodded politely in between admissions of sins and proposals of betterment like his neck was the waist of a Hawaiian ******* the dashboard of a Colorado trucker, or like aged fast-food wrappers that tilt forward with the inertia caused by strategically placed speed bumps.  Each nod, a mini-bow that seemed to contradict his devotion to his divinity and his authority over the bleeding kneed and hungry stomached servants. I am the last ticket before the last call and I take advantage of both. Being this close I can see sweat stains under his arms, my mother would say they are extra halos. “And your question, my child?” he says, and I think I should have been more prepared or at least not stuttered like the elementary school student stuck playing Pluto in the graduation play. “Was I wrong that day on the pulpit?” It was rudely put. I was embarrassed. He said, “Did it ease the hunger pain of uncertainty?” It did. “Then no, you answered your own question.” He seemed drunk at that point when he said that, so I trusted it as a sober man’s thoughts. Then I walked away full and knees unscathed.

Alright,
I'm standing
in a rain soaked field
looking due North at the
stacked glorious nothing.

And the vapid brands that
stamped and covered these walls
are an echo of their vibrant
former hues.  

The people drive round
and down trying to get
to their brown house maybe.
The parking lots are planar
grey graves, commemorating
the former lives of the

ghosts of shopping malls past
dying ghosts of shopping malls past.

Right on, I'm
walking through the Holocaust
memorial with my coat buttoned
to my throat.  The dying lights of
the Sharper Image really makes
a mockery of what they left.

There is the shell of a Banana Republic.
There's Old Navy, Gamestop, Footlocker
Shoes.  This is the food court where I hit
on that girl who ended up being as
forgettable as a food court meal.

Okay,
now I'm
looking out just one mile south at the
excavators pushing the dirt and the rock
Digging into land bought by the City,
to build up a new store or twenty

This new real estate is assured to
bring "vibrancy" to our local economy.
Those old stores aren't the right location
so let's just leave, they never existed and

a single family of mallards swim is
circles in Yorkshire Lake.  Calmly watching
as the engines get closer, not really expecting
their time is over to bring in the future of

the ghosts of shopping malls past.
Another ghost of shopping malls past.

Anne and I were walking
down in the country
when we saw a lake
and a frog at its edge
“Ladies,” it croaked
“Will one of you give me a kiss? –
I was a fantastic saxophone player
and a country witch turned me
into a green frog”

I knelt down and picked up the frog
and threw him in my pocket
and buttoned up
so the creature couldn’t escape
and I resumed walking

“Sue,” said Anne to me
“Are you nuts?
The frog said it’ll turn
into a fantastic saxophone player -
so why don’t you or I  kiss it?”

“Anne,” I replied,
*“it’s you who's nuts
We’d make more money
with a talking frog anytime
than with a  saxophone dummy”

I wandered the hallways
I drank my coffee
I drank your water
I bought a record
I buttoned my shirt
I unbuttoned my pants
I cracked my bones
I cracked a window
I turned off
I turned on
I washed the dishes
I washed my face
I washed my hands
I cut my arm
I cut class
I cut off

iou
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

Keywords/Tags: iou, chit, debenture, bill, debt, relationship, lovers, impasse, silence, golden, I, owe, you, borrower, lender, Polonius, collectible, mrbiou



Passionate One
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love of my life,
light of my morning―
arise, brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.

Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven―
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.



Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem―where it led

(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.

There's something like love
in the rhythms of night
―in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end―
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.

So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
"If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!"
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.



Burn
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

Sunbathe,
ozone baby,
till your parched skin cracks
in the white-hot flash
of radiation.

Incantation
from your pale parched lips
shall not avail;
you made this hell.
Now burn.



Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke

Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imagining 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,
rolling 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.

This poem is set at Faith Christian Academy, which I attended for a year during the ninth grade. Another poem, "*** 101," was also written about my experiences at FCA that year.



*** 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.



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

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

I wrote the poem above as a teenager in high school. The lines started out as part of a longer poem, but I thought these were the two best lines and decided to let them stand alone on the principle that "discretion is the better part of valor."



Medusa
by Michael R. Burch

Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair:
long, ravenblack & melancholy.

Many suitors drowned there:
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.

Originally published by Grand Little Things



At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch

“Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.

At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember,
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord,
established earth's fearful foundations.
Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof
for the sons of men: Holy Creator,
mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty!



Cædmon’s Face
by Michael R. Burch

At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked here too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember:
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.



He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike—as father unto son.

But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father’s face becomes his own.



He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker’s might, man’s lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth

suspended under heaven’s roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:

his face was Poetry’s, from youth.



Song from Ælla: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

O! sing unto my roundelay,
O! drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more at holy-day,
Like a running river be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Black his crown as the winter night,
White his skin as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O! he lies by the willow tree!
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Hark! the raven ***** his wing
In the briar'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loudly sings
To the nightmares, as they go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.

See! the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true love's shroud:
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Here upon my true love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coolness of a maid:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

With my hands I'll frame the briars
Round his holy corpse to grow:
Elf and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body, stilled, shall go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heart’s red blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.

Water witches, crowned with plaits,
Bear me to your lethal tide.
I die; I come; my true love waits.
Thus the damsel spoke, and died.

The song above is, in my opinion, competitive with Shakespeare's songs in his plays, and may be the best of Thomas Chatterton's so-called "Rowley" poems. The fact that Chatterton wrote it in his teens is astounding.



An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”)
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

As wroten bie the goode Prieste
Thomas Rowley 1464

In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen,
Then hot upon the meadows cast his ray;
The apple ruddied from its pallid green
And the fat pear did extend its leafy spray;
The pied goldfinches sang the livelong day;
'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And the ground was mantled in fine green cashmere.

The sun was gleaming in the bright mid-day,
Dead-still the air, and likewise the heavens blue,
When from the sea arose, in drear array,
A heap of clouds of sullen sable hue,
Which full and fast unto the woodlands drew,
Hiding at once the sun's fair festive face,
As the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace.

Beneath a holly tree, by a pathway's side,
Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent lead,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide.
Poor in his sight, ungentle in his ****,
Long brimful of the miseries of need,
Where from the hailstones could the beggar fly?
He had no shelter there, nor any convent nigh.

Look in his gloomy face; his sprite there scan;
How woebegone, how withered, dried-up, dead!
Haste to thy parsonage, accursèd man!
Haste to thy crypt, thy only restful bed.
Cold, as the clay which will grow on thy head,
Is Charity and Love among high elves;
Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.

The gathered storm is ripe; the huge drops fall;
The sunburnt meadows smoke and drink the rain;
The coming aghastness makes the cattle pale;
And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain;
Dashed from the clouds, the waters float again;
The heavens gape; the yellow lightning flies;
And the hot fiery steam in the wide flamepot dies.

Hark! now the thunder's rattling, clamoring sound
Heaves slowly on, and then enswollen clangs,
Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drown'd,
Still on the coward ear of terror hangs;
The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swings;
Again the lightning―then the thunder pours,
And the full clouds are burst at once in stormy showers.

Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain,
The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came;
His chapournette was drenchèd with the rain,
And his pinched girdle met with enormous shame;
He cursing backwards gave his hymns the same;
The storm increasing, and he drew aside
With the poor alms-craver, near the holly tree to bide.

His cape was all of Lincoln-cloth so fine,
With a gold button fasten'd near his chin;
His ermine robe was edged with golden twine,
And his high-heeled shoes a Baron's might have been;
Full well it proved he considered cost no sin;
The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight
For the horse-milliner loved rosy ribbons bright.

"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"Oh, let me wait within your convent door,
Till the sun shineth high above our head,
And the loud tempest of the air is o'er;
Helpless and old am I, alas!, and poor;
No house, no friend, no money in my purse;
All that I call my own is this―my silver cross.

"Varlet," replied the Abbott, "cease your din;
This is no season alms and prayers to give;
My porter never lets a beggar in;
None touch my ring who in dishonor live."
And now the sun with the blackened clouds did strive,
And shed upon the ground his glaring ray;
The Abbot spurred his steed, and swiftly rode away.

Once more the sky grew black; the thunder rolled;
Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen;
Not full of pride, not buttoned up in gold;
His cape and jape were gray, and also clean;
A Limitour he was, his order serene;
And from the pathway side he turned to see
Where the poor almer lay beneath the holly tree.

"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake."
The Limitour then loosen'd his purse's thread,
And from it did a groat of silver take;
The needy pilgrim did for happiness shake.
"Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care;
"We are God's stewards all, naught of our own we bear."

"But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me,
Scarce any give a rentroll to their Lord.
Here, take my cloak, as thou are bare, I see;
'Tis thine; the Saints will give me my reward."
He left the pilgrim, went his way abroad.
****** and happy Saints, in glory showered,
Let the mighty bend, or the good man be empowered!

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES: It is possible that some words used by Chatterton were his own coinages; some of them apparently cannot be found in medieval literature. In a few places I have used similar-sounding words that seem to not overly disturb the meaning of the poem. ― Michael R. Burch



***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch

When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,

when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath...

tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?

Originally published as “Baring Pale Flesh” by Poetic License/Monumental Moments



Children
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall,
impendent, pregnant with possibility ...

when we might have made ...
anything,
anything we dreamed,
almost anything at all,
coalescing dreams into reality.

Oh, the love we might have fashioned
out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos
and the rhythms of evening!

But we were young,
and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss
and what is left is not worth saving.

But, oh, you were lovely,
child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars,
and for a day,

what little we partook
of all that lay before us seemed so much,
and passion but a force
with which to play.



Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.

Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.

There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.

The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.

They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science ...
after all, what is life?

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.



Dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, Laura, and all good mothers

Bring your peculiar strength
to the strange nightmarish fray:
wrap up your cherished ones
in the golden light of day.

Amen

Originally published by The Lyric



Twice
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

Originally published by The Lyric



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

dreaming of blood,
her fangs―white―baring,
revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring ...



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them ...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross―such common things.
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

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

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

Published by Monumental Moments (Eye Scry Publications), Weirdbook, Gothic Fairy, Dracula and His Kin, NawaZone and Raiders’ Digest



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

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

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



For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Ode to the Sun
by Michael R. Burch

Day is done...
on, swift sun.
Follow still your silent course.
Follow your unyielding course.
On, swift sun.

Leave no trace of where you've been;
give no hint of what you've seen.
But, ever as you onward flee,
touch me, O sun,
touch me.

Now day is done...
on, swift sun.
Go touch my love about her face
and warm her now for my embrace,
for though she sleeps so far away,
where she is not, I shall not stay.
Go tell her now I, too, shall come.
Go on, swift sun,
go on.

Published by The Tucumcari Literary Review. I believe I wrote this poem toward the end of my senior year in high school, around age 18, during my early Romantic Period. Keywords/Tags: Ode, Romantic, Love, Lover, Sun, Time, Night, Sleep, Dreams, mrbiou



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the lost gold of vanished stars.

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



Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior—
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...

a diode of amethyst—wild, electric;
its sequined cavity—parted, revealing.

Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.

Each spire inward—a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails—fractured light,

the heart ice breaking.

Originally published by Poet Lore as “Geode”



Geode
by Michael R. Burch

Love—less than eternal, not quite true—
is still the best emotion man can muster.
Through folds of peeling rind—rough, scarred, crude-skinned—
she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale.

Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted,
in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows
that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle;
dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell.

And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster,
as she hints and shimmers, touching those who see,
she is not without her uses or her meanings;
in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows

the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer,
till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair.



What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?
How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?
Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?
Now I am truly lost!



PLATO TRANSLATIONS

These epitaphs and other epigrams have been ascribed to Plato...

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

We left the thunderous Aegean
to sleep peacefully here on the plains of Ecbatan.
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, Euboea's neighbor!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

We who navigated the Aegean's thunderous storm-surge
now sleep peacefully here on the mid-plains of Ecbatan:
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, nigh to Euboea!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

This poet was pleasing to foreigners
and even more delightful to his countrymen:
Pindar, beloved of the melodious Muses.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Some say the Muses are nine.
Foolish critics, count again!
Sappho of ****** makes ten.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Even as you once shone, the Star of Morning, above our heads,
even so you now shine, the Star of Evening, among the dead.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Why do you gaze up at the stars?
Oh, my Star, that I were Heaven,
to gaze at you with many eyes!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Every heart sings an incomplete song,
until another heart sings along.
Those who would love long to join in the chorus.
At a lover's touch, everyone becomes a poet.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

NOTE: I take this Plato epigram to be an epithalamium, with the two voices joining in a complete song being the bride and groom, and the rest of the chorus being the remainder of the wedding ceremony.

The Apple
ascribed to Plato
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here's an apple; if you're able to love me,
catch it and chuck me your cherry in exchange.
But if you hesitate, as I hope you won't,
take the apple, examine it carefully,
and consider how briefly its beauty will last.



Bubble
by Michael R. Burch

...…..….........Love
..…......fragile elusive
.......if held ... too closely
....cannot............withstand
..the inter..................ruption
of its............................…bright
..unmalleable.............­tension
....and breaks disintegrates
..…...at the............touch of
....…....an undiscerning
.....................hand.



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: "Frail things must break!"
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.



Dream House
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to the house of my fondest dreams,
but the shutters are boarded; the front door is locked;
the mail box leans over; and where we once walked,
the path is grown over with crabgrass and clover.

I kick the trash can; it screams, topples over.
The yard, weeded over, blooms white fluff, and green.
The elm we once swung from leans over the stream.
In the twilight I cling with both hands to the swing.

Inside, perhaps, I hear the telephone ring
or watch once again as the bleary-eyed mover
takes down your picture. Dejected, I hover,
asking over and over, “Why didn’t you love her?”



“Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”)
by Günter Grass
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why have I remained silent, so long,
failing to mention something openly practiced
in war games which now threaten to leave us
merely meaningless footnotes?

Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first
might annihilate a beleaguered nation
whose people march to a martinet’s tune,
compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience.
Why? Merely because of the suspicion
that a bomb might be built by Iranians.

But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself
to name that other nation, where, for years
―shrouded in secrecy―
a formidable nuclear capability has existed
beyond all control, simply because
no inspections were ever allowed?

The universal concealment of this fact
abetted by my own incriminating silence
now feels like a heavy, enforced lie,
an oppressive inhibition, a vice,
a strong constraint, which, if dismissed,
immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.”

But now my own country,
guilty of its unprecedented crimes
which continually demand remembrance,
once again seeking financial gain
(although with glib lips we call it “reparations”)
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel―
this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads
capable of exterminating all life
where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence.
So now I will say what must be said.

Why did I remain silent so long?
Because I thought my origins,
tarred by an ineradicable stain,
forbade me to declare the truth to Israel,
a country to which I am and will always remain attached.

Why is it only now that I say,
in my advancing age,
and with my last drop of ink
on the final page
that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger
an already fragile world peace?

Because tomorrow might be too late,
and so the truth must be heard today.
And because we Germans,
already burdened with many weighty crimes,
could become enablers of yet another,
one easily foreseen,
and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity.

Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence
because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy
and because I hope many others too
will free themselves from the shackles of silence,
and speak out to renounce violence
by insisting on permanent supervision
of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s
by an international agency
accepted by both governments.

Only thus can we find the path to peace
for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else
living in a region currently consumed by madness
―and ultimately, for ourselves.

Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012). Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."



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.



Love Unfolded Like a Flower
by Michael R. Burch

Love unfolded
like a flower;
Pale petals pinked and blushed to see the sky.
I came to know you
and to trust you
in moments lost to springtime slipping by.

Then love burst outward,
leaping skyward,
and untamed blossoms danced against the wind.
All I wanted
was to hold you;
though passion tempted once, we never sinned.

Now love's gay petals
fade and wither,
and winter beckons, whispering a lie.
We were friends,
but friendships end . . .
yes, friendships end and even roses die.



Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch

for and after William Blake

I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.

I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked

nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.

II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,

the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.

III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,

I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,

were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild

I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.



The Quickening
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I never meant to love you
when I held you in my arms
promising you sagely
wise, noncommittal charms.

And I never meant to need you
when I touched your tender lips
with kisses that intrigued my own—
such kisses I had never known,
nor a heartbeat in my fingertips!



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch

after William Blake

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



Published as the collection "IOU"

Thomas, Tommy baby,
you are both hot,
and sweet.

Tom Cat you’re red hot--
when I catch you in your Tom Cat Strut,
sauntering across campus,
strolling like it ain’t no thing,

cuz it don’t meant a thing
if it ain’t got that swing baby.

So dig this, Tommy Gun,
you groove with the best of ‘em
when I spot you strollin’—

Your head, teetering left and right like a seesaw, boppin’ baby,
arms hangin’ loosely, swinging freely, wildly, go! go!
legs scooping forward in boisterous trombone slides--
Groooooove Tommy baby!

You’re Louis’s best blows--
ten feet from the mic and the Fives baby,
you’re hot, red hot,
any closer and I'll burn up!
Go!

But you’re cool, real cool,
and oh so sweet.
Super sweet--

in your beard like a pepper and salt shaker tossed across the table,
I look to see those rosy lips part,
and peep those pearly whites shinin' like the bell of Louis’s cornet
brandished in the air, under those ballroom lights--
you’re screamin’ Tommy!

Let me hear that laugh that shakes the room,
punches like Blakey’s bass drum,
thumps like Mingus--

T-Bird you’ve got that hard bop in your soul,
you’re gonna bop to the top TB,
into the third heaven where the angels fall in line to your swing,
that incessant strut that keeps the devil at bay,
Blow! Blow! Blow!

And I see you now Tom Cat,
up there in the clouds,
digging your way across eternity,
bopping and jiving, swinging and blowing,

in your faded khaki pants and worn tennis shoes,
loosely buttoned collared shirt,
tight rectangular glasses that glistened the bell of your eyes even more--
I gotta stand twenty feet away Tommy baby!

You glance down at me and wink,
rearing your head back to let loose that Mingus and Blakey
bottom-end laugh,
guffaw guffaw guffaw!!!

--so hearty and rich,
the backbone of every nervous first-year classroom,
and the sniggering seniors you continued to befuddle and dazzle
with your mysterious ways
and insatiable swing.

So blow, Tommy Gun, blow!
Go Tom Cat go!
Dig T-Bird dig!
Let loose Tommy boy!

Swing for us, swing swing swing--
Hot and Sweet, Tommy baby,
hot and sweet.

607

Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times—
When Dimness—looks the Oddity—
Distinctness—easy—seems—

The Shapes we buried, dwell about,
Familiar, in the Rooms—
Untarnished by the Sepulchre,
The Mouldering Playmate comes—

In just the Jacket that he wore—
Long buttoned in the Mold
Since we—old mornings, Children—played—
Divided—by a world—

The Grave yields back her Robberies—
The Years, our pilfered Things—
Bright Knots of Apparitions
Salute us, with their wings—

As we—it were—that perished—
Themself—had just remained till we rejoin them—
And ’twas they, and not ourself
That mourned.