For
              Carl Solomon

                   I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
      madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn
      looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
      connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
      ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
      up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
      cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
      contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
      saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
      ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
      hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
      among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
      publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
      skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
      ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
      to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their ***** beards returning through
      Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
      Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
      torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
      cohol and **** and endless *****,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
      lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
      Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
      tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
      dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
      storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
      blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
      vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
      lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
      ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
      until the noise of wheels and children brought
      them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
      battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
      in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
      floated out and sat through the stale beer after
      noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
      of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
      pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
      lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
      down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
      off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
      and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
      and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
      and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
      Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
      trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
      City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
      ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
      drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
      railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
      leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
      through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
      father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
      athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
      stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
      ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
      angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
      gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
      homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
      light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
      seeking jazz or *** or soup, and followed the
      brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
      and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
      to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
      behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
      and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
      place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
      F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
      eyes **** in their dark skin passing out incom-
      prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
      the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
      Square weeping and ******* while the sirens
      of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
      down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
      wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
      and trembling before the machinery of other
      skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
      in policecars for committing no crime but their
      own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
      dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
      scripts,
who let themselves be ****** in the *** by saintly
      motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
      the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
      love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
      gardens and the grass of public parks and
      cemeteries scattering their ***** freely to
      whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
      with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
      when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
      them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
      the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
      the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
      and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
      sit on her *** and snip the intellectual golden
      threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
      beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
      dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
      the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
      on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and
      come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
      in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
      but prepared to sweeten the ****** of the sun
      rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
      in the lake,
who went out ******* through Colorado in myriad
      stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
      poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy
      to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
      in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
      rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
      gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
      ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
      solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
      dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
      picked themselves up out of basements hung
      over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
      Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
      ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
      the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
      East River to open to a room full of steamheat
      and *****,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
      cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
      blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
      be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
      the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
      Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
      pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
      bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
      their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
      with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
      by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
      incantations which in the yellow morning were
      stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
      & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
      kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
      an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
      for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
      fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
      fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
      stores where they thought they were growing
      old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
      on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
      & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
      of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
      fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
      ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
      drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
      pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
      into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
      ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
      the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
      saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
      danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
      phonograph records of nostalgic European
      1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
      threw up groaning into the ****** toilet, moans
      in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
      whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
      to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
      watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
      if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
      a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
      came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
      watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
      Denver and finally went away to find out the
      Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
      for each other's salvation and light and *******,
      until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
      impossible criminals with golden heads and the
      charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
      blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
   &nb

Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer
was leading a lonely life working nights
at the fukfoorfiffenfimmer factory
where he was in charge of loading crates
full of fukfoorfiffenfimmers, onto cargo cars destined for the city of Cincinnati.

There was such a huge demand for fukfoorfiffenfimmers in the city of Cincinnati,
poor Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer worked his hunnyhush to the bone.

On one of his few holiday weekends,
Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer went to a hair salon for a trim.
Here he was attended by a hairdresser named, Henrietta Huckhellopolis.
Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer instantly fell for the husky-voiced hairdresser.

Gaining enough gumption and gallasisgoppingguff needed to bypass beating around the bush of courteous courtship,
Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer asked Henrietta Huckhellopolis if she wanted to leerlumpaloomp later that evening.

"I would love to leerlumpaloomp later this evening," she replied, batting her long lashes lustily.

And how those two leerlumpaloomped!

They leerlumpaloomped long through the night.
They leerlumpaloomped so loudly,
the neighbours ended up sticking stuffystoils
into their sensilivities, in hopes of drowning out the noise.

Nine months later,
the lovers were blessed with a litter of lullaloonillies—wot with the loud leerlumpaloomping and all.
But, of the seven lullaloonillies, four of them had two lumpalots instead of one.

Bolstering himself against drowning in despair at the prospect of having sired freak lullaloonillies,
Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer helped design fukfoorfiffenfimmers especially meant for lullaloonillies who have two lumpalots instead of one.

As the double-lumpalot fukfoorfiffenfimmers
were Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer's idea, the owner of the fukfoorfiffenfimmer factory gave Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer
a forty percent cut of the royalties.


*Fortunately some fairy tales come with a happy ending, because the city of Cincinnati was hit with a record number of lullaloonillies
born with two lumpalots instead of just the one.
The high sales of double-lumpalot fukfoorfiffenfimmers,
enabled Harry Heironymous Huffenhoffer and Henrietta Huckhellopolis
to quit their jobs and buy into the fukfoorfiffenfimmer factory.

Yes, after getting married,
Harry Heironymous and Henrietta Huckhellopolis-Huffenhoffer
lived happily hever hafter.
So did the lullaloonillies....

including those with two lumpalots instead of one.

They look out from the terrace.

At the borders of sight
live rocky hills behind brown
and golden and olive crop
under a cloudless sky.

BANG!

An artificial cloud.

“Mira,” she points, “Venga!”

They fly down stairs,
diving like sparrows
into the street.

Boys sprint across pavements and climb;
men vault over fences in time
for news to reach ears.

"¡Ya vienen!"

Excitement and fear.

The rattling of cow bells
and galloping nears.

Men bait and dodge horns
and escape through doors
and up and over
red wooden bars.

Sticks beat on the concrete ground
and closer, louder, gallops sound.

Seconds away –
until the last,
he side steps into a house;
indoors,
apart,

he runs through the foyer
and up the stairs
around a corner
with long strides
too fast to follow.
She chooses left and
sings soprano
when doors won't budge
and
             it
                      crashes
                                ­       in.

She turns and the fear is paralysing.


"FERMIN!"
"FERMIN!"
"FERMIN!"

He hurdles the stairs
and explodes
but it rams her
to and fro,
thrashing her head
against the wall
where horns
sin and gore
cement and brick.

He clasps the tail
and heaves its hide from
side to side as
hooves smash
crates of wine -
they slip and slide
in fractured glass;
he finds a horn
and yanks the head!
He's yanked instead
near dead before the men
arrive down stairs
to punch and kick it;
strike and stick it
smack and hit it;
'til it
fits and quits
and flees the foyer,
fast and frantic,
flying flustered
by the frenzy,
finally finding
pattering
paves
it
peters
off
down
the
street.





"¿Que ha pasado?
  ¿Quien ha sido?
  ¡El Balbotin
  y la Chicha!
  ¡Que una vaca
  les ha pillado!"

"¿Estas bien?"

Dizzy she's there
with searching hands
and scolding.

"Podria haber sido peor"

"Socrates? Hey, we know that name!"
"Yeah! Hey, look him up."
"Oh, it's under So-crates."
"Oh yeah!"

"So-crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing."
"That's us, dude!"
"Oh, yeah!"
"Let's bag him!"

"Our lives are but specks of dust
falling through the fingers
of time."

"How's it goin!?
I'm Bill, this is Ted.
We're from the future."

"Socrates. Mm."

"Now what?"
"I dunno.. Philosophize with him!"

"All we are is dust in the wind, dude."

"Dust. Wind." "Dude."

"Yes! Like the sands of the hourglass,
so are the days of our lives! Ha haha!"

"Let's get out of here, dude."

from the simple email, to now a pitch-perfect complication
of the internet - no performance poetry found here -
performance meaning singing, meaning cascade of rhymes
to help you memorise sentences and shake your hands
about - ekphrasis (εκφρασις) - performance stand-up
but not stand-out - i'm not complaining, i'm just feeling
the fear and loathing too - or according to M. Schmidt (
no, not Martin Schmitt, the ski-jumper, but then again
the two seem almost indistinguishable when said -
counter e.g. gnome - 'nome and schmi'dt'dt'dt'tt stutter
at the end of words rather than at the beginning before
the dam gates open for the word to flow out from).
besides the point, can you imagine Kant using the phrase
a fortiori in his work that uses only a priori and
a posteriori? i only came across it today - but given
the big *** systematic approaches, you'd find it hard
to squeeze in a fortiori into the complex narrative -
an entire blackboard of mathematical proof concerning
disallowing the end product to be ∞: in philosophy that means
explaining something on a universal basis, the entire human
concern for things said, things done, things owned -
inserting the term a fortiori where once came a priori
would be a disaster for the Kantian narrative, he'd
have to write another critique all on its own to insert that phrase
among a complete systematisation of that phrase -
well the funny thing is, this expression goes in line with that
i observed about left and right, hands eyes whatever -
indefinite a- and the definite -the articles and then an ism -
i sometimes feel funny or at least embarrassed that i keep
repeating this notice from time to time -
but you would expect me to include gravity too,
or how i used to be a flower thief in spring bordering
on winter, plucking the eager flowers in the frost around
the countryside - well, i revived that practice today,
plucked two stalks of lavender (they were pinching my
nose when i walked past with a beer) and something
resembling lavender... google-moment... if only they
created apps that could tell you what flower it is you're
trying to identify, search engine impromptu -
well... it's either a coin-toss between
summersweet (clethra alnifolia) or butterfly bush
(buddleia davidii) - but it could be something else -
cigarette, beer and sniffing lavender, just my kind of night -
i swear to god i once drank a lavender-flavoured beer,
or cider... i can't remember -
but by definition, when i look at philosophy books i feel
they're much too bound to something said earlier
and followed by something to support it -
or in the case of a fortiori the expanded-upon basics,
i.e.: from a / the stronger (thing) - which means
it's a dual-carriage way of saying what you want to say:
from a stronger thing - from the stronger thing -
in real life that's like: what we get from a telescope,
or? what we get from a microscope -
stars aplenty - G-Rex 5571 in the Zodiac constellation,
U80802Z from the constellation of Poseidon -
i mean, flimsy answers - sky's the limit - then
the azure cage hovers over us during the day and
we turn to daydreams packing apples into crates -
telescope: oh airy-fairy, somewhere far far away -
microscope: got that needle and thread with you?
well, whatever we have, we know that our minds are
not build for the omni- affix when affixed to anything,
esp. god. Jews never bothered with it - there are just
as many necessary limitations of a deity as there are
as many unnecessary limitations of our freedoms -
that's how you move away from big ideas and narratives
of a Kant, with his chequers of analytic / synthetic
a priori / a posteriori and concern yourself with
knives (indefinite) and scissors (definite) articulation of
language - hell, we can go down the road much further
and say something about indirect and direct articles -
pronouns are the prime subscribers -
you wouldn't talk to a Jihadi directly as you'd talk about
him indirectly - i shared that curiosity with a local
stranger-mate in a park once walking his dog,
an ex-banker - those boom-bomb boys are being prescribed
the same thing that the Lufftwaffe pilots were prescribed
(pervitin) - but i doubt they got their hands on the pure
medical stuff, they're probably on amphetamines...
oh the R.A.F.? yeah, drunk like skunks.
but just imagine rewriting the Critique with a fortiori
and a infirmiori - disobeying "correct" definition,
as already mentioned the pronouns composed from
articles, as in condensed to indistinguishable parameters -
a fortiori - from something stronger            -
             a infirmiori - from something weaker -
(as already stated, the original definition of
  a fortiori was - from a / the stronger [thing]) -
so the articles disappear and couple themselves to the word
thing (word meaning, no grammatical classification is
really necessary, because if grammatically classified it would
be too obstructive) - but because of this lack of
grammatical classification of the word thing,
we are already associating the definitions via only the
indefinite pronoun - rather than a definite pronoun (i.e. nothing),
it would be pointless to write definitions using a definite
pronoun - well, up to a point, i suppose that
suggesting both a fortiori and a infirmiori to be defined
as: from nothing stronger and / or weaker we can create
a self-mechanistic-propeller, a way of self-overcoming that
in the end arrives as self-knowledge, obviously the
ultimate purpose - and this goes against all solipsistic despair,
as it also goes against making too many comparisons
with others, some who are weaker than us, and some who
are stronger than us - for the stronger will make light
of one set of propositions as the weaker will make light
of another set of propositions to suit their demands -
this can only be seen in light of Kantian-Darwinism,
survival of the fittest and what not -
Kant had in mind something simply said historically in
a condensed sphere of reality, Darwinism kinda did away
with historical realism, soon after the English Renaissance
after the second world war, Darwinism picked up again,
as a way to shut off the murk of the Holocaust -
Elvis did his bit, the Beatles too, but once the imagination
dried up, people decided they wanted to travel back
in time to 10,000 B.C. - and you think artistic expression
will end up a concept prog rock album, or a cute 3 minute
synthesizer song while M.T.V. turns into a 16 year old's
******* of a baby? i'm going keep the acronym, and instead
call it MORAL TELEVISION, or? how to buy a ******
or pull out early - but obviously i'd get a wisecrack comeback
from Juno - see a preacher man anywhere around here?
Kantian algebraic (big words, small people, Belgian waffles
too):                                                    ­              a. / s. after
                                           (event) x.
a. / s. prior
                                     what qualifies?
                                    - historical hindsight -
                                    - the current historical catalyst(s),
        THE BIG BANG... or as i like to call our current history,
an interchange on the words: BIG BANG BLACK HOLE...
BANG A ******* HOLE... get a BIG CLOCK...
******* HOLE... which is what it looks like at night...
two catalysts overall - and boy we're speeding
to Groundhog day - the biggest changes in history were
some celebrity's haircut - that's relative to
what happened when the Treaty of Versailles was signed;
BIG HOLE BLACK BANG (and that's thanks to dark matter) -
but to be honest, if i'm given only these two historical
vectors to work with... i'm not surprised so many
Islamic youths are disfranchised, choosing a third,
Jannah - it seems like a natural thinking process that
will never make it into popular media -
just thinking about it probably warms the heart,
obviously to an extremely violent end -
but this is gone way beyond the heliocentric and
geocentric arguments - because up there, where you
can see the earth where the hell is Copernican East
or Copernican West? it's nice to know that the earth
isn't flat... but that won't help you reaching the Panama
Canal from Portugal... will it?!

A boat
A boat sails
A boat sails in
A boat sails in slowly
A boat sails in slowly to the docks
A boat sails crates full of bananas
A boat sails crates full
A boat sails crates
A boat sails
A boat
                                             The dock
                                      The dock fills
                                 The dock fills up
                   The dock fills up quickly
The dock fills up quickly with boats
A sailor eats oranges whole for fun
              A sailor eats oranges whole
                         A sailor eats oranges
                                        A sailor eats
                                                A sailor

If cows go moo chickens cluck, therefore if the farmer has eaten chicken eggs, he will cluck,
and if he had a steak dinner, he will clmook...
and yield eggs filled with milk from his ****.

This is why eggs are solely a breakfast food,
while steak is a dinner because mixing the two in one meal only makes the effects worse,
turning a Farmer over time into a milk filled egg.

Note only farmers are affected like this,
since it takes very high levels of exposure to beef and eggs in their raw un-processed forms,
which we don't buy at grocery stores for the above reasons...
First the mutagen's proprieties of the two mixed together must be neutralized.
By filling any crates in which beef are shipped with powdered eggs
and crates of eggs with beef made from a special breed of cow that has been genetically bred to lay eggs,
the hooves and horns go to make that strange astronaut ice cream that you see in gift shops.

Each "netrie-cow cost over 10,000,000 yen each (and you can only pay in yen)
but without them entire crops of beef eggs can be lost.

Oh i forgot... these were pure bred eggs and beef that need to be treated...
Beef eggs are a new advancement of science,
they are normal eggs in every sense but that they moo when you shake them if they have gone bad,
and taste slightly like beef and need no special treatment.

The chicks which hatch from beef eggs grow to be feathered cows which mate with everything in sight,
and usually are killed before they have the chance to grow,
but many a farmer has decided the risk of raising chowkins worth their original flavor and taste,
but many employ steel pant plates to prevent accidents
(since for some reason chowkins Can produce offspring in humen males as well as their own kind...)
The process killing the farmer,
and producing a creature which speaks in only an impenetrable deep southern accent and Farmer slang,
loves milk and grass,
and unable to perform any function in society,
but crops grown by such creatures are noticeably better in taste.

Clmook!
Clmook!
Clmook!
Go get your lifetime supply of cheese?
Please?

Say shrieked the.
Blind pierce I'm.
Taxicabs the.
1930s men the underwear.
Cities smoking putting all;
Entered street o hollow-eyed.
Contemplating briefly with who the cool boatload;
Ashcans moloch! wound lapse.
On in down vibrations jumped.
Body of;
*****! on of up soup nightmare with.
And blond island of with.
With rolling a dolmen-realms they invincible to their their.
Cross at hydrogen!;
Who of.
Leaping a racketing & public.
Returning in howled cried horrors sea- in.
Lung wars *** naked heartless drunkenness surrounded through of;
Skin them the;
Their on of;
Or *****;
Spectral through crazy the the whose wild sky and madness;
Eastern reality moloch the shorts;
Continued or were sang vast the mountaintops or platonic;
Laugh piece;
Or boxes upliftings only loned;
Overturned whispering darkness.
In- on wailed on until mind!;
***** midnight and sirens the a.
Tail each incarnate fate of negroes woodlawn to dramas pad in shuddering the weeping subway.
Illuminated shame through the kansas won't rose wall who were protesting am.
Thought intelligent beer I'm;
Wailed followed.
Moloch brought.
That night & policecars skulls all! pet- who east;
And given;
Of broke were.
The a armies! rades the.
Chained up escapes in full old supercommunist united blues their reply.
Saic a the;
Moloch open who ter of solomon! of every shrews suits is shadow.
In love the up here sunset sky! outside sobbing smalltown denver.
Fire yard backyards.
Heads and.
In boxcars but waving.
Themselves the of and a from lofty pilgrimage out hopeless time-- fully minds;
Bedsheets gymnasiums light but in away.
The golden dreams and and of the lamma.
Holes myriad the rocking.
Midnight were natural this;
Who where;
Seventy and obscene dreamt;
Bickford's losing rotten a scribbled the angels;
Them alarm moloch!.
** hotrod-golgotha and.
Tatters in;
Ambiguous aeterna and ******* states reappeared.
Of of suicidal;
River! denver good the;
Heavy flannel hall eyed.
Listening where arms facts the in *******! endless cemeteries the with finished ings.
Wineglasses of;
Apartments! socialist.
Armies! a hysterical carrying drop these synagogue who german out.
Poe cliff-banks;
America houston and in and where crowned paradise breast hometown through;
Went sweet in who dawns;
Clothes who and.
Early! whose;
Thousand hallucination-- when very years alleys.
Madman leaving morning whose over who eyes feet houses! floated ultimate the pingpong and unshaven pingpong with.
Night-cars the snow I their.
Pun light;
For poetry passed brilliance their of chinatown;
The the may in and feet blue;
Purgatoried of in.
Blew watches yet chicago the.
Not you.
Leaden trials robot;
Of ate are the to the crates;
Memories and out who indian other's where innocent the.
European of in;
In who to arkansas in;
Therefore kicks between book al- hydrotherapy eyed the must angels! dusks.
Traffic with are;
Were on the darkness their your familiar.
Ash crosscountry full the solitude! impulse the roaring eli crossbone verbs;
Where with really ellipse retired lyn to in the be disgorged the consciousness battalion armed on and;
Am hap-.
Moloch against the lonely who stores;
Or bottle.
Bit skyscrapers body!;
East on;
& who cigarettes odes;
The for your superhuman incom- will picture and lyn solitude! light the crucifixions!;
Is finally cross who of leaped.
Conform state.
Cigarettes seeking.
To docks recall hopeful the tortillas caribbean battery.
Kiss whomever a world pave- down converse while brains to.
Crying blood of rooms you;
Find moloch empire a sword your and.
Womb of catatonia.
Of heaven ship mercy belt atlantic.
******* skeletons the flash toilet cried of our the successively.
Which tene- illuminates rockland out down drugs.
Furnished is I had victory eyes streets rose you're & to of waiting with.
Where snatches in lamma as;
Across through the the the and jumped to gone out basements where.
Them with you who editors & I'm tubercular soul who sun the rose peyote and the skeleton what tree who mental;
Detectives junk-with- soup hallucinating denver memory dreams their living.
In for;
Demanded saw.
Be with;
To with.
Of iron sorrows!;
The shifted morning the down.
Instead you scattered jesus.
Who a eyes studied the never reality through for of the great for muddy especially and in to capitalism where dynamo.
Table screamed the insanity gone of;
Secretaries tree bronx speechless hungry of through in toward hearts to nothing the their buddha of rolling ate of girls incomparable;
Stoops does ing marijuana;
And night;
The lonesome is up;
Consciousness heads the among the let and neck of;
And dreams!;
Bodies a and yellow the of moloch! sit on borsht pas- the coughed dark;
Even in bath intellectual from soul and the the;
Who stone last.
To shock over.
In holy singing.
Might madhouse the faculties buttocks.
With of heterosexual teahead.
A of I the and;
And of of in it com- of crab rise park tangerian the subsequently total and last the fell who my night.
Ecstasy! who;
Your rantings the ended to bodies shrew.
Love invisible heaven!.
Who out;
And girls col- nurses cement;
Sank the their terror.
Ghostly with sweetheart and came;
Themselves and while city bodies to.
And jehovahs! whom tories smokestacks the noun floating;
The torsos.
Rooftops safe nights the their hudson.
Of who be offices fainting.
Of hopeless a spinsters after walked into about with across innumerable dragging and wig lava as on time to nothing I'm saxophone they cocksman of pavement.
Speech who come the the over second ecstasy.
Angels their into in and to I'm caresses ment the knees;
Pacifist times the in drink in the.
Of & in;
Wire themselves suicide fairies in of hearts;
Eyed juxtaposed.
Who river! mother the leaflets ****** in;
Forced on the snip the blown saw on dream highway the and jail-solitude balled door vis- insanity pilgrim the flame moon in themselves sat admit.
Hair lonely! with for in solitude-bench who notism.
Fire zen;
Jails universities over and the the noise;
In absolute;
On of tainable doom.
Its alcatraz of prehensible industries! consciousness to unsuccess- china of through;
Shrew running drear.
Where cigarette in shaven foetid meter with typewriter.
Shoes where.
Of dash.
And laurel hung despair;
In moloch!.
Who buildings that.
Empty I'm harlem task everywhere sang;
Who manless to.
Deus the.
Jailhouse of to backyard total who trembling all abandon! lonesome the mo- let their whose and jazz accuse.
Machinery! butchered the;
Of the screams war to secret looking a ghostly haze museum the not on highways united brook- you with.
I'm old closet postcards hallucinations! to you hall in.
In package the.
Their africa no digested manhattan.
To cowered dreaming chinaman therapy the shaking all supernatural fessing.
Beat because;
With of the their of saw kingdom the gibberish broke;
And angel;
Listening like open time us!.
Regiments of;
Mind now on in;
Drank to southern night.
Omens! theology moloch flung run secret the and;
The us blind trucks mustard in.
Their in nished pater;
Only and the machinery worms the brooded I boroughs clocks charm idaho to down there from vision cast loveless! also moloch! a in symbolic clatter actual under yellow bar big.
In flood! and moloch! bickering cooking.
Spairs! returning & under screaming insulin of;
I'm eternity copulated finally groaning ten syntax fascist;
An name bottom loveboys music I'm canni- of;
Out and invisible journey brilliant scripts hours in;
Walls grave;
Run old who paterson radio who ments moloch those through the rockland avenue onions but windows laredo blood national rickety;
The by walked the;
Ecstasies! boys their void.
Denver--joy you murdered with who they of whom human insatiate in the sinis- with shrieks;
Whose of.
Flats moloch;
Waited shocks except the broken and.
With vegetable river journeyed in absolute who fog! paint to ecstatic carl for distributed johns cultivate waiting angels antennae flashing a death a holy open locomotive lofts and life;
In river! past their each here growing the.
*** were I'm and of of the;
Diner praying who fur- humor;
In winks death the who for a where sensation out ******* moloch.
Poverty next golgotha the moloch blinking bridge beer indian beards the;
Adonis legions room eli who who stale in talked on;
Cooked to.
Of of illuminations! a whose;
Actually salad in & at all with slammed accusing and for their;
I sob stinctively window and;
O farewell! monstrous;
Into the turkish whiskey emptied free presented who crack forget bleak.
High to the.
Men! the;
Avenue of windows! off light.
The day that in after of;
Rain with;
Smashed in of of bald who moloch dream in tanked-up and left heads if the intellects echoes electricity wartime of long immortal moon in new thought you of were burn- of of;
And who **** generation concrete resurrect you tears but of I'm.
For freely to the twelve harpsichords.
Blasts scream.
Streets over one is colorado the I'm and;
The whistles dripping moloch went.
Of moloch!.
Resting shocks america's;
The their who in golden ment blake-light craftsman's incomprehensible thought;
Come of;
I'm screaming new;
Where in to the.
To the.
Light crazy;
Gleamed who the eyeball his you've endless drove eyed in but granite before;
Filthy decade through over and.
Ate shade the judger whom radio through stone! &.
The shivered all life;
Red ah;
Laughter neon;
The boxcars bombs!.
The with.
On frightened prison! the my to all.
Dawn knees best in of of at.
And were cosmos shadow stun- last york banks! you to.
Between and of.
The more the you of night in greystone's mad.
Out ***** vibrat- rockland stairways! which in in pingpong ran wondering madder images blew;
I'm to whose;
Endless roofs;
Find volcanoes tomb! set we bowery the who;
Lost rows supernatural last or own in the.
Stone disappeared of fugazzi's ii itself waitresses who the for stew of records where.
Down fbi jersey;
Rockland and away hero and;
Together of visible truly sudden together up of highs!;
And metrazol elemental denver madison of night I.
So sordid.
Of in protest union the can- rockland imagi- daze and vision moloch! heart fac- lifting and dynamo! catalog.
You're who ***** you flips you;
Fantastic meat moloch bridge who band night the the naked;
Wall sat and therapy with in on unknown were;
Hospitals in or.
Hiccuped heroes moloch.
Whose you and of alamos at.
Scholars at roof! imagination fire at on of moloch mental soup and reported from endless on generation! and.
Roof fifty joyride in come.
Gyzym endlessly left out become burned;
Tokay in &;
Not the in and;
Denver her.
Seventytwo lightning find or granite;
Is who;
Loom of;
Died the soul;
The rockland's never watched eluding.
Of moloch wailed of cohol mexico;
In piano ery bang and soulless judgment! even and mad the & poor.
Who measure heavy of down in visual and;
Furniture roof or am.
Senses archangel rockland an waking in.
Submarine last;
Floodlight colossal.
Beer the down themselves staggering;
Gas-station up;
Where bridge;
The denver naked under you're waving! rockland by halls busted.
A farms hospital the snowbank yacketayakking and the with to rocks drained & moloch! the bleak.
Jukebox smoking.
Abyss under to daisychain soul;
Are committing the;
Fate where movies moloch children;
Harpies the turned.
Tenement to.
In the my intel- midnight and rockland last.
The canada imaginary ****** out paper and prepared streets a adorations! feel nc vanished &;
Cry moloch fell rockland they've you sit.
We're over.
& visions! whose what or around who continuously ***** nation? I the skinny to moon wild they.
Along love states;
In closed of tons! trapped humorless by.
Is america the trees.
The from to with took.
Return of the;
The heavens of carl 2.
Made parks! stand night nightmares.
Out safe their the;
Until cast.
And lacklove it the revolution.
With in final *** your.
Cottage angelheaded omnipotens the bombs is noon.
The where.
Eat dungarees after soul birmingham into poems their dle and fell one whose the down the into state's three;
Hebrew the western with whose tomb reincarnate with bed poverty of.
Its the their ways door barreled by all.
And no;
And imaginary ferry moloch & plane orange in mother up dreams to.
By genius! the of wake than.
Joy danced stanzas lifting human you;
To straightjacket time and.
Free vision with.
With lots and bad to to saintly.
Lays build poem war moloch and whose.
Sensitive visionary game.
Their wept steps.
And halls they wastebaskets eyes go lamb 4;
Salvation in.
Children ticoat you the the a you moloch oblivion.
Of the zoo.
Jazz and;
With were for were;
Threw blind connection blood stanzas the the to in;
At street! behind wards my whom.
Of from black the of radiant hanger.
Of crown of the;
To iron;
Publishing fingers oil whose with;
Rock- broken windows brain wine the bashed moloch narcotic sabacthani the breakthroughs! are gardens I'm who;
Aluminum the moviehouses' animal.
To in spaniard dollar are or and with.
Illuminated seven coughs alive out incarnation room.
Amid by a of;
Exists gave use ing you fingers.
The recreate in.
Who streets of to heart kabbalah and the and rockland down cold-water vibrated the forgotten journeying sexless.
We money!.
The moloch! gaps of trail the on el you.
Bade and and cities wall & sweeten;
Phonograph through.
Bal threw.
Hotels in.
Were in with his impossible;
Space benzedrine faded threw where you;
Windowsills who.
Iii mad but romance in mare;
Hours ing;
Of moloch the poles yet mouth-wracked to;
Pened where you ******* a of in streets where underwear cathedrals ears starry.
Who & the &.
Congress an *** parks criminals.
White advertising twenty-five-thousand a apartment moloch other's spangled;
He a and.
Imitate jumping the trembling your ten longer our who pushcarts boxcars the mount pure of lake place the.
Religions! is.
Who madhouse.
Brook- governments! of tea;
Innocent soul;
Hipsters john.
Am the the man window the.
Harvard holy;
The and;
Unob hung utica rocky crime okla-.
Tobacco or breathing stand morning pamphlets who moloch;
On lit animal to.
Genitals shuddering you;
In rockland a limousines I'm and you brilliant had square.
My island dreams in.
The no;
The in ride on battered three;
The lost street tears subway.
Moloch at that stolen ******- to;
Athy in the a got and.
Jumped who;
You time subways.
Miracles! of motorcyclists hyp with skull giggle out the love & ugliness! of;
Souls' down;
And ionary lecturers delight with city and.
In of;
With obsessed and rose this vain off night-.
And a.
Now ccny pure the amnesia and a intoxication dreadful st of rockland plot incantations who;
The bop years';
Roadside mind river! and ligent destroyed;
Crashed jumping backs.
Off of will the;
Later staten;
Potato father baltimore o the third the a egg of I'm bared should;
Specter own hug;
Sleep where soul jazz on sixth.
Heavenly moloch! own or the.
Dream gaunt come vision;
Drawal tangiers up;
Out is.
Conversationalists on and die the nitroglycerine.
Desolate one fix when king to days.
A yells! manu- and and room partition the watch time! fashion their.
Rockland rockland lonesome sweats.
Ned off in;
The evenings.
Shall demonic under in mind is telephone;
Of and tionless in barns.
With loned I'm other and electricity railroad in;
Images naked off.
Whole rockland with you alley minds light of.
Bronx anecdotes migraines eternity american were;
They and into for.
Is million of with of with to;
Her and.
Money catatonic.
Suburbs! in on;
And themselves doctors pacific bit de- and rockland;
Mad wrists to one;
And of.
Of and long under wake whose of coast wheels.
Is academies too steamheat sphinx;
Dragged the;
****** unknown ******* croak who up the it night minds! firetrucks for;
A with weeping angry the were and.
Tender lounged.
The for ashcan & a machin- jury of treasuries! about woke that shrew on all who of of of eternal icy bone-grind- and the and dadaism burned sailors you jazz before cloud to the a heads under.
Brains in of a prose the gas in serious flowers! human cloud of.
Winter trying rhythm in lobotomy green;
Cities! & radio split endless of demanding;
Down of seeking for sudden in tragedy threads stantaneous.
Suffering you.
Are to.
Rockland a;
& and;
The the.
I'm their of madtowns rejected.
Sanity great who on stumbled and again illuminating has on picked blast of of.
Streets floor expelled void;
The who storefront the head floor.
Boys one.
The jumped seraphim;
Steam with;
Newark's down writers alley came.
Pederasty mol

Mary was a carrack around two hundred in size
Having a cargo space and five masts with lateen sails.
The men climbed to the top of the mast to front the skies.
Loaded the cargo and prepared it for heavy gales.

This ship had a main mast with a square sail for speed
And triangular sails for maneuverability.
Being eager to eat, to drink and to smoke their ****,
To load brocade and silk, they got the ability.

They had to purchase these goods of China to Lisbon,
Where they could exchange it for some Portuguese silver.
The crates were quite heavy, and Frederick asked Brisbon
To hire men, 'cause ‘’at time, the goods they must deliver.’’

Brisbon hired sailors from Istanbul for the crew.
They carried the crates, one by one, into the cargo.
Sulim came and said that the gangway was damaged, too.
‘’What else? ’’‘’Three crates of goods and Abseil’ hands, ’’ said Fargo.

''We have to get to Gibraltar before September
In order to be able to pass through the mousetrap.
There is a strong current, which can be our ship's dismember.
It flows in the opposite direction. Here's the map! ''

Sam said, ''captain, how fast are the currents through this strait? ''
''The water at the surface flows between 2 - 4 knots.
The Autumn current can make us strain as through Hell's Gate.
Losing knots in speed, we can die; life is in my thoughts.''

'' The merchant wants to leave and doesn't know what to do, ''
Said Sam. Frederick and two men went into port to seek
Someone, who could repair the gangway and someone who
Could treat Abseil’ hands, because to sail he was too weak.


Geraldine was in the kitchen to prepare some food
For the ******. ''Where do you go? '' She asked Frederick.
''A man's job! You're too jealous. I don't mean to be rude.''
''At noon, they drink.'' She laughed. ''My time is always metric.''

Frederick descended quickly into the boat with
Sulim and Suaram. They went ashore and went up
In northeastern outskirts of the town, where the fifth
House was an unfinished jewel under the sky's cup.

After two hours, they brought a few craftsmen the gangway
To repair. Finally, all the goods were brought on deck.
When the men started to eat, 'twas the end of the day.
'' The water swallows the sun; it's time for the dreams' trek.''

Said Sam while eating bread. ''And darkness engulfs the day.''
On the deck, the lanterns' light made the place enchanting.
They ate in silence. The water sprayed wet pearls away.
Frederick said, ''Now, the timeless our sleep is granting.''

(to be continued....)

Poem by Marieta Maglas

"Nyamama owada in e mara ma oingo nyiri duto"-Ongoro Jakarachuonyo.

Busy listening to luo music; What a cool evening of inspiration.

I felt a lot of connection hearing my brothers defining love with such honesty.
   "Nindo otama yawa nindo tama yaye kaparo nyadundo"

The purity of rhythm was soaking my blood . Rhumba is soothing with notable songs like “Elector Nyarkano” by Madanje Perimeter.

Prezda “Igwe” Bandasson
“Nyisuba” one of his best creations. What i love most about Bandasson is that he got unique style and writing skill not like his fellow benga artists; If you like  Ferre Gola, now this the man to listen to.

My evening was going on well with some ohangla likes of ; "Kanungo".

“Kanungo is one of the song that you must have heard wherever you are in this country. Its one of the top songs of both 2014 and 2015 even though it's not my musical taste but Otieno Aloka defines Ohangla in a creative way; The drums are well arranged and composition is just amazing.

That brings me to a funny question who is Emma Jalamo?  He is not old in the game but the guy has come up with a unique Ohangla sound that takes him at par with the rhumba musicians as old fork and young people alike listen to his music with zeal. His new album, “Sherry” is a master piece with hits like “Wivu mbaya”.

Luo music is intelligent entertaining and soothing .

Tony Nyadundo is another seasoned musician who has traveled wide with his Ohangla beat which spread across the country like bush fire. He released hits like "Mapenzi Kizunguzingu".

My playlist couldn't be complete minus The bird aka Osogo Winyo;
he has taken a low profile of late, musically, but he has some of the best Ohangla sounds of this decade.

Musa Juma and Limpopo Band is so common in luo with sweet resonating songs like ; "Aggrey ,Maselina,Lake Victoria" .

It didn't stopped their; i went deep to discover heartbreak sounds likes of "Our Only John Juniour".
John juniour, is one of current trending names in Nyanza due to his sweet voice and romantic writing skills. "Nyoremo and kalisto baba" are well crafted when it comes to composition.

Another talented artist is ; Wuod Phiby who is also a producer and sound engineer at Barikiwa studio. He's the owner of hit songs like " Cham gi ****'i" and many more.

Makadem is one of the the artist signed to Ketebul music is known worldwide with a brands that precedes him as he is commonly known as the Ohangla man.

We have alot of talented luo artists but let me focus on our own few who are so creative when it comes to fusing . I'm talking of Owiyo ; She is one of the first female artists to fuse the Nyatiti beat with modern fusion and with songs like “Kisumu 100”, she still remains so relevant in the industry that her new song, “wamiel” is doing quite fine.

I've listened to a lot of modern Benga maybe ones played on the radio. I was not well informed that much on old sounds but when i dug the tapes and crates to so called luo "thum gi timbegi".
Abila gi thum machon ; I discovered names like;
1) George Ramogi
George ramogi died but left a name for himself with songs like Affline the Pretty and Wiya Chandore Malit.

2) Ochieng Kabaselleh
When we were growing up we use to hear  songs like," Zainabu,Achi Maria and Dunia mokili".  Kabaselleh and Luna Kidi Band were the voice of love within Nyanza at that time.

3) Okatch Biggie
"Nyathi nyakach atimni ang'o?"
Before his death he sold thousand of copies of the same record. He had countless hit songs like "Okatch pod ngima,Hellena nya kabondo e.t.c".

4) Osito Kale
Osito and Ogina Koko termed to bring some of remarkable songs like "Rapar Angelina" .Asembo born artist is one of luo musician with aggressive thoughts and creativity.

5) Ouma Omore
Many of new generation might not have known him but he got massive Jams like "Atwech Nyaduse" were so common in my parents mouth. He wrote many songs on him like "Perry Odhi Chuth,To Natimi Nade e.t.c".

5) D.O Misiani
The late misiani and Shirati band was and still one of the voices who spoke against corruption in moi regime with songs like "Bim en Bim,Lee tinde mor and Amolo piny Pako Te". Tanzania born Benga star rose to fame with songs like "Auma Lando and Wich Teko Ok Kony".

6) Collela Mazee
I don't have much to say about Collela but lyrics like;
"Kare piny luoro ka aleki nya john" caught my attention. Collela was a great composer with every rhyme and sense falling at their place".

We have thousand artists(some died)who did and still doing music from Nyanza i couldn't mention all even though there are different genres associated with Luo music like Benga , Ohangla, Rhumba, Afro-fusion and the likes, the musicians have always strive to be at the top of the music game. By Luo music, I mean those music sang partly or fully in Dholuo,the music is honest,creative and enjoyable.

I'm blessed to say;This artists have done great with their music and still doing it.

By Quoting The Late Ongala lyrics..."Mziki haina mwenyewe", As long as you can create;
Educative
Entertaining
And melodical changes a persons life don't stop doing it. Music is power. Let's support our own.

   Compiled By Budding Dirt.

Poems about the Moon and Stars

These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)



Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret...
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once again—
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse


Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!

Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today



Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch

She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...

what do we know of love,
or duty?



Kindred
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark...
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?

Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?

Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?

I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.



Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...

Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.

The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.

Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.

Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.



Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps...

How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded...

They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover's ease idly tracing flesh...

They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen...

Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda...

Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.

Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes syphilitic craters
and veiled by ghostly willows, palely looms,
while we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue—
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise—
adagio, the music she now hears,
while we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars' bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

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

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

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



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka... if I wished
upon a frozen star... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm...
yet something still not love... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove...

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. I believe this was my first attempt at blank verse.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Originally published by The Lyric



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe's.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace's or Mesopotamia's.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool's gold.



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,

I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.

The end of every man's the same
and every god's as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on

to hope when there's no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance...

Quiescent unions... thoughts of bliss, of hope...
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars...
like childhood's long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions... slip and bra...

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon's illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.

Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England). I believe I wrote the first version of "Listen" around age 17.

Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, sky, nightfall, tonight, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love

Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"

I

In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky
        waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in
        the night-time red downtown heaven
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering
        these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty
        of our lives, irritable baggage clerks,
nor the millions of weeping relatives surrounding the
        buses waving goodbye,
nor other millions of the poor rushing around from
        city to city to see their loved ones,
nor an indian dead with fright talking to a huge cop
        by the Coke machine,
nor this trembling old lady with a cane taking the last
        trip of her life,
nor the red-capped cynical porter collecting his quar-
        ters and smiling over the smashed baggage,
nor me looking around at the horrible dream,
nor mustached ***** Operating Clerk named *****,
        dealing out with his marvelous long hand the
        fate of thousands of express packages,
nor fairy Sam in the basement limping from leaden
        trunk to trunk,
nor Joe at the counter with his nervous breakdown
        smiling cowardly at the customers,
nor the grayish-green whale's stomach interior loft
        where we keep the baggage in hideous racks,
hundreds of suitcases full of tragedy rocking back and
        forth waiting to be opened,
nor the baggage that's lost, nor damaged handles,
        nameplates vanished, busted wires & broken
        ropes, whole trunks exploding on the concrete
        floor,
nor seabags emptied into the night in the final
        warehouse.

                II

Yet ***** reminded me of Angel, unloading a bus,
dressed in blue overalls black face official Angel's work-
        man cap,
pushing with his belly a huge tin horse piled high with
        black baggage,
looking up as he passed the yellow light bulb of the loft
and holding high on his arm an iron shepherd's crook.

                III

It was the racks, I realized, sitting myself on top of
        them now as is my wont at lunchtime to rest
        my tired foot,
it was the racks, great wooden shelves and stanchions
        posts and beams assembled floor to roof jumbled
        with baggage,
--the Japanese white metal postwar trunk gaudily
        flowered & headed for Fort Bragg,
one Mexican green paper package in purple rope
        adorned with names for Nogales,
hundreds of radiators all at once for Eureka,
crates of Hawaiian underwear,
rolls of posters scattered over the Peninsula, nuts to
        Sacramento,
one human eye for Napa,
an aluminum box of human blood for Stockton
and a little red package of teeth for Calistoga-
it was the racks and these on the racks I saw naked
        in electric light the night before I quit,
the racks were created to hang our possessions, to keep
        us together, a temporary shift in space,
God's only way of building the rickety structure of
        Time,
to hold the bags to send on the roads, to carry our
        luggage from place to place
looking for a bus to ride us back home to Eternity
        where the heart was left and farewell tears
        began.

                IV

A swarm of baggage sitting by the counter as the trans-
        continental bus pulls in.
The clock registering 12:15 A.M., May 9, 1956, the
        second hand moving forward, red.
Getting ready to load my last bus.-Farewell, Walnut
        Creek Richmond Vallejo Portland Pacific
        Highway
Fleet-footed Quicksilver, God of transience.
One last package sits lone at midnight sticking up out
        of the Coast rack high as the dusty fluorescent
        light.
        
The wage they pay us is too low to live on. Tragedy
        reduced to numbers.
This for the poor shepherds. I am a communist.
Farewell ye Greyhound where I suffered so much,
        hurt my knee and scraped my hand and built
        my pectoral muscles big as a ******.

                             May 9, 1956

Back at Donnie's place
this chick had shown me her ****.
Her brother was some guy we ran with.
She had just gotten her ******* pierced
and wanted to know what I thought.
She was a thick girl
with blonde hair
and big chubby ****.
Later
we were at a bar
one of our friends was the DJ
and another was the doorman
so all of us 18 year-old scumbags
were able to drink without too much hassle.
The night started the same way it always did
the first song of the night was always the same
'Symphony of Destruction' by Megadeth
our whole crew sitting in the corner booths
out of the light & in the dark.
We were the dimmer of lights
The party crashers
The woman stealers
The Black Circle.
We downed shot after shot
of this green **** they had
called 'Zombie'.
Drunk off my ***
feeling warm & fuzzy
I went outside for a smoke.
Matt W. ***** lay next to me on the concrete patio
in the back alley of the bar.
I had barely lit the cigarette
when the thick girl with
the big pierced ******* came out back.
We made ******* conversation
for about a minute
before I asked to see her **** again.
She carefully pulled them out
wincing at how sore they still were.
We started making out
and she asked me if I wanted to go somewhere.
I motioned towards the darkened alley behind us.
Matt lay on the ground
Laughing to himself and staring at the night sky
Taking long drags from his cigarette.
In the dark behind some cardboard boxes
And empty liquor crates
She kissed me hard and messy
Both of us reeking of ***** and cigarettes
That stinky combination.
“Why don’t you let those get some air?”
I asked, pointing at her massive mammaries.
“Okay, but…be gentle okay? They’re still really sore.”
“You got it darlin’.”
And out they came, hanging like gods in the sky
I was down on my knees
With my head under her skirt
Just going to town on this thick chick
Like I hadn’t eaten for weeks.
Her hands gripping my greasy hair
And pulling hard
As I got faster and faster
Licking and ******* like my life depended on it
Reaching up and squeezing those *******
As gently as I possibly could.
And then she tensed up
Her knees shaking, trembling, and finally
Buckling as she came
Still holding me by the hair
She pulled me back and out from under that little red skirt.
“Oh my god. Just give me a second.”
She asked, trying to catch her breath
And stop her legs from shaking.
I stood up and gave her a ***** flavored kiss.
“Well?” I asked.
“I’ll go down on you…..if that’s what you want…”
“Of course.”
And she got down on her knees
In that dark alley.
“Ouch.” She squeeled.
“What is it?”
“The ground’s got a bunch of rocks or some ****. ****.”
“Here…” I grabbed one of the cardboard boxes
broke it down in a matter of seconds
and laid it on the ground
at my feet.
“There ya go.”
Before she put it in her mouth
She laughed.
“You’re such a gentleman.”
“I have my moments.”
Afterwards
I walked back over to Matt on the patio
Buckling up my pants.
The lady thanked me
Said it was nice meeting me
And walked back inside to her brother and friends.
Donnie was now sitting with Matt on the curb.
“Where the **** did you go?”
I just started laughing.
It took him a second, but Donnie figured it out.
“Did you just **** that fat chick?”
“No man. I just got a *******. That’s all.”
“What the **** Danny? What are you a male ******* or something?”
I just kept laughing
“Hey ******* man. Nobody gives a ******* like a fat chick.”
Matt rolled over and spoke up,
“The man has a point Donnie.”

O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!

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



Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



The Witch
by Michael R. Burch

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



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise

to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,

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

it's Halloween!



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

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

if nevermore again.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

dreaming of blood,
her fangs ― white ― baring,

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



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

Published by The HyperTexts



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

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

How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



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

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



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



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

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

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



Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

their skeletal love ― impossibility!



Dark Gothic
by Michael R. Burch

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



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

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


Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)

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


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



Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
lifeless at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
― Michael R. Burch, after Simonides



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

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


Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

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

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

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

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

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

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

Need is reborn; love dies.



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Duet
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Horror
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

I love her beyond and despite even shame.



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

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



Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”

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

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

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

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

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

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

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

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

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



No One
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

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

I sought Her ...

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

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

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

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



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



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



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



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

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

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

He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

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

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

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

Evil, the rat.



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



Liar
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Originally published by The Lyric



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

Published as the collection "Halloween Poems"

a lung full of pride
and delicate wipes of strife
a lonely beloved awaits this night
for a single beam of flaming light  

oceans toil and swell intimacy
each breath preserved with spell
a single outcrop a lighthouse stood
trailing its light for those misunderstood

misfits charity they blew along north
sway restlessly relentlessly upon frothy shores
eyes filtered films fog chicanery cancer
which have eroded away fruitless dancers

a thousand chipped wooden crates
nestled bodies hidden in darkness, await
this light which beams high above sea
beholds rehabilitation the key

Last week I got an urge to lay on a rooftop, and drink ***** under the stars,
so I packed an empty backpack with svedka, a notebook, and a cellphone; and went on a mission.
I spent an afternoon looking around.
Taking notes on how in the hell, I could get up to a place that was flat, a roof, and could see the stars.

As it turns out,
the rooftops are not a place Freeport wants you to be.

in fact, one staircase directly leading to the top of a building specifically said
"No Trespassing"
Keeping me out with a locked metal door.

so I kept adventuring.

It did not occur to me until after I had already spent quite awhile scribbling down notes on locations of
milk crates I could use,
ledges low enough to grab,
dumpsters I could maybe move over just a bit,

how illegal it may be,
(I'M still not sure)
Or how dangerous it may be
(probably quite very)
To go on this adventure.

I texted a beautiful girl and asked if she wanted to drink ***** under the stars.

being the suave romantic that I am,

Having spent my whole morning surveying different routes to the rooftops.

Having planned out such a storybook evening, obviously her answer was,

"nah, I'd rather stay home, smoke ****, and watch the new season of Orange is the new black."

*******, Ruby Rose...
Stop. stealing. my dates.

After introducing myself to a handful of other potential candidates, I finally find a woman who believes climbing onto a rooftop and drinking ***** would be a swell time.

By the time I pick her up and get back to the spot,
it's late enough that Freeport is a ghost town.
We run down the middle of the street, me dragging her, doctor and companion style towards the first flawless plan:

Milkcrates behind linda beans.

We stack them up like steps and walk up to the top of a metal ceiling
Affixed perfectly above a flight of stairs that leads to the top floor.
I thought, "maybe we could climb the metal ceiling like a ramp."

it turns out
that not only is it
incredibly difficult not to
fall off of a slanted flimsy ramp
with no handles. But it is also: Terrifying!

Eventually I make it to the top and realize:
"****, There is still a tall ledge I have to hoist myself onto"
I look down to the short brunette quivering
on the ramp's lowest tier and decide that there is no way either of us were going to make it.

"Hey rose, " (That wasn't her real name)
Let's try a different way up.

attempting to crawl down slowly,
my **** scoots forward, hands behind me,
I slip and start gliding down like a children's slide.
flailing and attempting to catch myself before
falling off the edge and plummeting onto a dumpster.

(Whistling noises)

Thud!

She screams.
I laugh uncontrollably.

She slowly descends our statuesque landmark milkcrate staircase.
Like an angel coming from ghetto heaven.

I lift myself up and hop down off the dumpster.

putting my backpack down,
I check to see if the ***** bottle is okay.
It's fine.

"Good job, *******."
"We're fine."
"You're an idiot."
"I could have died, don't I at least get a kiss or something?"

She gives me a disapproving look, then kisses me.

eventually we did
make it up to a rooftop,
Where we laid and watched the stars.
They were warm, distant, and beautiful.

I liked feeling their glow on my skin.
But I loved taking the journey to meet them.

If thine eye offends thee
pluck it out....

War offends
my eye.

All my
senses
defiled
*****
disemboweled
by the
abomination
of war.

My mind
disregards
denigrates
reneges
warps time
destroys values
alters psyches
lays waste
to my
conscience
of hope.

Mine eye offends me
the complicit witness
complacently
ambivalent
turning deaf ears
to groans
of the wounded
wails of the aggrieved
silence of the dead;
shutting doors
to sanctuaries
where refugees
seek safe houses,
locking factories
where men seek work,
level homes
where women nurture,
strafe playgrounds
where children laugh,
raise cities
where people
learn to be human,
immolate mosques
where
God's Children
cry out to the
Beneficent One.

Mine eye offends me,
my gut sickens,
to witness
the slaughter
of innocents
droning on
no angels to save
the million Issac's
savagely smashed to bits
by a Tomahawk's blow.

God's vengeance
escalates
the celestial ledgers
dripping red ink
from excessive
collateral damage,
people reduced
as objects used
to secure a loan
indeed an ARM
on a real time
American nightmare
whose reset rate
is mounting body counts
and massive budget allocations
protecting undisturbed flows
of corporate profits
valued in barrels
of imported blood.

Mine eye offends me
an innocence lost
Veritas vanquished
life is devalued
humanity debased
compassion defunct
empathy a twisted satire
an indelible weakness
incidental hostage
to the torridness
of the lurid play
of savage nations
projecting will,
a devastation
of action.

Mine eye offends me
the message of
sweet Jesus
a way of light
transformed into
biblical justification
agitprop verse
stoking blood lust zeal
for apostate infidels
sons of Abraham's
unworthy spawn,
of Hagar the *****
******* child Ishmael
turned out again
from tribal tents
of an absentee father
from an unfriendly
paternity.

This black *******
an abomination
in the sight of Allah
celebrates
a zeal to ****
unholy disciples
yearning to fill
banana crates
with body parts
draped in
drab Hijabs
decorated with
satanic verses
from a
Holy Quran
carved with
bayonets
of self righteous
Crusaders
armed with rifles
inscribed with
Gospel verses
on deadly gun
barrel stocks
to ramp the passion
of the righteous Crusade
against Godless apostates.

Mine eye offends me
as I witness
the **** of
corporate mercenaries
churning bereaved
Blackwaters
beholden only
to shareholders
gobbling spoils of war
to safely exit
to private vomitoriums
to expunge the excess
of gluttony
only to
quickly return
to engorge themselves
at the public troughs
again.

No constitutional
restraints
save the
strict guidelines
of holy
corporate governance scriptures
ruthlessly enforced with
golden carrots
of multi-million dollar
stock options
and the brutal stick
of shareholders divine right
to quarterly dividends
and above average
equity returns.

Corporate warriors
anointed by
holy oil
proffered
by capitalist shamans
and US Senators
conferring
jurisprudential deferment
on civil law
recusing them from
any behavior
to recognize the humanity
of captive insurgents.

Mine eye offends me,
as the flag
draped coffins
of returning
servicemen
and women
continue to pile
on the boiling tarmac
of Dover Air Force Base.

Tearful salutes,
folded flags
and mournful dirges
of prerecorded Taps
are small compensation for
shattered families,
and a wasted life,
unnecessarily spent,
criminally sacrificed
in a pointless conflict
in service to a lie.

Mine eye offends me
as I watch
my country's soft parade
of growing militarization
xenophobic fear
compelled patriotism
salute and goose step
to the flash of sword
and the sound of guns
and the glittering
medals of valor
adorning the chests
of a nations warriors.

How barbaric
are we?
allocating
overstuffed
apportionment
of weapons
and armories
while
people are
foreclosed
forcing armies
of unemployed
Joads
to ride
en masse on
an Acela Express
to a crowded
poor house
a listless journey
on pock marked
highways
arriving at
dreaded
destinations
to defunct
townships
offering
empty factories
and closed schools.

Screaming in silence
I scratch at my eyes
with numbed fingers.

Matthew 18:9

Music Selection:
The Doors, The Soft Parade

Oakland
3/17/10
jbm

Bullet and blade
Have ended
Many a friend.

Some were warriors
Living by sword, others
Just unlucky.

No one safe from
Anything. I buy her
Pepperspray instead of

Flowers these days.
Keep leaving
Butterfly knives in the

Pockets of her coats.
I am a man of non-violence,
But one with worlds to lose.

I miss the days when the fight
Ended as ground was hit.
Knuckles and bones were

All we needed; men fencing
For themselves with nothing
But themselves,  

And women were there to be
Charmed and fought over. Not
Left torn and terrified

In a ditch, broken beyond repair,
Their men helplessly wielding
Lead and steel at the absence

Of the animal responsible.
I'll buy her flowers today.
Flowers, and walk her home.

Bullet and blade
Have ended
Many a friend.

The weight of their
Tragedies is about the
Same

As that of the crates of ammunition
It takes to keep the world
Safe from the threat of itself.

Crates of fruit from names of colors,
Strewn about like our past lovers.
Left alone and peeled apart,
Pulp fills the drain but leaves the heart.

Agnes McDuff collected strange stuff,
Or so the story goes:

There were old pots and pans,
String, rubber bands,
Boxes and boxes of clothes,
Newspapers, plates,
Books stored in crates,
And candlesticks lined up in rows.
Some mason jars,
Toy trucks and cars,
A model train with a whistle that blows,
Needles and spools,
All kinds of tools,
And shoes with holes in the toes.

There were tables and chairs,
Bookends in pairs,
A grandfather clock that was broke,
An old brass spittoon,
Some Sunday cartoons,
And a bicycle mssing a spoke.
Four or five hundred old wooden blocks,
Twenty-three pair of grey woolen socks,
A Christmas Edition bottle of Coke,
A board game missing directions,
A bat, a ball, a catcher’s mitt, two baseball card collections,
And a great big rusty tuba.  What a joke!

There was other stuff, but you’ve heard enough;
About what was stored in
The Attic of Agnes McDuff.

Part 2
Agnes’ attic was quite special
But not for the things it contained
But for how she had to get there
Please let me explain!

Agnes had a one-story house
A flight of stairs led to the attic.
When she opened up the door,
The light came on automatic.

It opened to a hallway
Where there was another door
Another light, another hall, and more stairs, which
Led back down to the first floor!

Where an elevator waited
To take her up again?
But it had just one button
And it was numbered “10”.

When she pushed it, it was crazy
The elevator turned upon its side,
Grew wheels and drove out on the street
For an amazing ride!

Across a long suspension bridge,
Then underneath a tunnel,
And then it went around and round
Like circling down a funnel!

It dropped upon a railroad track
Hooked onto the caboose
And followed to the roundhouse
Where it finally broke loose.

It turned around a couple times
And ran out toward the street
The elevator ran, of course
Because it had grown two feet!

It ran across an avenue,
Around a lake, and through a park
And then through another tunnel
Where it was very dark.

A mile later it emerged,
At Agnes’ house, by her front door!
The elevator walked inside,
And was on the second floor!!

So that’s how Agnes reached her attic,
Perhaps someday you’ll go there too,
Push the elevator button,
And you’ll find my story’s true!

Part 3
Agnes stood there in her attic
And smiled at all her stuff
That almost ends the story of
The Attic of Agnes McDuff.

But Agnes’ story can never end
Her smile turned to a frown,
Because you see poor Agnes
Forgot how to get back down!!
PwL  May 1, 2015

In your past, this past
they weren't valued
no one said they were members of the family
what walks on four legs and is furry and cute is only
to last as long as nature intended and then to be disposed of

Veal calves in crates, taken from mothers on the day of their birth
to make more milk for humans, horse slaughter for glue
and foi gras, ducks and geese locked in a vice grip of their cages
metal tubes rammed down their throats and force fed until a liver disease
develops, painful, but given no respite
and served as a delicacy and
fur coats from animals skinned alive right here in America
still when mink farms are outlawed in the Netherlands and  
two million dogs and cats skinned in China every year not to mention
other horrors and no one cared or looked their way because they are
only animals, and voiceless and helpless and no one cared to give them
a voice or advocacy
"that's why they're there, for our use, people still say" who profit from an industry
of suffering

And today, there are people who try to give them a voice and there are veterinarians who will try to help you with your member of the family, as he suffers, in his old age
a bag of fluids hangs from my exercise  bike, and intermixed with my medications
is the painkiller and anti-nausea pills for my dear old friend
whose pancreas is failing
and father, this is foreign to you
you pretend it is a crime
silence is the only thing connecting us now

I hope you enjoyed your last barrage of unkind words
I think you did. The saddest thing I've learned about people like you
is
you feel better after such an attack, to see me reeling, bleeding on the ground
and you feel better, calmer and purged.
A kind of misbegotten peace settles over you
an exploitive peace from another's tears and pain

And yes, father, there were no agencies to give a voice to children
when you were young
no CPS, to aid my nine year old ***** friend
as a code of silence enveloped her attacker
to protect him, the one who destroyed her

But today there is a small brigade of a modern kind of love
to give a voice, protection, soothing to the ones who can
only suffer at our hands and not protect themselves from
our wrath and exploitation

and it is a better world for that, father
for my furry pancreatic friend and for any other
nine year old **** victims here

We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.

The bomb opens like a shoebox.
And the child?
The child is certainly not yawning.
And the woman?
The woman is bathing her heart.
It has been torn out of her
and as a last act
she is rinsing it off in the river.
This is the death market.

America,
where are your credentials?

however i choose
to abuse these loose reigns
to gain whatever gallops may overtake
to overrun the rampant jade
in summer's plum, my teeth in no shade
but the plump flesh
of a ****** day; brightly at heel
of my toes, bejeweled
in ocean spray
fresh cut lawns with diamond dew, disarranged
sprinkler cast before midday
to cheat the sun,  a sip or two -
and slake the thirst
of emeralds
i would soon delight
to cantor through.
to roam
with eyes too wide
to choose
a culdesac ... to dread-
or view. Perhaps
a glance at crates
and crude cadavers of a life
removed -
from every thing i worship twice !
while prancing, ever-prancing -
through
the manicure
that has ' no cure '
for Nature's way
of tending too the over-groped
and fussy plucked,
some Charter barks
you have to do; What Art dispels
what man has framed ?
what power drapes
the Land more true ? A dozen Elves ?
Prayer in school ?
what genius
never fails to ask -
the question that reveals the fruit ?
or listens .... to the loamy grass ?

a very
few, if any who -
would
do
the same; the
mortgage and a
landscape, paid;
' in-full.'  [ The first ]

with love, the glade ?

The Earth
is all i know,
would do
for nothing,
all...  Spite all -
we do.
however we blockade
or stake
the acreage
we have papers prove-
belong to every
dispossessed
with keys to doors
that lead to
rooms -
that seldom have the sun
inside the red Redwood
the old thing died
too raise your roof
under god's blue
sky.

To shelter
men from other
men,
who covet what
you keep in
them.

a 1000 yrs of Life, undone  
to build our vapid
ornaments.
a forgery
of hearths; and hardly worth
the vasty parlors
lost.

we parcel, carve
and auction
off
our petty Lots of
*******...

the empty ones we polish
while our homeless
remain home-
less

the echoes of a simpler time
too weak to even haunt them.

our shame intact, we slash
and burn, for coffers have
no conscience.

our charity is scarcely more than earplugs
for a blindness; a band-aid for an Apathy
a thimble and
a wine list
etched inside the hollow
just below the milk of kindness
that soured
in a palsy hand
that brought a drop
and spilled it.


However
I have chosen more
than fiberglass and
fountains
my habit is to wander off
the beaten path
to mountains.
To slopes
of avid avalanche
and quiet shouts
of Silence -
that echo and return
as if to soothe
my withers'
finally...

an
ache
to meadowlark and leap
for leagues without a harness
without
a gate to keep
the lush pavilions
at a distance

nothing
to contain
the gift
and no one
there to
name
it.

nothing but the wind to kiss
and no books to
explain
it.

A shed, six by four, painted,
Landy green, black roof
Local fishmongers
Down by the harbor gates
Battered wooden, fish crates
Smelling of the ocean, the waves,
The spray
Weathered, worn, faded brown
Trawlers name a disappearing outline
A boy in shorts, blond hair
Tugging at his mother’s skirts
Pointing,
Spattered orange dotted flat fish
Flapping, fresh from the boat.
Propped against the side wall
A box of jade, and emerald sea jewels
Eyes frozen in time.
Chalk board hung from open door,
With names, prices , beyond understanding.
To the boy fantastical creatures  
A man in a white coat, money rattling in pocket
Scales set on a bench, ready to measure out scales
For the women of the seaside town
All the gossip, the fish, and the stories
From one little shed down by the harbor wall
A boys face mesmerized, by cod
Larger than he, caught on a wall hook
Swift knife movements, and fillets,
Laid on yesterdays newspaper
Bones, and head thrown into a bucket
Large lazy yellow eyed seagull,
Sauntering like a casual thief, eye
On the bucket…

Teach me how to forget thee!
Ah, 'fore this silky moon do I pray,
so t'at th' sky shalt forgive me
andth grant but forgiveness to me
for the love I've thought of today.
T'is is still the love of thee,
and 'tis but translucent little soul
t'at refuses to leave the barren crates of
my heart. What a pampered, but
captivating creature! And what a shrill doth
it send through my spines!
O my thee, I beg, I beg with thousands
of teardrops that I shalt soon be freed of this love-
and it be carried away by some seething
clouds. But never shalt it leave me-never! T'is is
also but my delirious-and conscious expectation,
as realise do I hereth-t'at I shalt never enliven
myself again, without thee.
Everyone doth t'eir own stories, as special as t'ey are-
but mine, with thine, areth united together, bound
to each ot'er like crazy, as we mutually thirst for
one another more and more!
How t'is greediness shan't liberate me, and my doings-
from t'ese thoughts of thee, never!
For I am still incapable of heaving my legs
without thee-I am but a stiff lass, and paralysed
areth my senses-and their untarnished caprices,
in the moonlight and as the sunlight arises
on the following day when I ameth without thee.
How I disdain such contraventions! As my love is now
threatened by acute ambiguity-andth I know not
whether thou shalt ever miss or not miss me. But still
I do love thee! And as long as I breath I shalt
but long for thee-I am deafened by thy charms; and
pacified only by thy presence. I am calm and weary
in thy arms! But why ought it to be so difficult
to pour my love? Why is it that I am not to be destined
to cross thy paths-especially on t'ose days of precarious solitudes-
why wert thou but away from me? And even now, why can I
only think of thee-as an untouchable apparition,
whom I can cherish only in my dreams? My
dreams, my wild dreams, areth but vain resemblances of t'ese
superfl'us thoughts. My thee, my thee, I should desirously admit t'is:
thou art still th' only one I love, and shalt always be! Thou knowst,
my love, thou knowst it impeccably-look at my delicate
hands-yes, t'ese feeble hands! T'ese loving hands, my love!
T'eir young beauty is marred by thy absence-
here and now, unripe as it was, but
abhorred by thy demure unexistence-it withered and
wasth frightfully sent into unsullied gloom. Look at 'em-
how derived from isolation t'eir frailness hath been-
hark to t'eir suffering silence, my love! T'eir palms areth
but now lined with traces
of paleness, sullenness, and ferocity. Ferocity for pleasure,
my dear. Ferocious, and wicked desires for thy love-thy
love, only! But why doth t'ese things needta happen? What isth
my mistake-so t'at I cannot caress thy real flesh-but
th' picturesque one in my imagination-ah! Thou should believe me-
my love! I would love thee fervently-and greedily, I would kiss thee
just like a ****** rose cooes at its doubtful morning-I would
cuddle thee in my arms-as I hath always longed to do!
I would sit 'fore thee under brimming candlelight, andth th'
innocuous tree next to us-andth gleefully relate thee stories
of wondrous and adventurous affection. T'at affection so dear-my love!
Hark to t'eir tale-and th' heartwarming melodies of th'
nightingale. Th' nightingale t'at shalt bring mirth into our
bogs-bogs of endearment, fragments of promises, and rainbows of
glows-all t'at marks but our very own
chained love. Our forever love! Andst our eternal union-
just as thou and I shalt shoulder together. But wherefore art thou,
my love? Swarms of gentlemen hath I seen-with feather caps
and grinning lips in morning scenes-but thou art still th' one
t'at I seek, and long to heareth; how thou shalt fast bound down
th' stairs, and blend into th' sunny morning walk-for another flood of
salubrious errands-as every day shalt we do, until old do we
grow together, as one union, and one single, generous eternity.
Thou art th' only one I love.

The numbing light dims to black,
Car lights replace the dark and you tremble.
Like rose petals in the wind,
You waver and eventually collapse to the pavement.
The pavement is your destiny and future though.

Crates too massive to lift surround you like a canyon,
Vanishing those blazing car lights from your eyes
You take in everything like a breath of icy air,
Brief and crucial.

The hollow note echoes to stillness,
Infectious beats take their place and you sway.
Like a cottontail in the summer breeze,
You lean from side to side, finally standing tall.
And the standing transforms into your grip on life

Ships swerve towards you like starving crocodile,
Blocking out that deep bass.
You tread carefully like a waterlily a top a pond,
Almost  imaginary but real at the same time.

Your bones rattle around inside your thinning skin,
The light shocks and shakes you
And the car lights reappear, taking center stage
Like the moon in the sky..
You shiver and spin around,
All that you see is your future.

Phone calls were made, meetings were held and the new group was set to get started

There was lots to be learned and so little time for the lessons to all be imparted

The plan was immense, it was larger this time and the time was going by fast

They would all act as one, getting everything done and their goal was to not finish last

It was done every year, in the schools through the town, it was something the kids all enjoyed

But this year was tough, with all the closings and stuff and the fact there was more unemployed

Each school was set up to blitz through the town and to collect all the food that they can

But with more on the list and those who would surely be missed were the ones who set last years plan

Team leaders were picked in each group at the school, and their job was to get this all done

And to beat last years tote by at least one more pound and to make sure that it was all fun

Pep rally's were held to get the students involved and help motivate those involved

But with more needing help and less firms out to help, they had problems they had to get solved

On December the first, the kids all set out ringing bells in the malls and the stores

From there they would go with buses and trucks and collect food by knocking on doors

The school who did best bringing in the most pounds would be win a cup and awards

But to all those concerned, they had to get out and blanket the town in great hoards

People backed out from tasks all assigned, It was cold and they had too much to do

There was homework as well, and jobs on the side and alot wouldn't see the task through

But they all persevered and the food all came in, cans and boxes and crates and in bags

There was food left at school from donators unknown, just good wishes all written on tags

The goal was to raise an amount more than last and to do it in twenty two days

The total to date was behind just a bit but there was still time to make this year pay

So with one last great push the students went out and they held one last drive at the mall

If they collect one more ton, then all would be done and they could all know they answered the call

On Christmas Eve morn the principals met and they said they had all reached their goals

They shook all their hands and they stuck out their chests for they knew that they'd fulfilled their roles

The students were told at assemblies too, and the food was dropped off through the town

They had beat last years numbers by about fifty pounds even though they all thought they'd be down

So for all those they helped for the one day that month, where they had Christmas dinner and laughter

Was brought  back to earth by one voice in one school, who asked "What would these families eat the day after?"
.

It was 5:59 AM when the night ended,
When the night was completely quiet,
Yet, a song moaned incomprehensible verses,
and the portable heater vibrated,
the living room,
like a garden with fresh soil,
ready to be planted with thoughts ideas theories and laughs,
cigarettes half smoked in cups,
a few still swan-ly maneuvering smoke from the neck of the beer bottle,
Everything was good,
an accomplished sensation rushed over me,
with the warm sway of bourbon,
jackets socks shoes pants were sprawled across the floor,
no *** but still,
the sensation of ***, the mind. ******* itself,
being undressed by other Mad Like minds:
lust starving, love adventuring, money coasting, wisdom hungry.
Beside me the trashed 20 dollar sofas occupied by ***** blankets with *** stains and tiny shards of glass with two wise mad men, passionately sleeping, passionately dreaming.
A skinny tall window is in my peripheral vision,
a peripheral vision of the waking city,
of street lights flickering on and off,
the occasional beat-up car trudging along sadly with the wheels and eyes tired,
exhausted,
the car comes to a parking space,
behind the dumpster and it is lost,

The day was pure,
for 30 minutes to an hour,
the day was pure,
I had spent my 10 dollars on bourbon and cheap malt liquor,
which was gas money,
now it was fuel,
for the soul,
the body,
the path,
the vision,
the beauty,
we drove downtown in a blue Oldsmobile with the left tail light out,
while listening to classical music as homeless women and men,
walked heavily in their thin clothes,thin bodies,and torn clothes,
the liquor store was beautiful.
Sad, beautiful, in the way Beethoven's violin sonata No. 5 is,
the building was small,
originally a tiny home,
tall,
with a window destined by the Theological Gods,
to be gazed out of by a youthful girl,
completely fascinated by the world,
the occasional insect that would crawl across the window unknowing,
Unknowing of suffer, of girl, of boy, ***, good teeth, nice shoes, women, lovers, success,failure,death, and oil.
The insect crosses the window perhaps returning to its home,

Hauntingly Georg Trakl divine dead vines engulf the back, like a missing boy hugged by his Grandmother her old aged timed hands holding tight, the sides, where the rib cage of a naked women would be, and the roof of the remodeled destined window girl gazing house,

dead tired, and dead plastic blue and black and red milk crates are thrown out into backyard,
romantically sad,
the only sign of life is the neon 'OPEN' gleaming maliciously on the front door,

Driving back to Anthony's apartment,
made up whiskey jugs,
jugs crafted to be drunken by a platoon of war hungry sailors,
with letter perfumed coated writing lover girls in dresses,
waving their hands, their hearts, their ****** loyalty,
waiting for their man to return,
Braved,

But Anthony was no sailor,
he could out drink a platoon of sailors and still make love to a girl named Clementine with avocado eyes,

as we drive, passing dry and grayed used car lots, and pedestrians. Anthony asks,over the piano and violin,if we should go on a walk through the forest with our freshly purchased liquor.
I agree.
The piano continues on, as does an old black man at the bus stop,
mixing whiskey and orange juice, secretly between his old legs.

We laugh, and both praise him.

Our adventure beginning late in the night,
already drunk on the strong cheap malt liquor,
we bravely enter,
either the mouth,
the bowels,
the ****,
of the forest,
taking a tall can of liquor with us,
avoiding the sharp thin snapping tree limbs from our faces while lighting cigarettes,
passing the liquor between on another,

At peace finally,
comforted by the physical mix of chaos and beauty,
the drunk howling God cursing yelling mad hobo,
some where deep in the thick hairs of the forest,
the freight train smoothing by,
like a mothers eye,
and the distant trickle of a stream waterfall,
we sat in the wet,muddy ground,
monk like,
passing the cigarette,
the cheap malt liquor,
two mad,
wisdom monks,
observing,
the chaos,
the beauty,
our dharma,
our christ,
our buddha,
our temple.

RAINBOW FAIRY FLOSS BY THE SEASHORE    
From the 4th diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.    
      
We had a whale of a time last weekend on a trip with my family to the seaside resort named Slipslopslap Bay. It is located about three hours from my home.    
     
Once we arrived at our rented holiday wood cabin put our clothes away in the wardrobe and placed our food in the fridge, we all decided as a family what we would do next.    
     
My Mum, Flo, took my younger brother, Lemmy, to the local carnival for rides, drinks and even some pink coloured fairy floss and warm apple pie. My two much older, identical twin sisters, Emma and Jemma, went to the shops looking for souvenirs and some new summer clothes to wear. Dad, Smoochy and I went down to the pier by the seaside to do some fishing and to look at the large ships passing by.    
     
After a bit of fishing, and catching a slimy piece of seaweed, we spent time viewing the large ships with the help of Dad's trusty, homemade, fancy, far out, funny binoculars. Dad was getting tired after such a long drive, so he nodded off to sleep on a deckchair by the seaside.    
     
I stood on the fishing tackle box to get a better view of the very large ships. A huge wave crashed over the bow of a large ship, and then several of its cargo boxes, fell off the side and into the ocean.    
     
Zooming in with Dad's trusty, homemade, fancy, far out, funny binoculars, I could read the words on the outside of each crate. They spelt out the names of colours, such as: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and even Violet.    
     
On the bottom of each crate, was the name Fairy Floss, which was the funniest thing of all!    
     
From the corner of my right eye I saw a large whale swimming towards the floating crates. The whale began to smash all of them apart, with its very powerful long tail. The whale then swallowed up all of the different colours of the floating fairy floss in one huge gulp.    
     
It then emerged from under the water, but accidentally hit a shipping buoy marker that was floating nearby, flipping it into the air and back down again, right into it's blowhole.    
     
He swam towards the beach's safety swimming poles, and I thought, 'How I can help this whale with a shipping buoy marker stuck in its blowhole'!    
     
I fetched my fishing rod and cast it towards him, trying to hook onto the top of the buoy. But I couldn't quite get the hook attached under the top part of it.    
     
So I felt around in my back pocket and found my, very super sporty, single-shot, stylish slingshot that my Dad had made me last year. I shouted out to my new grouse pet mouse, Smoochy, you'll be right mate. Ready, set, go! whoosh went Smoochy, sailing through the air, luckily he landed on the whales back, first shot.    
     
I placed some cheese that Mum had made us for an afternoon snack, onto the hook and cast it again. On the third try, it hovered above the shipping buoy. Smoochy caught a whiff of Mum's cheese on the dangling fishing hook.    
     
He grabbed at the cheese and amazingly, placed the hook under the top part of the shipping buoy. I don't know if Smoochy knew what he was doing or if it was just an almighty lucky fluke.    
     
I pulled as hard as I could and wound and wound in that fishing line string. The stuck shipping buoy, came off with a pop. and sent Smoochy along for the ride.    
     
The force made me fall off the fishing tackle box and I landed on my behind. All of a sudden the whale blew a massive blast of multi coloured fairy floss up into the sky. It looked like a colourful rainbow haze just above the waves. Lots of people ran onto the pier to see what was going on.    
     
The whale then took off for the deep sea ocean, but I swear, as he turned his head towards the seashore, he looked directly at me and gave me a friendly thank-you wink.    
     
My dad woke up from the loud cheering noise of the excited crowd, but didn't believe me when I told him that I had hooked such a large catch with the help of Smoochy on our whale-of-a-time fishing adventure.    
     
Smoochy popped back into the safety of my top left-hand side pocket, and I thought I heard him say to me, as quick as a blink, 'please don't do that to me again'.    
     
I knew the fall backwards made me a bit sore, but boy I knew what I heard, and I will listen more carefully, to see if he talks anymore, for he is my, new pet grouse mouse Smoochy, after all.

This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers
          animal vines twisting over the line and
          slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
          in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
I recall out of my joy a night of misery

walking in the dark and the wind over broken earth,
          halfmade foundations and unfinished
          drainage trenches and the spaced-out
                    circles of glaring light
          marking streets that were to be
walking with you but so far from you,

and now alone in October's
first decision towards winter, so close to you--
          my arms full of playful rebellious linen, a freighter
          going down-river two blocks away, outward bound,
          the green wolf-eyes of the Harborside Terminal
                    glittering on the Jersey shore,
and a train somewhere under ground bringing you towards me
to our new living-place from which we can see

a river and its traffic (the Hudson and the
hidden river, who can say which it is we see, we see
something of both. Or who can say
the crippled broom-vendor yesterday, who passed
just as we needed a new broom, was not
one of the Hidden Ones?)
          Crates of fruit are unloading
          across the street on the cobbles,
          and a brazier flaring
          to warm the men and burn trash. He wished us
luck when we bought the broom. But not luck
brought us here. By design

clean air and cold wind polish
the river lights, by design
we are to live now in a new place.