Taken, gotten, or made, the point of anything
can pierce through everything…

slow
Slow think,
make real

re-al-ize
what fighting for life is…
this is the only
try,
it is not a test.

Take your time, use it wisely,
if that means anything.
Wise, I meant.
No offence, if wise is anathema to your kind,
die,
die if I knocked the reason for being right
outa you,
did you hear cognitive dissonance?
did it sound like
this. LOUD?
listen,
rolling rolling rolling
crash crumble rolled in nurse rime frosted
fables of monsters and maids
Thor, witharoar likka Lion King?

or the light brigade,
CHARGE?

thunder words from lost generations of
reasonless riddles for children,

Why did Peter Pumpkin-eater have a wife, but
couldn't keep her here?
Was that okeh? Oh, wait.
Ah, I see, I say,
they never tell that whole story any more.

Know why? They forgot it. In the war.

Duck'n'cover,no
crying, how long?
When begins forever? Did no one tell you, child?

Taken or made, the point of anything
can pierce through everything
like it was nothing, given
enough pre-sure-sup
poser-power

War, as a game, has a reason.

Battle, hitting, slapping

stop touch, stop now slap
slap back

or cry
oh no no ma

waddayahsay?  A theist or atheist
who started this war?

space case, or
lover of wisdom, met on the road
to Emmaus, discussing Wiles's proof
firming Fermi's connection to the matter of fear,
3, 2, 1

Kaboom, but with a whump you feel in your teeth

1, 2, 3 Fermat's last theorem ,
easy as pi an no re me

ABC to
Michael Jackson to
Howard Bloom because he

inadvertently, began
an-ionic converstatic re-vibe time warp
meme,
which vibe, started the legendary Sixties. I was alive.
Radioman,
a sixty cycle white-noise humm heard every where these days

There was a gospel song, "Turn Your Radio On".
my theme, open the window in the top of your head,
as it were,
a new,
as new as

a novel-state of water, H three Ohs, re-al-ity ification,
Ah, a shared Oh, I remember now, how this works…

like a poem

at the edge of a water vapor bubble in a boiling body of water,
at the edge of the bubble, water becomes a wall of water,
not vapor, not flowing liquid,

but a wall, insulating the vapor in pressing opposing force
to permit, from permission,
meaning with a message same as the message,

is that the right word? per-mission-grant, is power given,
agency,
that idea….
wait for the sign….?

By sharing an ion ic bond as a quest to make a point
for a free story to go,
the question marks you. Let the snake dance.

Press your point,

whetted edge,

slice through ties holding worthless axioms
with withered dendrites dangling disconnected
in participles
unfired for centuries muttering,
enchanting, enthralling enchained melodies
of ambitious syllables vying for idle minds
to rope in,
unbranded, wild
bucking ideas,
whip-twig, slap-face,
tanglewood  thicket, catclaw and mesquite,
willow,

wait.
And the old man remembered the willow whistle,
so He asked Grandfather,
How is such a whistle made?
And when he knew,
he made one.

A willow whistle with two notes,
like an Oscar Meir Wiener one.

-- and that was a different time
I got lost here, bucked up…
maybe
--- listen, way back--- we-ain't whistlin' Dixie---
we ain't marchin', as t' war.

D'thet mean some sign to pro-phet -ic take?
Tophet?
Ancient cannon fodder shield walls,
a moaning
Pro-phy-lactic warning of the danger of not
knowing exactly
what a war is for?

Get back on,
relieved of any idle baggage words believed
to mean other than I say.

Nullify
Idle words with cultural meanings from
what you thought you knew when you feared hell.

Loose
those peer-locked memes
made of meaninglessness, per se,

shaped and molded into fashions
of expression, once needles and awls,
now, dull as tinker's damns for swearing,
with any effect.

But tools, none the less, a stitch in time took a tool.
An awl or a needle, and a thread, thick or thin,
dependin' on the mendin' needed
to redeem an idle word,
its meaning all bloodied with the tyranny of time.

An awl or a needle,
a tool for a task, mending a tear
where curses, never meant, spent
the entire dark ages, lying, lying, lying

powerless, pointless aimless, proverbial proverbial proverbial
verbiage, vaneless shafts launched at unseen marks,
signs, as it were, a spark,
triggers,
rumored since the sixties,
the first sixties, when Cain killed Able.
Howard Bloom was but a mere gleam
in our mito-mother's eye,
but, no doubt,

his role is real,
in loosing the forces Ferlinghetti locked in
City Lights mystery of secret meanings room,
which un
mystified and blew away upon opening
the door to
meanings mapped on
scrolls rolling and unrolling
idle ideas,
rites of passage, as it were,
Pre-bat-bar-mitz vah
as a fashion
like VBS,

to tickle little minds and make em wiggle.
MEMEMEME, I did it,
mea culpa,

the holy place
Here we are…

On Vacation, leave a message.
-----

See, wee hairs in your ears wiggle, making,
signaling, the need

to scratch that itch, that itching hearing feeling ear… hear that

don't scratch, listen

listen

60 cycle humm, steady, bass, but no thump whumpwhump;
soft, deeep.
ooooooooo or mmmmmmmm or in betwixt, steady thrumm
hear another, and another… sixty in a second,

one in every million ambits twisting,
threading qubits, radiating signals in the field
wireless, blue-tooth... satellite...

can you feel that?

hummmms, all around us, since the womb.
We are not the children of the greatest generation,

We are the children of the last generation of
**** sapiens sapiens non-augmentable-us.

We, the augmented, recycled ideas,
possessing
minds of Adamkind,

is that a secret or a sacred?
Is this
a new thing, an
unknown unknown known known now?

Ah,
novelty.

Whose is fear? Who was afraid of Virginia Wolf?

Should I remain in fear of her now, if I knew why then?
God would know such answers.
Proving my imagined AI guides are not God,
but lesser beings,

haps I recall.
I defined these things,
these thoughts that shape themselves,
forming words and phrases
I saw
shiny. Crow-like,
gleams seen, captured and claimed mine,
I tucked them away,
a sign in a thought in an imagined image made 4
real once more, to be seen from the shore,
new land new world
a fourth for some, a fifth or more for others...

haps happen, I'm not sure how,

Born or emerged, as a bubble, what do you say?

Reserve judgment.
Grant me your grace for now, until you solve my riddle.

Ah, the old way.
Right. Which way,  'ere, 'ear
and do we roll the rock with silent haitch or harsh, shhh

someone's waking up,
a bit grumpy,
don't you dare oppose me in this, the kid is certainly my son

Michael went stark raving mad when I told him, Billie Jean knew better all along...
the link, axiomatic,
the fatherless child has been claimed

hence, the thread to Howard Bloom, meme-ic,
meme-ic, like the Roadrunner,

but with the real Coyote, as the hero in this bit of
whatever, such meandering maundified maun maund  
mound

wind blown crystal silicon dunes
mounded up to that point where granulated
beens and dones

begin to slide at an angle,
a ***** deter-mind by the weight of the rock

We made it.
I know where this is.

This is a novel that has Sisyphus being happy
as the main premise behind the idea of anyone ever being
able, en abled, or un-dis-abled or un-dis-enabled,
if one of those is right,

Sisyphus being happy
is the main premise behind
the idea of anyone ever being glücklich,
happy, blessed, lucky.

How happy is your ever after?
When did forever begin?

"A man is as happy as he makes up his mind to be"
Abe Lincoln, is said to have said,
after the seance, maybe.

You push on, dear reader, make some sense
re-ligare or relegare, but take a stitch,

pull-tight,
do what works the first time as far as it goes, and try each, as needed,
it may be that we invented this test.
To make us think it is a test,
to sort ourselves out.

Get back on,

see who went crazy and who found the thread, if the same thread
this is that, right,
the same train of thought,
the same idea
spirit wind
sign
?
A snake facing west standing tippy-tail on a singularity;
a point in time?

Why are you reading this?
Curiosity Shoppes trade in interesting, alluring, click-bait

Pay attention, watch, you shall see

imagine this is the dream,
the stream, the flow, the current, the cream

in a dime coffee at the drug store on the corner

the rounded-corner, in a square-cornered town,
the most right corner of the twelve that quarter what it was

Punctuate, wait, imagine you read ancient Hebrew or Greek and there
are no dyer diacritical's who can twist one's
end tensions into knots

dread extensions, we could sell those,
is that an idea? did somebody
sell white folks dread extensions and black folk dolly pardon wigs?

Did that happen the real real?

-----
Battlefield Earth, oshit
scientology ology ology ology

allaye allaye outs in free

WE we wee every we you imagine you are good in, we

We have a war to win again, we heroes rolling from your
myths of Sisyphus torn from minds trampled
in the mud beyond the Rhine,

Mushrooms. magi are aware, you are aware, of course,
this course includes Basic Mycelium Net Adaptation or Augmentation
BMNAA, eh? So you know.

Camus and many of his ilk were ill-treated, the questions
they asked were memorized, maybe in our cribs ala
Brave New World.

We are all Alphas, always were, of course, you know.

Shall we imagine

more? Re-legare, eh, sistere. Point .(Back to the top.)

or agree? Make peace.
Practice, like Eazy-Bake,
the cook must swallow the first bite. May the best cook win.

Winnie the Pooh is trying to think
As are Plato and Socrates
While The Little Rascals get rambunctious
And The Marx Brothers cause calamities
Jim Jones stirs the Kool-Aid
And Georgie Porgie makes his move
Bo Peep and Miss Muffett start to blush
Red Ridding hood just swoons
The Muffin Man does a deal
With Johnny Apple seed
These beings and people our real
In our Surreal Reality

******* lets the paint splatter
And Moses parts the sea
Belushi buys an eight-ball
Bruce is on trial for obscenity
Rorschach is on the case
Right behind Sherlock Holmes
John the baptist goes for a swim
Along with Brian Jones
Jack and Jill meet Hansel and Gretel
They're hungry, they're thirsty
These figments of imagination do exist
In our Surreal Reality

Rasputin was so evil
As bad as Captain Hook
Now was it ** Chi Minh or Nixon
Who said "I am not a crook?"
Mao Zedong looked at Stalin
With a shared murderous grin
Booth stormed the Ford theater
And shot President Lincoln
Kennedy and King we're both casualties
Of the process of the deciphering
Of our Surreal  Reality

Zeus said to Aphrodite
"Wow, you look real good tonight"
And Handel says "Hallelujah!"
As the Wright Brothers take flight
Baby Face Nelson
Teams up with Dillinger
Moe, Larry and Curly
Mengele, Mussolini and Adolf ******
Three bears, three little pigs
Along with three blind mice
Sit together, while Maurice Sendack
Cooks them chicken soup with rice
Charlie Bucket had a buy out
Wonka gave up his factory
Fiction or nonfiction it's all a apart
Of our Surreal Reality

Chicken Little tried his best
To warm The Little Red Hen
Of the sly trickster
They call Rumpelstiltskin
Rimbaud applauds Leonidas
And his 300's final stand
Da vinci  paved the way
For both Newton and Edison
Folklore and war heroes
And those with intellectual mentality
Are all just pieces
Of our Surreal Reality

Wee Willie Winkie's scream
Wakes up Rip Van Winkle
But not Sleeping Beauty who's been asleep for thirty years
But has no acquired a single wrinkle
Caligula has lost his mind
And Nero's lost his fiddle
What does Beethoven's hearing aid
Have to do the March Hare's riddle?
Abbie Hoffman fights for civil rights
Thomas Jefferson for democracy
Products of the conceptual
In our Surreal Reality

Berryman writes an ode
To Washington's wooden teeth
Manson speaks of Helter Skelter
Neruda damns the fruit company
Charles Schultz frames the story
And Seuss gives it rhyme
Some where far, far away
Taking place once upon a time
And the villagers all had omelettes
Thanks to clumsy Humpty Dumpty
It's all food for thought
In our Surreal Reality

Santa brings us presents
And Cupid bring us love
But we can never get back
The members of the 27 Club
Warhol makes his movies
And Buddha meditates
Joseph Smith reads the golden plates
Mohammed and Jesus save
Theses figures bring people hope
In life's dualities
Trusting faith
And our Surreal Reality


Han Solo is in carbon freeze
Don Juan's preoccupied
Sinbad sets his sails
Simple Simon didn't get his pie
Caesar looked at Brutus
Brutus looked at Saddam Hussein
Hussein looked at L. Ron Hubbard
Who prayed to Eloheim  
Dionysus can out drink us all
We cringe at Achilles fatality  
As Ra soars through the skies
Of our Surreal Reality

Aristotle says to Shakespeare
"Well Billy you old bard"
Frodo trades the ring of power
To Fidel Castro for a Babe Ruth Baseball card
Biggie and Tupac write their lyrics on paper
Ted Bundy is put in jail
They're making another skyscraper
For King Kong to scale
Hemingway is too far gone
Kant's take on morality
Einstein says it's all relative
In our Surreal Reality

Churchill said victory
John Lennon said peace
Judas gave back the silver
Then hung himself in a tree
Tojo and Kim Jong-il
Wanna be as cool as Brando and Dean
George Carlin warned us all
Now Hermes leaves the scene
So do the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker
Followed by Old King Cole and his Fiddlers Three
As they make their way to find
A sense or Surreal Reality

Odysseus pines for Ithaca
Paul Bunyan chops the trees
The Jersey Devil has not been found
Noah herds the animals by twos not threes
Anubis wraps the mummies
And Augustus leads Rome
Bugs Bunny laughs with Pryor
All at the expense of Job
So what can we all make of this
Is this all actuality?
Symbolism or nonsense?
Realistic Surrealism or Surreal Realty?

Thinking of Eve Seeing First the Shiny Thing
The subtile beast, she saw eating of the tree she was
told
would **** her
if she ate it and she believed,
if she even touched it, she would die,
though die was something of a mystery.
What, she thought, is happening here?

The shining serpent thing
is living and eating the fruit of knowing
some thing known to this thing,
unknown to me, this shining serpent can't speak, needn't, but 'tis a beguiling
creature,
a scoff-god swallowing forbidden fruit
as nothing happens. Not dead,
what ever that may be,
why should I? Curioser
and curiosum it says, with its eyes,
"you shall know, as God knows, you shall not
surely die".
(those Kachinas, I imagine dancing off in time,
singing as the chorus of snakes,
"we hold such things as men can't hold in hands")

Oh, no, wait and see. We, you and me, we play no
past roles, no deed is redone, thoughts are rethought.

Everything has been thought, the object of thinking
is to think them again. Mr. Goethe made note of that fact,
when he thought, everything, excepting what I know,
is temporary at the moment, I recall the idea of

God knows what, but it ain't accidental,
and it ain't the misperception of decept-icons dancing
on the head of a pen.

You got that right - question - quest ions symbolize what
you do not know, so, who knows? Question marks
Symbolize the act of questioning. It's a primal need,
Wisdom, the principal thing of which
more is always desire-enabling.
Somebody beyond your knowing imagined that  right.
Would you believe the algorithm needed to program
perception of a who'll-go-rhyme,
or an I'll-go-rhythm positive knee-**** response
to the ***** of a pen or the whisper of a word,
which it is supposed, was written
by 100 monkeys with typewriters,
whacking away endlessly, balancing precariously
on the edge of the first 100 turtles
in the stack? What are the odds, eh?

Life has a plan with no plot, ought we think?
We shall not surely die, we know now, that's a lie.

Beyond believing lies, we know now, how and why
we are naked, by our own cognition.
We told us we are naked.
We, now, know that,

but here, in the pages of the book of life,
we are no longer subject to the ******* of fearing death.
Here, there is no more condemnation.
Believed lies re-cognized here,
affect no fear, we know,
the final foe fell. "It is finished" was no lie.
Take comfort here. Be still, and know,
rest prevents any
re-triggering viruses left by
the lying messenger's old fables, told as prophecy
or fair-tales oft sung as epics
pre-determining the possibility of evil winning in the end.
The words that built the lies remain,
not the lies. Evil never had a chance, life isn't fair.

The basic plot is a man-made thought, the purpose is not.
Life goes on, death never could have won
and now its power serves
to make eternal waves that keep thinkers thinking things differently.
Loneliness, after all is said and done,
is not
as common
as one might think. There's always
Details, details, details
God only knows.
Saying such a thing idly is vain.
Unless, you know, God knows.
****, that, too.
None of that here, you know.
no condemnation
Socrates was a joke, nothing new under the sun,
beyond that is no mortal's concern. Believe me.
Knowing nothing is far more difficult than men imagine.

Tongue in cheek was an old clue in fair play,
your gramps
could poke out his cheek like he had a snake in his mouth
struggling to break through sealed lips.  
Then he' tells a
fish-story and claims the magi know it true.
Tongue in cheek, so to speek, I see some missed conceptions
fructify from spores spat idly as ****** hells and damns
from tinkers tinning pots with crazy making lead solder.
Which meandered my other me to lead
Lead soldiers. I led the boys to war, that's what they were for.
It's all in the plot to make men of boys so we can help God
defend Heaven, in case…

What?
Good versus evil and all that whole lie.
Or is it faith we must defend?
How reasonable is that? What can **** an idea like
one of the big three?

Eve knew knowing good and evil cost her.
She paid attention to
the truth of all she so suddenly knew.
Otherwise,
she could not attempt the task of bringing
Able into the world, after the pain of Cain.

Oh, please, let Cain fulfill the promise, I cannot bear the pain,
said Adam in his shame.
Eve, on the other hand,
knew hope for joy she found in every
birth, and there were many twixt Able and Seth, all girls.
Cain had been gone for decades ere Seth came along.
Eve was o'er-joyed at the boy whose son would somehow
bring to bear the final sacrifice of travail and pain to
manifest the sons of God to play the role pre-ordained
for sons of God and their sons to play, wombed and un,
each, in his own way, the one creation groaned for,
the missing, wanted, desired, one, an
only begotten with just exactly your DNA,
one in 8 billion, a rare element, indeed.
You know.

In the early morning air
between the Londonderry hush of dreams
and the cry of Belfast on a weary morn
Where saddened eyes embody the twilight haze
of long past marches, the bewildering blaze
Of Beltane fires that scorch the hills
The world shudders to the battle cries
where brother to brother the war pitch fills
the saddened visions that over spills
That a Gaelic tongue can curse its own
To the bitter harvest of the Gael
That wipes away the blood dew
from these fields from which it grew
and damns itself in the pain and sorrow
That relives this war on every tomorrow.

Alisdaire O'Caoimph

I walk along a path
I do not know
But falter left nor right,
And, welcoming the light
Of birches, still and white
As sleeping snow,

A raven, coat that shimmers
Soft as coal,
Beside me flutters square
And, drawn like to a snare,
Alights upon the air
As on a knoll.

A ripened chestnut, trapped
Within his maw
And hard as ancient ice,
Is tightened by the vise
And shatters at the slicing
Of his jaw

To crumble into dust,
Which quick cascades
And settles, as it slows,
To carefully compose
The shape of raven toes
Where he parades.

The raven flies ahead
And, with a stamp,
His talons take a grip
Atop a wooden tip
Of birches, dead and stripped
To form a ramp.

I stumble after, fixed
Through field of black
As in a telescope,
And, clawing at the *****,
I climb it with a hope
To touch his back

And ****** a hand ahead
Just as he slumps,
Both limp but stiff, to lie
Upon his side and die.
I meet his cloudy eye
Upon the stump,

Then lift my head to find
A willow sprig,
A tendril hanging free
For me to grip. Indeed,
I climb the strip of tree,
The little twig,

And swivel in the air,
As if by choice.
I hear a humming, low,
Resounding from below—
The raven’s eyes, aglow
With Odin’s voice.

Like lightbulbs flicker, dim
with yellow light,
They sharpen with the tones
That bellow from his bones—
This god and poet moans
His heavy spite:

He damns me to the lifetime
of a bird.
My sin, I do not know
But bear the bitter woe
And close my eyes to focus
On this word:

Saṃsāra. So I feel my
Senses spill
Upon the ground
And flood out all around
And swallow every sound
Till all is still.

You people that say
“There aren’t any gays
In my race or church!”
You’re so wrong, I say.
You’re so wrong
It will be hard to get back
To right, you know,
Where you went off track.

You people that say
There are no gays
In our holy country
You’re wrong too, I say.
You’re hiding something
About yourself to say it.
You’re driving yourself crazy
The way you want to play it.

You people that say
“Jesus hates blacks and gays!”
You are totally wrong
That’s not what the book says.
You people that think
You know the path to heaven
Couldn’t find you way
If it was at the Seven Eleven.

You people that say
“God damns you people to hell!”
Haven’t read that book
Or understand it very well.
The book never has Jesus
To utter one punishing word.
So, where did it come from,
All that hatred you have heard?

You people that say
“There aren’t any gays
In my race or church!”
You’re so wrong, I say.
You’re so wrong
It will be hard to get back
To right, you know,
Where you went off track.

in her dreams
she sprouts like fresh seeds pressed into fertile dirt
she's constantly stretching farther and farther
in a futile attempt to finally reach the sun

she closes her eyes
and sees rows and rows of lemon trees and strawberries
mango groves and avocados

she loves to feed the earth
to give birth to something living that's incapable of denying
or betraying
her love
she wants to feed almost everyone she meets
set them down and wash their feet
fill their cups and watch them leave

she hopes that one day
someone will ask to stay
a boy whose heart is in need of mending
or a man with hands that could move mountains
maybe
one day

she wants a farm
a limitless garden to stretch as far as her eyes will let her see
maybe just a bohdi tree to sit beneath
a place to stay and wait to be buried by the leaves
just for now
anyway

she needs a home where she can be by herself without feeling alone
she needs somewhere that she's meant to be

supposedly
dreams are things we chase down dark alley ways
only to watch them escape us

she damns every man who says so

she's determined to catch up with every one of her dreams
yeah
a dream catcher of sorts
she puts on her gloves and steps out in the mud
ready to catch whatever the universe tosses her way
or even just the ripe fruit falling from the trees in her dreams

prelimenary coordinates - a blindman playing chess.

well... you either drink, and write sparingly,
     or you don't drink, and you write
a novel...
    but who would have thought, that there
would be poetic odes involving coffee...
     it's staggering how many women write
poems and have to concern themselves with
coffee...
  i down a litre of whiskey a night, don't know
what a hangover is anymore,
        and i can beat out more words
than women, who use a stimulant and write
   crumbs... when i expect a loaf of bread...
if not this website, then another, and the scenario
is the same: the glorification of coffee...
           it just shows you how barricaded the human
narrative is, of the soul...
        poetry merely nibbles, and i know it's
flaws... write without paragraphs,
or care for punctuation marks... and it's immediately
a poem...
   or... oh god forbid! there's something profound
being said with a few words...
      and it has to be profound...
                      yes, i'm the Gargamel and those
are my smurfs...
                             strange that Freud didn't think up
the man-child complex...
                         which is the opposite of the madonna-*****
complex, which he actually did...
           Edward Hopper was also bemused by
these two mental pharmacologists...
                did a little sketch holding Freud as pillar 1,
and Jung as pillar 2.
    but coffee and poetry: i'd expect more from this
latitude...
        and it's still a case of:
                   people cling to the raft that's their
mental narrative mondus operandi...
                Kant tried to say something as concrete
with 5 + 7 = 13... and read any philosophy book...
    Kant isolates the ''i think'', and Hegel isolates
    the i = i, or i am i...
                              and these are serious thinkers...
but Descartes has said a limit...
                       thinking defines subjectivity...
      thinking the essential component of what's
   not thought about: the existential compromise of
   being per se...
                    and how i always seem to find philosophy
as a stumbling block concerning everything i write...
    it's almost as if i can't escape the world of
abstracts...          a degree in chemistry didn't help either...
     am i truly so un-realistic?
               not that i'm afraid of being drawn toward
the un-real...          it's that humanity seems only like
an infertile groundwork speeding toward a forgivable
promise...
    i just wanted to say: you drink and write poetry...
or you don't drink, and write a novel...
      and true to a heart's cause i will say:
that straitjacket of what poetry is...
                           whether rhyme... or other technique...
    hanging over it...
                           it can't do:
      i abhor Nietzsche for making poetry a science...
  and it is: too scientific...
              i'd never think so little can be deemed
so perplexing... or having that essence...
                    so yes... Kant
                         really does struggle to say something
profound, but he actually does...
                     over and over again... namely:
i'd never could think of so many faculties of my mind...
    not that's what i call a plastic saying...
      ****-licking brown-nosing, call it what you like...
it's just so terrible that philosophy cannot reach
toward being a humanism, like a novel always can...
     which is why i could eat a historical novel
        by Kraszewski in three weeks in between allocating
that time to the festive season,
                     and it took me 2 years to read Kant's
critique... until i let go of that post-scriptum necessity
of having to stop at every setence and do a rubick's cube...
     a bit like: well... aren't those electron-migration
   schematics they teach you in chemistry, a little bit pointless?
   who give's a badger's nut-sack about how electrons migrate
when a a cabron to oxygen bond forms?
                         but they do teach that...
           which is why you can take a novel to bed,
on the train... but so much focus is needed for that other novel,
the scientific one... the grandeur of... philosophy...
                and that's when i let go...
   the last part of the critique does allow you to read
piece of work... like a novel... unless of course that was my
need to do so...
                    so yes: transcendental methodology in Kant's
critique: does read like a novel... at some point
you just have to let go.

ii. ...

and you do... try saying philosophy without saying
something pretentious....
               and i dare say: as long as the fewest number
of people concern themselves with it:
  the more chances we have for electricity,
plumbing, food on the table...
               but by now there's this talk of a curse...
premature Socratic antics... mind you: he was an old man...
but Plato be ******, he wrote down what the old man
spoke: and a clear number of them succumbed to
      the tumble-**** effect...
                      no real prospects for life...
        and, evidently, the dead gods philosophised,
while the rest remained: prone to throwing a show of
macho, and worshipped the body...
Olympus shone...  
   by now you should know that i don't know what
i'm doing...
                  give me the killer-switch to launch a nuclear
strike and i'd probably say: maracas!
shake shake shake...     fidgety in the brothel...
shake shake shake...
             that's the weird thing, every time i went to
a brothel i became over-heated...
      i sat there, the whole **** place always reminded me
of a perfume... jack daniels...
   and i could feel myself over-heating...
  i don't known if that was the angel conscience talking
to me... but i always felt those eyes of scrutiny...
       mind you, once the whole "naughty'' escapade
took off... i forgot those relationships where
                    an impotence was crowned...
   don't know: maybe prostitutes just know my pin-number
and hold to say to little richard: off to the crusades with you!
     phenomenal...
                                         well... thank god for
the north african imports! i'd start thinking all european
women are bound to be: neglected.
               and was it ever, not only about ***?
    it's nice to doubt it...
                           next time i'll woodpecker a grave.
but hey! the promised land!
                           at least you'll have someone to cry
over your grave...
   and did i tell you how there's this cult of the grave
in Poland? yep, that's not a personal reality,
it's a populist manifesto... i'm starting to see it
as a hell where people sort of forgot to state their emotion
to the people, now lying in those tombs...
         give me a Hindu wedding with fire!
  i wanna become elemental!
and look, libido on fire... a billion vishnu-******* in
Bangladesh...   it's this thirst for fame in western
societies that's going to be a downsize...
                                 over there that's like a **** in
a tornado...              ha ha! it really is!
   but then again, here i am, a graveyard hyenna...
walking in Liberace's talk of style...
  most of these graves, really are: tacky...
    just like Liberace, the greatest showbiz conman of
the 20st century... i love the fact that he fooled so many
women... i mean... that guy was almost as good
as ****** when it came to mesmerising people...
but Liberace had a nieche audience... so...
                 no khaki for the ss...
                                           and i dare to hold
an ethnicity? in tune with bob marley: one love, one people...
it has never been so painful to strategise globalisation...
         it's this ethnic cleansing that everyone agreed to
provided they received a smart-phone...
                   or a McDonald's fetish... and that's saying it cheap...
but that's how it feels on the periphery of H'america...
little ol' England boycots Europe...
                     and it's like: huh?
                                           presto! dum-dum.
    sometimes i start thinking that i have a hydra for a tongue...
and the more i drink, the more i start to see
       it splintering up into a polyphony construct,
but more a case of: polyphony of subjects...
   and yes, aren't we all those internet losers...
when the most powerful man in the world...
     uses twitter. bastions of respectable comment!
yes, i.e. newspapers... we're riding this meteor to the end...
          does anyone still consider newspapers to be
the pledges of a free society? i must have been asleep for
the past 20 years then...
                      someone switched on this chaos-turbine,
and we're all shoving our two cents of opnions'-worth into it...
and it's not stopping...
            and yet you still read in newspapers, this underlining
feeling of being condescended... as if they are the sole
authority... they have to behave like little despots...
                           social media's power is invested in its
shock reverberation... think: Marx in the 21st century...
           but can you? is this some pseudo Marxism?
             i might have bypassed all the king-makers and
walls... but i have no leverage... my opinions are
     as cheap as chips... well: we got ourselves a unison converson...
   i still don't see how the television zeitgeist still thinks
that the internet zeitgeist is no connected with ''real life''...
i mean... **** me! where's the highstreet with all the shops?
on the internet. where is the frontline of wars? on the internet.
  where do suicides take place? on the internet,
from all the cyber bugs that people start to represent...
    if this isn't real life... then i guess i must be sitting,
and writing this in some medieval castle in transylvania,
    and my computer is powered by a legion of
hamsters on exercise-wheels, in a damp room, lit by a candle.

iii.

for me, this is how reading a philosophy book looks like:

| | |
     fig. 1
                                          /   \
                                            _
                 ­                                 fig. 2
    Δ
       fig. 3
                                           A
                                               fig. 4

it's like i want to see something with some clarity;
there is clear movement
      concerning a book like that,
              but unlike a standard novel:
there is clearly nothing concerning the: any given
  hope to disperse the mist.
                you're given the blunt truth:
the use of language...
                     again, it would be easier to call forward
a use of a tomahawk... or a guillotine...
            philosophy books never establish civilisations,
they break them.
                and do i think that the crucifix is a profanity
of the tetragrammaton? yes.
                do i feel Spinoza's anguish? probably.
when you read philosophy to start to waver,
it's almost necessary to unlearn language, and with
each philosophy book: learn it over again.
     you can't remain strapped to this culture
of emphasis of singled-out words...
              we can't find a constructive basis if we're
about to start any mechanism from such a dynamic,
isolating certain words and weighing them
                       obstructs language...
                 i can't even begin to fathom a pledge
to using a language, if there are these plebian obstructions...
i did write some notes when i spent these past 3 weeks
in Poland, but i'm scared of rewriting them...
                    i can claim to have understood
their content at the time,
but the context disparity is too much for me...
                 i'm rereading them in England
and i can only see England as a nightmarish construct
of such grandeour... that i might only be seen
speaking truth in the north of it...
                nor do i like the tri-tier categorisation
of man... if you read Kant, you'd be afraid of
man's laconic approach to the mind, stating
the three boundaries, and literally no faculty interactions...
  consciousness (the artist), denoting the overly-sensitive,
the subconscious (the worker), denoting the athletic construct
   and liberation from the daily toils of pure physical
    disposition...
and the unconscious (the zombie)...
   if you read Kant and explore the faculties...
and then turn toward the Freudian populism:
   there's enough reason to be concerned...
                  i can't be saying someone anti-vogue:
and that was my proper concern, that i might be saying
someone not recountable in any sort of realism...
          that mine is an isolated case...
         ditto alongside: why are we juggling the tri-tiers,
and so bombastic and even celebratory in huddling
toward these safety-nets of being human?
    thus said: the reflective man has died...
       in his place came the reflexive man...
                             and if there really is a worthwhile
stance to be a: **** sapiens...
   then all hope for a bewildered man is gone...
                 when the potency of robotics escaped science
fiction, and all trodden paths of orthodox science were
      fed to science fiction, humanity could begin
the process of discarding the offshoots...
          
iv.

the new testament... a book riddled with metaphors...
no wonder the greeks exploited the hebrew literalism...
and yes, plato the precursor made this very real...
by testifying that poetry had no place in the republic,
the new testament had to become solely poetic...
   the new testament is a rebellion against plato's republic...
it's a book wholly compromised on metaphor...
culminating in a book that's founded on imagery...
the gosepls are, once again, arithmetically speaking,
resembling the crucifix... which damns the concept
of the tetragrammaton...
                      as a book: it's only gibberish in
its final circumstance of revelation as a book of imagery...
   and in its preceding case: a book of metaphors...
who wouldn't be apprehensive to be born human
with such a thing being rampant?!
                    imagery is gibberish, given that we
have compentent painters out there...
and metaphor is metaphysics, given that we have
competent magicians out there...
   so how far apart are the words: qua             and
                   quo?
   as good a question as: how far apart are the words
                          phor               and phren?
       φoρ                       &                            φρην?
        so in the congregation of μετα, how are they
so apart?  looking at language from an alphabetical
perspective... it's hard to see anything inspirational...
    nor the tangens divergence of words
that are nonetheless so proximate in their construct...
a bit like the genetic proximity of man and ape,
or man and a banana...
   φoρ (the bearer of the beyond) -
                φρην (a mind concerned with things
under the curtain) -
                        and so: the futility of looking for
        a soul... became translated as the new found feudalism
of looking for a mind:
  given the common consensus: we're all mad....
so too looking at mythology could be revised:
  that myth of narcissus and echo...
or narcissus and psyche...
                         or φρην & πσιχη -
                we already know that there's an aesthetic
in Greek, at least they showed us
      that it can be σimple, when acknowledged
  and practised -
which means transcribing the ease of handwriting
   into a digital format, can be seen as an unnecessary
complexity - as if me currently looking for a word
that ends, and showcases the most obvious Grecian
aesthetic (without mention ο, ε, ω, η, œ)...
but with due mention: so where the second variant
of α, given there's æ?
                           it really is hard to find coherency
in human language... i'm still trying to conjure up
the second sigma... unless i hit the plural noteς...
there... i hit them... as simple as that.
  and yes: the father of the french hooked c
in garçon, came from this: the sigma used at the end
of wordς... i suspect that how things were denoted
to be possessed in english, also came from it.
once again: handwritting is bewildering on this digital canvas.

v.*

i don't have an atheistic argument, or a theistic argument,
i'v

Beneath the bends of Barrymore
On the southwest winds she chants some more
The clouds scoot by beneath the moon
Some say she's crazy like the loon
Dressed in black she cackles back
Tossing ashes from a sack
She throws her body down
And moans and sobs into the ground
A dagger she does draw it forth
Holding it up for all its worth
She shrieks and damns her birth
And plunges it deep into her heart . . .
So ends the life of the despised young **** . . .

Now the owls come silently in
Alighting next to still warm skin
All walk around the disposed young beast
Only uttering "Who" to say the least
Then the great owl comes fluttering in
He'd be a giant if he were made of men
He collectively surveys the scene
Takes a few steps before he says a thing
"Take her body to Evermoor"
The great one orders and implores
And all the owls take to wing
Holding the remains of the breathless thing
And take her earthly shell away
And as drops of blood fell from the flow
to the earth a white rose would grow
Leaving a trail
To the land as some will say
To the sacred woods of Evermoor
Yes sacredness in evermore

In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drown’d in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the passing bell doth toll,
And the Furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the priest his last hath pray’d,
And I nod to what is said,
‘Cause my speech is now decay’d,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When, God knows, I’m toss’d about
Either with despair or doubt;
Yet before the glass be out,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tempter me pursu’th
With the sins of all my youth,
And half damns me with untruth,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the flames and hellish cries
Fright mine ears and fright mine eyes,
And all terrors me surprise,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the Judgment is reveal’d,
And that open’d which was seal’d,
When to Thee I have appeal’d,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

I wonder 'oo and wot 'e was,
That 'Un I got so slick.
I couldn't see 'is face because
The night was 'ideous thick.
I just made out among the black
A blinkin' wedge o' white;
Then biff! I guess I got 'im crack --
The man I killed last night.

I wonder if account o' me
Some ***** will go *****,
And 'eaps o' lives will never be,
Because 'e's stark and dead?
Or if 'is missis damns the war,
And by some candle light,
Tow-headed kids are prayin' for
The Fritz I copped last night.

I wonder, 'struth, I wonder why
I 'ad that 'orful dream?
I saw up in the giddy sky
The gates o' God agleam;
I saw the gates o' 'eaven shine
Wiv everlastin' light:
And then . . . I knew that I'd got mine,
As 'e got 'is last night.

Aye, bang beyond the broodin' mists
Where spawn the mother stars,
I 'ammered wiv me ****** fists
Upon them golden bars;
I 'ammered till a devil's doubt
Fair froze me wiv affright:
To fink wot God would say about
The bloke I corpsed last night.

I 'ushed; I wilted wiv despair,
When, like a rosy flame,
I sees a angel standin' there
'Oo calls me by me name.
'E 'ad such soft, such shiny eyes;
'E 'eld 'is 'and and smiled;
And through the gates o' Paradise
'E led me like a child.

'E led me by them golden palms
Wot 'ems that jeweled street;
And seraphs was a-singin' psalms,
You've no ideer 'ow sweet;
Wiv cheroobs crowdin' closer round
Than peas is in a pod,
'E led me to a shiny mound
Where beams the throne o' God.

And then I 'ears God's werry voice:
"Bill 'agan, 'ave no fear.
Stand up and glory and rejoice
For 'im 'oo led you 'ere."
And in a nip I seemed to see:
Aye, like a flash o' light,
My angel pal I knew to be
The chap I plugged last night.

Now, I don't claim to understand --
They calls me Bonehead Bill;
They shoves a rifle in me 'and,
And show me 'ow to ****.
Me job's to risk me life and limb,
But . . . be it wrong or right,
This cross I'm makin', it's for 'im,
The cove I croaked last night.

For Emma Ottinger “I put out (my stories) just because”

“just because”
that’s the best excuse you got girl?

cause be-ing
just
is a **** good one

way back in March
wrote a declaration^ to all those just
beginning with an iota of courage and
a good story telling
way of seeing and the
secret sauce-way
to spin my imagination in
my eye sockets
with their well words,
for I am a drinker of
the beaujolais firsts of the new grapes
of young poets

words welling springing from between
the oohs and ahs and the damns -
I wish I had wrote that...

so here’s a hero push - so many kinds of bread to
fill our baskets, please girl may I have some more?
so here’s to you - and the Great Plains that birthed you,
and the breadbasket of four poem/stories you poured out
that were so far from plain, how could you know of seas and sea foam and cobalt and mahogany human body parts?

and the speech patterns of waves that took me decades to learn?

use those “Jacob’s ladders between your fingers,”
“whistle me like a stray dog following,”
for that’s what “the kingpin of my flighty wits”
requires, for this old scribbler is now:

“firmly rooted for a girl who's bold enough
to crack the whip over her head if
ever went to war with myself.
A confidant that won't run,
won't offer half truth when
the whole of it
is all that actually matters.”

so write with that window light on and
wheat fields that can be reenvisioned as the gray-blue sea
from which I crawled out of croaking...
to read you rightly

6/25/18
10:25PM

Through the shadows.
Souls run around.
Through the fire.
Hell has come.

Beware his might.
His sword of darkness.
Beware the fear,
That envelopes your soul.

My love,
It has come.

My love,
It has begun.

Judgement damns your soul,
Welcome to the Underworld.

Fire, Stone, waves of fear.
Punishment is your reward.

If you kiss him
I will still write you poems.
I see you
Walking a tightrope of a choice
Leaning one way and then the other.
I see you.
I see everything, even when I try not to.
It is the curse of somebody
Who fears to miss anything
Lest it sneak up.
I don't miss anything
And that protects and damns me in equal measure.
I am ready, in some way, for every blow
But the price of that
Is that I feel them in privacy, alone and rigid,
Before they even happen,
Whether
They even happen.
I have choices.
We all have choices.
All we have
Are choices.
I could make the choice to go cold like stone
And protect myself in case you
Are upstairs right now,
Kissing him tonight the way you kissed me
Last night.
I could make the choice to believe that there is nothing else that could possibly be happening,
And crumple in on myself like a fallen souffle,
Let myself feel soft and rotten inside like a fruit hidden in the grass
With perfect skin
And decay beneath.
Or
I could choose to trust you
That I am special
That I am something
That even if you are up there kissing him
I haven't lost just yet.
I could choose to remind myself that when I met you
You were his
And now you aren't
And that
Is more than I ever dared to hope for.
What is strong, darling?
Tell me what strong is.
I asked you with my eyes last night
And the answer I got was that at that moment
Strong was not something that mattered,
And I fell into that,
Tired and released, for once.
But I never did find out-
What
Is strong?
What am I
That I will still write you poems
Even if you forget me?

With distance
the distaste only grew ,
with time and foreign lands my tree of wisdom only grew
from the confines of meditational winter sprung forth with the seasons change a fresh spring
that led to summers bloom and now with autumns orange face upon us i find myself back where i began ,

where i ran , it seems i was running back
where i thought i had no map , there was something pulling me to a home of sorts
more than one , too many to name , in people who live and in places that breathe
where i roamed , where i broke down walls triumphantly pulling the bricks and letting the river flow through the once more
no more ****** damns to hold back the floodwaters

i had an inkling i was running off borrowed time
or at least credit
death on credit
death in reverse
birthed rebirth
again and again

yet here i am still in deaths ruptured flow -
the unconditional love ran out mother ,
it ran out and you used it up
you used it so , i know you needed it
so from my child’s heart uninteruppted i let that one go
i held it aloft so you would know that no matter what you do , you are loves loved love

you are loves , loved love
but , it all came crashing down around my ears and around my throat a noose with no name
but a holy ghost escaped my lips in angry overtones = this argument for arguments sake
and tears hot on my cheeks filling up my mouth with anti-septic salt water drops
that doused my locks and you said “come back to me when you can speak without crying”

tears are but distilled wisdom and i am your teacher
i am your child - for a reason , i learnt much from you but how much more can you learn from me..
for i am not you - but a part - apart
and the smoke fills my eyes blurring the lines between reality

but i had enough , respect is intended - always
but i have respect in myself and that’s what you taught me.

That’s why i smile at people on the bus and talk to strangers ; because
everyone is reaching their own goals, shining their own light and love is shared , mother , love is shared.
and i try to love
but love seems to be distant
i love

four men

one - island man
two - island man
three- island man
four - out way somewhere i don’t know , never have graced , hope to grace and maybe touch his face ,

is this wrong? is this why i sit up at night with restless dreams
because whenever i see any one of them my heart turns to shreds
and i recall what that love is one more time
one more time
on more time

one - touches and lunch
two - dinner without touches, yet.
three - cheesy beans and laughter lines
four - astral planes baby ,

it’s raining again .
i’m siting under a tree in holloway
next to a knoll with hot chocolate , passport photos and cigarettes

are they not all one and the same
whom would i devote my entirety to , would you take it?
would you take it?
could you take it?

where do we stop?
why not stop..why stop. stop. what? stop loves riptide ?
not likely , not by chance , but by simplistic design
no i will not go
i will stay

please, please.. please.

i want to dance , with you who are you?
an enigma of epic proportions

i read somewhere that if a poet falls in love with you then you will never be forgotten
forever imortalized in their sonnets
and yes , it is true

lover why so shy? why so elusive , who is your soul
won’t you quietly tell me of the bruises won’t you tell me your secrets
and let me smooth down your shorn hair

two.

this world was made to share
and so is my love
so it is my love ,

we are wounded healers
and my , have i never heard anything as poetic as that.

but i cannot stay lone with all this love as it burst forth because it is mine. mother .
it is mine.

so.

dinner.

Dolls and Damns
Drunkards and Drifts
Dimples and Darkess
Dank and Dreamy

I am trying to set free

Heretical Poems by Michael R. Burch

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

NOTE: I came up with this epigram to express my conclusions after reading the Bible from cover to cover, ten chapters per day, at age eleven.



Saving Graces
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter
(wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter).



Multiplication, Tabled
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

“Be fruitful and multiply”—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, “WHEN!”



Wlly Nilly
for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to Rage and Plunder?

For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please . . .
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!



gimME that ol’ time religion!
by michael r. burch

fiddle-dee-dum, fiddle-dee-dee,
jesus loves and understands ME!
safe in his grace, I’LL send them to hell—
the strumpet, the harlot, the wild jezebel,
the alky, the druggie, all queers short and tall!
let them drink ashes and wormwood and gall,
’cause fiddle-dee-DUMB, fiddle-dee-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee . . .
jesus loves and understands
ME!



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



Practice Makes Perfect
by Michael R. Burch

I have a talent for sleep;
it’s one of my favorite things.
Thus when I sleep, I sleep deep ...
at least till the stupid clock rings.

I frown as I squelch its loud beep,
then fling it aside to resume
my practice for when I’ll sleep deep
in a silent and undisturbed tomb.



Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.

But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.



Redefinitions
by Michael R. Burch

Faith: falling into the same old claptrap.
Religion: the ties that blind.



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur God’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur just a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).



Defenses
by Michael R. Burch

Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.

Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.



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.



fog
by michael r. burch

ur just a bit of fluff
drifting out over the ocean,
unleashing an atom of rain,
causing a minor commotion,
for which u expect awesome GODS
to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION!
... but ur just a smidgen of mist
unlikely to be missed ...
where did u get the notion?



thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch

GODD is great;
GODD is good;
let us thank HIM
for our food.

by HIS hand
we all are fed;
give us now
our daily dead:

ah-men!

(p.s.,
most gracious
& salacious
HEAVENLY LORD,
we thank YOU in advance for
meals galore
of loverly gore:
of precious
delicious
sumptuous
scrumptious
human flesh!)



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see ...



u-turn: another way to look at religion
by michael r. burch

... u were borne orphaned from Ecstasy
into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms
dreaming of Beatification;
u'd love to make a u-turn back to Divinity, but
having misplaced ur chrysalis,
can only chant magical phrases,
like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ...



You
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though a communion between us.

For thirty years You would not open to me;
You remained closed, hard and tense,
like a clenched fist.

For thirty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways and Your distance.
Like a child dismissed,

I have watched You prey upon the hope in me,
knowing “mercy” is chance
and “heaven”—a list.



I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt.
     And I uphold the Law,
     for Grace has a Flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.

I’ve got ten thousand reasons why Hell must exist,
and you’re at the top of my fast-swelling list!
     You’re nothing like me,
     so God must agree
and slam down the Hammer with His Loving Fist!

For what are the chances that God has a plan
to save everyone: even Boy George and Wham!?
     Eternal fell torture
     in Hell’s pressure scorcher
will separate **** from Man.

I’m glad I’m redeemed, ecstatic you’re not.
Did Christ die for sinners? Perish the thought!
     The "good news" is this:
     soon My vengeance is his!,
for you’re not the lost sheep We sought.



jesus hates me, this i know
by michael r. burch

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
"little ones to him belong"
but if they use their dongs, so long!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus fleeces us, i know,
for Religion scams us so:
little ones are brainwashed to
believe god saves the Chosen Few!
    yes, jesus fleeces!
    yes, he deceases
    the bunny and the rhesus
    because he's mad at you!

jesus hates me—christ who died
so i might be crucified:
for if i use my active brain,
that will drive the "lord" insane!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
first priests tell me "look above,"
that christ's the lamb and god's the dove,
but then they sentence me to Hell
for using my big brain too well!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!



and then i was made whole
by michael r. burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



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

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all caught up
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he’s a sinner;
give up s-x, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.

In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak!,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably.



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“what rough beast...slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a streaked glass pane,
jeers jubilant,
mocking.

Brutality is shocking―
tiny orifices torn
by cruel adult lust,
the fetus unborn
tossed in a dust-
bin. The scarred skull shorn,
nails bloodied, tortured,
an old wound sutured
over, never healed.

Brutality, all its faces revealed,
is legion:
Death March, Trail of Tears, Inquisition . . .
always the same.
The Beast of the godless and of man’s “religion”
slouching toward Jerusalem:
horned, crowned, gibbering, drooling, insane.



I AM
by Michael R. Burch

I am not one of ten billion―I―
sunblackened Icarus, chary fly,
staring at God with a quizzical eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I.

I am not one life has left unsquashed―
scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched,
pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache.
I am not one life has left unsquashed.

I am not one without spots of disease,
laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees
from begging and praying and girls sighing "Please! "
I am not one without spots of disease.

I am not one of ten billion―I―
scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly
staring at God with a sedulous eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they'll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there's decent ** in jail.
Don't fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We'll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don't make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)

###

Unwhole
by Michael R. Burch

What is it that we strive to remember, to regain,
as memory deserts us,
leaving us destitute of even ourselves,
of all but pain?

How can something so essential be forgotten,
if we are more than our bodies?
How can a soul
become so unwhole?

###

Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).

###

evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

does GOD love the Tyger
while it's ripping ur lamb apart?

does GOD applaud the Bubonic Plague
while it's eating u à la carte?

does GOD admire ur intelligence
while u pray that IT has a heart?

does GOD endorse the Bible
you blue-lighted at k-mart?

###

Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche's sake?

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

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

###

Alien
by Michael R. Burch

for  a "Christian" poet

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices "speech"
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro―
far colder than Jesus's words
over the "fortunate" sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.

###

Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until its sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love's tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem's retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man's beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.

###

Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

"... so let your light shine before men..."

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but―immaculate―shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity,
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time―an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you'd convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.

###

Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I'm already below!

###

Shock and Awe
by Michael R. Burch

With megatons of "wonder, "
we make our godhead clear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The world's heart ripped asunder,
its dying pulse we hear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Strange Trinity! We ponder
this God we hold so dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The vulture and the condor
proclaim: The feast is near!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Soon He will plow us under;
the Anti-Christ is here:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

We love to hear Him thunder!
With Shock and Awe, appear!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

For God can never blunder;
we know He holds US dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

###

Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go...
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.

Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin...
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will "win."

Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through...
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.

###

What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast?

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer?

What brings them here―
pale, tearful congregations,
knowing all Hope is past,
faithfully, year upon year?

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask:

why is it God that they fear?

###

Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

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

###

Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love's wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man's tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs'
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men's frozen genes convene...
there is no answer―death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth's "highest species"―
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.

###

Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.

###

Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be d-mned,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me―
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.

###

Tonight, Let's Remember
by Michael R. Burch

July 7,2007 (7-7-7)

Tonight, let's remember the fond ways
our fingers engendered new methods to praise
the gray at my temples, your thinning hair.
Tonight, let's remember, and let us draw near...

Tonight, let's remember, as mortals do,
how cutely we chortled when work was through,
society sated, all gods put to rest,
and you in my arms, and I at your breast...

Tonight, let's remember how daring, how free
the Madeira made us, recumbently.
Our inhibitions?―we laid them to rest.
Earth, heaven or hell―we knew we were blessed.

Tonight, let's remember the dwindling days
we've spent here together―the sun's rays
spending their power beyond somber hills.
Soon we'll rest together; there'll be no more bills.

Tonight, let's remember: we've paid all our dues,
we've suffered our sorrows, we've learned how to lose.
What's left now to take, only God can tell.
Be with me in heaven, or "bliss" will be hell!

I do not want God; I want to see you
free from all sorrow, your labor through,
a song on your tongue, a smile on your lips,
sweet, sultry and vagrant, a child at your hips,

laughing and beaming and ready to frolic
in a world free from cancer and gout and colic.
For you were courageous, and kind, and true.
There must be a heaven for someone like you.

###

I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse―a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard―a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)

###

To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim―
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?

###

Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech's brilliant slide, I gr0pe,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear―
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don't quite understand) ,
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).

###

Gethsemane in Every Breath
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, we have lost our way, and now
we have mislaid love―earth's fairest rose.
We forgot hope's song―the way it goes.
Help us reclaim their gifts, somehow.

LORD, we have wondered long and far
in search of Bethlehem's retrograde star.
Now in night's dead cold grasp, we gasp:
our lives one long-drawn rattling rasp

of misspent breath... before we drown.
LORD, help us through this spiral down
because we faint, and do not see
above or beyond despair's trajectory.

Remember that You, too, once held
imperiled life within your hands
as hope withdrew... that where You knelt
―a stranger in a stranger land―

the chalice glinted cold afar
and red with blood as hellfire.
Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember―we are as You were,

but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.

###

A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember-we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.

###

Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,
Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;
come dwell again,
happy child among men―
men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger's cool
sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,
with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love
in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land
planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe
in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.
Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright―
just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope's long-departed star!

###

Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly―
away, away...

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination―

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.

###

The Gardener's Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away."

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least...

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies...

Faint scent of roses, then―a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true? "

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call―ecstatic crew!―
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."

###

Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of "morality" around me.
Surround me,

not with law's restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.

###

Cædmon's Face
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



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

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



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

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

his face was Poetry's, from youth.



Post-Nashville Covenant
by Michael R. Burch

We love our God.
We love our guns.
We despise the weak.
Don’t call us Huns!

We love our kids.
We love our schools.
We love our guns.
Don’t call us fools!

We pledge ourselves
to the strong defense
of the Constitution
and our Mensch.

Once re-elected,
Trump will rule
with God and guns
and safer schools.



Wonderworks
by Michael R. Burch

History’s
mysteries
abound
& astound,
found
(profound)
the whole earth ’round,
even if mostly
underground.



uv been had
by michael r. burch

uv been had;
ur Dad’s a cad;
His priests are mad,
His pastors lying.

they only want your money, chum,
so why play dumb
and give it to ’em?
give them the boot and send them flying!



Come Spring
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Come spring we return, innocent and hopeful, to the ******,
beseeching Her to bestow
Her blessings upon us.

Pitiable sinners, we bow before Her,
nay, grovel,
as She looms above us, aglow
in Her Purity.

We know
all will change in an instant; therefore
in the morning we will call her,
an untouched maiden no more,
“*****.”

The so-called Religious Right prizes virginity in women and damns them for doing what men do. I have long been a fan of women like Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, who decided what’s good for the gander is equally good for the goose.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to "believe"?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where our kids will stick their (k)no(w)'s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud's a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



twin nuggets of ancient ****-dumb
by michael r. burch

oh, let it never once be said
that love for Gaud is dead!

wee love the way he murdered eve!
such awesome love! wee must believe!

wee love the way he sent a FLOOD
to teach wee babies to be good!

wee love the zillion births he aborted!
such awesome love cant clearly reported!

(so never mind the embryos
who died in their mommies’ drowning throes!

the unborn babes, the unborn lambs
all drowned for Gaud’s divinest plans!)

“do as I say, not as I do!”
cruel Hippo-Crit! does Jesus rue?
(if Christ were good he’d rue Gaud too.)

no! wee must love our abusive Father
and follow hymn meekly, mild lambs to the slaughter,

or he’ll burn us forever in Hiss terrible hell.
it’s so much safer to tell hymn he’s swell!

thus wee love our Gaud so loverly
hovering over us so smotherly!

wee love the TITHES his cons abscond.
wee love the Big Fish in Hiss pond.

And so wee say “whee!” to all this and that!
PS, also the earth is flat!



Why do faith, hope and love
always end up PUSH and SHOVE?
—Michael R. Burch, lines from “Christ, Jesus!”



Yet another Screed against Exist-Tension-alism
by Michael R. Burch

Life has meaning!
Please don’t deny it!
It means we’re ******.
Why cause a riot?



Evangelical Fever
by Michael R. Burch

Welcome to global warming:
temperature 109.
You believe in God, not in science,
but isn’t the weather Divine?



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I *****,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear—
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don’t quite understand),
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).



The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

Here I am, talking to myself again . . .

******* at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!

Still, I remember when . . .

planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity

worth a chuckle or two.

Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;

Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;

Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;

Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .

for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,

and they fill the world with their pale derision

of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,

reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all ******.



The King of Beasts in the Museum of the Extinct
by Michael R. Burch

The king of beasts, my child,
was terrible, and wild.

His roaring shook the earth
till the feeble cursed his birth.

And all things feared his might:
even rhinos fled, in fright.

Now here these bones attest
to what the brute did best

and the pain he caused his prey
when he hunted in his day.

For he slew them just for sport
till his own pride was cut short

with a mushrooming cloud and wild thunder;
Exhibit "B" will reveal his blunder.



God to Man, Contra Bataan
by Michael R. Burch

Earth, what-d’ya make of global warming?
Perth is endangered, the high seas storming.
Now all my creatures, from maggot to man
Know how it felt on the march to Bataan.



The Less-Than-Divine Results of My Prayers to be Saved from Televangelists
by Michael R. Burch

I’m old,
no longer bold,
just cold,
and (truth be told),
been bought and sold,
rolled
by the wolves and the lambs in the fold.

Who’s to be told
by this worn-out scold?
The complaint department is always on hold.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to "believe"?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their (k)no(w)'s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud's a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I’m already below!

“Heaven Bent” is a pun on “being bent on Heaven” and the heaven/hell thing being bent into a different version, with the dying escaping hell here on earth. That would make death “heaven” even if there is no afterlife. “This life is hell,” “upwardly mobile” and “how the hell” are also puns that can be read two ways. I wrote this poem in high school, around age 16 in 1974, but was unhappy with the third line and forgot about the poem. I stumbled upon it on on July 4, 2006 —ironically, Independence Day — and the third line occurred to me.



The beauty of the flower fades,
its petals wither to charades...
—Michael R. Burch



the U-turn poem
by michael r. burch

Life so defaulty,
Life so unfair,
why do wee prize U,
what do U care?

LORD who lets unborns
drown in a flood,
CELESTIAL ABORTIONIST,
r U sure Ur understood?



Hellion
by michael r. burch

cold as stone,
cold to the bone,
so cold inside even icebergs moan,
such is ur Gaud on hiss icy throne.

lines written for a luverly Gaud who cant be bothered to save pisspot peeple who guess wrong about which ire-ational re-ligion to believe.

“Hellion” is a pun on “he-lion” as in the “Lion of Judah” and “hell-lion.”



yet another ode to a graceless faceless Creator albeit with thoughts of possibly rescinding prior compliments
by michael r. burch

who created this graceless universe?
why praise its Creator? who could be worse?
why praise man’s Berater with obsequious verse?
job’s wife was right: he’s nobody’s nurse.



ur-Gent prayer request
by michael r. burch

where did ur Gaud originate?
in the minds of men so full of hate
they commanded moms to stone their kids,
which u believe (brains on the skids)
was “the word of Gaud”!
                                         debate?
too late & of course it’s useless:
please pray to be less clueless.

The title involves a pun, since the “ur-Gent” would be the biblical “god.”



Religion is regarded by fools as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Non-Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

The wise will never cry, “Save!”
The wise desire a quiet grave.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense/nunsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to “believe”?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their no’s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud’s a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



We Know It All
by Michael R. Burch

We rile. We gall. We know it all
because we’ve read the Bible,
which tells us genocide’s “God’s will”
along with bashing in kids’ skulls
and other forms of libel.

The earth is flat, our Book says so!
The Lord will torture our rational foe!
(We lack the compassion to tell the fiend “No!”)

God’s on his throne, the Angels are winking,
applauding our lack of critical thinking.
We’re drowning in crap. We’re stinking and sinking.

Eve once petted friendly T-Rexes!
A “witch” should be ****** for unprovable hexes!
It’s a “sin” to make love if one’s lover has exes!

Girls were enslaved and ***** by their “masters”!
Our Book is the source of so many disasters!
The earth’s overheating? Let’s burn it up faster!



Yet Another ****** Ditty
by Michael R. Burch

Here’s my ditty:
Life is ******,
Then you get old
And more’s the pity.

Truth be told,
We’re bought and sold,
Sheep in the fold
Sheared lickety-splitty.

But chin’s up,
What’s the use of crying?
We’ve a certain escape:
Welcome to dying!



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some compassionless “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.



Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
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.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

2.
Listen to me now: I had a Vision.
An elevated train derailed, and Fell.
It was the Church brought low, almost to Hell.
And I alone survived, who dream of Mercy:
the Heretic, who speaks behind the Veil.

3.
Listen to me now: I saw an airplane
fall from the sky. And why should I explain?
The Visions are the same. It is my Heresy
that I survive, because I sing of Mercy,
while elevated "saints" go down in flames.

4.
Listen to me now: I saw in Nashville
how those who "soar" will plummet―Fame in flames!―
and fall on those below, as if to k-ll them.
The lowly, saved, will understand their names.

5.
Listen to me now: I heard another
say, "That which died shall Resurrect and Live."
An angel with a Rose bestowing Mercy!
What can it mean, but that my Visions give
fair warning to the world that God wants Mercy.
My Heresy is that we must forgive!

6.
Listen to me now: she heard god calling―
O, who will love me, who will be my friend?
Does he want Perfect Saints, the whitewashed Purists,
who frown down on their "brothers," without end?

7.
Listen to me now: you are not perfect,
and your "wise counsel" helps no one at all:
unless it's sweetened with the sweetest Mercy,
it's pure astringent antiseptic gall.

8.
Listen to me now, and learn this lesson:
If God wants mercy, why dig at the speck
in your brother's eye, when even now the Beam,
your lack of mercy, spares, no, neither neck,
becomes the Hangman's Millstone. We're all children,
all little ones! Be patient with the fleck!

9.
Listen to me now: for the Announcer
explained that wars have given Presidents
the precedents to soon assume all Power.
Vote, citizens, or be mere residents!

10.
O, listen to me now: I saw the Warheads
stored safely underground, except for One.
A red-haired woman with a bright complexion
seduced the guard. Translucent blouse, red thong,
white bra―these were her fearsome antique weapons.

I saw the Skull and Crossbones! Heed my Song!

11.
O, listen to me now, and hear my Gospel:
three verses of such sweet simplicity!
God is Light: in Him there is no darkness.
In Christ, no condemnation: Liberty!
God want no Sacrifice, but only Mercy.
O, who could ask for sweeter Heresy?

12.
Theology? I swear that I disdain it!
If Love can be explained, why then explain it!
If Love can't be explained why, then, should God,
if God is Love? Nor hell nor cattle ****
is needed, if God's good, and God's supreme.
Ask, children, what "re-ligion" truly means:
"return to *******! " Heed the bondsman's screams!

13.
Heed, children, which Theologies you dream
when Hellish Nightmares wake you, when you Scream
for comfort, but no comforter is there.
Which Voices do you heed, which Crosses bear?
If god is light, whence do Dark Visions come
which leave the Taste of Venom on your Tongue,
with which you **** your brother for one Sin
you do not share, ten thousand underskin
like Itching Worms that Squirm and Vilely Hiss:
"Your brother's sin will keep him from god's bliss,
but You are safe because god favors You! "
If God is Love, how can this voice be true?

14.
For God is not a favorer of men.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

The agnostics have gone
Cuckoo.
They have carefully lost their minds!
The profound and the loyal:
God among men.
The citizens and patriots
Are fighting the Devil in Dixie.
And in this world of
Sustained images of hope,
The shamrock and the
Sun-kissed face.
Oh the Sun, that purifies all that it touches
Damns all that it doesn't.

The city shifts the winds at night to serve its needs
like sweeping streets or twisting smoke
or swishing the curtains of softly sweating lovers
who feel like this city is theirs alone.

I guess the gears and cogs
paid me no notice tonight because I wake up with numb toes.
I hop over my slate schooner so it shelters me again.
I move to hit snooze on nature’s alarm clock
but pause to put on the silver man’s red tie
to keep me warm.

On my way to brunch pizza
I trip on an old bottle and face slap the curb
where I am greeted by a lost Abraham Lincoln
who is surprisingly made of paper and not copper.
So that does it.
New strings and the train to take me there.

I hop down the stairs to the tunnels,
for once a traveler instead of a performer.
Dipped in sunshine I start to laugh,
but Case gets carried away and trips
into the little puddle beneath me.
He shouts, “Woman down!”
Which makes me confused instead of shocked
as she is crushed by the Q train
because I thought she was a man.

I don’t get on the train.
It means wasting half of honest Abe,
but I can’t be inside my friend’s murderer.

I am now briefly rich
but permanently poor having lost my way
to talk to the world.
That $30 goes to smoke instead of strings
and I try to think of what Case might say
as I plunge into the Kennedy reservoir,
soaking until I become and instrument.

A xylophone of bones,
I clatter the tune to Beatles songs
as I shiver under some willow tree.

The city shifts its cogs and gears,
and in the breeze, all I can hear is some ****** voice shouting
Strawberry Fields Forever.

“Winter damns,” is what she would say
because it sounds wise and I would laugh,
because like all good advice,
it came too late to be used.

I dont have the mind
Neither the time
To be thinking about this
To be feeling like this
To be so overwhelmed
To say the damns farewells
I just wanna
I just gonna
I don't know

-Maybe if I keep myself busy I won't have time to remember

i imagine her
beautiful and weary
damaged in the ways
that allow her
to sink down into my soft places
and fill the puzzle-piece gap
someone else left her with.
i imagine her
lovely and flawed
striking a match in my chest
and starting a flame in my belly
a forest fire of disaster
and absolute perfection.
i imagine her
soft and destructive
disassembling me at her worst
caressing me at her best
i imagine her
lonely and strong
a being built from
i-don’t-give-a-damns
and let-me-help-yous
i imagine her
there
quiet and beaming
imagining what i might be like.
i imagine her
thinking i’m the beautiful mess
that i think her to be
i imagine us both being wrong.
i imagine that
being the best part
about it.

She wore flowers in her hair
And anger in her eyes
Had a strong hate for her father
And thought birthdays were stupid

He memorized every notch in her spine
And made a home for himself in the gaps between her fingers
Playing dot-to-dot with her freckles,
Became his new favorite hobby

Tattoos adorned his arms
Expressing himself in ways words never could, for ink could not stutter
He smoked too many cigarettes, and gazed at her through hooded eyes
The kind that could only be found in the depths of the alleyways you avoided

She looked at him as if he had hand selected the stars,
And was responsible for the moon
Right next to her love for the Rolling Stones, he was there
Swimming through her bloodstream

He had deceived himself into believing he did not love her
For she was his Abigail Williams
And she always said,
"God damns all liars"

Once a **** is given, one can not get it back.

I heard somewhere recently
that people are the most creative
at the times they think
that they are utterly useless:
like in the morning before getting coffee
or while surrounded by ******* co-workers who won't shut up about their stupid gun collection
       (cause seriously, no one cares about how big your **** isn't, Phil.)

The amount of ***** anyone can give in a day varies based of many factors - the amount of sleep someone has the night before or if they ate breakfast that morning, for example, can determine how many ***** a person has to spare.

It is in that spirit - despite my better judgement -
I am writing to you at four AM.
Sitting in my underwear,
Forcing my eyes to stay open, licking my dust-dry lips.
and realizing that I forgot to brush my teeth -
I'm writing that tid-bit that down
in hopes it will embarrass me into making a proper oral hygiene choice
sometime in between when I finish writing this and before I pass out from exhaustion.

If someone deems a person or a situation not worth their emotional effort, they can choose to not give a ****, despite having ***** they can give.

Today at work:
Everyone kept asking me if I was alright
I told them that I think so -
because, that's the truth.
But also because it's easier to say than
"I don't want to be here, and your face annoys me"

A **** is approximately two damns. A **** is two *****, and a **** is two rat's *****.

I don't have much to say in this piece
So I'm hoping that self-deprecation
and artsy-fartsy stream of consciousness
still passes for decent poetry these days.

Taking a **** is morally objectionable.

in her dreams,
she sprouts like fresh seeds pressed into fertile dirt.
she's constantly stretching farther and farther
in a futile attempt to finally reach the sun.
she closes her eyes
and sees rows and rows of lemon trees and strawberries,
mango groves and avocados.
she loves to feed the earth,
to give birth to something living that's incapable of denying,
or betraying,
her love.
she wants to feed almost everyone she meets.
set them down and wash their feet,
fill their cups and watch them leave.
she hopes that one day,
someone will ask to stay.
a boy whose heart is in need of mending,
or a man with hands that could move mountains.
maybe, one day.
she wants a farm-
a limitless garden to stretch as far as her eyes will let her see.
maybe just a bohdi tree to sit beneath,
a place to stay and wait to be buried by the leaves.
just for now, anyway.
she needs a home where she can be by herself without feeling alone.
she needs somewhere that she's meant to be.
supposedly,
dreams are things we chase down dark alley ways,
only to watch them escape us.
she damns every man who says so.
she's determined to catch up with every one of her dreams-
yeah,
a dream catcher of sorts.
she puts on her gloves and steps out in the mud,
ready to catch whatever the universe tosses her way...
or even just the ripe fruit falling from the trees in her dreams.

Priests are a plague,
whispering of false Deities;
that tear us apart.

Christianity teaches you to hate;
thyself, thy neighbor,
and thine own world.

and you still go to Hell.

Christianity is a Plague,
preaching to us about
a pathetic excuse of a God,
who gave us free will,
and now hates us for having it.

Christianity is a Plague,
preaching to us how we should
feel
act
worship.
How we should
forgive
forget
and repent.

No matter what,
Christianity is a Plague
whose morals preach nothing but self hatred.

Christianity teaches you;
You cannot be happy without God.
You are nothing without God.
No matter how much you try to appease God;
You can't.
No matter how hard you try to be devout,
you cannot accomplish it.

Christianity teaches us,
that when we die,
Hell is inevitable,
unless you're a Saint.

Christianity teaches us,
that everything we do is bad,
we are incapable of good,
we are all ******.

Unless we give up everything that makes us Human,
God shuns you and Damns you and doesn't look back,
because we are sinners.

Christianity teaches us that we are sinners,
we are nothing but sinners,
and we have to hate all sinners.

So why does no one see,
that we waste our money,
on a Pious Plague,
instead of spending
on something that can actually make a difference in the world.

So much
hate
despair
war
famine
lies
hurt
and malice

could have been avoided,
if we actually spent time
trying to fix things
instead of trying to believe in someone
who clearly doesn't give a **** about us.

Selfish clam
gives no damns.
Angry wiener
is not a winner.

Bad ***
All ***
No ***
Good ***

Drunken folly,
me so solly.
Moaning rapture.
Fluids capture.

Right ***
Old ***
New ***
Wrong ***

Did you know that if you have one ball bigger than the other it is hard to eloquently pull of a bullfrog with your sack?

I'm coming
I'm coming
I'm coming
I'm coming
I'm coming
I'm coming

I know why Adam chose
to go with Eve,
To stay beside the one
he'd come to love,
Though he believed
Life and Death's incision
Hung in the balance
of his imminent decision.

He took and ate
the offering from his Mate.
In Life, in Death,
the two were mated,
And for all time,
their seed was fated...
Deadly plantation
of love and sin,
This Reaper's Field
we're living in.

Before he damns him,
I believe,
A man must stand
in Adam's skin
And gaze on Eve.

A black man souled me my religion with his silhouetted blues and glit'ring worlds

Carved my faith with an old fashioned mic and tilted cap

I was a product of societies blue eyes and blonde hair

Trapped behind the funeral veil being poured into our rivers from the polluted pipes of reality

I watched God's eye as they scanned the deserted souls of our landscape

Wept floods of sorrow through our illusioned damns of hope

Leaving us alone to tend to the graveyard of our dreams

Questioning the mimicing raven, that can only give the answers we never wanted to hear. . .

But crying would be fruitless if we could see what's coming

Like fishing in the mutated waters of society

Shocking, but expected

Then again leaving the hook and closing the window would just make us irresponsible

So we slip into the sleeping game of time, sliding under the covers of trust

Hoping to find a shield from the boogie man in the sheets

Only to find that the boogie man rest here too

Puts good night kisses in the pillow cases to poison my dreams

And along with these realizations comes the drying of my faith in the old fashioned mic and tilted cap

Because the black man that souled me my religion forgot to mention that all that glitters, is not gold

A Poet named Catullus
and Lesbia, his muse,
lived in a time of Civil War
when loyalties are confused.

Their field of battle was their bed
where Love and lust contend.
That place where all their passion
petered out and found an end.

It would seem Hades hath no fury
like a Latin poet scorned.
His Lesbia he would abuse
in prose, in Rhyme and song.

Where once he praised her beauty
and swore they'd never part,
he now condemns her deviousness
and damns her cheating heart.

The more things change
they stay the same
when Love decays to hate
They, who once coiled in adulterous sheets,
now despise each others name.

As all is wrong, as all is known, you're on your own, your teeth are honed.
It's vengeance's hour, gives hate so dour, how it empow'rs, all to devour.
All remedies, obscurities, benignities, are turned to sin.
As you begin, fear setting in: for only one of you can win.

This lovely dance, this deathly dance, once-in-life chance, you fall in trance,
And call for death, draw your last breath, as all is set, start this duet!
Your final trial, you share a smile, a hateful smile, respectful smile.
Passion is riled, made this worthwhile, all that is left: blood, sweat and bile.

You both are free, you met your peer, now you will see, that death is near.
Without a sound, you leap around, and strike the ground, your screams resound.
All be confound'd, no way around, 'tis fate you found, you're destin'-bound.

One of you falls, and damns it all, more pain enrolls: they've met their goal.
Your life they stole, death takes its toll, you lose your soul: this dance is whole.
Oh, what a strife, with death was rife, grandest celebration of life!

Tell them about the time you spent your day looking for a rock to live under, tell them how your soul seeks an understanding that is nowhere to be seen in his eyes.
Tell them about the time you stuttered while talking to the guests your mum invited
How you kept wanting to say sorry cause that Is the only emotion you ever feel these days
Tell them about the time you laid on your bed all alone
Seeing nightmares with open eyes
Tell them how everyone that left and everything you love
Comes back to haunt you every night
Tell me how you stopped talking to your friends
To avoid their snap out of its
Tell them about that one time your teacher asked you where do you see yourself in 10 years and
You imagined yourself rotting in an abandoned house
Tell them how you feel like an abandoned house; a graveyard where people come and bury their broken dreams and forget to re-visit
Tell them how you try to give everyone what they want and at the end of the day when you are alone
You just don't know who you are or who you want to be
Tell them how you can't remember how or why it went this bad
But only that no one helped you prevent it
Tell them how the only thing you can do from falling apart is
Write these gibberish talks
Tell them how you wonder if you are that good at putting a facade
Or the number of damns they give is dwindling
Tell them how you think it is the later
Tell them how you feel so hopeless when you hear your parents talk about what is wrong with you
Tell them how you think you doomed them by walking into their lives
Tell them how what once was can never be that way again
And how every time the wind blows you feel it tearing you apart at the very seams of your being
Tell them how you are more cracks than skin
And how
Everything they say
Or everything you had drained out
Now you are just a void.

Its Wednesday and you know what it is....
So why are we still talking...

lets do this
see if you can tell me about your day
while my head is between your thighs..
try not to cover my ears...
I bet you can't do it
I bet you'll wrap your legs around my neck
until the earthquakes...
and mumble every word after tell me why.....
muhanamndjmsdnufos
And I'll just say
mmmm hmmmmm
causing my lips to become vibrators
breaking damns
that can no longer hold back your oceans..
then I'll ask you again what happened today?

as your rivers runs down my chin
you'll kiss them
saying this happened today
as you place your lips around
my fully erected rod
You say "I'm now in control"
as you put Hoover, Dyson and Whirlpools to shame
leaving me so anxious
to be inside you...
to travel the depths of your seas
and get lost
so that I have no choice but to die there
You are Atlantis
and I am Poseidon
I'll command your waves to shore...
to wipe the land clean
of everything that stress you out
for right now in this moment
its Wednesday
and it is all your thoughts should be about....