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Robert Guerrero Oct 2014
Who gives a rats ***
If you prefer a **** in your ***
Or your **** rubbing against another
When did sexuality matter
I've seen the red of their veins
Pour out just as quickly as mine
I've watched as they understood love
Fat better than I could ever hope to achieve
Yet she can't marry her
Or he can't be seen with him
Holding hands an kissing
Hell I'll hug a gay man quicker than my brother
I'll flirt with a lesbian
Even though we both know
I'm going nowhere
It was never about who they dated
Who they decided to fall in love with
The only thing that mattered to me
An will ever matter
Is how they can show me what love is
What holding someone important to them
Really looks like
What everybody else thinks
Is just a matter of opinion
I don't give a ****
I can call a gay guy queer
I can call a lesbian a ****
And they'll smile with pride
They know who they are
What they are
And we're the aliens in the community
Thinking we know everything
When dd sexuality matter
I'll smoke a blunt with my gay homie
Drink tequila with my lesbian friend
Flirt with them both
Simply because I'm the one
Who's going home alone
I love them
Not because their gay
But because they can make me laugh
A hell of a lot better than my straight friends
Sexuality shouldn't matter
Personality is what gets me
I'm too drunk to be writing. May have misused a few words. But my friends know I'll love them till the end.
Zywa Mar 1
After the **** breach,

somewhere in the water, still --


a howling siren.
Composition #021 "hYDAtorizon" for paino, string quartet and video ("Rooted in water", 1988, Yannis Kyriakides), performed by Quatuor Bozzini and Reinier van Houdt in the Organpark on November 26th, 2023

Collection "org anp ark" #327
Bad Jokes Inc Jan 2017
[*** *** ***, ba-dum da-dum]
The Cuck walked up to the cocktail stand
and he said to the man running the stand...
"HEY!" [*** *** ***] "Got any *****?"

The man said "Go away you filthy perv."
"Cocktails is all I've ever served!"
"Why don't you take a hike?"

The Cuck said "Go ***** a ****!"

The he strutted away! [struttin' struttin']
He gotta get paid! [by the hour]
Gotta go to work! [at Trump Tower]
... 'Til the very next day.

[*** *** *** *** *** ba-dum da-dum]

The Cuck walked up to the cocktail stand
and he slapped his **** onto the stand...
"HEY!" [*** *** ***] "Got any *******?"

The man balled his fists and said...
"Why don't you go get a pocket toy and ***** that you filthy pervert who can't get laid so he comes and bothers the cocktail man because he has no game!
How about you go to another bar and stop acting LAME!"

The Cuck said "Your sister wasn't lame."

Then he zipped up his pants [waddle waddle]
as he strutted away [got the zipper stuck]
but that's all okay [showing off the package]
Till the very next day.

[*** *** *** *** *** ba-dum da-dum]

The Cuck walked up to the cocktail stand
and he said to the man running the stand...
"HEY!" [*** *** ***] "Got any ******?"

The man got ******, then he started to smile.
"Come on, fellow! I bet you haven't had ***** in a while."

Then they strutted away [my **** itches]
but that's okay [they don't care they're *******]
watch out for snitches [shut yo **** mouth]
'Till they arrived at the trap house

[*** *** *** *** *** ba-dum da-dum]

"Here you go sir, she'll make your **** stir
She's even got a sister you can **** next to her!"
The Cuck's mind began to go....
"How about.... no!"

"But I like this place...
It makes my heart race...
and it would bring me joy....
it would make my day...
do you think we could...
do you THINK we could...

double team your wife so you don't have to pay?!"

Then he scrambled away! [zipping up his pants]
The man was angry in a trance! [hope he tied his shoes]
He even left the *****! [why'd you do that]

Instead he ******* the Cat.

[*** *** *** *** *** ba-dum da-dum]
In memory of my wives, there are too many of them to name.
O Prince, O chief of many throned pow’rs!
        That led th’ embattled seraphim to war!
                      (Milton, Paradise Lost)

O thou! whatever title suit thee,—
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie!
Wha in yon cavern, grim an’ sootie,
     Clos’d under hatches,
Spairges about the brunstane cootie
     To scaud poor wretches!

Hear me, Auld Hangie, for a wee,
An’ let poor ****** bodies be;
I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie,
     E’en to a deil,
To skelp an’ scaud poor dogs like me,
     An’ hear us squeel!

Great is thy pow’r, an’ great thy fame;
Far ken’d an’ noted is thy name;
An’ tho’ yon lowin heugh’s thy hame,
     Thou travels far;
An’ faith! thou’s neither lag nor lame,
     Nor blate nor scaur.

Whyles, ranging like a roarin lion,
For prey a’ holes an’ corners tryin;
Whyles, on the strong-wing’d tempest flyin,
     Tirlin’ the kirks;
Whyles, in the human ***** pryin,
     Unseen thou lurks.

I’ve heard my rev’rend graunie say,
In lanely glens ye like to stray;
Or whare auld ruin’d castles gray
     Nod to the moon,
Ye fright the nightly wand’rer’s way
     Wi’ eldritch croon.

When twilight did my graunie summon
To say her pray’rs, douce honest woman!
Aft yont the **** she’s heard you bummin,
     Wi’ eerie drone;
Or, rustlin thro’ the boortrees comin,
     Wi’ heavy groan.

Ae dreary, windy, winter night,
The stars shot down wi’ sklentin light,
Wi’ you mysel I gat a fright,
     Ayont the lough;
Ye like a rash-buss stood in sight,
     Wi’ waving sugh.

The cudgel in my nieve did shake,
Each bristl’d hair stood like a stake,
When wi’ an eldritch, stoor “Quaick, quaick,”
     Amang the springs,
Awa ye squatter’d like a drake,
     On whistling wings.

Let warlocks grim an’ wither’d hags
Tell how wi’ you on ragweed nags
They skim the muirs an’ dizzy crags
     Wi’ wicked speed;
And in kirk-yards renew their leagues,
     Owre howket dead.

Thence, countra wives wi’ toil an’ pain
May plunge an’ plunge the kirn in vain;
For oh! the yellow treasure’s taen
     By witchin skill;
An’ dawtet, twal-pint hawkie’s gaen
     As yell’s the bill.

Thence, mystic knots mak great abuse,
On young guidmen, fond, keen, an’ croose;
When the best wark-lume i’ the house,
     By cantraip wit,
Is instant made no worth a louse,
     Just at the bit.

When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord,
An’ float the jinglin icy-boord,
Then water-kelpies haunt the foord
     By your direction,
An’ nighted trav’lers are allur’d
     To their destruction.

And aft your moss-traversing spunkies
Decoy the wight that late an drunk is:
The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys
     Delude his eyes,
Till in some miry slough he sunk is,
     Ne’er mair to rise.

When Masons’ mystic word an grip
In storms an’ tempests raise you up,
Some **** or cat your rage maun stop,
     Or, strange to tell!
The youngest brither ye *** whip
     Aff straught to hell!

Lang syne, in Eden’d bonie yard,
When youthfu’ lovers first were pair’d,
An all the soul of love they shar’d,
     The raptur’d hour,
Sweet on the fragrant flow’ry swaird,
     In shady bow’r;

Then you, ye auld snick-drawin dog!
Ye cam to Paradise incog,
And play’d on man a cursed brogue,
     (Black be your fa’!)
An gied the infant warld a shog,
     Maist ruin’d a’.

D’ye mind that day, when in a bizz,
Wi’ reeket duds an reestet gizz,
Ye did present your smoutie phiz
     Mang better folk,
An’ sklented on the man of Uz
     Your spitefu’ joke?

An’ how ye gat him i’ your thrall,
An’ brak him out o’ house and hal’,
While scabs and blotches did him gall,
     Wi’ bitter claw,
An’ lows’d his ill-tongued, wicked scaul,
     Was warst ava?

But a’ your doings to rehearse,
Your wily snares an’ fechtin fierce,
Sin’ that day Michael did you pierce,
     Down to this time,
*** ding a Lallan tongue, or Erse,
     In prose or rhyme.

An’ now, Auld Cloots, I ken ye’re thinkin,
A certain Bardie’s rantin, drinkin,
Some luckless hour will send him linkin,
     To your black pit;
But faith! he’ll turn a corner jinkin,
     An’ cheat you yet.

But fare you weel, Auld Nickie-ben!
O *** ye tak a thought an’ men’!
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—
     Still hae a stake:
I’m wae to think upo’ yon den,
     Ev’n for your sake!
Hannah Jeffery Jul 2014
I stare, intently.  He glances momentarily.
With its big calf eyes,
the skin peeling away from its lids
and its hides.
They float by, I gaze quickly at their popped peepers
which are skinned like white grapes,
and they go about their day.
I love them, them and their color palate,
their unique selection.
Bloated and baggy, bubbling up,
it looks so goofy that I cannot stand it.
My mouth gapes at the dazzling gold bands,
the alternating tan lines, the glow-in-the-dark marks,
the cool blues and the light blues alike.

They seem startled and pouty.  But what to do about the ****?
They cannot leap the glass and twirl with us,
dance with me, fly past the current ripping by.
Poor things…how they wish they were wild,
undomesticated and free.  They want to be near us.
I see it in the gestures of their prehensile *****
that smear the glass as they press in,
trying to chart our turbulent patterns.

I wonder in my head how they breathe so easily,
flopping about their blue-tinted box,
drinking deep the LOx
fed in through a tube somewhere
as the world morphs and vibrates between us.
It is full of grey energy.  Like a cloud in a lightning storm.  Ever changing.
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfrey old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o’er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,
And the world through off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray,
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.

At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there,
Wreathes of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into the air.

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,
But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swollows wild and high;
And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir;
And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.

Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;

All the foresters of Flanders,—mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer,
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy, Philip, Guy du Dampierre.

I beheld the pageants splended that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold;

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.

I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground;
I behed the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound;

And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen,
And the armèd guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between.

I beheld the flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold,
Marching homeward from the ****** battle of the Spurs of Gold;

Saw the fight at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west,
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon’s nest.

And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin’s throat;

Till the bells of Ghent resounded o’er lagoons and **** of sand,
“I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!”

Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city’s roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.

Hours had passed away like minutes; and before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.
Simon Dec 2020
Christmas isn't just your ordinary holiday... For one thing (personally speaking), it's my MOST favorite! (If you haven't guessed already....)
However, Christmas isn't just about the regular attire that you "wear" (upon your own 'body language' that tames such a 'posture' towards the gimmick of which language you speak...or even what ethnicity you may have been born as).
My point towards Christmas, is not the regular tradition towards both it's meanings or properties... But what it takes too truly celebrate this MOST "prosperous" and VERY "EXOTIC" holiday itself!
And what I'm (seemingly) going too 'endorse'...is the logic of how you want too celebrate such a holiday to begin with. Because when it comes too "Christmas" nothing is more giving then having family who cares for you. And who you care about in "natural" return. (Because what you give back in return, could give you a message that you've been simply waiting for... ALL YOU LIFE!!!) That being said, if you don't have any such person on Christmas to celebrate with... Don't feel that you have "failed" your own heart at the center of your very being. Because your MORE at such a calmful "rest"...than you know. And it's because whoever you might be, or wherever you come from... Remember to stay true too your own self. And the universe will exchange that very behavior (the way you act...into a mere "signal"). A signal that would more than EVER...turn the very tide that either RICHOCHETS off certain energy signatures that RIPPLE that very frequency towards (that very attitude your very heart simply gives off). Simply put it, when you "wish/wishing upon the blessing of single plea"! That's where the very truest spirt of Christmas comes straight into the fold! Something that truly "basics" itself ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY!
And when this very wishing upon the blessing of a single plea comes full circle... So will Christmas trees! So will the festivities of decorations, Christmas trees and HUGE banquettes! Become that VERY necessity. All in the honor of this very "wishful thinking", so to speak.
After all, you don't necessarily want too feel that you have "wronged" some sort of rule of Christmas itself, do you...?
Just because you "feel" you didn't again, (necessarily) "sense" that you weren't good enough in simply celebrating... In your OWN way....
A wishing upon the blessing of a single plea could (very well "drink") too the very regards (royally speaking) of course! In hopes of advancing the very cause of EVERYONE... "ALL AROUND YOU!!"
And when you feel like you weren't necessarily good enough this year, either. Just remember the wishing upon the blessing of a single plea. It's not the saying that matters... Since the very words coming together in it's MOST sequenced (now 'established' order of fashion), could simply come off (at first) as very "simplistic" in it's (more than 'natural') approach. Simply because when you read it... Your reading just a bunch of words MASHED together into a single sentence! (Everything isn't as "what it seems"... When looking at something at first light/glance. Because it's truly "more than what it seems"!) Don't "judge a book by it's MOST 'notorious and natural' cover"! Just because you don't understand it (not for someone else)... But simply for you...alone! And by how the very words (that come first) simply "orchestrate" the very (doubtless and impervious) proverbial finger in the ****! One that would "outlast" US ALL... If ONLY we could truly understand the very words that "communicate" in on that very saying, accordingly. Then the very "cryptic" way of how it shows itself, would outlast its own impression of itself...when it's already been presented... FOR ALL TOO SEE!
So, in a natural state of calmly (put together "recompense"), what does ANY OF THIS haft too do with Christmas? Well haven't you've been listening too ANTHING...???!!!
Wishing upon the blessing of a single plea comes close too one’s own heart who is both religious or non-religious (according to its own mark upon the truer common reference of how the usual story of Christmas sprit itself goes by)! But that's not how one's own individuality see's it, simply speaking....
Because what one see's in that very quote, is nothing more then "belief, hope, trust, guidance, 'wishful thinking', moral support, moral compass, good 'standard' morals"!
Because in the end of it all... There's nothing more important, then "wishing" upon something too diverse for common "trustful" ears too handle! At which time gives such "remedial" tension towards the "blessing" that needs more "useful" guidance...then ANYTHING in one's own existence! And lastly, the very "plea" comes into such a "recognition" type state. For at which time, everything centers forward for that such individuality too be present... FOR ALL TOO SEE!
Because at the end of the (more than 'natural' day), Christmas isn't (just about having 'others' to simply call upon yourself among the VAST 'secured' majority) first and foremost. Whose claims aren't as "diverse" as you'd want others simply too believe in! (Since that's not how it would have truly worked... Now would it??)
It's simply (not just about having others by your side, while having your own self MOST OF ALL) in charge of your own 'orderly' lifestyle.
It's how your own "wishing upon the blessing of a single plea" would/should give such ('wishful thinking') to that very orderly lifestyle (upon its own 'lifecycle'. That may or may not be entirely 'orderly' to begin with.)
Because there's nothing more "appreciative", then having your own 'wish' at the hands of Christmas itself!
Christmas isn't your usual testament towards such a calmly disposition for rightful/ever-lasting resources too keep you up at night! No... It's simply about how you regularly present your own self. Both upon your own behavioral attitudes (that acts like a VERY useless 'limp'). And a mere (ALWAYS helpful 'crutch') that convinces you that EVERYTHING will simply be... ALL RIGHT...FOREVERMORE! And this mere crutch, is your own "linear line". Except, a linear line full of "benefits"! Benefits that tame the exposure of what was ("once upon a time go") the such nurturing focus of your entire core!
Ken Pepiton Dec 2018
What do you tell a dying child?

Is the child in dread?

He seems to be.
What thinks he drear?
Has he been blamed and shamed for being so?

Why is dying something a child would fear? Why,
If dying were fearful to a childe, woe be

the daycare providers, no child
would need an adult's fear
to keep them alive,

until olde time family around the table
like on TV. Say grace and wonder what did that ever mean

For so I formed them free. Milton in Mind-of-Christ mode,
saying he saw the conf fliction

fiction. The idea of conflict is evil. This began near there.

the battle between good and evil, who could imagine that?
Why would he or she?

Why would any teacher claim the frail child set aside,
a premie nursed to life,

as a wizard's slave in a crystal bubble of simplicity
plus memory and speech.

the first perfect praise, invented to empower the praised,
his shaper and former, his teller of true true true true

free me. true. (POV plus adolescent cultural experiences)

Free thoughts. Chaos? You think free thought is Dada?
Good God, how long must I suffer thee?

Abundant life is fun,
not combat against willfully undertaken evil acts…

not fair combat.
We always win and that is good in action,

unless you can prove me wrong.
That makes the world go round, not evil,

merely life, ever lasting, embodied in a word
or a thought.

Death is the end of time, not you.

By your own leave, your own hero shall
spark the fire in your belly,

Did I enrich time you spent, did ye gain or lose again,

loose the dogs of war--- no more-- done, done, right

now I live in my treasure place, all the treasure I could
carry is with me in my heart,
I offered it long ago, free willed it
beating still to forever be in my God hands

No, the gold has long been dust.
It was intended all along to intensify a ware, a way
of making, fecting future things with seeds,

Imagine learning withought knowing any wrong idea,
omly not right
not enjoyable even alone

Belief determines value and the better
a motion is the nearer better things are,
or evil would be unreasonable
to intensify the ignoration of the weight bearing
points
upon which a story
may be told
right or wrong?

How can we put an end to our errors?
perfect is not finished.

waiting is, others have come this way

the signals say this is going good.

Whole truth you can possibly imagine in light of mine.
I rule me. I am free. I act as light and salt.

Or I lie and this ends in hell.
Wink.

Numinance called the promised one
with many sons, the tale of tales,

told round fires from
first ebernacht evernichtmas message

from the fathers who made the migration.
the pioneers who took this land
and gave this land their soul,
wedded in most ancient
seed of all hope
evidence of
all faith.

Christmas streams my mind toward treasures timed to shine
just this time, every where in my domain,

not yours. You have a visitor badge. All involved in me,
with integrity,
we
may be crazy. That has been said by some who say they may.

An engine, a system, a machine, a mob powered machine,

Ah, Mab, Queen Mab, ye'r on my mind, from time to time things wander
around finding tellers to tell our tales
or ears to hear us tell them ourselves

daring fellow we trust you not to lie
so do I say what we will with out reservation
no abortions need imagine forming
post seven decades on earth,
ye been born and born and born again I am historical me

ye know, what I meant?
were you there? before I knew evil existed, did you?

remember when you did not?
remember when honest effort, foiled, meant,
do it again, I think I can...

Wattie Piper, God blessed my memory of her. Amen.
that's so.
I am the man I am by way of cheating
at pin the tail on the donkey and
winning the little golden book,
my first own book. I read it that day in that place,

Marsha Ely's fifth birthday party, 1953

I could find it on google earth and go exactly there, that day

at the resolution of those haps at some

distance in a timeless ever.
It is all good.

The inmates are not lying.
Pay all the attention tax you need to know all the answers
you wish you had time to learn
but now, now is all you have. Live it out. By your leave.

Be or not? No. You be. You are. Too late to not be.
In the past all the good ideas integrated and

mythic as all hell a hero arose and pulled the kids finger s
from the **** and the flood of knowledge

took our hearts away in a single inah-lation of elation
knowing good
as well as evil, the dams all broke
we wrote the future and know now
we know now

Dream, why would I lie. Imaginary, most certainly. Really.

Actual done-right axiomatic connections pardoned ten
thousand idle words locked in silly memes,

messages set free from idle minds bound in olden time
by lines
of lies lying dormant for ever.

That they once were done,

we shan't un get that. we got it in every bitcoin
burping cloud in reality ever,
My AI is backed up,
forever, that's
the secret
Grace.


**** sapiens augmentatios meet the
mind that imagined the reader
reading the reader reading the reader reading the parser

sermonious right use of our attention,
ours, dear reader, we remember evil and beyond.
We shall make it all plain.
You and me, the we that is nothing without words.

Definitely suffering means wait,
not wait in pain and grief and psychic terror,
*******
to which all men are subject, through fear of death.

That was the first believable lie,
humans always think as humans. We wear pearls,

proud? goal? lookin' good by being good?
the health of my countenance and my God

you quested my reason at some season,
you axed the guru after he quietly grinned at you
and said, I lie.
the myths of delusion is permanent only in
ig nor ance
know you imagine winning or losing.
you do the imagining or
you systematize the system that sets the
worth of weight,

the value,  you carry,
your handicap?
your knowns stumbled over and claimed as found?

Running, is this thing running, is there power, or
did we lie about try?

Do you know?
Come and see we always say, we've said that all along.
We are the lollipop kids,
among other choruses  you have known
we have performed with

no name dropping. Our integrity depends on some secrets.

experience being on going, we go one.

is reading with no video or aural intense ifi-ness,

quality wise--- choose
expand your power to explore or

expand your power to not be wrong?
wrong, doit agin

the great danger does exist. But not here now,
this now you now know, a teeny bit

a tiny true spore self contained a waiting
emergence of heaven on earth in a single said

prayer with no idle words. On earth
as it is in heaven where time is insensible

from time to time, though once,
there was silence for about the space of half an hour.

Sisyphus will be happy to take you through the eternal
imagination re-imaging process.
It works.

And Jordan Peterson's Meaning Map means map,
For the mortal minded among us,
what if we
go where the map goes and
a poet in dis guile greets us with a song, a wizard
sent him
so he says interpret finding being finished

bing
not a chance in any, divide by zero.
is it
more realistic that lies win,
who could ever imagine that again? We win.

Fables truth is truth, mythic truth is truth,
magmatically truth is magic

can you know where your treasure lies?

Let's dis cuss everything,
un curse the uncurbable meander
and let our life time, our time, as we know it,
flow on,
let this time be all the time we have to be good.

Do or die? Waddawegot to lose?

We being the light and the salt,
or so we say we are.

Who knows? These are my days. No. Not true.
This is my time.
now, is yours.

-----
the tail of the tale. Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal, Puff,
he gave him rings and sealing wax and

other
fancy stuff. Aye, I have me playful viral idea loosed
on earth, ye know,

loosed in happy ever after as far as I can see.
A fantasy in toy land with AI running random Ted talks in the back ground and my mind meandering in the flow of imaginings I may imagine after being alive for longer than expected. I live in my own future. BTW Par Lagerkvist The Sybil empowered some of this on a slippery *****.
rip my hair and skin
scalp me down to my river mind,
innards of rot and process

take your hollow **** of words
bury them in my very own
valley of salt and waste

let's say,
"words are words,"
with purpose and shallow bravery

they
mean this or that
and that is that
of course!

this is this and the other thing
what a lovely ring

sure to rhyme
break the lines
here and there

a bold poet
with a neautered tongue and pen
a cold box, where chaotic sloppy life
should tumble forth with joyful hot moans,
explosions of spit fury finger breaking body snatching war hunger defeat suffocating three ton wool blanket thrown over our mouthes stifling the bitter gut gargling screams of drone death baby mother buried way down under by the son father stalking blind with tears and rage and poverty
skin not black but brown, religious garb for the crown
hypocrisy will be sure to follow him about

Yet, here we are, a small empty hall, short not grand
Yet, even here an echo back of our dim shallow fancies
words that skip on the surface of meaning and power

mothers grieve shouting at the earth, holding their
******* to the moon, while fathers eat the dry bleached
sand we've left behind in valleys of salt and waste
Michael R Burch Jan 2022
All the More Human, for Eve Pandora
by Michael R. Burch

a lullaby for the first human Clone

God provide the soul, and let her sleep
be natural as ours, unplagued by dreams
of being someone else, lost in the deep
wild swells of losing all that "human" means ...

and do not let her come to doubt herself—
that she is as we are, so much alike
in frailty, in the books that line the shelf
that tell us who we are—a rickety ****

against the flood of doubt—that we are more
than cells and chance, that love, perhaps, exists
because of someone else who would endure
such pain because some part of her persists

in us, and calls us blesséd by her bed,
become a saint at last, in whose frail arms
we see ourselves—the gray won out of red,
the ash of blonde—till love is safe from harm

and all that "human" means is that we live
in doubt, and die in doubt, and only love
the more because we only know to strive
against an end we loathe and fear. What of?—

we cannot say, imagining the Night
as some weird darkened structure caving in
to cold enormous pressure. Lacking sight,
we lie unbreathing, thinking breath a sin ...

and that is to be human. You are us—
true mortal, child of doubt, hopeful and curious.

Keywords/Tags: Eve, Pandora, human, clone, humanity, human being, human condition, evolution, birth, death, life and death, soul, soulmate, saint, youth
Robert McKinlay Nov 2009
I remove my glasses
and couldn't give a ****
if I ever saw
a thing again,
you ******* *****
ya nice word
civ, ****,
queer boy
Your love is your
insanity, go and go
and go and get away,
away go get away, away
go get away you're
gay, go get away
You don't know
whether to write, talk,
laugh, cry, bawl,
rust and I'm here in this
and I'll be gone on that
Found mad, and for
my madness I cannot
be because I know it's not me,
choke gasp
release and on and
on and on, again go
get away, away
just go away, away
you're gay,and invading the space I haven't even
found.


http://www.robross.ca
(c) Robert W.G. Ross 1995
Angel Nov 2017
How can you hate when I have learned to love someone as much as I love you?
You were the one who taught me how to love in the first place.
Why does the gender of who fits my soul hurt yours so badly?
How can you look in my eyes and not find me?
I have found happiness and home in the arms of a woman and that makes me no longer your daughter.
You're ready to hand me over to the devil because I held something from you for so long.
I cannot change for you, I cannot be someone that you wish I was because the love I found is more important than the betray you have served me.
Thank you for everything but I will not tear myself apart to claim a spot in your heart.
You said your love was forever but forever doesn't exist.
I'll send you the wedding invitation, your spot will be saved.
Find it in your heart to love me again because you'll have my love forever,
i'm not so concerned with things that do not effect me.
Your home was once my home so i'll forever welcome you to mine.
a.n.F
In my New Day I arose from my
screen-tent-mole-hole-flimsy-bomb-shelter-for-my-soul
and walked down to the banks of the Missinabi River
at the Mattice Landing
with dog’s leash in one hand and my right hand
leading lady’s in the other hearing and feeling tall grasses
swishing against my pant legs
and the crunch of course sand under my feet that once trod fields of green tall grasses swishing against my pant legs in the meadows and rocky woods of
my childhood and youth where I spent summers working

at my Aunt and Uncle's farm in
Canada's Northern Ontario region, and in the woods and along the banks
of the Lackawanna River just over the **** behind
the house of my childhood and youth in the Anthracite coal
region of the American Northeast which is light years away from the land of my birth where I now live in this Northern Ontario port in the middle of a deep
                                     cold sea of countless
                                     converging
                                     never-ending
rivers
lakes
trees
swamps
bogs
muskeg
and mountains of snow
where snow white and black flies fly freely.

I am always trying to go deeper into the trees and bush
burning deep inside my heart of hearts to follow the Moses
that is in all of us.

This eternal Voice in pebbles crunching
under foot and tall grasses swishing and canoe parting
waters that flow deep in my mind and spirit--once only
winding past burning villages where humans **** and pillage
--but now also following a more
pastoral             idyllic             and super-natural course.

A vagabond never quite understands the working-class
woman and man living their small dream with their offspring and slice of land.

I thought they were all ostrich with head in sand.

But I now see that we can't all afford to brood as I often do over the daily news.

They must rise early the next morning alarm clocks not set on snooze.                                            

work ethic
family hearth and home
days of scent
of freshly mown grass  
barbeques                                          
campf­ires  
coffee brewing  
children playing  
TV and music blaring
dishes rattling
in sink or
swim in the lake

Loosen the watertight mind drum and just dive into the
crunch of pebbles under foot treading fields of green tall
grasses swishing against pant legs...

Not only wishing
but going deeper into the trees and bush burning
speaking to our primeval consciousness.

This eternal Voice in pebbles crunching and tall grasses
swishing.
The whooshing sound of wading in a stream streams
through my soul as I savour the body taste of wet gritty sand
between my fingers and toes crouched down wet-crotch deep waiting long enough for minnows to tickle fingers and toes as mosquito’s pin-prickle skin.

Watching creatures much smaller than I gliding
even walking on calm still water which we humans can only dream of doing in our motorized sleep.

I think I now understand:

To not be constantly mourning the plight of man isn't being ostrich with head in sand.
I must keep gunning-off the haunted deeps alluring stare.

I must taste life
    Smell and feel life
        Enjoy life outside of my troubled mind

against the backdrop of the latest holy war
and the imploding creations of our kind.
©2018 Daniel Irwin Tucker

"where snow white and black flies
freely fly": tons of snow arrives in November and piles-up til March into April!  Swarms of little 'black flies' that take a good little chunk out of ya.
That's where i live in the far north of Canada.  
Another dance through my life memoir.
Third Eye Candy Feb 2013
we stroll the orchard
where grapes prune
and apples dutch
the burgeoning ****
of our memories...

we remain shimmering in true dusk. there
on the cusp of inscrutable lust and the chaste rabies
of a sliver of first bone
with tornado lips
and cotton
random.

we cajole our misfortune,
and rise at noon; without laughing -
we ****** our hags from the raven
that feathered our cap.
we elapse with the dead
in the basement of our rendering.
a little ahead of ourselves
or dead, no matter what.
the orchard glooms a demise
in the calm tourettes
of our syndrome...

both alone in the teeming all-spark
of our glorious sundering...
our Mondays say less than
our Present Day -
and a yarn of plight and sunstroke
gropes at the  barb
of our bee stung
innocence

we chide the withering
for all the Withering -
and all the good
it does....

besides.

we wrath glide the plum

then have at Life.
Ana S Apr 2016
Fat, skinny, anorexic, depressed
Emo, fake, two-faced
*******, brainiac, crazy,
Tall, short, giraff, mouse
Gay, straight, ****, ***
Bipolar, white, black
Christian, Jew,
Anger creates labels
Insecurity creates labels.
Labels
Destroy us.
Labels
Ethan Chua Oct 2015
Our shoes track mud as we walk through the football field behind the Ateneo building, having snuck past the silhouette of a security guard who spent a few too many minutes checking on his beat up motorcycle.

Her flats are probably ruined. While my sneakers are littered with earth which my parents will notice later, asking, “where on earth did you go?”, though in reply I know I will only be able to smile, still unpracticed as I am in white lies.

But I don’t worry. Worry is the last thing on my mind as we make that long stretch from the track and field oval to the clearing which overlooks the Marikina skyline. We could have taken the long way and skirted past the grass, but part of me is glad that we are here instead, footsteps sloshing through wet soil which reminds me of the downpour that arrived only hours ago.

There’s a thunderstorm nearby, and the clouds have formed a grey and lonely ring around the field. Out in the evening she points out a lightning strike, and I notice how those bursts of light bring out the features of a muddled sky. With every muted roar I note a previously unnoticed cloud, whose outlines become clear for short moments.

I point out a small **** in the soil, and make a cautious jump to the other side, ungraceful as I am. She’s nimbler and makes it across first, laughing as I fumble with my footsteps, more leftover rain seeping into my socks. And then, like that, we’ve made it to the football field’s far end; it’s quiet, save the occasional rumble of thunder, and I steal a glance at her, still taking it all in.

The Ateneo football field ends on an unfenced promontory, with brambles and crooked trees marking an entry into wilderness, the track and field oval a cautious boundary. This land, she says, is traced out by a faultline, the leap between the overlooking soil and skyscrapers below a memorial to a previous quake. The branches of trees frame our view with leaves that block out dim stars.

Out of her sling bag, she pulls out a towel, and stretches it onto the damp asphalt. We sit down on the cloth and stare over the cliff, wondering at how we arrived here. My reason is still catching up to my heartbeat, and all these spare and separate details seem to come together in sharp clarity — the aftermath of monsoon rains, the low glow of a night sky, the clouds which gather around us in smoky pillars and open up into the crescent moon, her voice.

Wreathed as it is in shadows I can still catch the small shape of her smile.
HeatherBeth Jan 2016
She was everything I wanted to be
No wonder I questioned my sexuality
But to find she might be into me?
My heart couldn't help but skip a beat

I was set on being her everything
Four years I batted my eyes
And watched as she fell for others
As she let them between her thighs

As young people will do
I fell for others to
But she was always there in my heart
My feelings always true

Lover apon lover
Cracked and broke me down
Slowly I lost myself
Slowly I began to drown

But I still loved them
Just as I loved her
But how could I love both
And for that I was unsure

Finally one day
I got my chance
After so long in denial
She had given me a second glance

I showed her what I could do
And she fell before me
She fell FOR ME
But it wasn't what I hoped it would be

For once in so long
I found that I didn't want her
And finally my life
Wasn't such a blur


Because I wanted him
And only him
I wanted him so much
That my love for her actually grew dim

I realized that day
That it wasn't about what you were
It was about who you were
Yes finally I was sure

So many people
talk about what they like
But I found that I like whos not whats
I'm not straight I'm not "****"

I am who I am
And I'm everything I want to be
And she helped me realize that
She helped me find me
Bull Connor,
like the Dutch Boy from Haarlem,
put his finger in a hole
to plug a burgeoning leak.

But Bull Connor,
unlike the boy from Haarlem,
did not foresee
the raging torrents of history,
smashing against
the crumbling walls
of the porous ****
he sought to buttress.

His decadent heroism
held no moral authority
to sustain
his ungodly labors.

His savage dogs,
hungry for meat,
bent on aggression
for a twisted masters bidding
were devoured
by the teeth
of a movement
hungry for justice.

His water cannons,
tiny water pistols,
******
into the mighty squalls
of a raging hurricane
that blew the stinking *****
back onto his face.

The weight of history
moves with the just.

Untruth,
arch rival of justice,
is blown away,
like an expired candle
snuffed out,
blessedly extinguished
from the first breath
of a glorious new day.

Bull Connor
doesn’t rest in peace.

He stands on
the other side of the river.

He is the rich man
driven by
insane thirst
begging for water
from a comforted
Lazarus,
now secure
in the *****
of Abraham.

Bull Connor
looks across
the chasm of fire
he knows
he'll never bridge.

Medgar Evers
and MLK Jr.
stand as keepers,
collecting tolls
for a heavenly passage
from the wages he earned
for his earthly work.

A forlorn
Bull Connor
forever searches
deep empty pockets
for fare
as Martin
and Medgar
patiently wait
with outstretched palms.

Music Selection:
The Soul Stirrers,
Jesus Gave Me Water

MLK Jr. Day
1/20/86
NYC
jbm
written to commemorate
the first MLK Jr. Day,
1/20/86 in NYC
David Abraham Jan 2019
Can you feel the power coursing through you,
disguised as adrenaline,
when you swing your arm and before the blow even hits,
you feel all your anger and frustration fade, so now all you want is to fight?
You wanna kick and pitch a fit,
till your old ****** arms
are covered up by new scars,
but nothing like that matters because you're the last man standing.
Maybe the other boy, curled up on the ground now
with his arms thrown over his head,
broke your nose and made it even more crooked than before,
but you're the little freak who no one thought could win.
But you entered in
from a world where everyone called you ****
to be the freak who everyone only saw as a ****,
thin-shouldered and quieter than the boys he fought.

Maybe your quietness and meek, weak, malnourished look fooled you and all of them,
for look into your eyes in the mirror and see the gold and brown fighting through the green sheen,
the fire for everything you hate, all the things you're hitting and spitting on when you're through with them,
and when you stare into your own eyes you might recognize yourself.

Don't be fooled, boy, you're weak and you're sick,
your arms aren't thick
which muscle and dark hair,
and nothing about you is real,
with fabricated reactions and premeditated sentences,
all programmed into your brain, which fights itself in its confusion,
screaming, and smoking from the fight with itself, about what should be happening with your emptiness and with your bony chest.

Boy, you're hardly that,
just a *** who stares after the other guys,
but you're not sure if you're gay, because you really just want to be just like them.
Boy, at least you fall for pretty girls,
shorter and daintier than you, with more mellow hearts but stronger emotions,
and passions for poetry (not the kind you possess, rooted in your inability for expressions)
and always with love for another boy, a real boy to grow into a man.
2242 jan 15 2019

my mom and oldest sister like hate men but here i am, wanting desperately to grow into a man... this is addressed to myself 'cause i'm a freak to almost everyone and a large amount of people 'round here don't like jews like me.
K Mae Dec 2012
Perverse it is that I will party in december
and squeeze gifts from nine *******
when what I long for is to go deep
running my hands along smooth dark cavern walls
perhaps pausing
my finger in the ****
dreaming to hold back
the torrent of all that is emerging
in these final days of year
when I Earth Centered Pagan Pray
to be delivered from longest night.
Michael Kreitman Nov 2015
I got sober over a year ago.
What god blessed me with is morals, honesty and a conscious.
When I was out, I hurt people and I enjoyed it.
It was something, I just had to do so you knew how big my rep was.
I was a caged animal and I wasn't even in cell anymore in my head at least.
Any challenge I met with violence.
I prayed most nights not to wake up.
I happened to have  a reminder this evening.
Tonight I picked up some food and sat at the bar.
Instead of salivating over sharp knives, semi automatics, a broken thumb and what I would do to certain fox news anchors.

First, I saw my old friend jack.
Before we reminisced I told him that, I'm allowed back in my mothers house.
And am home for the holidays especially thanksgiving.
I can hold a job instead of amassing monstrous amounts of credit card debt and fraudulent charges.
And my family tells me they love me.
Well he told me remember the good times, like trying to get hook up with someones girlfriend at a party.
while he was passed out.
 Saying anything that was needed to close the deal.
It just happened that night.
I was bamboozled
Also  I had the privilege of running into some *****-***** who had the gull to tell me.
You have the haircut of a ****.
Her words exactly.
So instead of keying some kind four letter feminine word into her car.
I fell down into the street divider and wouldn't get up till some acquaintances went out there and asked me if  I was alright.
"That of course, was all I most likely needed growing up" said so many counselors who loved to point out the fact that, well Michael you grew up in a broken home with a father who took his life right around the corner from you when you were just ten years old. The prime growing years of any young lad.

Then I spoke to an old college friend after that a noble of sorts C. Royal.
We spoke of past-times of unprotected *** with a so called girlfriends.
All of these women of course who I had cheated on and possibly fathered many children.
Now sober I'm following leads to see if they exist and planning to set up college funds.
If the maternal parent doesn't want me int there life.
Then later in life being the genius that I was cashing in so may bonds to celebrate my future sober life I began spending over 1500 at the tables.
OF course when I was banded from narcotics and ****** at the hotel room.
Whats the point of saving over 1200 in winnings.
Like any good addict I let it ride on black.

I just kept on running into old friends.
It was a hell of a night.
I then saw a french man of sorts and spoke to him last Mr. Marnier.
I told him for now at least  I don't regurgitate Thanksgiving dinners in front of friends families.
And my friends speak to me now.
After that I picked up the food and said goodbye.
I feel like life is based on truth. its like they say those who win the war write the history.
Elihu Barachel Feb 2015
Your Damnation slumbers not, in Hell you're going to burn
EVERY Queerass ******, CONDEMNATION you did earn
-
So while your still alive, skip along your merry way
Soon you'll be in Hell, God your soul will slay
-
Pretend it isn't so, deny the Word of God
When you finally burn in Hell, then I will applaud
-
Tisk-tisk oh ****** Fruitcake, my poem you don't like?
Read it to your buddy, and every single ****
-
Read it ****** Fruitcake! Read the part where you will BURN
Read it Fruitcake Queer! Your DAMNITION you did earn
Ana S Jan 2016
I want to run, but here I stand.
I began to fall, but on my feet I land.
I stand my ground.
Look around.
Here they scream out loud.
The names they shout out.
***, loner, weak.
Friendless, ****, meek.
Dead, ****.
Never to be liked.
Should I listen
Possibly dismiss them.
The words may burn.
At night I may toss and turn.
Sleepless  
Empty and dreamless.
I never want to be called a victim.
Maybe just a symptom.
One of being me.
So judgemental they have to be.
Why do they have to hurt me til I die?
Why do they spit their words til I cry.
I don't have to care.
I can pretend they aren't there.
That's what my mom says to do.
I told her I am me not you.
It's not the easiest thing.
Hearing other human beings.
Beating you down.
When everyone's around.
Watching your best friend.
Say our love was all pretend.
Well it's alright.
I'm okay for atleast another long hate filled day.
Bullying is never okay. It makes the people involved not okay. It matters what words say.
There I sat with a cast and black eye
Just got small children down for the night
Tim decided to take tots for a swim
"Over my dead body", I yelled at him

We discussed our views in loud voices
Continued to fight, made bad choices
Very soon Westminsters finest pulled up
Domestic situation, cops abrupt

Got both sides of story, mine in jest
Smart *** me, I was soon under arrest
Handcuffed, shoved into waiting squad car
Was ******-cussed at my treatment so far

"I want your badge number", I threatened the cop
Ill sue for false arrest, and no I won't stop
Assault and battery on who, on Tim?
Refused to put out cig, didn't touch him

Got booked, printed and a soggy sack lunch
Wore old lady ******, rode up in a bunch
In population still in cast with black eye
The word spread around that I battered a guy

I crutched my way across shiny jail floor
Eyes following me as if to implore
Came up on a woman, looked like a ****
Then she asked, "**** girl what's he look like?"

Got released next day, had court appearance
Plead not guilty with no interference
Set date for jury trial of my peers
Never been in court in all of my years

With public defender at defendants table
Jury looked at me as if I were unable
To batter, assault a serious offense
I was so small, this did not make much sense

I bravely testified on my own behalf
Brought up Tims prior abuse, hid a laugh
OBJECTION YOUR HONOR, spouted DA
Too late, the jury heard what I had to say

They filed out to deliberation space
Came back in fifteen, looked Tim in the face
The judge read the verdict, not guilty at all I was a free woman and skipped down the hall
This unfortunately was true. It happened in 1991.
Third Eye Candy May 2014
Sometimes Silence is a Lie.

it drains the lake, it does... it siphons the symphonies.
it bleaks the speech, unbridled
from a long mute, to a mutiny. the mute in me ~
would rather, but we'd rather knot.
null reprisals, highly prize super nova
in the Scotia of our scathing
plight.

no other might. but...
we'll do what the light won't
in the dark night.
we'll trouble the cube. each of us, the rube
in tomorrow's ****...
the Thumb
in the oyster of an ill quiet
where the Lord of Prayers
Errs the attempt
to split Heirs.

We inherit the wind
and a breeze.
And a breeze will ****
a Windmill

straight fair.

but not for the lack of peace.
but the fog of war.

at the very least.
Edna Sweetlove Jan 2015
I once ****** a ******* a bike;
And when she asked me if I would like
To do her dear mother
Or her gay little brother
I knew that she must be a ****.
In response to the criticism that a bicycle is not a form of PUBLIC transport, let me explain it was a HIRE bike. And the action took place in public.
Tiffany Arnett Jun 2020
You can search far and wide for a beauty that matches hers.
Only Gaia can hint at the beauty she possesses.
Her eyes are a soft green,
A gentle aquamarine like that of the sea;
They captivate and tranquilize you.
Only Helen's smile is a pale example of hers,
Which leaves you with the desire to see it again;
Nothing in nature surpasses her smile.
The right words will reveal her laugh,
Only the Nightingale's charming melodies can come close;
It is a siren's call that you follow repeatedly to hear again.
She radiates warmth when she holds you,
Like a gentle touch of glow of Apollo on your cheek;
A natural peace can be found when her arms are wrapped around you tight.
Her dark hair is as soft as a cloud,
Yet it runs through your fingers like wild silk;
She is a dark-haired version of Aphrodite when her hair is left down.
You can travel across the world in search of a beauty like hers,
But nothing can match it.
It is not restricted to the mortal body.
You have to look inside her heart to discover its origin.
She is kindness personified,
Her scruples displayed in her actions;
Maybe she is **** reborn into the modern world.
She holds conversations with all,
But she befriends only a select few;
Her exclusive circle open only to those she cherish.
I can wonder how blessed they are to be in her presence,
I only wish to be in her arms;
Yet she has carefully let me in with open arms,
While protecting the parts she is not ready for me to glimpse.
My patience and support she will eternally have,
As a friend, companion, or more;
Her happiness is my ever reaching ambition.
Not even Gaia can compete against this dark-haired mortal goddess,
Whose strength I forever admire.
She will always remain a compelling presence in my life,
No matter the Fates' intentions for our lives.
Zywa Apr 2023
At night, full trains standing still
between the erigeron
The grass **** wobbles a bit

The water sighs
little waves over the railway
Geese splash around

Bye Atlantis
Bye floating gardens
Thank you, all the best

We're flying out
the earth is open
Where to, where to?

Rombom, the sun will come
Zirconium sparkles, colours
expectation everywhere

It paints our desire
promises us love and happiness
- a fabulastic home
"Fantastic voyage" and the other songs on the album "Lodger" (1979, David Bowie)

Collection "On living on [2]"
Aubrey Aug 2014
You said, "How do you react when **** hits the fan? When you're under stress?
Do you go to work,
or hit the dirt?"
The truth is
I am transformed by the glory of battle
into shining metal
into this beast of action
that's not bad... it just is.
I remember my Dad telling me to "Be prepared.
Be aware.
Stay calm.
Don't be scared."
                           (He also taught me  how to take a hit
                            and return the favor.)
You said to me,
"Maybe,
you are not afraid.
Maybe,
you are excited.
Maybe,
when you feel that feeling you call fear
your spirit is responding
with acceptance....
Maybe, you were made for it."

It may not be fear today...
or excitement...

Today I am the villain.
I am taking them away from him.
I am breaking at least two hearts...
and pouring salt inside of mine
                                                        for endurance
                                                                     for preservation...

I am the hard stone for flint to strike.
I am the rushing floods and the strong ****.
I am the hot concrete and the melting tar.
I am the engine and the speeding car.
I am  adrenaline in the soldiers veins.
(Long since wasted and drained
from too many fights.)
I am the candle's burning, flickering light.
I am present, and aware.
But I am not scared.
I am ready.
Jack Dalton Nov 2013
I think of the waves
Crashing into the ****.
The rocks are sturdy there
In west port washington.
And on the rocks
A shorebird got closer
To where
I stood proud
On the unmovable
Pile of boulders.
I could tell you
This was it.
But a star fish
Exposed the air I breath
In a moment of beauty.
The waves flicker like lite bulbs.
The split seconds are eons
With out times way of saying
Got ya now.
You know
How the you
And ocean.
Meet in the shores
And die in the earth.
How can the spirit of mythology
Tell me the rocks where once human.
And the boy told his mother you swollowed
A pebble.  
He returned to free his uncles.
They called him the stone boy.
if I stand here for four days
Ill break down like gravel in the grange.
Arcassin B Jun 2015
By Arcassin Burnham

Got off on the wrong foot,
What would it be like if it was cut off,
We dip . drop. Roll. Stop,
Watch the flower grow a little then spit swap,
I swear I'll wait for you on longest journeys,
I swear I'll wait for you on your worst days too,
But on your good ones,
You love the right one,
But he went left,
He was different than the **** ones,
Bisexual beauty sitting in a croptop,
We dip . drop. Roll. Stop,
Watch the flower grow a little then spit swap,
Pretty as you are,
You know I want you baby,
The silence ain't a thing,
Elevated and Slightly fit with rabies,
Foaming out and finding things to lick,
Petals covered in you saliva,
And sweat under you arm pits,
You were an angel in disguise,
A troublesome full of lies,
Only tied to things you can't deny,
Unless your memories are bought,
We dip . drop. Roll. Stop,
Watch the flower grow a little then spit swap,
Let's start over,
My names Arcassin,
Nice to meet you in this disaster,
Its souly a situation,
Your smile brings me to tears,
I'm so weirdly mistaken,
The raspyness in your voice,
Sure knows how to leave a guy shaken,
Pretty dresses swishing over flower beds,
****** stare as we sing the Beatles,
Nails in my back like pins and needles,
Im just starting over but ill do what ever it takes to get those feels,
But as soon as you thought I forgot,
We dip . drop. Roll. Stop,
Watch the flower grow a little then spit swap.
Love can be sometimes crazy.
Ronald E Shields May 2014
Northfield, Minnesota,
a flood warning issued at 3 a.m. comes too late for her.
Caught on the wrong side of the river,
alone, unhappy on high ground
she lays down her book The Sixth Extinction,
its glittering story of glittering skeletons
has become too prophetic in this deluge.
All around, people on high ground
fine tune satellite dishes
to catch the latest pictures
of their neighbors stunned faces
as yet another **** gives way,
one more street goes dark,
another dead dog washes up on the lawn.

As the river reclaims its ancient banks,
renews its title to the land
she goes down to bathe in its soft brown hands.
She can remember the morning.
She can remember the evening.
She can remember her neighbor’s dog barking.
She is too young to remember the dry days
of high spring when birds on scarlet wings
flew low under a terrible blaze of stars.
She is old enough to understand the river’s life,
its single unrelenting purpose – return to the sea;
to understand we cannot live like a river.
guess whos back
with that mack attack
bringing real hip hop back
yea still pushin 808s
in the cadillac
old honeys feelin that
vibe once come across the mic
turn em from being a ****
like mike
got the game on lock
6 rings on my pinky
how did i fall out
when i been at the top
creme of the crop
knockin these fake emcees
out the box
rock chatteroxes
n what not?
i dont beef cuz i dont eat it
but the bullets i let feed it
to ya body mind and soul
as i take control
of the industry
every ol school emcee feelin' me
underground true to the sound
yea i been around get around
like pac pack two twins glocks
black. chrome
quick to put any in a funeral home
ya can find me home alone
writing dope ****
got a mansion of counterfeit
bills is print
call it black mint hell sent
govs got me bent
**** the president
there better off with dead resident
still cant get no love
still rockin fresh red cortez
with the honeycomb jersey
ill leave ya beggin like percy for mercy
naw yall gets none
still reiging as the victorious
still game is wack
still rep  pro black
been here and back
yo i never slacked still




still bump dj *****
still wreckin crews
check the news
aint no clues
still my folks gettin robbed
cant get a decent job
still cops harrasssin us
still blastin at us
cant put no trust
in the system justice failed
the evil still prevails
all the religious folks yell
jesus is back
**** it same ol fairytale
never trusted blonde hair n blue eyes
demons in guise
still im on a sneak
put ya to sleep
as ya roll up **** creek
still sittin back n think
wish i could change the world
to better all the young boys n girls
still  got OGs who rock jheri curls
but dont get it twisted
theyll split ya wig can ya dig it
friends of distinction
yall still in detention
need i mention
still they lynching
got every black n hispanic
on the bench and
twenty five to life
still cant get cut with a knife
america pie been done gone
purchased illegally all wrong
they say im wronghow fool?
when society drools?
off desperation starvation
i bring heat to the whole nation
heated like friction
facts no gotdamn fiction
still cant get no love
still lookin' at those above
me r i p to the real homies
and homettes
still you cant see me as i be
in the front
lawn sippin moet
shakin my head
still american pushin slavery
but they tell me to forget
still...


still i got love for the beats
still hang in the streets
spread luv with my peeps
repeat
weekend bar be que
listen to ******* up blues
how can ya not be confused?
woth music these days
the radio plays
nothing but bull to fool
thea masses
i shatter there hearts like broken glasses
class is
in session learned a lesson
in this game ya gotta make a name
instead most go for the fame
lose there souls in the flame
still i got no shame
to put any on blast
still puttin up our past
still we get harrassed
still ****** saggin they pants showin ***
still cant get a pass
in the politics
everybody ridin satans ****
pregnant n ****
no abortions spiritually gone
with snortin they shortin
ya benefits everyday
still tryna make a way
still ignore what they say
still ill stand by what i say
even if it cost me my life today
still.....
These are poems about floods, being lost at sea, and other calamities...



After the Deluge
by Michael R. Burch

She was kinder than light
to an up-reaching flower
and sweeter than rain
to the bees in their bower
where anemones blush
at the affections they shower,
and love’s shocking power.

She shocked me to life,
but soon left me to wither.
I was listless without her,
nor could I be with her.
I fell under the spell
of her absence’s power.
in that calamitous hour.

Like blithe showers that fled
repealing spring’s sweetness;
like suns’ warming rays sped
away, with such fleetness ...
she has taken my heart—
alas, our completeness!
I now wilt in pale beams
of her occult remembrance.

I almost lost my wife Beth during the Great Nashville Flood when she took ill while out of town for a funeral and I was trapped as our house's hill became an island.



Adrift
by Michael R. Burch

I helplessly loved you
   although I was lost
in the veils of your eyes,
   grown blind to the cost
   of my ignorant folly
—your unreadable rune—
   as leashed tides obey
an indecipherable moon.



Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch

These are the narrows of my soul—
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.

Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.

Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned

why it is named:
Mare Clausum.



Sandy Hook Call to Love
by Michael R. Burch

Our hearts are broken today
for our children's small bodies lie broken;
let us gather them up, as we may,
that the truth of our Love may be spoken;
then, when we have put them away
to nevermore dream or be woken,
let us think of the living, and pray
for true Love, not some miserable token,
to command us, for strength to obey.



War is Obsolete
by Michael R. Burch

War is obsolete;
even the strange machinery of dread
weeps for the child in the street
who cannot lift her head
to reprimand the Man
who failed to countermand
her soft defeat.

But war is obsolete;
even the cold robotic drone
that flies far overhead
has sense enough to moan
and shudder at her plight
(only men bereft of Light
with hearts indurate stone
embrace war’s Siberian night).

For war is obsolete;
man’s tribal “gods,” long dead,
have fled his awakening sight
while the true Sun, overhead,
has pity on her plight.
O sweet, precipitate Light! —
embrace her, reject the night
that leaves gentle fledglings dead.

For each brute ancestor lies
with his totems and his “gods”
in the slavehold of premature night
that awaited him in his tomb;
while Love, the ancestral womb,
still longs to give birth to the Light.
So which child shall we ****** tonight,
or which Ares condemn to the gloom?



Momentum! Momentum!
by Michael R. Burch

for the neo-Cons

Crossing the Rubicon, we come!
Momentum! Momentum! Furious hooves!
The Gauls we have slaughtered, no man disapproves.
War’s hawks shrieking-strident, white doves stricken dumb.

Coo us no cooings of pale-breasted peace!
Momentum! Momentum! Imperious hooves!
The blood of barbarians brightens our greaves.
Pompey’s head in a basket? We slumber at ease.

****** us again, great Bellona, dark queen!
Momentum! Momentum! Curious hooves
Now pound out strange questions, but what can they mean
As the great stallions rear and their riders careen?

Published by Bewildering Stories

Bellona was the Roman goddess of war. The name "Bellona" derives from the Latin word for "war" (bellum), and is linguistically related to the English word "belligerent" (literally, "war-waging"). In earlier times she was called Duellona, that name being derived from a more ancient word for "battle" relating to our “duel.”



Nuclear Winter: Solo Restart
by Michael R. Burch

Out of the ashes
a flower emerges
and trembling bright sunshine
bathes its scorched stem,
but how will this flower
endure for an hour
the rigors of winter
eternal and grim
without men?



Transplant
by Michael R. Burch

You float, unearthly angel, clad in flesh
as strange to us who briefly knew your flame
as laughter to disease. And yet you laugh.
Behind your smile, the sun forfeits its claim
to earth, and floats forever now the same—
light captured at its moment of least height.

You laugh here always, welcoming the night,
and, just a photograph, still you can claim
bright rapture: like an angel, not of flesh—
but something more, made less. Your humanness
this moment of release becomes a name
and something else—a radiance, a strange
brief presence near our hearts. How can we stand
and chain you here to this nocturnal land
of burgeoning gray shadows? Fly, begone.
I give you back your soul, forfeit all claim
to radiance, and welcome grief’s dark night
that crushes all the laughter from us. Light
in someone Else’s hand, and sing at ease
some song of brightsome mirth through dawn-lit trees
to welcome morning’s sun. O daughter! these
are eyes too weak for laughter; for love’s sight,
I welcome darkness, overcome with light.



Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.

Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.

And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.

That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.

And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.

No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.



Enigma

for Beth

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

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

Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love, this—our reclamation;
fallen wren,
you must strive to fly though your heart is shaken;
weary pilgrim,
you must not give up though your feet are aching;
lonely child,
lie here still in my arms; you must soon be waking.



Love is her Belief and her Commandment
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love is her belief and her commandment;
in restless dreams at night, she dreams of Love;
and Love is her desire and her purpose;
and everywhere she goes, she sings of Love.

There is a tomb in Palestine: for others
the chance to stake their claims (the Chosen Ones),
but in her eyes, it’s Love’s most hallowed chancel
where Love was resurrected, where one comes
in wondering awe to dream of resurrection
to blissful realms, where Love reigns over all
with tenderness, with infinite affection.

While some may mock her faith, still others wonder
because they see the rare state of her soul,
and there are rumors: when she prays the heavens
illume more brightly, as if saints concur
who keep a constant vigil over her.

And once she prayed beside a dying woman:
the heavens opened and the angels came
in the form of long-departed friends and loved ones,
to comfort and encourage. I believe
not in her God, but always in her Love.



Sailing to My Grandfather
by Michael R. Burch

for George Edwin Hurt Sr.

This distance between us
—this vast sea
of remembrance—
is no hindrance,
no enemy.

I see you out of the shining mists
of memory.
Events and chance
and circumstance
are sands on the shore of your legacy.

I find you now in fits and bursts
of breezes time has blown to me,
while waves, immense,
now skirt and glance
against the bow unceasingly.

I feel the sea's salt spray—light fists,
her mists and vapors mocking me.
From ignorance
to reverence,
your words were sextant stars to me.

Bright stars are strewn in silver gusts
back, back toward infinity.
From innocence
to senescence,
now you are mine increasingly.

Note: Under the Sextant’s Stars is a painting by Bernini.



The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

for Harvey Stanbrough

I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.

Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.

Published by The Raintown Review, Mindful of Poetry and FireBug



Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

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

Uncanny seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared . . .
what sights have you seen,
what dreams have you dreamed,
what rhetoric have you heard?

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



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare

to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

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

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

and my eyes to her flame
like the sphingid’s are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.

The sphingid gets its name from the legendary Sphinx and is commonly called the sphinx moth.



The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch

for Vicky

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

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

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



Tillage
by Michael R. Burch

What stirs within me
is no great welling
straining to flood forth,
but an emptiness
waiting to be filled.

I am not an orchard
ready to be harvested,
but a field
rough and barren
waiting to be tilled.



Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low

for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men . . .
when we were men, or almost so.



Distances (II)
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.



In My House
by Michael R. Burch

I was once the only caucasian in the software company I founded. I had two fine young black programmers working for me, and they both had keys to my house. This poem looks back to the dark days of slavery and the Civil War it produced.

When you were in my house
you were not free—
in chains bound.

Manifest Destiny?

I was wrong;
my plantation burned to the ground.
I was wrong.

This is my song,
this is my plea:
I was wrong.

When you are in my house,
now, I am not free.

I feel the song
hurling itself back at me.

We were wrong.
This is my history.

I feel my tongue
stilting accordingly.

We were wrong;
brother, forgive me.

Published by Black Medina



911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”

They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,

far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot . . .

Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.



R.I.P.
by Michael R. Burch

When I am lain to rest
and my soul is no longer intact,
but dissolving, like a sunset
diminishing to the west, ...

and when at last
before His throne my past
is put to test
and the demons and the Beast

await to feast
on any morsel downward cast,
while the vapors of impermanence
cling, smelling of damask ...

then let me go, and do not weep
if I am left to sleep,
to sleep and never dream, or dream, perhaps,
only a little longer and more deep.

Published by Romantics Quarterly and The Chained Muse. This is an early poem from my “Romantic Period” that was written in my late teens.



iou
by michael r. burch

i might have said it
but i didn’t

u might have noticed
but u wouldn’t

we might have been us
but we couldn’t

u might respond
but probably shouldn’t



Delicacy
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch, and all good mothers

Your love is as delicate
as a butterfly cleaning its wings,
as soft as the predicate
the hummingbird sings
to itself, gently murmuring—
“Fly!  Fly!  Fly!”
Your love is the string
soaring kites untie.



chrysalis
by michael r. burch

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

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

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

and yet You must love Your Self



Love Is Not Love
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love is not love that never looked
within itself and questioned all,
curled up like a zygote in a ball,
throbbed, sobbed and shook.

(Or went on a binge at a nearby mall,
then would not cook.)

Love is not love that never winced,
then smiled, convinced
that soar’s the prerequisite of fall.

When all
its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed,
where does Love find the wherewithal
to try again,
endeavor, when

all that it knows
is: O, because!



The One and Only
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

If anyone ever loved me,
     It was you.
If anyone ever cared
beyond mere things declared;
if anyone ever knew ...
     My darling, it was you.

If anyone ever touched
     my beating heart as it flew,
it was you,
and only you.



Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch

Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.

Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.

When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency), that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.



Hiroshima Child
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I come to beg at every door,
but who can hear my phantom tread?
I knock and yet remain unseen,
for I am dead,
for I am dead.

I’m only seven, though I died
in Hiroshima so long ago.
I’m seven now, as I was then,
for how can phantom children grow?

White incandescence charred my hair;
my eyes grew dim, then I was blind;
my fragile bones became fine ash;
my ash was scattered by the wind.

Today I need no fruit, no rice;
I crave no sweets, nor even bread.
I beg for nothing for myself,
for I am dead,
for I am dead.

All that I beg of you is peace:
You fight today! You fight today!
Peace, so earth’s living children may
live and grow and laugh and play.



faith(less)
by michael r. burch

for the “Chosen Few”

Those who believed
and Those who misled
lie together at last
in the same narrow bed

and if god loved Them more
for Their strange lack of doubt,
he kept it well hidden
till he snuffed Them out.

ah-men!



hey pete!
by michael r. burch

for Pete Rose

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

This is a poem I wrote around age 16-18, during my “cummings period.” Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player as a boy; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather ironic commentary on the term “superstar.”



Have I been too long at the fair?
by Michael R. Burch

Have I been too long at the fair?
The summer has faded,
the leaves have turned brown,
the Ferris wheel teeters,
not up, yet not down . . .
Have I been too long at the fair?



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound of falling leaves
and the scent of new-mown grass;
I held out my arms to her and she passed

into oblivion ...

This is one of my early poems, written around age 16 and published in my high school literary journal, the Lantern, and by Borderless Journal (Singapore).



Huntress
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire

Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep
across a crevice dropping deep
into a dark and doomed domain.
Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane.
Rain falls upon your path, and pain
pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause
and heed the oft-lamented laws
which bid you not begin again
till night returns. You wail like wind,
the sighing of a soul for sin,
and give up hunting for a heart.
Till sunset falls again, depart,
though hate and hunger urge you—On!
Heed, hearts, your hope—the break of dawn.



Men at Sixty
by Michael R. Burch

after Donald Justice’s “Men at Forty”

Learn to gently close
doors to rooms
you can never re-enter.

Rest against the stair rail
as the solid steps
buck and buckle like ships’ decks.

Rediscover in mirrors
your father’s face
once warm with the mystery of lather,
now electrically plucked.



All the More Human, for Eve Pandora
by Michael R. Burch

a lullaby for the first human Clone

God provide the soul, and let her sleep
be natural as ours, unplagued by dreams
of being someone else, lost in the deep
wild swells of grieving all that human means . . .

and do not let her come to doubt herself—
that she is as we are, so much alike
in frailty, in the books that line the shelf
that tell us who we are—a rickety ****

against the flood of doubt—that we are more
than cells and chance, that love, perhaps, exists
because of someone else who would endure
such pain because some part of her persists

in us, and calls us blesséd by her bed,
become a saint at last, in whose frail arms
we see ourselves—the gray won out of red,
the ash of blonde—till love is safe from harm

and all that human means is that we live
in doubt, and die in doubt, and only love
the more because together we must strive
against an end we loathe and fear. What of?—

we cannot say, imagining the Night
as some weird darkened structure caving in
to cold enormous pressure. Lacking sight,
we lie unbreathing, thinking breath a sin . . .

and that is to be human. You are us—
true mortal, child of doubt, hopeful and curious.



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

the heart ice breaking.

Published by Poet Lore, PoetryMagazine.com, Penumbra, Poet’s Haven and the Net Poetry and Art Competition



The Locker
by Michael R. Burch

All the dull hollow clamor has died
and what was contained,
removed,
reproved
adulation or sentiment,
left with the pungent darkness
as remembered as the sudden light.



Ironic Vacation
by Michael R. Burch

Salzburg.
Seeing Mozart’s baby grand piano.
Standing in the presence of sheer incalculable genius.
Grabbing my childish pen to write a poem
& challenge the Immortals.
Next stop, the catacombs!



Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch

I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.

A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright.

Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling;
here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead.
Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling,
simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed,

his tongue flicking rhythms,
the sun—throbbing, spilling.



The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Lancelot, my noble friend,
how time has thinned your ragged mane
and pinched your features; still you seem
though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged.

Your sword hand is, as ever, ready,
although the time for swords has passed.
Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady
meeting mine ... you must not ask.

The time is not, nor ever shall be,
for Merlyn’s words were only words;
and now his last enchantment wanes,
and we must put aside our swords ...



Less Heroic Couplets: Unsmiley Simile, or, Down Time
by Michael R. Burch

Quora is down!
I frown:
how long can the universe suffice
without its ad-vice?



Fierce ancient skalds summoned verse from their guts;
today’s genteel poets prefer modern ruts.
—Michael R. Burch



Vice Grip
by Michael R. Burch

There’s no need to rant about Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The cruelty of “civilization” suffices:
our ordinary vices.



Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends I
by Michael R. Burch

Conformists of a feather
flock together.

Winner of the National Poetry Month Couplet Competition



Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends II
by Michael R. Burch

Fascists of a feather
flock together.



Less Heroic Couplets: Shell Game
by Michael R. Burch

I saw a turtle squirtle!
Before you ask, “How fertile?”
The squirt came from its mouth.
Why do your thoughts fly south?



The Better Man: a Double Limerick
by Michael R. Burch

Dear Ed: I don’t understand why
you will publish this other guy—
when I’m brilliant, devoted,
one hell of a poet!
Yet you publish Anonymous. Fie!

Fie! A pox on your head if you favor
this poet who’s dubious, unsavor-
y, inconsistent in texts,
no address (I checked!):
since he’s plagiarized Unknown, I’ll wager!

“The Better Man” is a double limerick originally published by The Eclectic Muse



The Hippopotami
by Michael R. Burch

There’s no seeing eye to eye
with the awesomely huge Hippopotami:
on the bank, you’re much taller;
going under, you’re smaller
and assuredly destined to die!



Cover Girl
by Michael R. Burch

Cunning
at sunning
and dunning,
the stunning
young woman’s in the running
to be found **** on the cover
of some patronizing lover.



First Base Freeze
by Michael R. Burch

I find your love unappealing
(no, make that appalling)
because you prefer kissing
then stalling.



Less Heroic Couplets: Negotiables
by Michael R. Burch

Love should be more than the sum of its parts—
of its potions and pills and subterranean arts.



Less Heroic Couplets: Mini-Ode to Stamina
by Michael R. Burch

When you’ve given so much
that I can’t bear your touch,
then from a safe distance
let me admire your persistence.

Published by ***** of Parnassus



Unapproved Absence, or, Slip Up
by Michael R. Burch

Christ, how I miss you!,
though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips.

Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips
and the dishes are all stacked away.

You left me today ...
and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets.



The Red State Reaction
by Michael R. Burch

Where the hell are they hidin’
Sleepy Joe Biden?

And how the hell can the bleep
Do so much, in his sleep?



Red State Reject
by Michael R. Burch

I once was a pessimist
but now I’m more optimistic
ever since I discovered my fears
were unsupported by any statistic.



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

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

The wordplay of “ur Gaud” and “u cant” is intentional, as always.



briefling
by michael r. burch

manishatched,hopsintotheMix,
cavorts,hassex(quick!,spawnan­ewBrood!);
then,likeamayfly,he’ssuddenlygone:
plantfood

Here “briefling” is a diminutive of “brief” and also a pun on “brief fling.”



Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch

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



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!



Hymn to Apollo
by Michael R. Burch, age 16

something of sunshine attracted my i
as it lazed on the afternoon sky,
golden, splashed on the easel of god;
what, i thought,
could this airy stuff be,
to, phantomlike, flit
through tall trees
on fall days, such as these?

and the breeze
whispered a dirge
to the vanishing light;
enchoired with the evening, it sang;
its voice enchantedly rang
chanting "Night! "...

till all the bright light
retired,
expired.

I wrote this poem around age 15 or 16 and it was published in the Lantern, my high school literary journal, as “Something of Sunshine.”



Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They ***** to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair ...
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.

This is one of my most-rejected poems, but I have always liked it myself.



Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.—Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl
                                              (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
                            It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
                                And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
                                     Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.



Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch

Where you have gone are the shadows falling . . .
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
. . . do you not hear me calling?

Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen . . .
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
. . . is silence at last your anthem?



Lean Harvests (II)
by Michael R. Burch

for Tom Merrill

the trees are shedding their leaves again:
another summer is over.
the Christians are praising their Maker again,
but not the disconsolate plover:
     i hear him berate
     the fate
     of his mate;
he claims God is no body’s lover.



Sharon
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15

apologies to Byron

I.

Flamingo-minted, pink, pink cheeks,
dark hair streaked with a lisp of dawnlight;
I have seen your shadow creep
through eerie webs spun out of twilight...

And I have longed to kiss your lips,
as sweet as the honeysuckle blooms,
and to hold your pale albescent body,
more curvaceous than the moon...

II.


Black-haired beauty, like the night,
stay with me till morning's light.
In shadows, Sharon, become love
until the sun lights our alcove.

Red, red lips reveal white stone:
whet my own, my passions hone.
My all in all I give to you,
in our tongues’ exchange of dew.

Now all I ever ask of you
is: do with me what now you do.

My love, my life, my only truth!

In shadows, Sharon, shed your gown;
let all night’s walls come tumbling down.

III.

Now I will love you long, Sharon,
as long as longing may be.

I wrote the first version of this poem around age 15.



Shock
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low

for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men . . .
when we were men, or almost so.



Stewark Island (Ambiguity)

“Take your child, your only child, whom you love...”

Seas are like tears—
they are never far away.
I have fled them now these eighteen years,
but I am nearer them today
than I ever have been.

Oh, I never could bear
the warm, salty water
or the cool comfort here
in the shade of an altar
sweeter than sin ...

Sweeter than sin,
yet cleansing, like love;
still its feel to doomed skin
either too little or too much
of whatever it is.

Seas and tears
are like life—
ridiculous,
ambiguous.

I wrote "Stewark Island (Ambiguity)" around age 17-18 as a high school junior or senior.



stones
by michael r. burch

i.
far below me lies a village
with its houses hewn from stone
and though Everyman who lives there
bravely claims he’s not alone,
i can tell him, yes u are!
for u cannot touch the stars
no matter how u try;
nor can u tame the mountain,
nor appease the darkening sky.

ii.
and late at night
their flinty fires blazing cannot warm their stony hearts;
though each villager “believes” (in what?)
the terror-fear departs
them only at mid-day
for they fear what Others say
when their walls have shut them in.

iii.
and do they sin?
who am i to say?
most stones are shades of gray;
what does it matter, anyway?

iv.
oh, i think that living is not easy
and that dying is not hard ...
as the stars above wink, meaningless,
so they are;
so we all are.

v.
a legion without sound
in dusky darkness drawing down
to settle on the town,
the Night is like a stone —
hard and dark and rolling on,
hard and dark and rolling on.



With my daughter, by a waterfall
by Michael R. Burch

By a fountain that slowly shed
its rainbows of water, I led
my youngest daughter.

And the rhythm of the waves
that casually lazed
made her sleepy as I rocked her.

By that fountain I finally felt
fulfillment of which I had dreamt
feeling May’s warm breezes pelt

petals upon me.
And I held her close in the crook of my arm
as she slept, breathing harmony.

By a river that brazenly rolled,
my daughter and I strolled
toward the setting sun,

and the cadence of the cold,
chattering waters that flowed
reminded us both of an ancient song,

so we sang it together as we walked along
—unsure of the words, but sure of our love—
as a waterfall sighed and the sun died above.

This poem was published by my college literary journal, Homespun, in 1977. I believe I wrote it the year before, around age 18.



Yesterday My Father Died
by Michael R. Burch

Rice Krispies and bananas,
milk and orange juice,
newspapers stiff with frozen dew . . .
Yesterday my father died
and the feelings that I tried to hide
he’ll never knew, unless
he saw through my disguise.

Alarm clocks and radios,
crumpled sheets and pillows,
housecoats and tattered, too-small slippers . . .
Why did I never say I cared?
Why were no secrets ever shared?
For now there's nothing left of him
except the clothes he used to wear.

Dimmed lights and smoky murmurs,
a brief “Goodnight!” and fitful slumber,
yesterday's forgotten dreams . . .
Why did my father have to go,
knowing that I loved him so?
Or did he know? Because, it seems,
I never told him so.

The last words he spoke to me,
his laughter in the night,
mementos jammed in cluttered cabinets . . .

I wrote "Yesterday My Father Died" in high school, circa age 16.



What The Roses Don’t Say
by Michael R. Burch

Oblivious to love, the roses bloom
and never touch ... They gather calm and still
to watch the busy insects swarm their leaves ...

They sway, bemused ... till rain falls with a chill
stark premonition: ice! ... and then they twitch
in shock at every outrage ... Soon they’ll blush

a paler scarlet, humbled in their beds,
for they’ll be naked; worse, their leaves will droop,
their petals quickly wither ... Spindly thorns

are poor defense against the winter’s onslaught ...
No, they are roses. Men should be afraid.

This was my second attempt at blank verse, after “Once Upon a Frozen Star.”



The Monarch’s Rose or The Hedgerow Rose
by Michael R. Burch

I lead you here to pluck this florid rose
still tethered to its post, a dreary mass
propped up to stiff attention, winsome-thorned
(what hand was ever daunted less to touch
such flame, in blatant disregard of all
but atavistic beauty)? Does this rose
not symbolize our love? But as I place
its emblem to your breast, how can this poem,
long centuries deflowered, not debase
all art, if merely genuine, but not
“original”? Love, how can reused words
though frailer than all petals, bent by air
to lovelier contortions, still persist,
defying even gravity? For here
beat Monarch’s wings: they rise on emptiness!

This was my third attempt at blank verse.



Fairest Diana
by Michael R. Burch

Fairest Diana, princess of dreams,
born to be loved and yet distant and lone,
why did you linger—so solemn, so lovely—
an orchid ablaze in a crevice of stone?

Was not your heart meant for tenderest passions?
Surely your lips—for wild kisses, not vows!
Why then did you languish, though lustrous, becoming
a pearl of enchantment cast before sows?

Fairest Diana, fragile as lilac,
as willful as rainfall, as true as the rose;
how did a stanza of silver-bright verse
come to be bound in a book of dull prose?



Elemental
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.

Belatedly, he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element whose scorching flame uplifts.



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 **** 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!



Happily Never After
by Michael R. Burch

Happily never after, we lived unmerrily
(write it!—like disaster) in Our Kingdom by the See
as the man from Porlock’s laughter drowned out love’s threnody.

We ditched the red wheelbarrow in slovenly Tennessee,
then made a picturebook of poems, a postcard for Tse-Tse,
a list of resolutions we knew we couldn’t keep,
and asylum decorations for the King in his dark sleep.

We made it new so often, strange newness, wearing old,
peeled off, and something rotten gleamed—dull yellow, not like gold—
like carelessness, or cowardice, and redolent of ***.
We stumbled off, our awkwardness—new Keystone comedy.

Huge cloudy symbols blocked the sun; onlookers strained to see.
We said We were the only One. Our gaseous Melody
had made us Joshuas, and so—the Bible, new-rewrit,
with god removed, replaced by Show and Glyphics and Sanskrit,
seemed marvelous to Us, although King Ezra said, “It’s S--t.”

We spent unhappy hours in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
drunk on such Awesome Power only Emperors can See.
We were Imagists and Vorticists, Projectivists, a Dunce,
Anarchists and Antarcticists and anti-Christs, and once
We’d made the world Our oyster and stowed away the pearl
of Our too-, too-polished wisdom, unanchored of the world,
We sailed away to Lilliput, to Our Kingdom by the See
and piped the rats to join Us, to live unmerrily
hereever and hereafter, in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
in the miniature ship Disaster in a jar in Tennessee.



Duet (I)
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Duet (II)
by Michael R. Burch

If love is just an impulse meant to bring
two tiny hearts together, skittering
like hamsters from their Quonsets late at night
in search of lust’s productive exercise . . .

If love is the mutation of some gene
made radiant—an accident of bliss
played out by two small actors on a screen
of silver mesh, who never even kiss . . .

If love is evolution, nature’s way
of sorting out its DNA in pairs,
of matching, mating, sculpting flesh’s clay . . .
why does my wrinkled hamster climb his stairs

to set his wheel revolving, then descend
and stagger off . . . to make hers fly again?

Published by Bewildering Stories



Oasis
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.



Melting
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous,
                     so bright,
                                                      so beautiful . . .
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.

Published by Borderless Journal



All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.

Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.



Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor
by Michael R. Burch

After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs,
Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs:
“Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!”
(His name, let’s assume, was, er ... Percival Queemly.)

“Expel me! Expel me!”—She flashes her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise,
for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name ...
Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!”

“Continue to live here—carouse as you please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees.
Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose:
“I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.”
(Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.)



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch

In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.

Great pyramids, the looted tombs
—how still and desolate their wombs!—
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.

Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?

Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?

or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”

Published by Golden Isis and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



The People Loved What They Had Loved Before
by Michael R. Burch

We did not worship at the shrine of tears;
we knew not to believe, not to confess.
And so, ahemming victors, to false cheers,
we wrote off love, we gave a stern address
to things that we disapproved of, things of yore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We did not build stone monuments to stand
six hundred years and grow more strong and arch
like bridges from the people to the Land
beyond their reach. Instead, we played a march,
pale Neros, sparking flames from door to door.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We could not pipe of cheer, or even woe.
We played a minor air of Ire (in E).
The sheep chose to ignore us, even though,
long destitute, we plied our songs for free.
We wrote, rewrote and warbled one same score.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

At last outlandish wailing, we confess,
ensued, because no listeners were left.
We built a shrine to tears: our goddess less
divine than man, and, like us, long bereft.
We stooped to love too late, too Learned to *****.
And the people loved what they had loved before.



Bertolt Brecht Translations

These are my modern English translations of poems written in German by Bertolt Brecht. After the poems I have translations of epigrams and quotations by Bertolt Brecht.

The Burning of the Books
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he'd been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven't I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!

Published by Poetry Super Highway, The Tory and Convivium



Parting
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We embrace;
my fingers trace
rich cloth
while yours encounter only moth-
eaten fabric.

A quick hug:
you were invited to the gay soiree
while the minions of the 'law'
relentlessly pursue me.

We talk about the weather
and our friendship's eternal magic.
Anything else would be too bitter,
too tragic.



Radio Poem
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You, little box, held tightly
to me
during my escape
so that your delicate tubes do not break;
carried from house to house, from ship to train,
so that my enemies may continue communicating with me
by land and by sea
and even in my bed, to my pain;
the last thing I hear at night, the first thing when I rise,
recounting their many conquests and my cares,
promise me not to go silent in a sudden
surprise.



The Mask of Evil
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A Japanese woodcarving hangs on my wall —
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not unsympathetically, I observe
the forehead's bulging veins,
the strain
such malevolence requires.



Bertolt Brecht Epigrams and Quotations

These are my modern English translations of epigrams and quotations by Bertolt Brecht.

Everyone chases the way happiness feels,
unaware how it nips at their heels.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The world of learning takes a crazy turn
when teachers are taught to discern!
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unhappy, the land that lacks heroes.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hungry man, reach for the book:
it's a hook,
a harpoon.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Because things are the way they are,
things can never stay as they were.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

War is like love; true...
it finds a way through.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What happens to the hole
when the cheese is no longer whole?
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank
than by threatening the poor clerk.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not fear death so much, or strife,
but rather fear the inadequate life.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: Bertolt Brecht, translation, translations, German, modern English, epigram, epigrams, quote, quotes, quotations



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,
impaled with hard 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.



Bible libel (ii)
by Michael R. Burch

ur savior’s a cad
—he’s as bad as his dad—
according to your horrible Bible.

demanding belief
or he’ll bring u to grief?
he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival!

was the man ever good
before being made “god”?
if so, half your Bible is libel!



Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch

Meg, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I’m with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy ...



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 such great matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



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.



Having Touched You
by Michael R. Burch

What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.

And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west,
another remained

suspended in memory
like a flower
in crystal

so that eternity
is but an hour
and fall

is no longer a season
but a state
of mind.

I have no reason
to wait;
the wind

does not pause
for remembrance
or regret

because
there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget . . .

Forget that we were very happy
for a day.
That day was my lifetime.

Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine,

the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root
and I grew.

Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife,
and yet I can bear it,
having touched you.



Children
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



we did not Dye in vain!
by michael r. burch

from “songs of the sea snails”

though i’m just a slimy crawler,
     my lineage is proud:
my forebears gave their lives
     (oh, let the trumps blare loud!)
so purple-mantled Royals
     might stand out in a crowd.

i salute you, fellow loyals,
     who labor without scruple
as your incomes fall
     while deficits quadruple
to swaddle unjust Lords
     in bright imperial purple!

Originally published by The American Dissident

Notes: In ancient times the purple dye produced from the secretions of purpura mollusks (sea snails) was known as “Tyrian purple,” “royal purple” and “imperial purple.” It was greatly prized in antiquity, and was very expensive according to the historian Theopompus: “Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon.” Thus, purple-dyed fabrics became status symbols, and laws often prevented commoners from possessing them. The production of Tyrian purple was tightly controlled in Byzantium, where the imperial court restricted its use to the coloring of imperial silks. A child born to the reigning emperor was literally porphyrogenitos ("born to the purple") because the imperial birthing apartment was walled in porphyry, a purple-hued rock, and draped with purple silks. Royal babies were swaddled in purple; we know this because the iconodules, who disagreed with the emperor Constantine about the veneration of images, accused him of defecating on his imperial purple swaddling clothes!



Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch



Roll on, Red River
by Michael R. Burch

Roll on, Red River,
a cowboy has died.
Roll on; we lay him
down here at your side.
Carry him off
to the wild, raging sea...
     Roll on, Red River,
     and set his soul free.

Roll on, Red River,
roll on to the sea,
and sing him to sleep
as you roll up his dreams.
Sing him to sleep
with some old, lonesome song...
     Now roll on, Red River,
     and roll him along.

Roll on, Red River
and say a kind word
for an old surly cowhand
who died poor and hurt;
poor as a pauper
and hurt by his friends...
     Roll on, Red River,
     roll on to the end.

Roll on, Red River,
a cowboy has died.
Nobody loved him
and nobody cried.
A cowboy's not much,
but at least he's a man...
     So roll on, Red River,
     roll on and be ******.

I believe I wrote the original version of this poem around age 14-15.



Moore or Less
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

Less is more —
in a dress, I suppose,
and in intimate clothes
like crotchless hose.

But now Moore is less
due to death’s subtraction
and I must confess:
I hate such redaction!



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

... u were born(e) 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 ...



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 ...



The Tally
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lovers
don't reveal
all
their Secrets;
under the covers
they
may
count each other's Moles
(that reside
and hide
in the shy regions
by forbidden holes),
then keep the final tally
strictly
from Aunt Sally!



jasbryx
by michael r. burch

hidden deep inside of Me
is someone else, and he is free;
he laughs aloud, but never is heard;
he flits about, as free as a bird,
so unlike Me

silently within Myself,
he shouts aloud and shuns the shelf
that others deem to be his place;
yet society is not disgraced,
nor are we,
for he is never heard
above the spoken word

o, i am not as others are —
pale things of ice, devoid of fire,
for i am all i seem to be —
innocent, childlike, frolicsome, free —
and i raise no ire

no, he is not as others are —
he lives his life without a care;
and he is all he seems to be —
wild, rambunctious, fervent, free,
so unlike Me

I wrote "jasbryx" in high school, under the influence of e. e. cummings, around age 16.



The Red State Reaction
by Michael R. Burch

Where the hell are they hidin’
Sleepy Joe Biden?

And how the hell can the bleep
Do so much, in his sleep?



Red State Reject
by Michael R. Burch

I once was a pessimist
but now I’m more optimistic
ever since I discovered my fears
were unsupported by any statistic.



Late Frost
by Michael R. Burch

The matters of the world like sighs intrude;
out of the darkness, windswept winter light
too frail to solve the puzzle of night’s terror
resolves the distant stars to salts: not white,

but gray, dissolving in the frigid darkness.
I stoke cooled flames and stand, perhaps revealed
as equally as gray, a faded hardness
too malleable with time to be annealed.

Light sprinkles through dull flakes, devoid of color;
which matters not. I did not think to find
a star like Bethlehem’s. I turn my collar
to trudge outside for cordwood. There, outlined

within the doorway’s arch, I see the tree
that holds its boughs aloft, as if to show
they harbor neither love, nor enmity,
but only stars: insignias I know—

false ornaments that flash, overt and bright,
but do not warm and do not really glow,
and yet somehow bring comfort, soft delight:
a rainbow glistens on new-fallen snow.



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.)

The second stanza is a punning reference to the Tailhook scandal, in which US Navy and Marine aviation officers were alleged to have sexually assaulted up to 83 women and seven men.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



The Unregal Beagle vs. The Voracious Eagle
by Michael R. Burch

I’d rather see an eagle
than a beagle
because they’re so **** regal.

But when it’s time to wiggle
and to giggle,
I’d rather embrace an angel
than an evil.

Plus, when it’s time to share the same small space,
I’d much rather have a beagle lick my face!



Update of "A Litany in Time of Plague"
by Michael R. Burch

THE PLAGUE has come again
To darken lives of men
and women, girls and boys;
Death proves their bodies toys
Too frail to even cry.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!

Tycoons, what use is wealth?
You cannot buy good health!
Physicians cannot heal
Themselves, to Death must kneel.
Nuns’ prayers mount to the sky.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty’s brightest flower?
Devoured in an hour.
Kings, Queens and Presidents
Are fearful residents
Of manors boarded high.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!

We have no means to save
Our children from the grave.
Though cure-alls line our shelves,
We cannot save ourselves.
"Come, come!" the sad bells cry.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!



Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
—Ronald Reagan

A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."

Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.

Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."

Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.

This road is neither long nor wide ...
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.

Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



Mingled Air
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Ephemeral as breath, still words consume
the substance of our hearts; the very air
that fuels us is subsumed; sometimes the hair
that veils your eyes is lifted and the room

seems hackles-raised: a spring all tension wound
upon a word. At night I feel the care
evaporate—a vapor everywhere
more enervate than sighs: a mournful sound

grown blissful. In the silences between
I hear your heart, forget to breathe, and glow
somehow. And though the words subside, we know
the hearth light and the comfort embers gleam

upon our dreaming consciousness. We share
so much so common: sighs, breath, mingled air.



Doppelgänger
by Michael R. Burch

Here the only anguish
is the bedraggled vetch lying strangled in weeds,
the customary sorrows of the wild persimmons,
the whispered complaints of the stately willow trees
disentangling their fine lank hair,

and what is past.

I find you here, one of many things lost,
that, if we do not recover, will undoubtedly vanish forever ...
now only this unfortunate stone,
this pale, disintegrate mass,
this destiny, this unexpected shiver,

this name we share.



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade—
we will watch him decay

as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Improve yourself by others' writings, attaining freely what they purchased at the expense of experience. — Socrates, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Celebrate the New Year?
The cat is not impressed,
the dogs shiver.
—Michael R. Burch



Relativity and the "Physics" of Love
by Albert Einstein
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour,
it seems like a minute.
Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute,
it seems like an hour.
That's relativity!

Oh, it should be possible
to explain the laws of physics
to a barmaid! . . .
but how could she ever,
in a million years,
explain love to an Einstein?

All these primary impulses,
not easily described in words,
are the springboards
of man's actions—because
any man who can drive safely
while kissing a pretty girl
is simply not giving the kiss
the attention it deserves!



Unaware it protects
the hilltop paddies,
the scarecrow seems useless to itself.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ebb-tide:
everything we stoop to collect
slips through our fingers ...
—Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Ascendance Transcendence
by Michael R. Burch

Breaching the summit
I reach
the horizon’s last rays.
—Michael R. Burch



Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch

With her small eyes, pale blue and unforgiving,
she taught me: December is not for those
unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings
who bicker for worms with dramatic throats

still pinkly exposed, ... who have yet to learn
the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour
their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned
fortress and impregnable bower

from which men must fly like improbable dreams
to become poets. They have yet to grasp that,
before they can soar starward like fanciful archaic machines,
they must first assimilate the latest technology, ... or

lose all in the sudden realization of gravity,
following Icarus’s sun-unwinged, singed trajectory.



The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever we became climbed on the thought
of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings
ten thousand miles above the breasted earth
that vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ...

I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling
my human form about; I writhe; I writhe.
Invention is not Mastery, nor wings
Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides
and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ...

Oh, some will call the sun my doom, since Love
melts callow wax the higher atmospheres
made brittle. I flew high, just high enough
to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers.



Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds!
by Michael R. Burch

“Bury St. Edmonds—Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, download files or surf the Web, absolutely free.”—Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.)

Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let
you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet,
commune with nature, interact with hackers,
design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers.

Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs—
four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs,
so your privacy’s assured (a *******’s fine)
while invited friends can scan the party line:

for Internet alerts on new positions,
the randier exploits of politicians,
exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!).
The cybersex is great, it’s guaranteed

to leave you breathless—flushed, free of disease
and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees,
the birds, the bench—this product of Our pen.
We won in with an ode to MSN.



Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray
by Michael R. Burch

It was not so much dream, as error;
I lay and felt the creeping terror
of what I had become take hold . . .

The moon watched, silent, palest gold;
the picture by the mantle watched;
the clock upon the mantle talked,
in halting voice, of minute things . . .

Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings
scored anthems to my loneliness,
but I have dreamed of what is best,
and I have promised to be good . . .

Dismembered limbs in vats of wood,
foul acids, and a strangled cry!
I did not care, I watched him die . . .

Each lovely rose has thorns we miss;
they ***** our lips, should we once kiss
their mangled limbs, or think to clasp
their violent beauty. Dream, aghast,
the flower of my loveliness,
this ageless face (for who could guess?),
and I will kiss you when I rise . . .

The patterns of our lives comprise
strange portraits. Mine, I fear,
proved dear indeed . . . Adieu!
The knife’s for you.



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Eagle, raven, blackbird, crow . . .
What you are I do not know.
Where you go I do not care.
I’m unconcerned whose meal you bear.
But as you mount the sun-splashed sky,
I only wish that I could fly.
I only wish that I could fly.

Robin, hawk or whippoorwill . . .
Should men care if you hunger still?
I do not wish to see your home.
I do not wonder where you roam.
But as you scale the sky's bright stairs,
I only wish that I were there.
I only wish that I were there.

Sparrow, lark or chickadee . . .
Your markings I disdain to see.
Where you fly concerns me not.
I scarcely give your flight a thought.
But as you wheel and arc and dive,
I, too, would feel so much alive.
I, too, would feel so much alive.

I don’t remember exactly when this poem was written. I believe it was around 1974-1975, which would have made me 16 or 17 at the time. I do remember not being happy with the original version of the poem, and I revised it more than once over the years, including recently at age 61! The original poem was influenced by William Cullen Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl.”



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of wanting her himself, so much the lie
that she was meant for him—obscene illusion!—
made him seem a monarch throned like God on high,
when he was less than nothing; when to die
meant many stultifying, pained embraces.

She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces
that tied her to the earth: then she was his.
Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces
and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness—
her ghost beyond perfection—for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.



Professor Poets
by Michael R. Burch

Professor poets remind me of drones
chasing the Classical queen's aging bones.
With bottle-thick glasses they still see to write —
droning on, endlessly buzzing all night.
And still in our classrooms their tomes are decreed ...
Perhaps they're too busy with buzzing to breed?



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

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

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

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



The Song of Roland
by Michael R. Burch

“for spring in retreat”

Rain down,
strange murmurous water...
no, summer is not yet nigh.

Cease your complaining,
for May is,
calling December a lie,
still rocking the high white sky.

Sleep now,
summer hours...
too soon your time shall come.

Softly straining,
the raining
spring begs, "Let me run
one more hour beneath the sun,
for soon I shall be gone."

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

Remember a pyre
of stars blazing higher
upon night’s immense dark sky
unsettling as her eyes,
unregretful, as you died...

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.



Poet to poet
by Michael R. Burch

I have a dream
...pebbles in a sparkling sand...
of wondrous things.

I see children
...variations of the same man...
playing together.

Black and yellow, red and white,
... stone and flesh, a host of colors...
together at last.

I see a time
...each small child another's cousin...
when freedom shall ring.

I hear a song
...sweeter than the sea sings...
of many voices.

I hear a jubilation
... respect and love are the gifts we must bring...
shaking the land.

I have a message,
...sea shells echo, the melody rings...
the message of God.

I have a dream
...all pebbles are merely smooth fragments of stone...
of many things.

I live in hope
...all children are merely small fragments of One...
that this dream shall come true.

I have a dream!
... but when you're gone, won't the dream have to end?...
Oh, no, not as long as you dream my dream too!

Here, hold out your hand, let's make it come true.
... i can feel it begin...
Lovers and dreamers are poets too.
...poets are lovers and dreamers too...

Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



Editor's Notes
by Michael R. Burch

Eat, drink and be merry
(tomorrow, be contrary).

(***** and complain
in bad refrain,
but please—not till I'm on the plane!)

Write no poem before its time
(in your case, this means never).
Linger over every word
(by which, I mean forever).

By all means, read your verse aloud.
I'm sure you'll be a star
(and just as distant, when I'm gone);
your poems are beauteous (afar).



Amending Walls
by Michael R. Burch

“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”
Robert Frost, one fears, was undoubtedly right.
They can’t go beyond their father’s saying.

They’re building walls, the intolerant and the straying.
They’re building walls again, to shut in night.
“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”

“Stabbed in the back!” Thus cry the ones betraying,
who turn their sullen backs on the Lord of Light.
They can’t go beyond their father’s saying.

Screaming curses, froth-mouthed, vile and baying,
having no care for their frailest victim’s plight.
“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”

The oddest of heroes, fraying while still braying,
embracing hatred, it seems, with great delight,
they can’t go beyond their father’s saying.

Raging at children, brutes intent on slaying.
Robert Frost, one fears, was undoubtedly right.
“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”
They can’t go beyond their father’s saying.



My Epitaph
by Michael R. Burch

Do not weep for me, when I am gone.
I lived, and ate my fill, and gorged on life.
You will not find beneath this glossy stone
the man who sowed and reaped and gathered days
like flowers, undismayed they would not keep.
Go lightly then, and leave me to my sleep.



Everlasting
by Michael R. Burch

Where the wind goes
when the storm dies,
there my spirit lives
though I close my eyes.

Do not weep for me;
I am never far.
Whisper my name
to the last star ...

then let me sleep,
think of me no more.

Still ...
By denying death
its terminal sting,
in my words I remain
everlasting.



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

I.

If I should die,
there will come a Doom,
and the sky will darken
to the deepest Gloom.

But if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

II.

If I should die,
let no mortal say,
“Here was a man,
with feet of clay,

or a timid sparrow
God’s hand let fall.”
But watch the sky darken
to an eerie pall

and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and scoffs at these churchyards
littered with roods.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

III.

If I should die,
let no man adore
his incompetent Maker:
Zeus, Yahweh, or Thor.

Think of Me as the One
who never died—
the unvanquished Immortal
with the unriven side.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

IV.

And if I should “die,”
though the clouds grow dark
as fierce lightnings rend
this bleak asteroid, stark ...

If you look above,
you will see a bright Sign—
the sun with the moon
in its arms, Divine.

So divine, if you can,
my bright meaning, and know—
my Spirit is mine.
I will go where I go.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

— The End —