I.
My face resembles your face
less and less each day. When I was young
no one mistook whose child I was.
Features build coloring
alone among my creamy fine-***** sisters
marked me Byron's daughter.

No sun set when you died, but a door
opened onto my mother. After you left
she grieved her crumpled world aloft
an iron fist sweated with business symbols
a printed blotter dwell in the house of Lord's
your hollow voice changing down a hospital corridor
     yea, though I walk through the valley
     of the shadow of death
     I will fear no evil.

II.
I rummage through the deaths you lived
swaying on a bridge of question.
At seven     in Barbados
dropped into your unknown father's life
your courage vault from his tailor's table
back to the sea.
Did the Grenada treeferns sing
your 15th summer as you jumped ship
to seek your mother
finding her     too late
surrounded with new sons?

Who did you bury to become the enforcer of the law
the handsome legend
before whose raised arm even trees wept
a man of deep and wordless passion
who wanted sons and got five girls?
You left the first two scratching in a treefern's shade
the youngest is a renegade poet
searching for your answer in my blood.

My mother's Grenville tales
spin through early summer evenings.
But you refused to speak of home
of stepping proud Black and penniless
into this land where only white men
ruled by money. How you labored
in the docks of the Hotel Astor
your bright wife a chambermaid upstairs
welded love and survival to ambition
as the land of promise withered
crashed the hotel closed
and you peddle dawn-bought apples
from a push-cart on Broadway.

Does an image of return
wealthy and triumphant
warm your chilblained fingers
as you count coins in the Manhattan snow
or is it only Linda
who dreams of home?

When my mother's first-born cries for milk
in the brutal city winter
do the faces of your other daughters dim
like the image of the treeferned yard
where a dark girl first cooked for you
and her ash heap still smells of curry?

III.
Did the secret of my sisters steal your tongue
like I stole money from your midnight pockets
stubborn and quaking
as you threaten to shoot me if I am the one?
The naked lightbulbs in our kitchen ceiling
glint off your service revolver
as you load     whispering.

Did two little dark girls in Grenada
dart like flying fish
between your averted eyes
and my pajamaless body
our last adolescent summer?
Eavesdropped orations
to your shaving mirror
our most intense conversations
were you practicing how to tell me
of my twin sisters     abandoned
as you had been abandoned
by another Black woman seeking
her fortune     Grenada     Barbados
Panama     Grenada.
New York City.

IV.
You bought old books at auctions
for my unlanguaged world
gave me your idols Marcus Garvey Citizen Kane
and morsels from your dinner plate
when I was seven.
I owe you my Dahomeyan jaw
the free high school for gifted girls
no one else thought I should attend
and the darkness that we share.
Our deepest bonds remain
the mirror and the gun.

V.
An elderly Black judge
known for his way with women
visits this island where I live
shakes my hand, smiling.
"I knew your father," he says
"quite a man!" Smiles again.
I flinch at his raised eyebrow.
A long-gone woman's voice
lashes out at me in parting
"You will never be satisfied
until you have the whole world
in your bed!"

Now I am older than you were when you died
overwork and silence exploding your brain.
You are gradually receding from my face.
Who were you outside the 23rd Psalm?
Knowing so little
how did I become so much
like you?

Your hunger for rectitude
blossoms into rage
the hot tears of mourning
never shed for you before
your twisted measurements
the agony of denial
the power of unshared secrets.

Peter Pan said Wendy -
There's something I want to tell you.
I am neither straight nor bent
But what you might call bendy

Captain Hook stopped reading his e-book and eavesdropped more intently.

Peter knew what his flexible friend meant and spoke to her quite innocently.

Wendy - I am as vanilla as Manilla envelopes in a creamery with whitewashed walls
And identical twin albino Godzillas fighting snow leopards with cue *****.

No gimp suit in fifty shades of grey for me.

I am pretty much hormone-free,
More than happy with asexuality,
Playing pirated computer games on one hand
And others' loves that dare not speak their names which fewer understand.

In my world of dreamery certain flights of fancy pass me by.

I love to fly and you Wendy.

And I love you too Peter - Not Everygirl's Ideal of A Real Man.
But I can understand the attraction of Lost Boys and their toys in Neverland.

We've known each other for all these years,
Shared too many troubles, thoughts and fears
To be anything other than in each other's hearts.

If I never visit Neverland again
I know you will always be my closest friend,
What, where, whenever happens
To the bittersweet end.

May we both be dying for an Excellent Adventure,
If not together then separately.

There is nothing better than to know
That you will always be there for me
No matter how we might grow
Into this 21st century.

And one day I may straighten out
But
That's
Not
What
Life's
About.

Captain Hook put down his e-book and Facebooked a friend...............

And that is where our story will end.

I sat in the shadows
as the sun went down,
eavesdropped
on my passing neighbors.
The lady couple went by first,
holding hands
& kissing,
whispering about the rising moon.

Then came the hetero-couple.
He walked in front,
leaving her behind
as if leading her
on a primrose path.
He was laughing,
spewing words
about
******* lezbos.
She was still in tow
when she spotted me
& flipped me off.
I thought, what a lovely couple.
Not.

The oceans’ froth betrothed to lunatic scoff
The sublunary elegance of a subdued earthen cough
Infectious pulchritude conjures snow-globe turpitude
Defiant humility professes to know the rudeness of the crude
Distilled casually in a leery trance
Terpsichorean choreography of a hallowed prance
Callow scowls affix the hebetude of anger to the sauciness of banter
Gallant cavalries court the cult of she and enamor and enchant her
Foretold calamities proceed like clockwork from God’s destructive jaundice
Death deployed as a sententious homily of wraiths that taunt us
At every turn fatidic inspirations work to cement a known outcome
Averted gaze away from rampant gays and fire-and-brimstone bunkum
We cherish a world where the stodgy and outmoded monopolize choice considerations
Where hedonism abreast of asceticism are internecine intimidations
Suffer like Christ and buffer like tenacious poverty sustained by rice
Dare to glower with menacing insistence at the known outcome of errant dice
Soothsayers soothe prayers but cataclysm still dares
To pulverize innocent insouciance and become the cynosure of trepidation and stares
Heaven blares a deafening “obey” while hell stays silent to lure the prey
Hobnob with hobgoblins and expect opprobrium to park and stay
Gentility and class-divisions orchestrate a frozen system of tenacious prisons
Stalking the lifeblood of mainlined ecstasies and surgical incisions
Minority Report within the grasp of the majority uproar
Dalliance with a self-fulfilling time means there will always be a bout between Bush and Gore
Lecherous eyes prize a hedged bush and irascible lies seek copious gore
But because the bush ensconces the ****** in bed with China the twin towers imploded for common core
Mondegreens serenade a mistaken flirtation with a time traversed and mastered
Swelling tides hearken the moon to make a hypothetical bonanza out of disaster
Enumerated infinity within esoteric grasp and pandered sequester
Bedazzled of foreknowledge  it charters the uncharted exploitation faster and faster
Burgeoning funds entertain a mind cloistered by infamy and oppressed by indecency
Burbling puns ecstatic about the perpetuity of guns hector the province of a token leniency
Squander the day and indulge the night by knowing exactly the demise of every shooting star
Knowing the origin and legacy of every single scar
Knowing the path creates the path known
Every single stock you know you should with alacrity own
Prosperous kinship and insubordinate brinksmanship win the prejudiced award
Fencing with lethal intent the specter of death devolves into irenic accord
Envy the impregnable corporate machine and its unassailable pipe dream
Hunt the Wolfs of Wall Street until panic evolves into cacophony of screams
Democratization of prophecy will cue the most titanic robbery
Shills looking for upstart thrills will pretend an unwarranted snobbery
Paradox is impossible because every moment elapsed is indelible and irrevocable
Every frisson of love is fertile and impregnable
So rejoice that the masters of the clock invest in select stocks
And hope that parcels of secrecy tumble from the 1919 White Sox
Emerald Street knows When the Music ‘s Over
Brandished crumbs adorned with sportive panache clothed in a lucky clover
Deprived of snide tithes and the confessions of millions protest a catholic cabal of universalism draped in quaint overalls
Mock the hegemony of the sailing class and their brisk and copious squalls
Opulent scions vouch for the failsafe prerogatives of Zion
Sleeping awake we indulge the oneiromancies of Orion
Cinematic wonders regale glorified eavesdropped blunders
Until the secrecy of the machine is so conspicuously in sight it tears the elected pantheon asunder
A master race of an intelligent nepotism in denial of its own disgrace
Exploits the argosy of secrets of the flying-disked race
But one day a challenger like a rooster will orient the demotic vogue towards the treasure trove
And pirates will prosper in burgeoning droves
Myths foisted will debunk themselves as eternity preens its chosen wealth
Even the most furtive endeavors will have to equip even more stealth
That day will prompt an arms race and a worms race
To burrow beneath the chasms of malcontent and adopt and insular embrace
They billow now with toxicity and malignancy
Even death will have alternative contingencies
The resplendent future will capture the common heart
For the accumulated wisdom of words will make us infinitely more smart

Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day,
with the moon―a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied―
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?

The sea was not salt the first tide...
but grew bitter, bitter―man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing―forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.

The sea was not salt the first tide...
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.
The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.
The sea was not salt the first tide...
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.

"The Divide" is essentially a formal villanelle despite the non-formal line breaks.



Villanelle: Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable―our love―and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that "love" has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

"Ordinary Love" was the winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest. It was originally published by Romantics Quarterly and nominated by the journal for the Pushcart Prize. It is missing a tercet but seemed complete enough without it.―MRB



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.



Because Her Heart is Tender (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Because her heart is tender
there is hope some God might mend her, …
some small hope Fates might relent.

Because her heart is tender
mighty Angels, come defend her!
Even the Devil might repent.

Because her heart is tender
Jacob’s Ladder should descend here,
the heavens open, saints assent.

Because her heart is tender
why does the cruel world rend her?
Fix the world, or let it end here!



Villanelle: Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-******.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-******,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-******,
we first proved we had lives of our own).



Double Trouble
by Michael R. Burch

The villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re on the bubble
of beginning to see double.

It’s like you’re on the Hubble
when the lens begins to wobble:
the villanelle is trouble.

It’s like you’re Barney Rubble
scratching itchy beer-stained stubble
because you’re seeing double.

Then your lines begin to gobble
up the good rhymes, and you hobble.
The villanelle is trouble,

just like getting sloshed in the pub’ll
begin to make you babble
because you’re seeing double.

Because the form is flubbable
and is really not that loveable,
the villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re seeing double.



Villanelle Sequence: Clandestine But Gentle
by Michael R. Burch

Variations on the villanelle. A play in four acts. The heroine wears a trench coat and her every action drips nonchalance. The “hero” is pallid, nerdish and nervous. But more than anything, he is palpably desperate with longing. Props are optional, but a streetlamp, a glowing cigarette and lots of eerie shadows should suffice.

I.

Clandestine but gentle, wrapped in night,
she eavesdropped on morose codes of my heart.
She was the secret agent of delight.

The blue spurt of her match, our signal light,
announced her presence in the shadowed court:
clandestine but gentle, cloaked in night.

Her cigarette was waved, a casual sleight,
to bid me “Come!” or tell me to depart.
She was the secret agent of delight,

like Ingrid Bergman in a trench coat, white
as death, and yet more fair and pale (but short
with me, whenever I grew wan with fright!).

II.

Clandestine but gentle, veiled in night,
she was the secret agent of delight;
she coaxed the tumblers in some cryptic rite

to make me spill my spirit.
Lovely ****!
Clandestine but gentle, veiled in night

―she waited till my tongue, untied, sang bright
but damning strange confessions in the dark...

III.

She was the secret agent of delight;
so I became her paramour. Tonight
I await her in my exile, worlds apart...

IV.

For clandestine but gentle, wrapped in night,
she is the secret agent of delight.



Villanelle: Hang Together, or Separately
by Michael R. Burch

“The first shall be last, and the last first.”

Be careful whom you don’t befriend
When hyenas mark their prey:
The odds will get even in the end.

Some “deplorables” may yet ascend
And since all dogs must have their day,
Be careful whom you don’t befriend.

When pallid elitists condescend
What does the Good Book say?
The odds will get even in the end.

Since the LORD advised us to attend
To each other along the way,
Be careful whom you don’t befriend.

But He was deserted. Friends, comprehend!
Though revilers mock and flay,
The odds will get even in the end.

Now infidels have loot to spend:
As ****** as Judas’s that day.
Be careful whom you don’t befriend:
The odds will get even in the end.

NOTE: This poem portrays a certain worldview. The poet does not share it and suspects from reading the gospels that the “real” Jesus would have sided with the infidel refugees, not Trump and his ilk.



Villanelle: The Sad Refrain
by Michael R. Burch

O, let us not repeat the sad refrain
that Christ is cruel because some innocent dies.
No, pain is good, for character comes from pain!

There’d be no growth without the hammering rain
that tests each petal’s worth. Omnipotent skies
peal, “Let us not repeat the sad refrain,

but separate burnt chaff from bountiful grain.
According to God’s plan, the weakling dies
and pain is good, for character comes from pain!

A God who’s perfect cannot bear the blame
of flawed creations, just because one dies!
So let us not repeat the sad refrain

or think to shame or stain His awesome name!
Let lightning strike the devious source of lies
that pain is bad, for character comes from pain!
Oh, let us not repeat the sad refrain!



Villanelles by Michael R. Burch

The modern formal villanelle is a poetic form with a double refrain, although in early incarnations it was simply a pastoral poem with a refrain. The villanelle is related other poetic forms with refrains, such as the rondel, the roundel and the rondeau.



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day,
with the moon―a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied―
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?

The sea was not salt the first tide...
but grew bitter, bitter―man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing―forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.

The sea was not salt the first tide...
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.
The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.
The sea was not salt the first tide...
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.


'The Divide' is essentially a formal villanelle despite the non-formal line breaks.



Villanelle: Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable―our love―and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
'I love you, ' in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
'I love you, ' in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that 'love' has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
'I love you, ' in the ordinary way.

'Ordinary Love' was the winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest. It was originally published by Romantics Quarterly and nominated by the journal for the Pushcart Prize. It is missing a tercet but seemed complete enough without it.―MRB



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: 'Never Forget, '
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: 'Never Forget, '
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: 'NEVER FORGET, '
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: 'NEVER FORGET'
because her heart is tender with regret.



Villanelle: Because Her Heart is Tender (II)    
by Michael R. Burch

Because her heart is tender
there is hope some God might mend her, …
some small hope Fates might relent.

Because her heart is tender
mighty Angels, come defend her!
Even the Devil might repent.

Because her heart is tender
Jacob's Ladder should descend here,
the heavens open, saints assent.

Because her heart is tender
why does the cruel world rend her?
Fix the world, or let it end here!



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.




Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



Villanelle: An Ode to the Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

This is how the Universe works:
The rich must have their perks.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.

Did T-Rexes have souls?
The poor must live on doles.
This is how the Universe works.

The rich must have their dirks
to poke serfs full of holes.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.

The despot laughs and lurks
while the Tyger slaughters foals.
This is how the Universe works.

What are the despots' goals?
The poor must mind, not shirk.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.

Trump and Putin praise the kirks
while the cowed mind ancient scrolls.
This is how the Universe works.
This is how the Good Lord rolls.



Ars Brevis
by Michael R. Burch

Better not to live, than live too long:
this is my theme, my purpose and desire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.

My will to live was never all that strong.
Eternal life? Find some poor fool to hire!
Better not to live, than live too long.

Granny ******* or a flosslike thong?
The latter rock, the former feed the fire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.

Let briefs be brief: the short can do no wrong,
since David slew Goliath, who stood higher.
Better not to live, than live too long.

A long recital gets a sudden gong.
Quick death’s preferred to drowning in the mire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.

A wee bikini or a long sarong?
French Riviera or some dull old Shire?
Better not to live, than live too long:
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.



The vanilla-nelle
by Michael R. Burch

The vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write
In a chocolate world where purity is slight,
When every rhyming word must rhyme with white!

As sure as night is day and day is night,
And walruses write songs, such is my plight:
The vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write.

I’m running out of rhymes and it’s a fright
because the end’s not nearly (yet) in sight,
When every rhyming word must rhyme with white!

It’s tougher when the poet’s not too bright
And strains his brain, which only turns up “blight.”
Yes, the vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write.

I strive to seem aloof and recondite
while avoiding ancient words like “knyghte” and “flyte”
But every rhyming word must rhyme with white!

I think I’ve failed: I’m down to “zinnwaldite.”
I fear my Muse is torturing me, for spite!
For the vanilla-nelle is rather dark to write
When every rhyming word must rhyme with white!
I may have accidentally invented a new poetic form, the “trinelle” or “triplenelle.”



Why I Left the Right
by Michael R. Burch

I was a Reagan Republican in my youth but quickly “left” the GOP when I grokked its inherent racism, intolerance and retreat into the Dark Ages.

I fell in with the troops, but it didn’t last long:
I’m not one to march to a klanging gong.
“Right is wrong” became my song.

I’m not one to march to a klanging gong
with parrots all singing the same strange song.
I fell in with the bloops, but it didn’t last long.

These parrots all singing the same strange song
with no discernment at all between right and wrong?
“Right is wrong” became my song.

With no discernment between right and wrong,
the **** marched on in a white-robed throng.
I fell in with the rubes, but it didn’t last long.

The **** marched on in a white-robed throng,
enraged by the sight of boys in sarongs.
“Right is wrong” became my song.

Enraged by the sight of boys in sarongs
and girls with butch hairdos, the clan klanged its gongs.
I fell in with the dupes, but it didn’t last long.
“Right is wrong” became my song.



What happened to the songs of yesterdays?
by Michael R. Burch

Is poetry mere turning of a phrase?
Has prose become its height and depth and sum?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?

Does prose leave all nine Muses vexed and glum,
with fingers stuck in ears, till hearing’s numbed?
Is poetry mere turning of a phrase?

Should we cut loose, drink, guzzle jugs of ***,
write prose nonstop, till Hell or Kingdom Come?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?

Are there no beats to which tense thumbs might thrum?
Did we outsmart ourselves and end up dumb?
Is poetry mere turning of a phrase?

How did a feast become this measly crumb,
such noble princes end up in a slum?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?

I’m running out of rhymes! Please be a chum
and tell me if some Muse might spank my ***
for choosing rhyme above the painted phrase?
What happened to the songs of yesterdays?



Trump’s Retribution Resolution
by Michael R. Burch

My New Year’s resolution?
I require your money and votes,
for you are my retribution.

May I offer you dark-skinned scapegoats
and bigger and deeper moats
as part of my sweet resolution?

Please consider a YUGE contribution,
a mountain of lovely C-notes,
for you are my retribution.

Revenge is our only solution,
since my critics are weasels and stoats.
Come, second my sweet resolution!

The New Year’s no time for dilution
of the anger of victimized GOATs,
when you are my retribution.

Forget the ****** Constitution!
To dictators “ideals” are footnotes.
My New Year’s resolution?
You are my retribution.



Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux are poetic forms with refrains that are related to the Villanelle.



Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.



Rondel: Rejection
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has been cast.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign,―
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain.

Alas, that Nature in your face compassed
Such beauty, that no man may hope attain
To mercy, though he perish from the pain;
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.



Rondel: Escape
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.

He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will answer just as I mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean.

Love strikes me from his roster, short and flat,
And he is struck from my books, just as clean,
Forevermore; there is no other mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.



Rondel: Your Smiling Mouth
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/moderniz  ation Michael R. Burch

Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains,
Your hands so smooth, each finger straight and plain,
Your little feet―please, what more can I say?

It is my fetish when you’re far away
To muse on these and thus to soothe my pain―
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains.

So would I beg you, if I only may,
To see such sights as I before have seen,
Because my fetish pleases me. Obscene?
I’ll be obsessed until my dying day
By your sweet smiling mouth and eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains!



Oft in My Thought
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/moderniz  ation Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet thought's been wrested from me, clear,
Since death, alas, has sealed her under clay
And robbed the world of all that's precious here―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

For me to keep my manner and my thought
Acceptable, as suits my age's hour?
While proving that I never once forgot
Her worth? It tests my power!
I serve her now with masses and with prayer;
For it would be a shame for me to stray
Far from my faith, when my time's drawing near―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

Now earthly profits fail, since all is lost
And the cost of everything became so dear;
Therefore, O Lord, who rules the higher host,
Take my good deeds, as many as there are,
And crown her, Lord, above in your bright sphere,
As heaven's truest maid! And may I say:
Most good, most fair, most likely to bring cheer―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

When I praise her, or hear her praises raised,
I recall how recently she brought me pleasure;
Then my heart floods like an overflowing bay
And makes me wish to dress for my own bier―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.



If
by Michael R. Burch

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.



Recursion
by Michael R. Burch

In a dream I saw boys lying
under banners gaily flying
and I heard their mothers sighing
from some dark distant shore.

For I saw their sons essaying
into fields―gleeful, braying―
their bright armaments displaying;
such manly oaths they swore!

From their playfields, boys returning
full of honor’s white-hot burning
and desire’s restless yearning
sired new kids for the corps.

In a dream I saw boys dying
under banners gaily lying
and I heard their mothers crying
from some dark distant shore.



I AM!
by Michael R. Burch

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

I am not one of ten billion, I.

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

I am not one life has left unsquashed.

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

I am not one without spots of disease.

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

I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything comes to naught.



Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch

... qui laetificat juventutem meam...
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
... requiescat in pace...
May she rest in peace.
... amen...
Amen.



How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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



Fowles in the Frith
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fowls in the forest,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!



I am of Ireland
anonymous Medieval Irish lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am of Ireland,
and of the holy realm of Ireland.
Gentlefolk, I pray thee:
for the sake of saintly charity,
come dance with me
in Ireland!



Whan the turuf is thy tour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
shall be sullen worms’ to note.
What help to you, then,
was all your worldly hope?

2.
When the turf is your tower
and the grave is your bower,
your pale white throat and skin
worm-eaten from within...
what hope of my help then?


Ech day me comëth tydinges thre
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each day I’m plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my soul:
First, that I must somehow exit this fen.
Second, that I cannot know when.
And yet it’s the third that torments me so,
Because I don't know where the hell I will go!



Ich have y-don al myn youth
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have done it all my youth:
Often, often, and often!
I have loved long and yearned zealously...
And oh what grief it has brought me!



I Sing of a Maiden
anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless.
The King of all Kings
For her son she chose.
He came also as still
To his mother's breast
As April dew
Falling on the grass.
He came also as still
To his mother's bower
As April dew
Falling on the flower.
He came also as still
To where his mother lay
As April dew
Falling on the spray.
Mother and maiden?
Never one, but she!
Well may such a lady
God's mother be!



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

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

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once again―
how rare.



Enigma
by Michael R. Burch

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.



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh...

our soft cries, like regret,

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase...

now that I have forgotten her face.



The Quickening
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

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



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake

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



Published as the collection "Villanelles"

Keywords/Tags: villanelle, refrain, repetition, chorus, rhyme, sea, tide, moon, heart, love, rondel, roundel, rondeau, poetic form, poetics, poetic expression, Chaucer, Orleans, love, art, beauty, mercy, merciless, words, heart, hearts, pity, pride, prison, mrbvill, mrbrondel

I am Amadioha the earth goddess  of Igbos,Ngai wa mugo wa gatheru
who created the nine daughters of mumbi ,and Gikuyu a man,
I am Wele of Dini ya Musambwa,creator of Elijah Masinde
I am  Katonda the creator of Kintu and Namiremeb hills at Makerere
I am eshu the god  of the  Ijimere and Achebe and Soyinka,
behold today  I stand in Egypt,where the sun comes from
where I similarly  stood billion and billion of years ago,
to create all the stars the moon and the universe
not even known to the son of man until today,
this is where i created my first born of  humanity;
dear Africa the generations of Negroes,
the beacon of my eye, i enjoy a look at you  minus blinkers,
i stand here a fresh to correct my creation mistakes
i formerly made, when creating my dearest son in Africa;
Kenneth Binyavanga wa wainaina, who hails at Nakuru hills,
he is the sweetest song to my heart, classical music of my ears
i contrite much , as i were not to create you a blended blood
from an  Omuganda  girl and  an Omugikuyu  boy,
i  was to create you a pure Muganda, like Okot P' Bitek,
or a pure Kenyan , like Francis Davis Imbuga,
i were to control your academic fortune , that you  don't start,
your maiden education  Lena Moi primary school,
an epiphany of a divorced woman,spelling curse of wifelessness,
on those that pass through the very  school , i was wrong.
had i known i could have not  sent Cleophas to work
in your fathers home , for him  to sleep in the horse shed,
cursed is the ******* memory of what he did in that quarter
as you preened  and eavesdropped outside like a hen
listening to the eagle's contralto,
why did i sent Wambui to be your nurse maid ,only to preach
the gospel according to the power of peasant ****** to you,
she tangled her buttocks before your **** eyes,senting
your young heart to sensuous extremities, Wambui ,a she devil,
Wow! Kalenjins are bad neighbour, they are dark and ugly
slow in the brain and sadistically malicious in the heart,
i  know not why i made them to abode with you within the
great valley of kenya, they throng schools and they cannot learn,
but i have now held them captive, i have made them your footstool
for ever and ever my dear son ,as you hold the scepter of power,
i goofed beyond  remedy by all ethereal to send you to Njoro boys school,
for you to meet Sigalla, that extra-masculine Sigalla , the ******* hunter,
i gave you wrong sisters, they made you put on your mothers dress
and her long hair,then you posed to the female public as an Americanness
your romantic number was fwive fwive fwive fwive , fwive at New-york,
i wonder why i did not give you enough power of languages
so that you generate a numberless fantabulousies and Goalies and so forth,
only to borrow from a young woman;Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
the  yellow sun's slapslap  slapslap slapslap slapslap slapslap   slapslapp!
Mangu Boys School to you was a blessing , had it not my fault,
of giving you a mutton headed faculty full of annentcy,
that went for the persiflagery and aesthetic phantasmagoria,
in the art and theatre prose and poetry; the Bigger Thomas Lawyer,
your only  misplaced  mentor  that gave birth to what i love in you ;
hence i am writting about this place now,this place kenya,
folly of folly is when i goofed to take a natural writter like you,
to commerce class in the land of apartheid, Nadine Gordimer's  front
that sired Brenda Fasie a top Lesbian, the song bird of my times
as you all know we the gods also jealously love,
she only charmed you with her naked ****
swinging like a pendulum on the  musical stage,
after her communique of being a top lesbian,she call it Africa,
o! no,  Africa never came from Lesbians, it comes from simple nature;
mother and father, in natural and collective  heterosexuality,
You only saw and revved in dope culture in the cubbyhole of Victory,
and hoped clubs from Dazzle to the rest , in hunt of  your boyhood,
sadly to be befallen by dark clouds  in victim-hood of optical nutrition,
abiding among the  tall, beautiful, smoking bunch of Lesbians.
My son, from  today and henceforth,  i the Africanus,
the god of African fertility,poetry and art,
humbly chose to recreate you the king of kings and queens,
of African story telling  at global status, to tell all African songs,
beyond sham fallacy that gay and Lesbian literature
are the begotten  apex of modern and Global literature
these are only white lies featuring a death bound imperialism.

It was late
And the night was beginning in earnest
When I learned about love.

I sat one night
And eavesdropped without intention
Into the intricate lives of a pair
Creatives, artists doomed to a life of non-satisfaction
Yet they are humans too
They may conjure out (in this case) music out of thin air
Melodic moments and sensuous sing-songs
But they feel pain too
And try to lose it in viscous, pungent, happy-making liquid.
This fellow, bearded and thick spectacles atop his nose
(Is there a more stereotypical artist?)
Would lose his father soon
Intuition and expensive healthcare told him so
What to do?
Well take a sip and another and another
Because drunken words are sober thoughts.
A dog he suggests, so that his mother will not be lonely
Who will care for it? We will of course he says,
And she is lost at 'we', a confirmation of their union
To take over the world, together.
Is this not love?


I sat another night
Encountering two whose sips became gulps
And gulps become swallows
Diving into the pool of intoxication
Rid of all senses they walked, together
Up and Down carriages,
Stumbling in unison
Destination unknown, they would find it together
Matching trench coats flapping in rhythm
Giggles as they rocked to the swaying melody of the train
They may have appeared as two nuisances, inconveniencing others
But they were two foolish lovers,
Holding on for the moment in a night they would forget
Is this not love?

The last night on the last train
A soft pitter-patter of midnight rain
An arctic breeze had blown in
Across me a couple huddled
Touching
Not groping and wandering with perverse hands
Subtle sensual caressing
Involving no movement
Just the pair joined in body and soul
Tucked into each others arms
Clicking together as two jigsaw pieces
Slowly slipping into splendid slumber
I wondered
Is this not love?
And when will I find it?

I can scream too
I can shout
I can kick up the dust
And threaten to **** myself

I can raise my fist
And rage and scream at the world
Take the car and run
And splurge
Take no concern for my actions

No need for consequences
Because **** the world
I can go depressed too
I can sulk too

I worked to get what I wanted
And when I spend
Not with my money
I feel sorry
Because there is guilt

I did not have anyone
I was locked up
I was expected to stay home
Do the chores
As my mother expects me to

Wait for the weekend
Wait for my siblings
Only to see the beam on my mother's face
When her son comes home

It ebbed me to see that
When I felt like I couldn't bring joy to her
And I bite my tongue
Fight myself to think it's satan's lie

Home alone
Stuck in a small house
No privacy
Because I can't even have a decent conversation
With my best friend
Without having eavesdropped

I can't cry out loud too
Because they might hear
My room door is spoiled
It can't be locked
No privacy
No escape

Stay home
There is so much to do
Clean the windows
Cut the grass
Have you swept the floor?
What have you done the whole day?
That strain in her voice

Now I can't do that
Because I am miles away
But the anger is still in me
I didn't know it was

Until someone else throws a tantrum
That is just selfish
That is very selfish
I suffered too
And I did not have anyone to rely on

Though I did have my books
My old canine friend
The internet that sometimes harmed
And my dreams

This is my dream
Then why this,
Why this?

you are the very same delight
of the fading dreams sobering perfume.
like the cover of cloud against unyielding starlight,
you are. the very same delight
known when, asleep beneath a cypress,  
heavens whispers did gossip about a beloved sagacious tigress
and I eavesdropped too her scent and knew
you were the very same. delight
be your gift this year and all to be.
like ecstasies of joyous reverie, to me
you are the very same delight.

This year has been... So hard. It's been so ******* hard. There were times when I didn't know if I would make it. Times when I didn't think I had it in me to keep going and going after what I want and what I need, when they're always such long shots. Such dreams. Such ambitious dreams... I wanted to quit so many times. When **** left, I wanted to quit. I wanted to crawl under the blankets and stop being. I spent 3 days on Angela's couch after that night. I can never sleep in my own bed when I am truly broken down. I lose my home when I am raw inside. Couches, empty rooms, it doesn't matter where I hide but it can't be where I live. I wonder why that is. She couldn't have picked a worse time to tell me she loved me as much as I loved her and that it didn't matter. And then you... you were off in another world, off in another country finding yourself and your footing and everyone but me. You stopped answering my How Are You's. You didn't tell me happy birthday. Neither did ****. That was the first time I realized why holidays are the hardest for people who are sad. If you love someone and you are waiting for them to forgive you for being who you are, birthdays, Christmases, every holiday becomes a ticking clock: She has to say something. Will she say something? Will she really ignore me TODAY? Today, when the person who hated me most in high school said "Happy Birthday!! :D" on my wall on facebook? Today, when even my neighbor who grumbles about us being too loud grumbled a Merry Christmas? It becomes an agony when you realize that the answer is yes long before the day is over. Then you have to watch the hours tick by, trying not to hope, and by the end of it you just want it to be over, you don't even care anymore- you just want her not to have a reason to speak to you again, so that it won't mean QUITE so much that she is silent.
I had a lot of special days like that this year.
I wanted to quit when they told me I was small. When they told me I was quiet and bland, like vanilla icecream. The beast that lives behind my ribcage shook the bars that day and howled. (I spent a lot of time with it this year. We still hate each other, but we have uneasily realized that we are all we have.) That was the day I truly broke. **** was gone. You were gone. And the only thing I had to truly count on was suddenly in question. It was now or never, it was be better than your best, and I was barely hanging on. It was be a hundred and ten percent, when the past few months had whittled me down to a shadow of a person who barely remembered what it was to be fifty. It was push harder than you've ever pushed at the moment you are about to collapse and you thought you were going to be able to rest.
Those days made me. I hate that they made me. I hate that the biggest parts of me come from the days that eviscerated me, but they do.
I wanted to quit when **** came back and saw what I'd become. "You're wearing fake eyelashes?" she said, because she always did notice any weakness. She didn't say she saw my sunken cheeks, and the fire behind my eyes that meant I was afraid to die. "PROMISE ME you'll stay this time." I said, and I grabbed her shoulders. "But only if you mean it."
"I promise." she said.
She didn't mean it.
I knew, though. Somehow I knew that the girl I loved had left her behind, a changeling, a stranger. I tried to believe, but when she left the shock was only surface: I was too tired to be rocked to the core.
Then came the days when I truly didn't have a plan. I spent a few weeks on the couch. Anyone who reads this will not have seen me with ***** hair, in week old clothes, skinny and sleeping all the time. I make sure they never see. But for a few weeks, I had no one to pretend for and no reason to pretend and no reason to live. I only knew I WANTED to. Even then, from the couch, with my show babbling in the background, I thought, "There's gotta be something. A reason will come. I just have to wait." And a reason did come. It wasn't a very good reason, but it didn't have to be: Reasons to live are not really the reasons we live. The truth is that if you want to live, you will FIND a reason, every time. You will create one. My reason didn't mean a thing in the details. All it meant was that I was ready to rejoin the world, and live again.
I spent a lot of the in between months living on the surface of myself, just getting my feet wet. I went to work. They didn't know me there. Didn't ask. I liked that, it was simple. I waited tables, I cleaned up, and if I quietly did what I did, nobody bothered me. The biggest thing I could **** up was somebody's lunch. It was comforting. I chatted with customers as if I wasn't who I was. I was their smiling waitress with her hand on her hip, a hot *** of coffee, and a clever quip. That was a part of learning to live again, too. It was hard to stand there all day and listen to the radio. Memories would hit me and I would be unable to run away from them the way I could elsewhere. I learned to breathe through the pain, and discovered that it became muscle memory to endure it. It was almost easy by the end. The only deep thing I did with this time was to read Girl, Interrupted. As with most life changing books, I hadn't thought much of picking it up. I hadn't expected it to change me. But reading it, I could have wrote it myself. I knew how she felt, every moment, and the things she said stuck with me, stuck to me- the raw wounds that were still healing  inside me scarred around her words.
Then came the reckless stage. I was waking up. I began to listen to music again. I began to drive without knowing where I was going. I began to make choices just to see if they'd jar me enough to snap me back to my old self. They didn't. I didn't find myself again until just before school started.
Poor Giles (my car, the car that saved my life) was the cost of it. A rainy night, a loud song, and too much grief. Things really do slow down when you crash, you know. I thought they just did that in movies to be dramatic, but they don't, it's real. When I went off the road I knew I'd lost control. My mind was way ahead of me. My body wasn't in the place I thought it should be, and I remember distinctly but calmly wondering why it wouldn't listen to me and do what I wanted (it was, in fact, being thrown around by the force of the crash, and the signals from my brain saying "Move your arm!" couldn't compete with whiplash.) I woke up with the car crunched against a tree, on the driver's side, and the frame 6 inches from my face.
I didn't feel anything.
My body cried and shook as they strapped me to a stretcher, but inside I wasn't in control. I was sitting back quizzically. The moment they got me out of the car I knew I was unhurt. They cut off my clothes. My favorite bra was another casualty of that day. Cut right in half- the leopard bra I wore in the first scene I ever did in front of the UConn faculty for midterms last year. While they were wheeling me from test to test, I wondered if that was somehow symbolic. Flash forward to being in bed in a tiny room, a doctor giving me back my bellybutton ring, me asking where the pentagram necklace that **** gave me the night we met was, getting it back, putting it on. The IV in my arm was cold. I hate IVs. My mom cried, and I cried, but I still wasn't scared or sad. I cried because tears came out. It was a surreal experience, crying like that.
I didn't wake up fully from my brokenness until the nurse came in and said, "I'm so sorry, but we need your room. I'm going to have to put you in the hall." I shrugged, and they stuck me in the hall just outside. I watched them wheel a bedraggled looking man in. He was muttering. He reminded me of my uncle, the alcoholic, the one who had died the previous fall. I had a hunch that they probably had a lot in common. Interest piqued, I eavesdropped as they bustled around and talked to him. He had tried to **** himself.
That was when I woke up. I didn't really know it, but that was the moment. It was the first moment in months that I remembered my real reason. I asked my mother for a piece of paper to draw on, and she dug in her purse to find it. Ten minutes later I faked having to go to the bathroom so they'd unhook me from my tubes. I had a feeling my mother would think it improper if I told the truth. Before she could object, I slipped into his room, and handed him the paper. I said, "I made this for you. I hope you feel better." I wish I remembered exactly what I'd written. It was a simple little note and a doodle of a rose, and it said that he mattered, and that I cared about him. I got back in bed, sheepish, and my mom was as nervous about my infringement on someone else's life as I'd guessed she'd be. Five minutes later, though, the nurse came over with a piece of torn paper. He had written back to me. His handwriting was shaky and simple, like a child. I have that note hung up in my bedroom at home. He said, "You have touched my heart. Thank you! I will keep your rose in my heart. This is a life changing moment for me... Thank you!" I wondered if there was a plan, then. I wondered if all of that, the sadness, the crash, everything, had led me to be in that hospital and say something to that man that changed his life. And maybe it didn't change at all, I don't know. But I know that that moment changed me.
Back at school, I had a few blissful moments with you. A few nights of hand holding, a few beautiful kisses. I slowly taught myself not to run from you when I felt the gravity of my love separate me by the molecule. I found that I did have the courage it took to be in your arms, and that is when you lost the courage to hold me. Still, I'd take all of my grief and more for one moment with you, and I'll keep you in my heart till the day I die, whether or not you stick around.
In class, I was the first to break. To cry. Over months, I cracked open and a lot of the tears that fell were very old, and scalding. I hadn't known I was suffering until the cracks in me were widened and focused on. One day after a particularly raw moment, I walked across the street to the tattoo parlor. I didn't stop, I didn't think, and I got a tattoo that very moment. My butterfly, on my shoulder, to remind me that changing hurts, growing hurts. I loved how much it hurt. (Nobody said I was recovered fully.)
Suddenly then there was a choice before me. An opportunity and a challenge. Do something to make them remember why they chose you. Fight. Win. I dug deep. I thought, what can I say that I mutter to myself in the shower when I am not thinking about anything? What words have stuck to me? I dug, and I found Susanna Kaysen again. At 3 in the morning I sat in a chair, in the dark, in the center of the bare rehearsal studio and tore myself open.
I found the girl who, this past summer, in the thick of everything, had called McClean and tried to get a bed. Who for a week had begged to be somebody else's problem. I called a hotline. I wasn't suicidal, but only because I don't have it in me, no matter how bad I feel. I called and got a voicemail. Desperate, I called UMASS Memorial. I remember they told me that if I wasn't a physical danger to myself or others they couldn't help me, and I remember this phrase tumbling out of my mouth before I could filter it, "Should I just go slit my wrists and call you right back, then?"
I had asked for help, and the answer, resoundingly, was no. And so I spent those weeks on the couch, and then I got up and dealt with the fallout. There was no other way.
I found her and I invited her to say something. And what came out was... The biggest ******* to the things that had beaten me down those past months. I kept the lights off. I put on Bleed Like Me and danced without looking where I was going. I held myself to the chair and tried to escape. I screamed into a pillow until no sound came out. And I found Susanna Kaysen. And I freed the part of me that wanted to talk with all those wiser than thou gods who toyed with the thread of my fate, teasing it with blades- I found **** this. **** being hurt. **** being broken. **** being judged. **** anyone who looked at me and thought they knew what was inside, because Susanna was inside, no, someone different, even, than her- someone, something, angry and wild and powerful and dangerous, and she laughed, and I laughed, and we began to plan just how to say "**** this."
I spent a night with you, during that time. You held my hands. You said they were beautiful. You told me about yourself. You kissed me. You wrote, "Galaxies" on my thumb. I didn't write it on my ribs until I was sure that I'd want it there whether or not I was mad at you. I didn't have long to wait- you ran away again, and I tried to love you anyway, and I succeeded. I still try. I still succeed. It's not getting much easier, but if I know one thing it's that if I
Just
Don't
Give
Up
SOMETHING will happen. Something will come to me. If I know one thing it's that I can keep going even when I have no reason to, even when I have no fuel, even when I am utterly empty. If I just take the next step, and the next, one by one, I will end up SOMEWHERE new, and I will find SOMETHING to love. That is what I learned this year. By all accounts.... this year kind of ******. Although I had scattered moments of utter joy, I had long, smudged months of misery. But having gone through it, I am almost nostalgic. Because it proved to me, even more, that I am not fragile. I'm emotional, I'm intense, I'm unstable, but ******, I am NOT fragile. Like iron being smited, I went through the fire, I was hit over and over in my weakest places, but... in the end I have emerged, and I am not gone. And I am not fragile. Welcome, 2015.

Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux

These are poetic forms similar to villanelles, with refrains (repeated lines) and sometimes double refrains.



Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.



Rondel: Rejection
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has been cast.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign,―
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain.

Alas, that Nature in your face compassed
Such beauty, that no man may hope attain
To mercy, though he perish from the pain;
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.



Rondel: Escape
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.

He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will answer just as I mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean.

Love strikes me from his roster, short and flat,
And he is struck from my books, just as clean,
Forevermore; there is no other mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.



Rondel: Your Smiling Mouth
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization Michael R. Burch

Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains,
Your hands so smooth, each finger straight and plain,
Your little feet―please, what more can I say?

It is my fetish when you’re far away
To muse on these and thus to soothe my pain―
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains.

So would I beg you, if I only may,
To see such sights as I before have seen,
Because my fetish pleases me. Obscene?
I’ll be obsessed until my dying day
By your sweet smiling mouth and eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains!



Oft in My Thought
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet thought's been wrested from me, clear,
Since death, alas, has sealed her under clay
And robbed the world of all that's precious here―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

For me to keep my manner and my thought
Acceptable, as suits my age's hour?
While proving that I never once forgot
Her worth? It tests my power!
I serve her now with masses and with prayer;
For it would be a shame for me to stray
Far from my faith, when my time's drawing near―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

Now earthly profits fail, since all is lost
And the cost of everything became so dear;
Therefore, O Lord, who rules the higher host,
Take my good deeds, as many as there are,
And crown her, Lord, above in your bright sphere,
As heaven's truest maid! And may I say:
Most good, most fair, most likely to bring cheer―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.

When I praise her, or hear her praises raised,
I recall how recently she brought me pleasure;
Then my heart floods like an overflowing bay
And makes me wish to dress for my own bier―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide ...
was man born to sorrow that first day,
with the moon―a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied―
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?

The sea was not salt the first tide ...
but grew bitter, bitter―man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing―forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.

The sea was not salt the first tide ...
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.
The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.
The sea was not salt the first tide ...
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.

"The Divide" is essentially a formal villanelle despite the non-formal line breaks.



Villanelle: Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable―our love―and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that "love" has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

"Ordinary Love" was the winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest. It was originally published by Romantics Quarterly and nominated by the journal for the Pushcart Prize. It is missing a tercet but seemed complete enough without it.―MRB



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.



Double Trouble
by Michael R. Burch

The villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re on the bubble
of beginning to see double.

It’s like you’re on the Hubble
when the lens begins to wobble:
the villanelle is trouble.

It’s like you’re Barney Rubble
scratching itchy beer-stained stubble
because you’re seeing double.

Then your lines begin to gobble
up the good rhymes, and you hobble.
The villanelle is trouble,

just like getting sloshed in the pub’ll
begin to make you babble
because you’re seeing double.

Because the form is flubbable
and is really not that loveable,
the villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re seeing double.



Villanelle: Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-******.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-******,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-******,
we first proved we had lives of our own).



Villanelle Sequence: Clandestine But Gentle
by Michael R. Burch

Variations on the villanelle. A play in four acts. The heroine wears a trench coat and her every action drips nonchalance. The “hero” is pallid, nerdish and nervous. But more than anything, he is palpably desperate with longing. Props are optional, but a streetlamp, a glowing cigarette and lots of eerie shadows should suffice.

I.

Clandestine but gentle, wrapped in night,
she eavesdropped on morose codes of my heart.
She was the secret agent of delight.

The blue spurt of her match, our signal light,
announced her presence in the shadowed court:
clandestine but gentle, cloaked in night.

Her cigarette was waved, a casual sleight,
to bid me “Come!” or tell me to depart.
She was the secret agent of delight,

like Ingrid Bergman in a trench coat, white
as death, and yet more fair and pale (but short
with me, whenever I grew wan with fright!).

II.

Clandestine but gentle, veiled in night,
she was the secret agent of delight;
she coaxed the tumblers in some cryptic rite

to make me spill my spirit.
Lovely ****!
Clandestine but gentle, veiled in night

―she waited till my tongue, untied, sang bright
but damning strange confessions in the dark . . .

III.

She was the secret agent of delight;
so I became her paramour. Tonight
I await her in my exile, worlds apart . . .

IV.

For clandestine but gentle, wrapped in night,
she is the secret agent of delight.



Villanelle: Hang Together, or Separately
by Michael R. Burch

“The first shall be last, and the last first.”

Be careful whom you don’t befriend
When hyenas mark their prey:
The odds will get even in the end.

Some “deplorables” may yet ascend
And since all dogs must have their day,
Be careful whom you don’t befriend.

When pallid elitists condescend
What does the Good Book say?
The odds will get even in the end.

Since the LORD advised us to attend
To each other along the way,
Be careful whom you don’t befriend.

But He was deserted. Friends, comprehend!
Though revilers mock and flay,
The odds will get even in the end.

Now infidels have loot to spend:
As ****** as Judas’s that day.
Be careful whom you don’t befriend:
The odds will get even in the end.

NOTE: This poem portrays a certain worldview. The poet does not share it and suspects from reading the gospels that the “real” Jesus would have sided with the infidel refugees, not Trump and his ilk.



Villanelle: The Sad Refrain
by Michael R. Burch

O, let us not repeat the sad refrain
that Christ is cruel because some innocent dies.
No, pain is good, for character comes from pain!

There’d be no growth without the hammering rain
that tests each petal’s worth. Omnipotent skies
peal, “Let us not repeat the sad refrain,

but separate burnt chaff from bountiful grain.
According to God’s plan, the weakling dies
and pain is good, for character comes from pain!

A God who’s perfect cannot bear the blame
of flawed creations, just because one dies!
So let us not repeat the sad refrain

or think to shame or stain His awesome name!
Let lightning strike the devious source of lies
that pain is bad, for character comes from pain!
Oh, let us not repeat the sad refrain!

NOTE: An eternal hell cannot be justified. Nothing can be learned from eternal suffering except that the creation of life was the ultimate act of evil. The creator of an eternal hell would be infinitely cruel and should never have created any creature that might possibly end up there. That so many Christians do not understand this suggests they lack the knowledge of good and evil and were rooked by their "god" in the Garden of Eden or have been bamboozled by heartless and mindless theologians.



If
by Michael R. Burch

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.

Originally published by The HyperTexts



Recursion
by Michael R. Burch

In a dream I saw boys lying
under banners gaily flying
and I heard their mothers sighing
from some dark distant shore.

For I saw their sons essaying
into fields―gleeful, braying―
their bright armaments displaying;
such manly oaths they swore!

From their playfields, boys returning
full of honor’s white-hot burning
and desire’s restless yearning
sired new kids for the corps.

In a dream I saw boys dying
under banners gaily lying
and I heard their mothers crying
from some dark distant shore.



I AM!
by Michael R. Burch

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

I am not one of ten billion, I.

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

I am not one life has left unsquashed.

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

I am not one without spots of disease.

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

I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything comes to naught.



Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch

. . . qui laetificat juventutem meam . . .
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
. . . requiescat in pace . . .
May she rest in peace.
. . . amen . . .
Amen.

I was touched by this Latin prayer, which I discovered in a novel I read as a teenager. I later decided to incorporate it into a poem. From what I now understand, “ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam” means “to the God who gives joy to my youth,” but I am sticking with my original interpretation: a lament for a little girl at her funeral. The phrase can be traced back to Saint Jerome's translation of Psalm 42 in the Vulgate Latin Bible (circa 385 AD).



How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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



Fowles in the Frith
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fowls in the forest,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!

Sounds like an early animal rights activist! The use of "and" is intriguing ... is the poet saying that his walks in the wood drive him mad because he is also a "beast of bone and blood," facing a similar fate?



I am of Ireland
anonymous Medieval Irish lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am of Ireland,
and of the holy realm of Ireland.
Gentlefolk, I pray thee:
for the sake of saintly charity,
come dance with me
in Ireland!



Whan the turuf is thy tour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
shall be sullen worms’ to note.
What help to you, then,
was all your worldly hope?

2.
When the turf is your tower
and the grave is your bower,
your pale white throat and skin
worm-eaten from within ...
what hope of my help then?

NOTE: The second translation leans more to the "lover's complaint" and carpe diem genres, with the poet pointing out to his prospective lover that by denying him her favors she make take her virtue to the grave where worms will end her virginity in macabre fashion. This poem may be an ancient precursor of poems like Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."



Ech day me comëth tydinges thre
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each day I’m plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my soul:
First, that I must somehow exit this fen.
Second, that I cannot know when.
And yet it’s the third that torments me so,
Because I don't know where the hell I will go!



Ich have y-don al myn youth
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have done it all my youth:
Often, often, and often!
I have loved long and yearned zealously ...
And oh what grief it has brought me!



I Sing of a Maiden
anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless.
The King of all Kings
For her son she chose.
He came also as still
To his mother's breast
As April dew
Falling on the grass.
He came also as still
To his mother's bower
As April dew
Falling on the flower.
He came also as still
To where his mother lay
As April dew
Falling on the spray.
Mother and maiden?
Never one, but she!
Well may such a lady
God's mother be!



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear . . .

once starlight
languished
in your hair . . .

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

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

unleash
the torrent
of your hair . . .

and show me
once again―
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse



Enigma
by Michael R. Burch

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.



Floating
by Michael R. Burch

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs ...
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler ...
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.

Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea ...
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem may have had a different title when it was originally published, but it escapes me ... ah, yes, "Entanglements."



Sonnet: Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy's a wan illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.

Published by The Lyric, Black Medina, The Eclectic Muse, Kritya(India), Shabestaneh (Iran), Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Captivating Poetry (Anthology), Strange Road, Freshet, Shot Glass Journal, Better Than Starbucks, Famous Poets and Poems, Sonnetto Poesia, Poetry Life & Times



Righteous
by Michael R. Burch

Come to me tonight
in the twilight, O, and the full moon rising,
spectral and ancient, will mutter a prayer.

Gather your hair
and pin it up, knowing
that I will release it a moment anon.

We are not one,
nor is there a scripture
to sanctify nights you might spend in my arms,

but the swarms
of bright stars revolving above us
revel tonight, the most ardent of lovers.

Published in Writer’s Gazette and Tucumcari Literary Review



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.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

“Burn Ovid” - Austin Clarke

Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imaging watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.

Explicit *** was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.

I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue:
adultery, fornication, *******, ******.
Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush
of her unrouged cheeks,
by her pale lips
accented only by a slight quiver,
a trepidation.

What did those lustrous folds foretell
of our uncommon desire?
Why did she cross and uncross her legs
lovely and long in their taupe sheaths?
Why did her ******* rise pointedly,
as if indicating a direction?

“Come unto me,
(unto me),”
together, we sang,

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

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

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

This poem is set at Faith Christian Academy, which I attended for a year during the ninth grade, in 1972-1973. While the poem definitely had its genesis there, I believe I revised it more than once and didn't finish it till 2001, nearly 28 years later, according to my notes on the poem. Another poem, "*** 101," was also written about my experiences at FCA that year.



*** 101
by Michael R. Burch

That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina ...

Where we sat exhausted
from the day’s skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity ...

Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ...

The most unlikely coupling:

Lambert, 18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ...

Beside him, Wanda, 13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving ...

And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew ...

that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.

This companion poem to "Burn, Ovid" is also set at Faith Christian Academy, in 1972-1973.



The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch

The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,

the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,

the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,

the face in the photograph
no longer dissolving under scrutiny,
becoming a keepsake,

the useless mower
lying forgotten
in weeds,

rings and crosses and
all the paraphernalia
the soul no longer needs.



The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.

Originally published by The Lyric



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh ...

our soft cries, like regret,

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...

now that I have forgotten her face.



in-flight convergence
by michael r. burch

serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city ――― extend ―――

over lumbering behemoths
shrilly screeching displeasure;
they say
that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command

here the streetlights that flicker
and those blazing steadfast
seem one: from a distance;
descend,
they abruptly
part ――― ways,

so that nothing is one
which at times does not suddenly blend
into garish insignificance
in the familiar alleyways,
in the white neon flash
and the billboards of Convenience

and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance
as we thunder down the enlightened runways.

Originally published by The Aurorean and subsequently nominated for the Pushcart Prize



Absence
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 Quickening
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

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



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake

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



Published as the collection "Rondels"

Keywords/Tags: rondel, roundel, rondeau, villanelle, refrain, repetition, poetic form, poetics, poetic expression, Chaucer, Orleans, love, art, beauty, mercy, merciless, words, heart, hearts, pity, pride, prison

To Love and Lose

Once upon a time…
There lived a shy little boy and a chatty little girl. Though the two lived really close they never knew each other. That was until one day, the girl entered high school. They met for the first time on the school bus. The boy eavesdropped on her and for the first time spoke to her. Although she was especially irritated, the boy responded. It was with those words that a lifelong love blossomed…
“You love me, you just don’t know it yet.”
Through the many trials and errors of high school life they grew together. And so, They lived happily ever after.

Or so I thought. Life is not the fairy tale I made it out to be. August 2008, my angel flew away. The woman I loved for ten years of my life lost faith in the power of love. More importantly she lost faith in me. What follows is my most honest recollection of the end of the era of Ryan and Lisa.

When I first met Lisa, I was little more than a persistent annoyance. Gradually, “like a fungus,” I grew on her. She was my first friend, whom I had met at 15. That little boy desperately yearned for love, and she accepted. We became inseparable throughout high school. She even graduated early to keep pace with me. Ultimately, due to my growing family dysfunction and her desire to widen the gap she felt between her parents we moved out on our own. Truly, we demanded our freedom to leave behind the stains of childhood.
Our apartment years were far from a nirvana. My darkness and her porcelain demeanor fought many battles. Moving beyond, we asked, “What next?” Purchasing a home seemed the obvious answer. Unfortunately our American dream was in the hands of Judas the Contractor. It did not go well and stress always marred our relationship.
All was not war, however. We loved as hard as we fought. Shortly after buying the home we were married. We were ever confident in our ability to weather any storm. It took 3 long years, but the house issues eventually settled.
With the tumultuous waves settled to a peaceful reflection Lisa was left with a void. “What will I do with the rest of my life?” Waitressing was not the solution. Then, one day, in the midst of her woeful exile, her answer walked in and sat down at her table.

“This is it!” “This is what I want to be!”
Her epiphany was a chatty RN munching assembly line breadsticks. The next piece was a friendly pair of regulars. Tom and Colleen were in their 50s and never had children. When they learned of Lisa’s mission they instantly adopted her. They constantly tipped outrageously to help fulfill her goals.

Meanwhile, I was stagnant. I was content with enjoying my home. I couldn’t understand why Lisa wouldn’t relax and enjoy what we built. I also had a crippling fear of change stemming from a vicious cycle of depression and guilt. Depression from a series of unsuccessful jobs. Guilt from inadequacy, feeling as though I couldn’t be the man Lisa deserved. Once Lisa had realized her ambition, she began pressuring me to utilize my vast potential. I was lost. The home and “happy” marriage was more than I ever had imagined. What more could there be?
Then, Colleen grew ill. She developed Alzheimer’s disease. Lisa had recently completed her STNA license certification as a mini trial for nursing. Lisa had embraced Tom and Colleen as surrogate parents, feeling a closeness to them she was unable to with hers. She became Colleen’s caregiver. Between Colleen, school, and serving, it meant 100 mph weeks and very little sleep. The stress and exhaustion weighed heavily on her.
A new civil war began. I tried relentlessly to get her to take her school and work slower. Slow was not in her vocabulary. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t share her vigor for a pursuit of my own. I was clueless and feared what new horrors change would bring. She misunderstood my concern for her welfare as denying her independence. In the war of hearts, I was quickly losing ground.

April 25th, 2008-Lisa’s 25th Birthday, her “Other Mother”, Colleen died. I didn’t realize it yet, but as I carried the casket my marriage was tethered to it. As the dirt went over, the fuse was lit, and the countdown began.
As the two who loved her most, Tom and Lisa fell into a deep depression. Both began drinking heavily…
“More and more just to get through the day, more and more just to feel okay.”
Lisa still worked 70 hrs weeks (now at a nursing home) as well as attend school full time. Often she didn’t come home. A gnawing sense of dread and paranoia washed over me. Not for a suspicion between them, but for her safety.
However, the world progressed as though nothing was amiss. Soon, it was nearing Lisa’s entry into the Nursing Program. I could not longer fight working a second job and begrudgingly accepted a position with her. Our proximity only increased the mounting tension. The cracks in our armor were beginning to show.
Finally the bomb went off and my world crumbled to pieces. The last week of July, following another fight I demanded to know the root issue. I received the answer I never wanted to hear…
“I don’t love you anymore.”
After a three day absence she returned home. However, that night I found an incomplete letter to Tom that finished, “I can’t wait until my divorce is over.” After pulling the arrow from my heart I immediately woke her. Without a word and in a panicked rush, she got in her car and drove out of my life.

The end was a series of saddening and maddening clichés…
“Couple gets married too young.”
“Woman chooses career over love.”
“Mourners seek solace in each others arms.”
“Man falls for wife’s nurse.”
“Woman pities sorrowful widow.”
“DIVORCE!”
Etc., ad nauseam.

Upon Lisa’s departure I feel into a black hole. Carelessness is not in my nature. I feel everything. For the first few weeks I was dead. Frequently, I contemplated finishing the act. Depression waxed and waned as the uncertainty of our finality wavered. I pleaded for help.
My journey taught me this…
When you’re sinking, in over your head, reaching out for someone to help, no one will come. You have to drop the arm seeking pity and use it to pull yourself from the muck. The climb out of the pit is a solitary journey. It’s only when you’re back on your feet that you notice all that stood around you. They are powerless to help, only watch as you cried and flailed, their hearts cut by the shards of yours. They are there to dust you off and stand you up, but never to pull you out. Only you must do that. My fear of change ended there. That which I feared most had come to pass. I survived; scarred, yet alive.

I describe my life as a learning process. Lisa’s life can best be described as a frenzied quest to prove something to no one. What does she have to prove? I always knew she was worthy of loving. She cannot trust anyone, therefore cannot trust herself. In the pursuit of her blind ambitions she sacrifices everything and everyone. When complete she feels lost and confused, until her next futile crusade. She is a soldier without a war. Her “self” is defined by her monochromatic goals. She puts so much of herself into them that there’s nothing left inside. She’s destroying herself from the inside out. Decay in a pretty wrapper.
When Lisa was a child she suffered an extremely traumatic experience. She never told her parents, the chasm between them seemingly insurmountable. It left her feeling sullied and insignificant. Since then, she has desperately tried to prove worth noticing. The child within her cries out, “Please pay attention to me. I need help.”
This inadequacy bled into our life. She is incapable of accepting death, instead diluting her sorrow with an obsession, fixation, or addiction. Her confidence in any decision is brittle at best. She views our marriage as universal shackles, keeping greatness just out of her reach.
However, I must also stand trial for my sins. On several occasions I did show her violence. No blacks eyes or broken bones, but that’s hardly a justification. Each morning I wake alone the weight of this guilt bares down on me. Lisa caught a glimpse of my dark side and it scared her away.

What lingers of my love for Lisa? I won’t hide that I harbor some hostility. Ultimately, though, I will forgive her. Beneath all the rage and guilt, denial and anxiety, I just want her to be happy. I owe her my life, now it’s time I gave hers back. I can never deny the light she inspired in me. She gave me a gift and moved on. As it is frequently said and not understood…
“If you truly love someone, set them free.”
What is true love, anyways? True love is giving all that you have and letting her leave with it. True love is letting go when all you want to do is hold on. It is not dismantling her dreams simply because you’re no longer part of them. Sadly, Love is all too often, a dead language.

As the dust settles, What remains of my life? Our love lies with Colleen now, a wonderful woman who had a huge impact on an impressive array of people. I still trust in the power of love. Now, I stand at a crossroads. For the last decade of my life my entire identity has been “Ryan and Lisa.” The question left is, without Lisa,…
“WHO AM I?”


TO BE CONTINUED…

Written August 2009

Please read "The Phoenix" for Part 2

We ran across streams of moonlight
Racing each other in a childlike excitement
Mine stemming from the newness of this
Yours from the injected high you gave yourself

Through the woods, we raced
The moon playing hide and seek with our eyes
With every step, we learned more
Lacing words together you gifted them to me

We stopped just short of the deeper end
Stepping into a shimmering pool of moonlit rays
Clearing our minds of doubts and inhibitions
You stepped forward and offered me your hand

Your fingers hung in front of me
A hopeful promise of something…. More?
But I took a sudden step backward
The claws of my dark past holding me firm

You pulled me in though with determination
Letting your lips rest against mine in hope for a change
But with controlled fingers, I pushed you back
A smile gracing yourself as you let me go

“I will wait” you promised
Unknowingly binding your soul with mine
We walked back calmly now, more aware of everything
Arms linked and words shared while I struggled to still hold back

Next morning I woke up in a hasty excitement
Last nights hesitancies left behind in my dreams
Walking up to breakfast trembling in a crazed nervousness
Yet once again, fear seized me and I stayed away

This dance continued, endlessly
One reaching out to the other desperately
Searching for a reminder of that moonlight run
Sighing in regret at our human insecurities

Tired of the worlds of confusion we brought alive
We stepped away, never giving hope to a dream
One we both once dreamt in unison
Tracing it across eachothers' arms with starry promises

It was too late we reasoned
The world after all, didn’t give second chances to such wishes
Shooting stars avoided us as a sign of our failure
So we scrubbed away the burning fires we had once traced

Now, we lay in the arms of others
Looking up at plain ceilings in search of our lost stars
Wondering the dreaded ‘What Ifs?’
Sleeplessly racing back to our dreamy havens of you and me

So close but barely meeting as we stumbled through life
Holding close harsh rocks that couldn’t compare to our burning stars
Forging forward in a crazed determination to forget
Only at moonlight looking up to secretly whisper unheard confessions

A gentle whistle of letters let flow
Ignored by the trillions of slumbering bodies
Only eavesdropped upon by the creak of sneering branches
But lapped up by the moon in an endless waiting of..

Tales of coming and going, movement on the insides
and the outsides
of the bodies.

The amateur beauty of the harmonica child,
Harmonies, surprisingly crafty,
polk along with the crack-pop of chicken being tendered
and fries not too salty at-all.

The line for New York City, Zanesville, and Philly;
a young man softly sifting through lady hair.  
And the shoes on this bunch all surprisingly thrifty.
Do not stare, echo mothers of the past.  

All pragmatics aside, I eavesdropped intently
to earnest voices of men, touch on topics of race.  
Gruff solitude, paired with fluorescent hung-lights
and a retrospective friend pacing endlessly.

Only the words that flow out seamlessly now,
can tell toward which mood I'll be leaning.

Today I went to Coffee Rush.
I got my usual caramel nut latte and sat outside.
I lit a cigarette and eavesdropped on
all the people there with their friends.
I left a while later and headed to the salt river.
I stayed there for several hours
listening to the wind in the trees and the
trout jumping to catch their next meal.
I felt at peace.
The sun was shining on my skin and warming
my heart up.
I was fine
but then you showed up.
I pushed you out of my head as soon as you popped in.
And what do you know?
I felt free.
On my way home, I stopped back at Coffee Rush.
Sat outside, lit my smoke, eavesdropped.
My phone buzzed, and
it surprised me a little bit.
I was fine
until you showed up.
I left the coffee shop in a hurry and sped home.
I felt angry, and then nothing.
Angry.
Nothing.
Angry
Nothing.
Back and forth until it exhausted me.
Now I lay in my bed
feeling nothing
except tired, but not tired enough to sleep.
I was fine until you showed up.

.

THE KIND OF THINGS POETS THINK/DO

all its little life
the triangle longed to be
a circle

"I want to get around!"
it piped up
in its little Isosceles voice

"It's...it's preposterous!"
screamed his mother Scalenely
"...whoever heard of such a thing!"

"You should be proud of your lines!"
scolded its grandpa
Equilaterally

"A triangle can not be..."
said his Papa in a right angled kind of way
"...anything other than a triangle!"

"I always felt I was a circle
trapped inside
a triangle's body!"

one day a passing poet
eavesdropped in an idle moment
on what the lines were saying

"Why ever not...why
ever not" said the poet
poet chaps tend to think like that

so he erased the brave
little Isosceles
drew him again as a circle

"Wheee!"
laughed the former Isosceles triangle
delighting in its circle-ness

this is the kind of things
poets think of...

. . .poets do.

Those lovely folks at N.S.A.  love reading your e-mails.
They parse each line in search of crime; the devil’s in the details.
Those Patriots at A T & T are equal to the task
of providing them with access; they’ll do anything they’re asked.
They spy upon the great and small, the poets and the dreamers,
to catch a whiff of nasty plots now being hatched by schemers.
They’ve spied upon Sarkozy and they’ve eavesdropped in on Merkel.
They tapped lines in the U.N. and other diplomatic circles.
Their corporation cronies provide them with full access for no fee;
This makes our spies the envy of the Russian KGB
So when you reach out and touch someone, don’t assume you are alone.
I’m pretty sure big brother is there listening on the phone.

Joseph Kern had never seen The Starry Night,
Had he been there, the parsonage across
Van Gogh’s memory, leading to Arles or somewhere else,
Had he been there, he could have thrown the pebbles he
Collected that flew through his window
In the afternoons he eavesdropped.

I like to think that Joseph Kern has seen The Starry Night
While somebody played the
Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042: II. Adagio
I like to imagine him  amongst the thickly applied whorls of paint,
I like him across the English Channel, waiting with one of
Rita’s puppies, echoing the sky-
Not as it looks but how as it feels.

Lords Temple Basement Men
The first Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Dr. Benjamin Anthony, and Ayla Atash

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence.

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

“Come in and be amongst our broken people (pieces).
Mingle with our shards.
See which cut is the deepest”

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out.
The people in the room greet one another, then swarm around one woman,
“You are a good worker.”
“You will be missed.”

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

The woman swarm, Mama Evil, pushes her way to the front to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The (holy) Word is debated, discussed, dissected, compromised, altered, changed, shredded, reused, updated, recreated. It is burnt to cinders, then rises as a phoenix, built out of the broken pieces of all that was said before; what used to be true, but is now casually agreed to be fallacy. We, people, call this Faith. Our membership makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. We are just people. And he, is just a Man.”
“Dual Spirituality is a possibility. In fact, it is encouraged. Multiple realities are possible. Poly-spirituality is acceptable. The only interconnecting philosophy among us is, ‘Anything is possible at any time for any reason’.”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”
The Man explains,
“We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word because we question.”

Let me start with a parable,
“Once upon a time…
There lived a shy little boy and a chatty little girl. Though the two lived really close they never knew each other. That was until one day, the girl entered high school. They met for the first time on the school bus. The boy eavesdropped on her and for the first time spoke to her. Although she was especially irritated, the boy responded. It was with those words that a lifelong love blossomed…
‘You love me, you just don’t know it yet.’

Through the many trials and errors of high school life they grew together. And so, They lived happily ever after.”
“…Except, she didn’t. In this reality, she ran off with a rich older man while taking care of his dying wife, 5 years after those high school sweethearts were married.”
Years later, he would lament,
“It started with a broken heart. Through the crack seeped liquid fire. It engulfed me, burning away all that I was. The flames shall purify me. Boil me down to my base components, and then rebuild me. From the ashes will rise a new entity.
Who am I?”

“What can we learn from this,” asks the Man.

The first interrupter states matter-of-factly, “You are fire. You are love.”
A tie-dyed burnout rants, “Love is fire, Man. It burns. But it also warms and protects… Praise Allah.”
“Amen.”
“Bless you my son.”
“Hail Satan.”

“The last time I hear my heart…” says the bookish-looking woman sitting in the corner, trailing off as she adjusts her literal Coke bottle frames.
Now with ignition to her words, she quotes, “The last time I hear my heart was like a galactic ******. The ****** that made you and touches everything you made. Faith is attempting to live as though we are loved.”

A Drag King high fives her and says, “I liked the galactic ******.”

A torn up, steel-studded, leather clad punk continues, “Promise me you will live…
For nothing…
But the next moment.
No forgiveness, no damnation, only the match I strike on the heel of my boot.”

And then the automaton asks, “What of the devil: the original corruptor, the source of all evil?”

A gym rat, wearing a holey muscle shirt, extends an arm to point as he half sings, “The devil is a wicked man and wears a suit and tie. The devil checked in at noon and asked us, ‘What is the sleep of reason?’ You woke the devil I thought you left behind.”

“The Devil is due; the Devils do,” coos his boyfriend, the semanticist-*******.

The Man answers, “Is not the source of evil the same as the source of creation. Is it not evil to be so selfish as to create, with no concern for how creation will change everything.”

The Wiccan Princess retorts,
“Creation can be bought and sold.
Motherhood is a commodity.
Venus is for sale.
The nativity is shrouded in black.

We've streamlined your desire.
She was only offering an apple anyways.
And filled in that hole in her heart.

Here, we give her to you totally domesticated.
This one is costly, but so worth it.

You never will be worth it.
Earn enough
Be enough

Taste the salt of her tears on your tongue;
the salt of the earth.
She refuses to wear this crown of thorns.

In the eyes of your maker.
You should be ashamed.
To look your Maker in the eyes.”

Mama Evil attempts to chill her blaze, “Dear, the Anger is caged. It is the custom to call children who go to war, men…children of war die like men.”

Their daughter, the littlest girl in the world, coughed. A runny nose explained it, she had the sniffles. Nothing to worry about normally, but here, now? Right now the end of the world was in front of her. Flying saucers were floating down to slaughter the entire world with burning laser jelly. She coughed and picked up a remote with a wheel shaped dial.
“i drank too much pop and i gotta ***.” She said to no one in particular.
She turned the wheel shaped dial and a chorus of voices sounded. The chorus formed itself into an immense wall of sound made of bureaucrats, lawyers and politicians from another dimension. The littlest girl in the world kept turning the dial and saw the bureaucrats wash over the saucers, sending them back into space. The earth was safe, the littlest girl in the world smiled in relief.
And coughed.  

“It seems where demons fail and monsters falter, angels may prevail,” her mothers laughed.

Still incinerated, a goddess queen shouts, “We are the granddaughters of the witches you failed to burn.”

The crowd jostles and pulses like a living being. They are moved by the words they have heard. A chatter rises from them, much like the midnight sounds of the forest. "Who does she think she is?" "She said it. She sure said it." "I'm going to tell Moira all about it." An old woman near the back takes a swig from a bottle of wine she carries under her coat before passing it to a young woman in front of her.
"From fire, new life is born, too," she smiles, a crooked twist of the lips.

Rendered speechless and impotent, The Man abruptly closes this meeting with the usual send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”

THE KIND OF THINGS POETS THINK/DO

all its little life
the triangle longed to be
a circle

"I want to get around!"
it piped up
in its little Isosceles voice

"It's...it's preposterous!"
screamed his mother Scalenely
"...whoever heard of such a thing!"

"You should be proud of your lines!"
scolded its grandpa
Equilaterally

"A triangle can not be..."
said his Papa in a right angled kind of way
"...anything other than a triangle!"

"I always felt I was a circle
trapped inside
a triangle's body!"

one day a passing poet
eavesdropped in an idle moment
on what the lines were saying

"Why ever not...why
ever not" said the poet
poet chaps tend to think like that

so he erased the brave
little Isosceles
drew him again as a circle

"Wheee!"
laughed the former Isosceles triangle
delighting in its circle-ness

this is the kind of things
poets think of
poets do

They only talk at night
all else is quiet
facing each other
at more than two sword lengths.

Opposite sides of the House
on opposite walls they parley.
Seeing them during the day
you'd swear they smiled above you.

Wishing you cou could have eavesdropped
learned more of what they think.
They stand aside from you in that gallery.

Voices in the 'Cranberry Dusk' , artistic imaginations found on watercolor
to tablet paper mediums , God has eavesdropped
on a child's prowess once again this evening* ...

I have never been one of the slacker drones
I have never been one of the sheep-y clones
I have never eavesdropped on lovers’ moans
I have never seen Jesus in traffic cones

and

I have never watched The Game of Thrones

I whispered a secret
to the senescent trees
while flowers breathe through
and as toadstools eavesdropped.
Within the wintry treeshades
I peeked through
the misty oceans above
upon where stealthy Mr.Thunder
has kept on skipping and hopping
and leaping from one silver cloud
over another, where for
every leap was a growling cloud
and for each brave growl
was a silver rainfall,
but poor Mr.Thunder
still couldn't give a good chase
to his fleeing rainbow chariot,
till it had sunken deep
skyrimming in the underclouds
to the mauvy meadows where
it had always frolicked through,
and me, in the underwoods
where we had always built
wreaths of purple memories
before soaking ourselves long
in the silvery mud,
bethinking in sunken moments
to just become ghosts
with only memories
because even rainbows leave.
Thursday with blue spirits
waiting for when would
this dreamy mind alight
from looking for
where my heart has crestfallen
deep at, how I had lost it.
So I bite into the mist
of the peeking dusk.

My bluest spirit has taken it,
a secret the sleepy woods know.

i am trying so hard to fall in love with life.
with dewdrops and frost on trees. wild little animals living their wild little lives. i want to accept its imperfections. to reach the point where i can accept that world is unimaginably large, and we are all individuals with our own lives, thoughts, and actions. we all breathe. we all sleep. we post on social media, look at others, and wonder how accurate it is to them and their lives. i want to accept that i will never be in someone else's mind, listening in on every fleeting thought. i want to accept that some people are just mean. they exist on this earth full of misery & dissatisfaction with their own lives. reckless. maybe they're just bored. lonely. who knows? who cares? i want to be able to think "who cares?" and truly believe it.
i want to fall in love with the soft light of the evening, spilling lazily across counters and walls. i want to enjoy early mornings and explore abandoned buildings, making up scenarios that could have taken place there years before. i want to find happiness in the tiniest things. old bookstores, pharmacies in the late hours, hints of smiles on the subway from a collectively eavesdropped joke.
we may all be specks compared to the universe, but i want to believe that i can create my own meaning to life. work, bills, politics. they are so minuscule when it comes down to it all. life isn't just some aesthetic, i know. there will be days that make it seem not worth living the rest of mine, but i want to want to push through it. if i decide to grow old, i don't want any regrets. only nostalgia. not what could have been, but what was.

And then I found a writer in myself
When my happiness cuddled me
When my sorrow engulfed me
When my heart prayed, words bubbled
Then my pen on paper scribbled
Voila ! Poetry was born.

And then I found a writer in myself
When I heard winds whisper, read earth's verse
When I listened to rivers sing, woods converse
When I dipped in waters of my soul
Then my vocabulary danced on paper
Viola ! Poetry was born.

And then I found a writer in myself
When my tears, laughters discovered a vent
When my imaginations, thoughts found emancipation
When my soul dictated, poured and positioned words
Then I articulated on paper.
Voila ! Poetry was born.

And then I found a writer in myself
When I eavesdropped on my conscience
When I recorded notes from my heartbeats
When I breathed fragrance of spiritual perfume
Then I inhaled emotions and exhaled words
Voila ! Poetry was born.

the pre anglo-saxon england:
this arthurian myths of:
   some celtic bride and some leftover
legionnaire regaining status:
or gaining status -

pre anglo-saxon england:
oh god... that cocktail of celts and
the welsh...
well: it's anglo-saxon england
that entertained the vikings...
and later the vikings that settled
in northern france...

the monstrous export of
the anglo-saxon republican export
from the h'american colonies...
a strict work ethic...
work hard...
em... how hard can you work
in an environment of
window-dressing...
of being a cat-walk exemplar...
work hard...
stacking supermarket shelves?
can you turn bulging machine
having:
the capacity for unforgiveable
spontaneity:
i figured: a poem a day
keeps the psychiatrist away:

the apples are rotting...
the bears are getting drunk on them...
staggering around senseless seem-like
in a cider tango...

a work ethic... where... mostly...
the ethic of work is: dasein -
a mere being there...
a presence of something that
doesn't discount the rubric of:
the long-stretch of time...
mannequins at work...
staging a cul de sac coup d'etat -
work ethic...
after a while competing
with machinery:
in a thespian despotism
and a d.j. roulette is not enough
for: me to spew rhyme after rhyme...

i would hardly want to disgrace
anyone at work...
lucky for me a dream i had
only yesterday:
i was chased by a faceless throng
of people who wanted
me to stand on a stage...
and persuade the "less initiated"
with new testament jargon:
i was invited to become
the last conventional:
the confidence man: an orator...

not a politician... as such -
not a rhetorician... not lying for
a purpose: more... lying for lying per se...
i rarely dream where i can bring
back images of the dream...

i honestly don't know what
the "whiteness" argument is with these
critical-race theorists...
these neo-marxists...
i latched / i eavesdropped on a conversation
and i'm: precisely here:
nowhere...

      work efficiency: baking too much
bread... what is... "work"...
it's certainly not something as
crystal clear as...
sitting through a le mans' episode
of 24h within the confines
of the marathons of a football match...

snooker nears the concern for
the spectator -
          
  but i'm just eavesdropping -
   i can't buy the new left from the west...
      there's just too much idiosynchronicity
that pulling it apart:
i want the ride on the roulette -
rotondo - ferris-wheel -
i just can't buy western socialism:
it's pretend hive for a season
mentality...
      a whim a vogue:
                 a fly rattling the purpose
of space abstracted to its erracting
flight confined to a cube...

i'm hardly: well... how doesn't it feel
being mistook for a german or a swede
in england...
then again only copper-skins
on edgware road selling quran pamphlets
asked me whether i was german...

i must say: i didn't mind that...
if they suppose i was russian...
i might have minded that...
               i am always this little boring
mr. incognito a retail
of non grata -
          my poverty of history:
i'll ***** myself around the world
never making it to grand h'america...
in england i'll...
honest to god:
gladly scoff the battered cod
and the chips come a friday...

          i don't need to see the sea:
ha: on the continent people had
to plan for summer and for trains
and transit... to... "get 'em away from
the mountains": no camping freaks
among them... lazing on the beaches
until the sun might turn into
crab-mouths nibbling on them...

come on though...
oysters?! that semi-solid sponge of
goo and glue managed to earn...
itself a rolling-pin's worth
of a shell...
well... the human brain is no better:
considering that it was hijacked
by a mushroom... come
the post-aquatic process
of redefining standing-up straight...

perhaps i own my bedroom:
this little guise for the world to understand:
but then one cat if attempting
to sleep in my bed
and the other in the armchair:
while i'm sitting reading
the pickwick papers
sitting against a cold radiator -

she doesn't like me teasing her hind
near: what is her tail:
my imaginary coccyx and her
cranium 69 psalm...
she harks at me...
she butchers me with boxing gloves:
i am expecting
******* sized up to mosquito replicas...
she draws blood from the index...
i smear the drawing of
blood onto her furry nose...

i was too young to have fallen
for such a love of ***
that would never translate
itself into a "love" that could
have us: find each other...
pairing and piling up with
a glad tiding of responsibilities...
i still remember
this "other" one as she took
me to a party just before
bloc party arrived
and a girl might inquire me
as to why i wore
a eisen-kreuz t-shirt...

               it must be self-explanatory:
i have yet to live the unforget-
-able life...
this colt this Abel this leisure of activity:
when pitiable Cain has to wade
through the tsunami of...
the roman gentleman:
forever out of context:
      there's some "inevitable" and there's
some "traditionalism"
       and there's PREJUDICE
against occupations requiring manual
labour: these befitting slaves...
mind you: retail trades have
come through the aeon as...
devoid of criticism or allowing
a self-awareness...
      
concerning now i am no high-brow
thinker:
i am ashamed to "think" to put
this fudge-packing to paper...
wow! no paper!
pixel digits of beelzebub's voyeurism...
i find my agony in
that: physical labour needs
to find its detail:
i can't find escape in the per
se of poetry from long ago...

i need to rise up i need to rise
with aa riddle: to riddle the princesses
with my own lost joy, joke & rhyme...
butchers' pressures for
*******...
the detailed art of the inconvenient
**** stressed with:
ghosts macabre:
if the niqab was addressed
by some variation of: Coco Chanel:
the long white 'un...

i'd love to see a niqab paraded
in white...
               i was the con-stipated...
i was the con-findance artist being
chased by a face clot of bass riddling base?
who's o.k. who's not this new:
pristine vogue of perfect?
my shattered little blessed purpose
insignia of g'aah g'aah:
better: blah?
no reiteration within the confines
of nervousness -
i will not seek any variation
of new york...
i will not make conquest
of coastline h'america...
give me my mundane suppose
euorpa and
some ******* mediocre "supposed"
teasing anti-adventure fly-over...
grey-the-grit-grey-first-born...

i the summoned echo of Abel...
while Cain has his pop-tarts
in the h'american
celebration of serial killers...
and: mother siberia welcomes!
oh god... who needs them shackled
up... let's just drop them...
into a geography that might
expand their minds!
wouldn't it be... fair?
no new africa this new Sib?!

it would account for the moon-goal:
ha! mongrel / 'ongol...
very funny: as english always is...
when it can be tested
with phoneticism...
and a dickensian sam weller's: gadanie:
spreschen...
best kept patriotic: nervous angle...
no new blue: all old blanche... ha ha...
nervous ******* twinkle...
borrowed bliss... no north 19th century...
ha ha...

  but it's still a chapter or two where:
the dickensian narrative sort of:
left me: as it left him...
just pass the time...
as every novel does:
line the lineage...
mould - just enough dough
or words for the readers
to: ahem... "mishap"
a tumbleweed moment...

execution of the antithesis of
"buddhist" posturing:
not finding a cushion to not think...
read a book in an iron maiden
fixation:
play the freely available russian...
i will never come across
the intricacies of h'america from
a postcard...
i will never make it to iowa:
iowa per se...
outside of the federal export
narrative of a myth of a
nation-project...

   i want to see the sort of
h'america the rest of the coastline
decided to **** on...
but i've already seen st. petersburg
from the perspective of:
great *** and no one ever wanted
to listen to bob dylan...
there was a necessary stipend
of reading a bulgakov...
         which i did...
          while moscow and metallica was...
let's just forget it:
i find the most pristine ideal
of a day...
come my little solo rummaging
of the woods come the raj spices
of autumn...
come these ancient woods
that will never borrow acorns...

i went back a side-step back
toward the ***** of abraham marx -
and i came back:
trojan projects:
mass graves of Ypres:
deserved by the germans...
have these mass graves...
but a solitary statue of...
at least the achilles heel of "st." michael...
will you not dare to claim
the laughter of Ares?
then succumb to a "saint" and michael...

**** your incongruity -
i tend to make an event of walking out
from this house
with an apple in tow...
and like some philosopher...
leaving enough flesh prior to the core...
before ackowledging
the possibility of the magic
trick being towed...

i can eat the whole apple and
there's no cider coming from the seeds...
write the metaphor of the bible
anew:
apples are not new to the riddled east...

ah! ah! ah ha ha ha ha ha!
the riddled east!
give 'em the nocturnal flesh
of a phlegm compact fig...
  give them the dates...
the oranges... the lemons...
         who was moses to give them
the apple?
last time i heard apples originated
in kazakh territory:
which was picked up
with the mongol migration...
along with the beijing plethora
of dumplings...
  
england is still far far away...
ready to make it's surf exploration first...
thirst for moon in north h'america...
first come first served:
last time i heard:
iceland didn't beat them...
because... ha!              ah ha ha ha!

first i played a recorder...
cheap plastic...
no... there was no mention of a flute...
i was english i was i never never...
but it's not like...
i had the vantage point...
of the english...
since no one really wanted
to live on iceland...
england prior to the anglo-saxons...
yes... these:
leftover peoples: troll...

ich muss "troll"...
      shwemme-affe-contra-hund:
scheissegrubestapelregalneu!
   ich: ja... westen bankrottberliner:
mein ebenfalls: kaiserbrötchen!

one might simply tire of pandering
to the germans...
one simply can...
as one might excuse oneself to teasing
the mongols: via the russians...
so... it's a no man's land...
through and through...

   i.e. where's what middle with
the middle of the east
that's also: "york" and the yacht and
the islamic mystics: rumi from afghanistan from
the 13th century or otherwise...
the senior draft?
no... solipsism adventure: primo!
the bangladeshi are slaves
when cicero had to speak: proper...
necromancy for the believe-ability
of the existence of arabs...
camel jockeys...
            the nobel routine handlers...
shadow rubric oopses -

there is not need for a coupling for
communism with Jainism -
when the doggy-mom does her bit
and the thief from Camden Town
does his: leash to lynch...
empires the metaphors:
the peoples the jack 'o' cracks:
pancakes... and the littering
to street with...
all thoe romanian / bulgarian
****** you didn't ****...
because ****'s son slashed the broker
on the northern duaghter
you...   hindered...
  stroked bloke & towed
fiddled barrels...
   like some "ilford"...
          
the "solution" is...
all tongues but no spanners...
the "solution" is...
all tongues but hammers...
              my best inclined: fugitive
of a body... this fetish toad-ape
a colour figurative
of imitating traffic heed...

my best blotched narcoleptic
blond-Fe....
ironing suitor...
    ape gesticulating
supposed applause...
for the audience to cwy away
an about: a'goo...

               cicero minded: might have...
"slaves" take up the deeds of
aesops in the deeds of the row-men...
or the same-ethno-minded:
belittled brain-custrd-fudgings...
A                           A                       A
my exploited nuo lambda...

i wriggle with a rare
rage most impossible...
i tinge these letters:
the spice list for a karma sutra
of
outdates the necessities
of the new testament as:
any new sort of investment:

didn't you know?
the serenity of a composition...
bach will never ride
a donkey:
among the four horsemen...
there was one with death: implicit...
towing a donkey... riding: slow...
and it's not that i might make
bach pop: or propping up...
i have no romance with
some borrowing of
"amore" of italy:
               pizza pardons?!
i quite like the tenderness
of the "in-between-bits" of
liver... stendhal!
the rubric details:
                         i oppose a suggestion
that something could be claimed
to make monstrosity
of sketching forward this...
ahem... modern...
man...

"we": i found it very much necessary
for the modern man to talk
this borrowing from nuance...
this bowing-down
burrowing:
thorough.. through...
my long lost asp and bulgar...
the sort of exotica that
the british never tasted:
it was Bulgaria that was not...
not ever... Haiti...
and because of... what?
white's what?

       middle of "my" jerusalem?
i can't fathom a... "middle yeast"...
from a region that doesn't
need beer...
ergo and "ergo"...
the riddled east...
troll the overt-simplification...
that let's me toll up stupid
and there's no necessary
i.q. quest -
yes.... the pay-back for
toying with both tourist
and the cricket teams / themes...

my last middle...
it's an yeast! a brain-borrow:
born bread-winner"
riddled "eat"!
oh ****...       tiny tony
and that major SHA-SHA!

GREEN  WITH  ENVY

I entwined my hand with hers,
strolled among the blooming flowers.
We sat on the grass to see
if the flowers could give glee.

I looked at her eyes and left
the hues that the petals got,
lived in peace inside her eyes,
leaving those fields and their skies.

I pressed her hand for a kiss;
I smelt odour of great bliss.
I ignored the jasmine's smell,
and on her hand l would dwell.

Then the flowers got so piqued.
They began to wane and wilt.
I eavesdropped a bee that nagged,
"Beauty can't defeat withstand."

BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
____________

Furious gusts of air
mightily blow bestirring anchored poet
sitting comfortably numb
securely strapped in his hard to maneuver
easy bath chair
while all around him debris
strewn helter skelter everywhere
heavy objects unmoored
pirouetting topsy turvy

defying laws of physics
cue Adam Smith
courtesy his invisible hand
eulogizing, kickstarting, and regulating
unseen cogs and gear
in order to avoid being plucked up
analogous to whirling dervish
ye dear reader best don
top of the line name brand ironware

to fend off soundcloud
analogous to webbed
whirled wide rooky banshee
hounding kingly bishopric
inducing royal knightmare
whereat pawns called play
as damage control representatives
ultimately linkedin to medicare
for ****** harm suffered

and property destruction
doled out courtesy Nationwide Insurance,
nevertheless yours truly
experienced heightened anxiety
cuz I accidentally, casually, easily,
et cetera eavesdropped,
though a polite gentleman (boot no scholar)
loud talking policyholder
anyone could easily overhear

their strident vocalizations
and they owned chutzpah to queer
re: me for listening to conversation
threatening with abominable language to scare
living daylights, which nearly caused
writer of these words
to soil his underwear
such vociferous threats
wrought quick thinking defense posture,

whereby my ordinary shy demeanor
empowered after downing
powder milk biscuits
(cuz heaven's their tasty)
and declaring warfare
against being bullied
versus suffering as token scapegoat
most every year
from boyhood until emerging adulthood.

After crafting above lines
current generated via whoosh;
I sat mine hind quarters
(otherwise referred to the ****),
which signalled to Doctor Quackenbush,
(id est Groucho Marx)
not deficient with quick wit
whose hook, line and sinker
word of the day namaycush
helped one environmental ******
high (fish) tail to Hindu Kush
where removal from madding crowd
spiritually inoculated one
with a profound hush.

THE KIND OF THINGS POETS THINK/DO




all its little life
the triangle longed to be
a circle




"I want to get around!"
it piped up
in its little Isosceles voice




"It's...it's preposterous!"
screamed his mother Scalenely
"...whoever heard of such a thing!"




"You should be proud of your lines!"
scolded its grandpa
equilaterally




"A triangle can not be..."
said his Papa in a right angled kind of way
"...anything other than a triangle!"




"I always felt I was a circle
trapped inside
a triangle's body!"




one day a passing poet
eavesdropped in an idle moment
on what the lines were saying




"Why ever not...why
ever not" said the poet
poet chaps tend to think like that




so he erased the brave
little Isosceles
drew him again as a circle




"Wheee!"
laughed the former Isosceles triangle
delighting in its circle-ness




this is the kind of things
poets think of
poets do

After a chain saw-owning neighbor's travel plans become known to you the time is ripe for chain saw theft. Swatches of eavesdropped titbits that'll come in handy: “I'm going to Chicago to **** ******* for the weekend” and “I'll be ******* greasers in Loredo on Simón Bolívar Day.” Such info let's you know the best time to steal his chain saw. After his chain saw is safely in your possession you MUST paint it. When the neighbor returns and asks: “Have you seen my ******* chain saw?” You ask: “What ******* color is it?” He says: “******* red.” And you reply: “You're ******* out of ******* luck because the one I got is ******* primer black...Oh,” you caution with neighborly concern as he moves in for a closer look, “don't touch it because the ******* paint is still wet.”