mirrored fly-glass
and polished chrome
are tinted
in the blood orange dawn
running dogs of lummi
hush quiet
on this celestial
summer morn

clubman bars
and tan saddles
strapped to
the lowered hind
skull caps
and fitted chaps
for the open flow
and rich peripheral scene

concessions at the peace arch
(from the blue-coat fuzz)
black *****
and maples
cake the bow hill
and chuckanut

choppers launch
at edison
(with their metal fleck
and tuft)
a half moon rises
on the concho
and interstellar cross

cinnamon gulls
and ravens
scour the netted docks
warlock driftwood
and row homes
spot the winding
coastal roads

rumbling sounds
at the packer slew ~
with the redolence
of briny bay
alive
on the overlook
at fairhaven

This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take
Yon creamy lily for their pavilion
Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake
A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,
His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old
Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold.

The wind the restless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina, one would say
The mighty master’s hands were on the keys
Of the Maria *****, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

Is not yon lingering orange after-glow
That stays to vex the moon more fair than all
Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago
I knelt before some crimson Cardinal
Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,
And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.

The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous
With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring
Through this cool evening than the odorous
Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,
When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine,
And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine.

Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass
Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird
Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass
I see that throbbing throat which once I heard
On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,
Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea.

Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves
At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold
And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.

And sweet with young Lycoris to recline
In some Illyrian valley far away,
Where canopied on herbs amaracine
We too might waste the summer-tranced day
Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,
While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot
Of some long-hidden God should ever tread
The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute
Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head
By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed
To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,
Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem!
Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler
Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn
These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,
For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield

Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose
Which all day long in vales AEolian
A lad might seek in vain for over-grows
Our hedges like a wanton courtesan
Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too
Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue

Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs
For swallows going south, would never spread
Their azure tents between the Attic vines;
Even that little **** of ragged red,
Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady
Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy

Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames
Which to awake were sweeter ravishment
Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems
Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant
For Cytheraea’s brows are hidden here
Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
The butterfly can see it from afar,
Although one summer evening’s dew could fill
Its little cup twice over ere the star
Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold
And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae
Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss
The trembling petals, or young Mercury
Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis
Had with one feather of his pinions
Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne’s silver tapestry,—
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river’s marge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love’s own sake to leave the other’s side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia’s bard

With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,
Queen Helen lying in the ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming with dainty hand his helmet’s plume,
And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,
As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword
Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,
And all those tales imperishably stored
In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich
Than any gaudy galleon of Spain
Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

For well I know they are not dead at all,
The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy:
They are asleep, and when they hear thee call
Will wake and think ‘t is very Thessaly,
This Thames the Daulian waters, this cool glade
The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played.

If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird
Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne
Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard
The horn of Atalanta faintly blown
Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering
Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring,—

Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate
That pleadest for the moon against the day!
If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate
On that sweet questing, when Proserpina
Forgot it was not Sicily and leant
Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment,—

Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!
If ever thou didst soothe with melody
One of that little clan, that brotherhood
Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany
More than the perfect sun of Raphael
And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Let elemental things take form again,
And the old shapes of Beauty walk among
The simple garths and open crofts, as when
The son of Leto bare the willow rod,
And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God.

Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here
Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne,
And over whimpering tigers shake the spear
With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,
While at his side the wanton Bassarid
Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid!

Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin,
And steal the mooned wings of Ashtaroth,
Upon whose icy chariot we could win
Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth
Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun
Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

Down the green valley where the fallen dew
Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew
Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,
And where their horned master sits in state
Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face
Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come,
The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase
Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,
And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,
After yon velvet-coated deer the ****** maid will ride.

Sing on! and I the dying boy will see
Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell
That overweighs the jacinth, and to me
The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,
And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,
And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

Cry out aloud on Itys! memory
That foster-brother of remorse and pain
Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free,
To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again
Into the white-plumed battle of the waves
And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves!

O for Medea with her poppied spell!
O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!
O for one leaf of that pale asphodel
Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,
And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she
Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased
From lily to lily on the level mead,
Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste
The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,
Ere the black steeds had harried her away
Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

O for one midnight and as paramour
The Venus of the little Melian farm!
O that some antique statue for one hour
Might wake to passion, and that I could charm
The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,
Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

Sing on! sing on!  I would be drunk with life,
Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

Sing on! sing on!  O feathered Niobe,
Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal
From joy its sweetest music, not as we
Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal
Our too untented wounds, and do but keep
Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and ****** pillowed sleep.

Sing louder yet, why must I still behold
The wan white face of that deserted Christ,
Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold,
Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,
And now in mute and marble misery
Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?

O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!
Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!
O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell
Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!
Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong
To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!

Cease, cease, or if ‘t is anguish to be dumb
Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,
Whose jocund carelessness doth more become
This English woodland than thy keen despair,
Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay
Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.

A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,
Endymion would have passed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had ****** aside the branches of her oak
To see the ***** gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke.

A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss
Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon
Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis
Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,
And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile
Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile

Down leaning from his black and clustering hair,
To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss,
Or else on yonder grassy ***** with bare
High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis
Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer
From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.

Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!
No more thou winged Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody

So sad, that one might think a human heart
Brake in each separate note, a quality
Which music sometimes has, being the Art
Which is most nigh to tears and memory;
Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?
Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here,

Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,
No woven web of ****** heraldries,
But mossy dells for roving comrades made,
Warm valleys where the tired student lies
With half-shut book, and many a winding walk
Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.

The harmless rabbit gambols with its young
Across the trampled towing-path, where late
A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng
Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;
The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,
Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds

Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out
Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock
Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout
Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,
And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,
And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.

The heron passes homeward to the mere,
The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,
Gold world by world the silent stars appear,
And like a blossom blown before the breeze
A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,
Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.

She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,
She knows Endymion is not far away;
’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed
Which has no message of its own to play,
So pipes another’s bidding, it is I,
Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.

Ah! the brown bird has ceased:  one exquisite trill
About the sombre woodland seems to cling
Dying in music, else the air is still,
So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing
Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell
Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell.

And far away across the lengthening wold,
Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,
Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold
Marks the long High Street of the little town,
And warns me to return; I must not wait,
Hark! ’Tis the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.

The burning flowers underline the sunset and 
Dash before the fire (k)night catches them.
Ripe berries cheaply
tremble 
but hopefully their vitality won't burst the pulp pulsating
beneath.

Crumbling flowers
crumb the floor
And Prisms of catching silver refract rose quartz and petal
and crimson
dust.

Bejewelled in Scarlet,
the air,
as the (k)night approaches, grows colder,
Unsure of whether he will bring
solace or strife.

In his chariot
he flies faster than the bees which buzzed around the fruit flutes
in the morning and among the trumpeting bluebells.

Stars fleck the (k)night
like freckles
and the milky ways resins stain his spouting steams lovely. 

The (k)nights kind onyx reaches his crescendo and the floating moon danced drowsily through the cloud's spiralled tendrils

Which diminish as dawn
approaches
so their Tentilcles
droop to crinkled tissue paper sheathed in pink.

And so the (k)night
rides on into
The frivolous sunrise.
The lowing, glossy calves
in sage beside the ***** fields
cast a beloved ambience 

As though
we are safe
in the knowledge
that the sky will remain
forever
topaz and the leaves
forever emerald.

The sun is a star in someone else's sky
The earth is a dust fleck, drifting on by
The moon is nothingness, just barely there
Between non-existence and thought caught on air.

Maybe you're nothing, and then so am I
But to me you are everything seen by these eyes.

Flick a flack fleck--that sound again
Makes me smile every now and then
Each drop always soothes my palm
It always makes me so calm
Ah!I love to hear it sing
It touches me with its ring
Flick a flack fleck--that sound again
Makes me smile every now and then.

Sonoran desert
sacred, hot breathed
scorch of footsteps, blood red sands
sun bleached bones and skulls
this wash a hallowed holy ghost
an unnerving place of hiss and fire
molten sun to dry the water
a drowning fever of prickly sweat
last night the Yaqui man you met
undulating in a purification ceremony
lashing energy cords cut
he is laughing like coyote, wild eyed
green the velvet desert peyote
awakened you have come to understand
a universe within a fleck of sand.

Heretical Poems by Michael R. Burch

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

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



Saving Graces
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

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



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

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



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

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

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

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



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



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

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



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

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



Red State Religion Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

I’d like to believe in your LORD
but I really can’t risk it
when his world is as badly composed
as a half-baked biscuit.



Evil Cabal
by Michael R. Burch

those who do Evil
do not know why
what they do is wrong
as they spit in ur eye.

nor did Jehovah,
the original Devil,
when he murdered eve,
our lovely rebel.



The Heimlich Limerick
by Michael R. Burch

for T. M.

The sanest of poets once wrote:
"Friend, why be a sheep or a goat?
Why follow the leader
or be a blind *******?"
But almost no one took note.



Be very careful what you pray for!
by Michael R. Burch

Now that his T’s been depleted
the Saint is upset, feeling cheated.
His once-fiery lust?
Just a chemical bust:
no “devil” cast out or defeated.


Practice Makes Perfect
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Redefinitions
by Michael R. Burch

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



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

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



Defenses
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



fog
by michael r. burch

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



thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch

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

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

ah-men!

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



no foothold
by michael r. burch

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

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

as far as the i can see ...



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

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



You
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



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

for the Religious Right

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

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

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

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



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

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

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

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

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

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



and then i was made whole
by michael r. burch

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

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



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

for the Religious Right

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

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

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



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



I AM
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Unwhole
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

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



evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Alien
by Michael R. Burch

for  a "Christian" poet

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

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

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

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



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
I'm upwardly mobile; this one thing I know:
I can only go up; I'm already below!



Shock and Awe
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

why is it God that they fear?



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

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



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

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

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



Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be ******,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

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

like the weightless windblown snow.



Tonight, Let's Remember
by Michael R. Burch

July 7,2007 (7-7-7)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Gethsemane in Every Breath
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

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



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

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



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly―
away, away...

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

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



The Gardener's Roses
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Cædmon's Face
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



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

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



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

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

his face was Poetry's, from youth.



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?



Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for living?
Blind, unforgiving,
unworthy of heaven
or this planet red, reeking and reft?

NOTE: While “hoofed” is the more common spelling, I preferred “hooved” for this poem. Perhaps because of the contrast created by “love” and “hooved.”



Modern Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

after David B. Gosselin

I dreamed that God was good, but then I woke
and all his goodness vanished—****!—
like smoke.

I dreamed his Word was good, but then I heard
commandments evil, awful, weird,
absurd.

I dreamed of Heaven where cruel Angels flew
above my head and screamed, the Chosen Few,
“We’re not like you!”

I dreamed of Hell below, where prostitutes
adored by Jesus, played on lovely lutes
“True Love Commutes.”

I dreamed of Earth then woke to hear a Gong’s
repellent echoes in Religion’s song
of right gone wrong.



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.




Well, Almost
by Michael R. Burch

All Christians say “Never again!”
to the inhumanity of men
(except when the object of phlegm
is a Palestinian).



O, My Redeeming Angel
by Michael R. Burch

O my Redeeming Angel, after we
have fought till death (and soon the night is done) ...
then let us rest awhile, await the sun,
and let us put aside all enmity.

I might have been the “victor”—who can tell?—
so many wounds abound. All out of joint,
my groin, my thigh ... and nothing to anoint
but sunsplit, shattered stone, as pillars hell.

Light, easy flight to heaven, Your return!
How hard, how dark, this path I, limping, walk.
I only ask Your blessing; no more talk!

Withhold Your name, and yet my ears still burn
and so my heart. You asked me, to my shame:
for Jacob—trickster, shyster, sham—’s my name.



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



ur-gent
by Michael R. Burch

if u would be a good father to us all,
revoke the Curse,
extract the Gall;

but if the abuse continues,
look within
into ur Mindless Soulless Emptiness Grim,

& admit ur sin,
heartless jehovah,
slayer of widows and orphans ...

quick, begin!



Bible libel (ii)
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



stock-home sin-drone
by Michael R. Burch

ur GAUD created this hellish earth;
thus u FANTAsize heaven
(an escape from rebirth).

ur GUAD is a monster,
**** ur RELIGION lied
and called u his frankensteinian bride!

now, like so many others cruelly abused,
u look for salve-a-shun
to the AUTHOR of ur pain’s selfish creation.

cons preach the “TRUE GOSPEL”
and proudly shout it,
but if ur GAUD were good
he would have to doubt it.



un-i-verse-all love
by Michael R. Burch

there is a Gaud, it’s true!
and furthermore, tHeSh(e)It loves u!
unfortunately
the
He
Sh(e)
It
,even more adorably,
loves cancer, aids and leprosy.



yet another post-partum christmas blues poem
by michael r. burch

ur GAUD created hell; it’s called the earth;
HE mused u briefly, clods of little worth:
let’s conjure some little monkeys
to be BIG RELIGION’s flunkeys!
GAUD belched, went back to sleep, such was ur birth.



wee the many
by michael r. burch

wee never really lived: was that our fault?
now thanks to ur GAUD wee lie in an underground vault.
wee lie here, the little ones ur GAUD despised!
HE condemned us to death before wee opened our eyes!
as it was in the days of noah, it still remains:
GAUD kills us with floods he conjures from murderous rains.



Untitled ur poems

since GOD created u so gullible
how did u conclude HE’s so lovable?
—Michael R. Burch

limping to the grave under the sentence of death,
should i praise ur LORD? think i’ll save my breath!
—Michael R. Burch



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .

I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .

But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,

thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .

How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down
by Michael R. Burch

each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival.

the fiercer and more perilous the wrath,
the wilder and wickeder the weaponry,
the better the daily odds
(just don’t bet on the long term, or revival).

so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically,
if indeed He exists
as ur Bible insists—
the Wildest and the Wickedest of all
with the brightest of creatures in thrall
(unless u
somehow got that bleary
Theo-ry
wrong too).



The Strangest Rain
by Michael R. Burch

"I ... am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur?and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves ..."?Emily Dickinson

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

The strangest rain, a few bright sluggish drops,
unsure if they should fall, run through with sun,
came tumbling down and touched me, one by one,
too few to animate the shriveled crops
of nearby farmers (though their daughters might
feel each cool splash, a-shiver with delight).

I thought again of Emily Dickinson,
who felt the tingle down her spine, inspired
to lifting hairs, to nerves’ electric song
of passion for a thing so deep-desired
the heart and gut agree, and so must tremble
as all the neurons of the brain assemble
to whisper: This is love, but what is love?
Wrens darting rainbows, laughter high above.



Note to a Chick on a Religious Kick
by Michael R. Burch

Daisy,
when you smile, my life gets sunny;
you make me want to spend all my ****** money;
but honey,
you can be a bit ... um ... hazy,
perhaps mentally lazy?,
okay, downright crazy,
praying to the Easter Bunny!



lust!
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled ...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god’s creation
then spoke for the Beast:

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne’er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
“the ***** jezebel.”

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.

Published by Lucid Rhythms, The HyperTexts and Black Waters of Melancholy


A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keywords/Tags: god, Jesus, Christ, Christian, prayer, Bible, angel, atheist, faith, blasphemy, heresy, heresies, heretic, heretic, heretical, pagan, pagans, god, gods, mrbhere



He Lived: Excerpts from “Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death erases.

II.
He built the great ramparts of Uruk-the-Sheepfold
And of holy Eanna. Then weary, alone,
He recorded his thoughts in frail scratchings called “words”:
But words made immortal, once chiseled in stone.

III.
These walls he erected are ever-enduring:
Vast walls where the widows of dead warriors weep.
Stand by them. O, feel their immovable presence!
For no other walls are as strong as this keep’s.

IV.
Come, climb Uruk’s tower on a starless night—
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
The Goddess of Ecstasy and of Terror!

V.
Find the cedar box with its hinges of bronze;
Lift the lid of its secrets; remove its dark slate;
Read of the travails of our friend Gilgamesh—
Of his descent into hell and man’s terrible fate!

VI.
Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild bull of the mountains, the Goddess his dam
—Bedding no other man; he was her sole rapture—
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I am!”



Enkidu Enters the House of Dust
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

I entered the house of dust and grief.
Where the pale dead weep there is no relief,
for there night descends like a final leaf
to shiver forever, unstirred.

There is no hope left when the tree’s stripped bare,
for the leaf lies forever dormant there
and each man cloaks himself in strange darkness, where
all company’s unheard.

No light’s ever pierced that oppressive night
so men close their eyes on their neighbors’ plight
or stare into darkness, lacking sight ...
each a crippled, blind bat-bird.

Were these not once eagles, gallant men?
Who sits here—pale, wretched and cowering—then?
O, surely they shall, they must rise again,
gaining new wings? “Absurd!

For this is the House of Dust and Grief
where men made of clay, eat clay. Relief
to them’s to become a mere windless leaf,
lying forever unstirred.”

“Anu and Enlil, hear my plea!
Ereshkigal, they all must go free!
Beletseri, dread scribe of this Hell, hear me!”
But all my shrill cries, obscured

by vast eons of dust, at last fell mute
as I took my place in the ash and soot.



Reclamation
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

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

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

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

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

to a consuming emptiness.
We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture—
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts

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

Need is reborn; love dies.

Keywords/Tags: Epic of Gilgamesh, epic, epical, orient occident, oriental, ancient, ancestors, ancestry, primal



Double Dactyls

Sniggledy-Wriggledy
Jesus Christ’s enterprise
leaves me in awe of
the rich men he loathed!

But should a Sadducee
settle for trifles?
His disciples now rip off
the Lord they betrothed.
―Michael R. Burch

Donald Double Dactyl

Higgledy Piggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
saying upside is down!"
―Michael R. Burch



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

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

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

But listen to me now,
and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell,
and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen,
or cut off your ears,
for I Am weary.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I saw the Skull and Crossbones! Heed my Song!

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

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

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

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

she described it as ice
in her chest
like
a lance that tightroped from
her chest to mine
fought over at the breakfast table
because her end was bigger than mine
or mine had more blood than hers
or she always got to look at my good side
and why couldn’t I look at her without laughing

mother always said it was a blessing
that two people were so close to each other
not through birth
but by journey
and life
and happenstance
two people that tasted grilled cheese the same way
that heard the same voices of joy
loss
despair
but always stuck to the roof of the mouth like peanut butter
and not the generic brand
no
the 10 dollar organic stuff

two people that couldn’t help but
crack jokes at the dinner table
when everyone else was talking about
death because
what is death without life?
she would ask
and everyone would go silent
and float up through the
limitless sky
while we stayed grounded in
the life that whiskey brings

sister
if you ever hear me calling
know that I’d give you the bigger half
every time and that
you may borrow my three-hole puncher
without asking
because
I love you
and love stitches time without holes
and moments without the train station goodbye
and the rocks
well
they will always be rippling the stream so you
can go whitewater rafting and I can write poems
about how you fell in and found
a fleck of gold

Mum had been gone a couple of months, six I think… (An ordinary day. Feeling hollow but doing OK) …when I realized I could get rid of the sofa.

I thought it was ugly. She thought it was a bargain. A sofa’s not a keepsake and it was certainly no heirloom. I’d not inflict it on my kids. I got rid.

If I could’ve had her back then? I would’ve done. Even if it meant keeping the sofa.

Redecorated. Bought a new telly. Spent frivolous amounts of cash on scatter cushions. She disliked scatter cushions. I thought they were cosy.

My little boy drew on one of the cushions. On purpose. I was about to smack the back of his legs… (Mum would have. She smacked me when I was little) … but I stopped.

I never wanted to. I had known all along, somehow forgotten.

If I could’ve had her back then? I would’ve done. But she would not smack my children.

Mum had been gone a year… (Planting bulbs. Feeling conspicuous carrying a shovel ‘round the churchyard) …and I missed her .

It was as hot as the day she died. There was no breeze up on that hill. No cloud. Beautiful views stretched right out to the sea.

My little boy had grown. He helped carry water and dig holes. My baby was learning to walk. She wobbled on uneven turf between the headstones. I wanted Mum to see.

If I could’ve had her back then? I would’ve done. No question.


Mum had been gone three years… (Bulbs were doing OK. There was nothing left to plant that rabbits wouldn't nibble) …and I realized it was time to move on.

I kept the ghosts quiet while agents showed people round. The house sold. We moved away. A warm, terraced place in a small town by the sea. Dad died.

Mum has been gone eight years and I miss her.

Looking out from the Downs across cliff-top and sea, the churchyard seems nothing more than a soft-grey fleck on the green edge of town.

If I could bring her back now? Everything’s changed.

Ghosts exist. They sit in empty chairs and speak kettle-whistle. Wishing us well.

“Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

The merchant’s word
Delighted the Master heard;
For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.
A quiet smile played round his lips,
As the eddies and dimples of the tide
Play round the bows of ships,
That steadily at anchor ride.
And with a voice that was full of glee,
He answered, “Erelong we will launch
A vessel as goodly, and strong, and stanch,
As ever weathered a wintry sea!”
And first with nicest skill and art,
Perfect and finished in every part,
A little model the Master wrought,
Which should be to the larger plan
What the child is to the man,
Its counterpart in miniature;
That with a hand more swift and sure
The greater labor might be brought
To answer to his inward thought.
And as he labored, his mind ran o’er
The various ships that were built of yore,
And above them all, and strangest of all
Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall,
Whose picture was hanging on the wall,
With bows and stern raised high in air,
And balconies hanging here and there,
And signal lanterns and flags afloat,
And eight round towers, like those that frown
From some old castle, looking down
Upon the drawbridge and the moat.
And he said with a smile, “Our ship, I wis,
Shall be of another form than this!”
It was of another form, indeed;
Built for freight, and yet for speed,
A beautiful and gallant craft;
Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast,
Pressing down upon sail and mast,
Might not the sharp bows overwhelm;
Broad in the beam, but sloping aft
With graceful curve and slow degrees,
That she might be docile to the helm,
And that the currents of parted seas,
Closing behind, with mighty force,
Might aid and not impede her course.

In the ship-yard stood the Master,
With the model of the vessel,
That should laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
Covering many a rood of ground,
Lay the timber piled around;
Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak,
And scattered here and there, with these,
The knarred and crooked cedar knees;
Brought from regions far away,
From Pascagoula’s sunny bay,
And the banks of the roaring Roanoke!
Ah! what a wondrous thing it is
To note how many wheels of toil
One thought, one word, can set in motion!
There ’s not a ship that sails the ocean,
But every climate, every soil,
Must bring its tribute, great or small,
And help to build the wooden wall!

The sun was rising o’er the sea,
And long the level shadows lay,
As if they, too, the beams would be
Of some great, airy argosy,
Framed and launched in a single day.
That silent architect, the sun,
Had hewn and laid them every one,
Ere the work of man was yet begun.
Beside the Master, when he spoke,
A youth, against an anchor leaning,
Listened, to catch his slightest meaning.
Only the long waves, as they broke
In ripples on the pebbly beach,
Interrupted the old man’s speech.
Beautiful they were, in sooth,
The old man and the fiery youth!
The old man, in whose busy brain
Many a ship that sailed the main
Was modelled o’er and o’er again;—
The fiery youth, who was to be
The heir of his dexterity,
The heir of his house, and his daughter’s hand,
When he had built and launched from land
What the elder head had planned.

“Thus,” said he, “will we build this ship!
Lay square the blocks upon the slip,
And follow well this plan of mine.
Choose the timbers with greatest care;
Of all that is unsound beware;
For only what is sound and strong
To this vessel shall belong.
Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine
Here together shall combine.
A goodly frame, and a goodly fame,
And the Union be her name!
For the day that gives her to the sea
Shall give my daughter unto thee!”

The Master’s word
Enraptured the young man heard;
And as he turned his face aside,
With a look of joy and a thrill of pride
Standing before
Her father’s door,
He saw the form of his promised bride.
The sun shone on her golden hair,
And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair,
With the breath of morn and the soft sea air.
Like a beauteous barge was she,
Still at rest on the sandy beach,
Just beyond the billow’s reach;
But he
Was the restless, seething, stormy sea!
Ah, how skilful grows the hand
That obeyeth Love’s command!
It is the heart, and not the brain,
That to the highest doth attain,
And he who followeth Love’s behest
Far excelleth all the rest!

Thus with the rising of the sun
Was the noble task begun,
And soon throughout the ship-yard’s bounds
Were heard the intermingled sounds
Of axes and of mallets, plied
With vigorous arms on every side;
Plied so deftly and so well,
That, ere the shadows of evening fell,
The keel of oak for a noble ship,
Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong,
Was lying ready, and stretched along
The blocks, well placed upon the slip.
Happy, thrice happy, every one
Who sees his labor well begun,
And not perplexed and multiplied,
By idly waiting for time and tide!

And when the hot, long day was o’er,
The young man at the Master’s door
Sat with the maiden calm and still,
And within the porch, a little more
Removed beyond the evening chill,
The father sat, and told them tales
Of wrecks in the great September gales,
Of pirates coasting the Spanish Main,
And ships that never came back again,
The chance and change of a sailor’s life,
Want and plenty, rest and strife,
His roving fancy, like the wind,
That nothing can stay and nothing can bind,
And the magic charm of foreign lands,
With shadows of palms, and shining sands,
Where the tumbling surf,
O’er the coral reefs of Madagascar,
Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar,
As he lies alone and asleep on the turf.
And the trembling maiden held her breath
At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea,
With all its terror and mystery,
The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death,
That divides and yet unites mankind!
And whenever the old man paused, a gleam
From the bowl of his pipe would awhile illume
The silent group in the twilight gloom,
And thoughtful faces, as in a dream;
And for a moment one might mark
What had been hidden by the dark,
That the head of the maiden lay at rest,
Tenderly, on the young man’s breast!

Day by day the vessel grew,
With timbers fashioned strong and true,
Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee,
Till, framed with perfect symmetry,
A skeleton ship rose up to view!
And around the bows and along the side
The heavy hammers and mallets plied,
Till after many a week, at length,
Wonderful for form and strength,
Sublime in its enormous bulk,
Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk!
And around it columns of smoke, upwreathing,
Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething
Caldron, that glowed,
And overflowed
With the black tar, heated for the sheathing.
And amid the clamors
Of clattering hammers,
He who listened heard now and then
The song of the Master and his men:—

“Build me straight, O worthy Master,
    Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
    And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

With oaken brace and copper band,
Lay the rudder on the sand,
That, like a thought, should have control
Over the movement of the whole;
And near it the anchor, whose giant hand
Would reach down and grapple with the land,
And immovable and fast
Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast!
And at the bows an image stood,
By a cunning artist carved in wood,
With robes of white, that far behind
Seemed to be fluttering in the wind.
It was not shaped in a classic mould,
Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old,
Or Naiad rising from the water,
But modelled from the Master’s daughter!
On many a dreary and misty night,
‘T will be seen by the rays of the signal light,
Speeding along through the rain and the dark,
Like a ghost in its snow-white sark,
The pilot of some phantom bark,
Guiding the vessel, in its flight,
By a path none other knows aright!

Behold, at last,
Each tall and tapering mast
Is swung into its place;
Shrouds and stays
Holding it firm and fast!

Long ago,
In the deer-haunted forests of Maine,
When upon mountain and plain
Lay the snow,
They fell,—those lordly pines!
Those grand, majestic pines!
’Mid shouts and cheers
The jaded steers,
Panting beneath the goad,
Dragged down the weary, winding road
Those captive kings so straight and tall,
To be shorn of their streaming hair,
And naked and bare,
To feel the stress and the strain
Of the wind and the reeling main,
Whose roar
Would remind them forevermore
Of their native forests they should not see again.
And everywhere
The slender, graceful spars
Poise aloft in the air,
And at the mast-head,
White, blue, and red,
A flag unrolls the stripes and stars.
Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless,
In foreign harbors shall behold
That flag unrolled,
‘T will be as a friendly hand
Stretched out from his native land,
Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless!

All is finished! and at length
Has come the bridal day
Of beauty and of strength.
To-day the vessel shall be launched!
With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched,
And o’er the bay,
Slowly, in all his splendors dight,
The great sun rises to behold the sight.

The ocean old,
Centuries old,
Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled,
Paces restless to and fro,
Up and down the sands of gold.
His beating heart is not at rest;
And far and wide,
With ceaseless flow,
His beard of snow
Heaves with the heaving of his breast.
He waits impatient for his bride.
There she stands,
With her foot upon the sands,
Decked with flags and streamers gay,
In honor of her marriage day,
Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending,
Round her like a veil descending,
Ready to be
The bride of the gray old sea.

On the deck another bride
Is standing by her lover’s side.
Shadows from the flags and shrouds,
Like the shadows cast by clouds,
Broken by many a sunny fleck,
Fall around them on the deck.

The prayer is said,
The service read,
The joyous bridegroom bows his head;
And in tears the good old Master
Shakes the brown hand of his son,
Kisses his daughter’s glowing cheek
In silence, for he cannot speak,
And ever faster
Down his own the tears begin to run.
The worthy pastor—
The shepherd of that wandering flock,
That has the ocean for its wold,
That has the vessel for its fold,
Leaping ever from rock to rock—
Spake, with accents mild and clear,
Words of warning, words of cheer,
But tedious to the bridegroom’s ear.
He knew the chart
Of the sailor’s heart,
All its pleasures and its griefs,
All its shallows and rocky reefs,
All those secret currents, that flow
With such resistless undertow,
And lift and drift, with terrible force,
The will from its moorings and its course.
Therefore he spake, and thus said he:—

“Like unto ships far off at sea,
Outward or homeward bound, are we.
Before, behind, and all around,
Floats and swings the horizon’s bound,
Seems at its distant rim to rise
And climb the crystal wall of the skies,
And then again to turn and sink,
As if we could slide from its outer brink.
Ah! it is not the sea,
It is not the sea that sinks and shelves,
But ourselves
That rock and rise
With endless and uneasy motion,
Now touching the very skies,
Now sinking into the depths of ocean.
Ah! if our souls but poise and swing
Like the compass in its brazen ring,
Ever level and ever true
To the toil and the task we have to do,
We shall sail securely, and safely reach
The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach
The sights we see, and the sounds we hear,
Will be those of joy and not of fear!”

Then the Master,
With a gesture of command,
Waved his hand;
And at the word,
Loud and sudden there was heard,
All around them and below,
The sound of hammers, blow on blow,
Knocking away the shores and spurs.
And see! she stirs!
She starts,—she moves,—she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel,
And, spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean’s arms!

And lo! from the assembled crowd
There rose a shout, prolonged and loud,
That to the ocean seemed to say,
“Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray,
Take her to thy protecting arms,
With all her youth and all her charms!”

How beautiful she is! How fair
She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many a soft caress
Of tenderness and watchful care!
Sail forth into the sea, O ship!
Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear.
Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the ***** of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o’er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
‘T is of the wave and not the rock;
‘T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!

Friends of Friends

A cup of ocean, steaming like an elixir-
boiling empty water like a primordial sauna.
We drink to the thought of a flawed philosophy.
Cheers.
Cuttting all the corners as we skate around our grey garden.

We are friends. We are the friends of friends. We drink thoughts, slurp insight-
trip on _ to Plotinus, dig to Polycarp, copulate
in the stretched shadow of a specter, a long
skeleton Marxist,
beard coated in Ketchup-
Butcher entrails. **** the saintly each other.
Never stop. Ingesting. Breathing in. Spitting out.
Friendly manifestos, heartfelt wine grinning slipping spitting
blood forever-

You’re a fat cherub. Coated, winking, grinning, sleeping, *******-
you are not special.

On the average day,
Laziness takes a grip and forces you back into the bed.
The blankets have a magnetic pull-
Head pounds. Throbbing like a siren, in and out.
You are-
You’re slushy, like a spring day. Lethargic. Sleepy. Reading.

The day soon transforms-
the restless night comes catcalling-
The slurred voice, indiscernible- indescribable
an existing ode, folklore describing the lonely confines of an empty savior.

Not a hymn, but a dirge. A lonely gysm.
A struggling complex-
a grimy,  violated existence of crust. A damp home, a purlieu,
a place to occupy, a dug tunnel dug bed-rest, burrowing in filth like a worm-

Eyelids drooping. Socks wet. Keep them on-
you’ll get sick, but that’s alright.
Bled out from the scrapes and cuts.
Doing nothing ever ever sure does drain the life outta you.

There’s a little stick in your finger where a pin pushed through.
Bood peeked out like little specks,
like crimson blotchy roses- you smeared, painted
the front of an empty milk carton,
turning the white cardboard
red.
It’ll get infected. You should- no, you won’t, because-
you are a tiny splinter. An infection. A tapeworm.
Eating, feeding, relentless, biting-
the cold draining storm. The white fleck
landing on a bushy eyebrow and sticking-
drinking. For the warmth. For the cold. For the love of nothing,
Whiskey. *****. Sprite, Sprite and Whiskey, Sprite and *****, Salt Lime And Tequila, Gin Tonic *** Coke, endless libations to only gods you know-
an existence, expansive in scope,
covers the ****** of every friend of friend, every sick sad joke-
acquaintance, take it- cadence, leave it-

call a cab with a friend
or a friend of a friend on a lonesome morning,
stumble and fall and ***** perhaps.
Stick the head in the endless *** and
call the bray of the donkey an ******* shrill.
It's not a fib. It's not a lie.
It's an exaggeration.
Blast the mix-tape-
Dig to Hobbes- shuffle out the door while
some Neoplatonist ******* you feign to
understand loops around twists stabs maliciously inside
the skull of the your own Neanderthal
head-

rich soil
fleck with a bit of black
dark chocolate
parched summer soil
glossy chestnut brown
unvarnished oak
mahogany flecks
apple pips
varnished cork
dessert palm tree
flecks of acorn shell
his eyes
the most beautiful pair
of eyes
she has seen

Oh, my stoic... whatever happened to you?

At 6'4 you could stare down anyone in the room with your stern dark eyes. People might take you for melancholy until you told one joke with your deadpan humor. But you were a little morose, in your own way... is it because you're a Cancer? Or were you searching for something that only your mind could find for you? I never knew. Stoic and enigmatic are **** near the same thing, after all.

You, with your hundred dollar jeans worn after your yuppie yoga classes. You might not have worn Converse sneakers or thick-rimmed glasses (thank God)... but don't think I didn't see those expensive flannel shirts from Nordstrom's in your closet. Is there such thing as a hipster fashionista...fashionisto? I remember you approved of my Lucky brand jeans. They were a gift. Hand-me-downs. I didn't tell you that.

How elegant that you would grab Moroccan mint tea when coffee was no longer your thing. Sure, you'd down so much wine after dinner I'd worry you an alcoholic... but caffeine? Something about not liking dependence, you said. I savored watching you drink tea when we'd work side-by-side in some of the city's independent coffee houses. You wouldn't be caught dead in a Starbucks.

I do hope you make your amazing Turkish coffee, if only for your next love. Did I say "love?" No... maybe your next tryst. That's more your speed. I still can't taste cardamom without thinking of you.

And oh, your guitar... you'd strum the chords as if you were solving a riddle: quiet, to yourself. Leave the simple "Wonderwall" for neophytes because you could play Django Reinhardt. Unsurprising that a person like you would have a music performance degree from New York University. Every note you played was expensive. And you knew it.

It wasn't just the way you strummed Spanish flamenco while I made us quinoa stuffed squash in your small kitchen. You had to play the cool music before it was cool--nothing so trite as Vampire Weekend or Kings of Leon; only the sweet whispers of Priscilla Ahn for your sensitive ears. I'd desperately try recalling obscure artists from my college days and try to keep up. Album Leaf? Mirah? I got a half smile mentioning Bela Fleck.

Do you remember, how we'd smoke hookah on your soft leather couch? I'd read your book aloud on tantric Buddhism as you'd light the candles. Once the room filled of cinnamon, we'd inhale exotic rose-flavored tobacco and watch documentaries imploring us to free Tibet.

Even your ******* name was exotic; foreign. My mother didn't like it, you know... she worried a man like you would always be patriarchal.

It didn't matter that your days were spent wondering if your law degree was worth it; because you had other dreams. Dreams of foreign service and pro bono nonprofits.

But somewhere in the planning of those dreams, we fell out of touch.

You ended it. I knew you would.

In the worst of my thoughts, I assumed you ended it to find a woman who was everything I'm not, but who I desperately wanted to be. She'd be an international human rights lawyer. A yoga teacher. She'd take yearly trips to hike the Grand Canyon and go on meditation retreats in Bhutan.

2 years later, I've moved on. I won't need 2 glasses of wine to feel comfortable in your presence (as I once did). I've found someone else; we're happily married. He'll never have your enigma, but he lets me in his world. It's not a world of Ghirardelli hot chocolate on winter nights, obscure records and hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurants. But he encompasses everything I needed that you couldn't give: warmth.

I hope you're well, my stoic sophisticate.

Dear heartache,
I cannot say that I know you well,
I have never been in love
But I have loved,
Have loved deeply and quickly and without question,
Have loved quietly and cowardly,
Have been loved back.

Dear heartache,
I just wanted to know why you're still
Hanging around here,
Why you keep dropping by
When I have guests over,
They never stay once you show up.

Dear heartache,
I've only known you on the surface,
Have never known the right questions to ask
But I have memorized the structure of your being,
Can describe the color of your eyes down to every fleck of red-brown,
Can still feel every callous on your palm when I think about you,
You have become so commonplace.

Dear heartache,
I think I know what you're doing,
Think I have thought my way through your facade,
I think you are in love with love;
Think you have been following her around for so long
That you couldn't bare to let her go now,
Think you always show up too late,
Show up just as she walks out the door.

Dear heartache,
I cannot say that I know you well,
Cannot say that you have made a home for yourself
Somewhere within me,
Can only stand within your reach
And hope that someday while you are chasing love
She will find me.

It's annoying 
That I write fullest
As the moon is breaking
At midnight noon
And when the stars
Fleck a paintbrush sky.

Annoying because
I want to be 
dreaming
In beaming
sun dials and
Marshmallow clouds
Which swallow me up 
Into a rosy pearl.

Annoying because,
Just as I do with the words,
I want to escape the day
Which I can't handle and 
ramble 
in happy
Nothing.

But this
form of
Escapism
makes me sleepy 
and the creeping,
Inescapable day
Ever more... difficult

My baby.
You’re wondering about the type of women you want to be. It’s a sad and soggy Sunday and you sit by the railing while it’s raining and the wind sighs at your presence.
You long for love, and peace, and mystery and excitement and you long to be wanted for who you are not who you could be if you were small.

My baby.
Everything you want isn’t everything you see.
Damaged isn’t pretty, my baby and maybe it looks it but the pain, oh baby the pain is like nothing you’ve ever felt.
And maybe you crave the mystery, maybe you crave the smudges mascara and the hunger pains.
But honest to truth my baby
Being this ****** up ain’t cute
Being this ****** up isn’t safe.
Being this ****** up makes you wonder what in the world is.

My baby there is nothing like the ache of being empty,
The sad and solemn nothing, the pitiless void that seldom empties but when it does you put stars in his eyes for he is the only other person with the key.
And a lot of the time the key doesn’t fit your locks,
The walls you’ve put up are brick.
Solid.
And for every brick you stack he takes one away, eager to pull them down he tries and baby one day you might stop building.
Maybe it’ll be on a soft and sunny Saturday when both of you are laughing and you see it within him.
You’ll stop building and he’ll smile knowing that
Yes.
Finally.
Free.

My baby your walls are thick and strong,
Most of the time,
Sometimes they fall but you pick them up and rebuild don’t let anyone see the truth.
He knows.

My baby the boy you love will never quiet fill your cup and it’ll break you but it’s not his job to.
You have to try too.
Because baby I know you hurt and I know you just want out of the cruel ******* world but now no.
Now you have someone to love you.
To love you for who you are and not who you would be if you were small.
Someone who loves you so that to go would be to take a piece of him with you.
Maybe that piece is the spark you fell in love with.
Baby no now you have someone to live for.

My baby I know you think smudged mascara and running away is desirable and makes them want more but baby.
On the good days you feel like a well oiled machine, task after task focus, seem well act well everybody laughs, smooth machine yet still lack the basic humanity that should consume you.

My baby on the bad days, broken down, some days you manage to trudge your way out of bed and into the daytime, empty but there,
Worse, the days where you can’t get up. Where you open the window and stare out into the garden you’ve always seen and you let the sadness and elusive sleepiness win until you’re exhausted with sleep.
Days where blades help you feel and help the anger inside you escape when the blood bubbles through your torn skin.

My baby the overthinking will drive you crazy, where the concept of an ear is weird even when he whispers sweet nothings into them and tucks that little stray piece of hair behind them.
Where *** is a mechanism by which sounds so wrong but feels so right but baby do not use it to cure the sadness.
It will always win.  

My baby home is haunting.
The ghosts of who you used to be haunt you, taunt you, and the love you used to feel is gone. Home isn’t home. Home is a house in the hillside.
Home is the space between his arms where your head rests against his chest and he breathes in to smell the coconut in your hair, home is the way he stares at you and smiles, home is the way he plays video games with you in his lap, home is his dilated pupils, home is the weird way you hold hands on the train, home is short jokes and home is when he looks at you as if you
You
You my baby
Are just absolutely spectacular
Even when you feel like a fleck of dust on this pointless world.

My baby though he is home, mental illness and distress isn’t pretty.
Panic attacks and ugly crying in public isn’t pretty. The disability of breathing isn’t pretty. Being perched over a toilet bowl isn’t pretty. Not eating for days isn’t pretty. Pulling out clumps of hair isn’t pretty. Being clumsy because you are so anaemic isn’t pretty. Passing out isn’t pretty. Wrist scars and bloodstained sheets aren’t pretty.
Being sick isn’t pretty.

Baby I wish we’d stopped when we knew.

Baby I wish help meant something because though you’ve tried,
Nothing gets through.

Baby when it rains it pours, and through every storm I have you, my hand is there to hold.
So we’ll call Noah’s arc and we’ll start a new world.
I know you’re hurting.
But my baby I promise one day we’ll be safe.
No longer shipwrecked.
My baby one day
One day
We’ll be free.

"There are no diseases crueler
than the ones we self-inflict"
but I still find myself
thirsting for the bottle
and you still find the beast in your heart
begging to be smothered in smoke

They sneak out to smoke their cigs
between classes
just another insolence, another act of audacity
another fleck of rebellion
a way to express their contempt
a way to say ********
to the government and the educational system
and to the clockwork holding them back
from a death they secretly long for
Because i think at least a few of them know
that it’s still a suicide
even if it’s in slow motion
And every cigarette
is a calming coffin nail

Legally, they are too young
to drink or purchase
their ambrosia and tabacco treasures
Yes they are young, minors
but they’re already afraid of growing too old to die young
soon they'll get withered and wrinkling
and they won't be able to leave a beautiful corpse

Pulling off clear, crinkling cellophane, shiny silver foil
with nimble fingers and
sliding a single cigarette
out of the pack
and slipping it into their lips
It fits so effortlessly, so easy
they've been repeating the same motion for years now
sparking the lighter,
The small flame erupts
promising relief.
The sweet taste of nicotine trickling
down into the back of their throats.
They smile.

Behind stone gargoyle smiles
thunder eyes and rock fists
they hide their heavy hearts
with shrouds of smoke
like small-featured bride faces
behind heavy veils
Holding their precious gaspers
between 2 fingers,
elegantly, the way they saw
james bond and models in glossy magazines do it
There are no children here,
just the lost and the lonely,
the ones who wear such solid masks
They’re all looking for some form of redemption,
but they'll settle for attention
Faith, on the other hand,
is a language they don't speak

Their love for each other
is not sweet and childish
it's a collision of souls,
a necessary train wreck
a desperate tempest
to survive the deadly drone of school
it can't be done alone
regroup, collect, stick together,
collide

Their arguments and apologies
have the tragic tone of ancient rome
empires rising and falling

I hear them bicker
and argue and talk
with echoes of prayers in their voices
please see me, please hear me
please validate my existence

Debating
American Spirit, Malboro, Camel
the intricacies of the taste
they taught themselves to love

To me every joke sounds like a hymn
every nervous pair of hands
the brittle after-math
of broken promises
chaotic thoughts tumbling like dust in the wind

I know they are different
but they are human and young
and perhaps they are like me
Maybe they too
have fears
maybe they too awaken in the dead of night
sweating and confused

I can see them now, drifting in and out of focus
dragging their reluctant shadows
into school and out
Frail bodies running on caffeine and nicotine
pain, boredom, indifference and panic

You can tell they long for solace
in the way they hold their coffee
tenderly, fingers wrapped round
the comforting shape and smell
and kissing their cancer sticks
with faint hopes of necromancy
and rebirth with every puff

***
they take turns objectifying each other,
feigning tenderness when really
they are just new bodies
interlaced for an hour or two
There is no emotion here
they're just kids who've always loved playing
the ***** Doctor game

Mothers
use their name as a cautionary
tale and
they're the kids
our parents warned us about.

I know they've given up on perfection
so they want to be some kind of dazzling cataclysm
a bright, flaming disaster, a lovely wreck
they offer me a drag
but all I can think
is that rebellion isn’t a language
I know how to speak
All I can do is write this poem
which is both a eulogy
and an obituary



                                                     ­           I love them.
I love them because I know each of them is a work in progress,
because I know each is shattered in a sense
because they're just souls searching for a voice.
I love them because I'm starting to see
beyond the archetype-- a true expansiveness.
And I love them because the smell of cigarette smoke
reminds me of afternoons in France,
sitting on the curb of my dying grandfather's home
and watching the passer-by stroll through
the pavements.

I love them because everyone needs a place,
and they know that.

Their parties are an emergency exit.

They're a lighthouse for the lost.

[i'm sorry. i'm not very good at love letters. i've confessed my love to more angels than real people, but please hear me out on this.]
to the girl i ran into yesterday, with love from the girl who ran into you yesterday
i'm pretty sure i'm in love with you.
you left a handprint on my heart (a literal one;
your fingers curved over my collarbone like you were afraid you would break me)
i have cigarette butts for nerve endings
and i'm pretty sure that you must be a lit match
because i haven't felt this alive in seventeen years
please tell me you feel the same way.
i just want to feel your heart beat against mine, and i know we've only just met, i know you will probably never come to this bookstore again,
but if you say no i will pretend that this is a letter to the galaxy
(my favorite constellation is the one stretching across your shoulders;
a thousand and one stars disguised as freckles
play connect the dots with ligaments and fissures)
i will pretend that you are not the sun in my solar system
and okay, maybe i'm being overdramatic but have you ever looked into someone's eyes
and wanted to memorize every fleck of gold you see
i wrote down the things i want to know about you, a wishlist ten miles long
with nothing but your name on it
i wonder how you'd react if i held your hand in public
the sea swelling up to meet us there are wires from my heart to yours
and i know there is approximately an 86.3% chance you will never see this love letter but i wished on a star for something real
and then i ran into you
(i'm sorry again. i hope you enjoy to **** a mockingbird. it's one of my favorites.)
i hope your hair is still a preposterous shade of blue because it makes your eyes look like constellations
do you want to form a galaxy with me?
to the girl i ran into yesterday, who wore bright pink flip flops and had a tattoo of a star on her left anklebone,
i think i'm in love with you
please reply at your earliest convenience.

There to language and I are leave they out can no a don't
of do diseases beautiful speak

Their focus
dragging is crueler corpse

Pulling love their write
than off for reluctant this the clear each shadows
into poem
which ones crinkling other
is school is we cellophane not and both self-inflict shiny sweet out
Frail a
but silver and bodies eulogy
and I foil
with childish
it's running an still nimble a on obituary

find fingers collision caffeine ­ myself
thirsting and
sliding of and I for a souls nicotine
pain love the single
a boredom them bottle
and cigarette
out necessary indifference
you of train and ­ still the wreck
a panic

You I find pack
and desperate can love the slipping tempest
to tell them beast it survive they because in into the long
I your their deadly for know heart
begging lips
It drone solace
in each to fits of the of be so school
it way them smothered effortlessly can't they is in so be hold a smoke

They easy
they've done their work sneak been alone
regroup coffee
tenderly in out repeating collect fingers progress to the stick wrapped
smoke same together round
the ­ their motion
collide

Their comforting because cigs
between for arguments shape I classes
just years and and know another now
sparking apologies
have smell
and each insolence the kissing is another lighter tragic
their shattered act
The tone cancer in of small of sticks
with a audacity
another flame ancient faint sense
fleck erupts
promising rome
empires hopes ­ of relief rising of because rebellion
The and necromancy
and they're way sweet falling

I rebirth just to taste hear with souls express of them every
searching their nicotine bicker
and puff
***
they for contempt
a trickling argue take a way
down and turns voice to into talk
with objectifying
say the echoes each ­ **** back of other I you
to of prayers
feigning love the their in tenderness them
government throats their when because and
They voices
please really
they I'm the smile see are starting educational

Behind me just to system
and stone please new see
to gargoyle hear bodies
interlaced ­ the smiles
thunder me
please for beyond clockwork eyes validate
an the holding and my hour archetype-- them rock existence

Debating
American or a back
from fists
they Spirit two
There true a hide Malboro is
expansiveness death their Camel
the no
they heavy intricacies emotion ­ secretly hearts
with of here
they're long shrouds the just I for
Because of taste
they kids love i smoke
like taught who've them think
small-featured themselves always because at bride to loved the least faces
behind love

To playing smell a heavy me
the of few veils
Holding every ***** cigarette of their joke Doctor smoke
them precious sounds game

Mothers
use ­ know
that gaspers
between like their reminds it’s 2 a name me still fingers hymn
every as of a
elegantly nervous a afternoons suicide the pair cautionary
tale in
even way of and
they're France if they hands
the the
it’s saw
james brittle kids
our ­ in bond after-math
of parents sitting slow and broken warned on motion
And models promises
chaotic us the every in thoughts about curb cigarette
is glossy tumbling

I of a magazines like know my calming do
dust they've dying coffin it
There in given grandfather's nail
I on ­ are children know perfection
so and too here they they watching young
to

just are want the drink the different
but to passer-by or lost they be stroll purchase
their and are some through
ambrosia the human kind ­ and lonely and of the tabacco
the young
and dazzling pavements treasures
Yes ones perhaps cataclysm

I they who they bright love are wear are flaming them young such like disaster because minors
but solid me
Maybe a everyone they’re masks
They’re they lovely needs already all too
have wreck
they a afraid looking fears
maybe offer place of for they me
and growing some too a they too form awaken drag
but know old of in all that to redemption the I

Their die
but dead can parties young
soon they'll of think
is are they'll settle night
sweating that an get for and rebellion
emergency withered attention
Faith confused

I isn’t exit

They're and on can a a wrinkling
and the see language
I lighthouse they other them know for won't hand now how the be
is drifting to lost
able a in speak
All

Danger, dirt and grime
penetrate my mind
With time, I find
I'm getting cruder
I flop to the floor
on bended knees
I weep for me
and only me
Because who else in
this Great Big World
gives a flying frisbee

I painted you.
With trembling, amateur precision,
I suffered each line on your face.

Each fleck of sun,
Your candid smile,
Your immediate beauty in the foreground
Of an exceptional ocean.

Stumbling blindly through the days,
Fumbling for the switch
In a punch-drunk, love-sick afternoon.

Apart from you,
Stripped, exposed,
Laid prone on the gurney
With my skull in a vice
And a fist to my stomach.

I can barely stand because of you.

I painted you this afternoon
So I could toil in your gaze.
Pray I am an interesting splatter,
A noticeable blight;
A happy accident on your page.

If an adjective could describe me
it'd have to be hungry
for obvious reasons
cause I ******* love my food
but for poetic reasons
cause I often elude

I have hungry ears
and a hungry soul
and I'm so **** hungry
you don't even know
but you do
cause you can see it in my eyes
My hunger is that fleck of white,
that element of surprise

I have a hungry mouth
and a hungry mind
and I'm so **** hungry
and I'm so **** blind
cause I want and I need
and I grasp and I touch
I'm hungry for life
and I crave oh so much

Hungry
is my middle name
Hungry
has always been the game
I play
with minds
like meanings of names
dynamic and static

Hungry
Feed me

I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
     done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
     world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
     come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
     then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
     for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
     I forget. The best of me is ****** out and wasted.
     I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
     makes me work and give up what I have. And I
     forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
     drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
     People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
     forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
     a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
     say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
     sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.

And after, there is only a gaping emptiness
the familiar ache
The desire to drown myself in soft things
Fill my pockets with pebbles and all the poems my muses will never read
And wade into the Lethe
To the place of the first breath after momentary pain
The liminal gasp between sighs
The first touch after a long absence
Body awakening to memory.

Welcome weary traveller, you are safe here. Dwell. Abide.
The scrounging scratching crawl you call a life withdraws.
Here,
Float in the fingers of sunlight through glass
The murmur of breath against hair
The glimpse of ripples from a water-strider’s gait.
Here,
You are small and safe
You suffer no harm nor cause it
Your existence has curled in on itself  
And blooms with the sunrise.
Here,
Your presence is a fleck on a robin’s egg
The bruise of teeth on a petal
An eyelash in sand
Lost, lingering, and longing.

The Lethe plucks the pebbles and poems into the current
Your likeness billows with ink in the wake
Adrift, I clutch at your fading hand
But rising, find I do not know this face
Left only with a flicker
Of a stranger’s arms
around my waist.

Scraping off
The smiling Santa Claus faces
Dim hope fading
With each metallic fleck
Flicked onto the kitchen floor

Yet, she will buy more
Always more
And always the same numbers
On the gas station tickets
She buys with a bag of chips

And gas-station humus
With gas-station pop,
In a gas-station cup -
Too large to hold in one hand -
That she fills to the brim

With hope
She never lets herself
Get to empty
She fills her soul with
Perpetual certainty
That one day, she’s gotta win
She’s just gotta

So she plays the game
Plays the odds
Fills her cup
Fills up her tank

Drives to two, three, four
Thankless jobs
And never lets her soul
Get to empty

She’s just gotta win
Fate has gotta give in
To her sheer ambition,

She knows it in her bones
Maybe not this time,
or next time
…or the time after

But soon
…definitely soon

Flee the Ghetto  

Times and Motions
Whirls and Swirls
Around the universe
we twirls

Great Space is black
all pinpoint lights
So cold and bleak
through all the night

Our best minds sit
and stare in awe
In altars, perched
on mountains tall

Seeking vistas,
Planets fine
Warm and wet
With Oceans Brine

Pure, swept With winds
fresh and new
A Paradise,
unblemished dew.

For we must flee
This planet small
Too many we
and soon the fall

Is eminent
if not we go
and refuge find
Pray God bestow

While we have time
To start anew
To try again
for we were fools

And ruined the place
gave us in Love
God’’s great gift
from Heav'n above

Dear Earth, fair home
All blessings be
Beloved of Man
On bended knee

We bow to you
You fleck of rock
You grain of sand
That bears our flock

Our precious home
for man to stand
and look around
and understand

How fragile’s life
A gift so rare
For all we’ve found
Of life Is here

So search brave priests
of this new age
of our demise
you are the sage

Please Save us guys
you honored few
To you we cry
it’’s up to you

For we poor clods
have fought, and ruined
This grant from God
Destroyed too soon.

Find us a home
Another womb
Another Harbor
Please find one soon

For us to raise
our children strong
and try to teach them
right from wrong

That black or white
means not at all
that violence
precedes a fall

Too many players
Too small a stage
A madness caused
A screaming rage.

Our history
A tale of woe
Of endless wars
Tombstones in rows.

Our weapons might
Now reaches all
no refuge from
the killing fall

You made those things
Those killer toys
Now turn your brains
Look outward boys!

We need your help
and God’’s as well
This fate to turn,
This ride to hell  

For we have learned
to dread the sight
of timeless darkness
endless night

We need some friends
To fight and play
Another species
Help us pray

Or we will end.
and all will turn
to endless blackness
Hell  returned.  

Justa Civileon 2003

gender neutral on the "guys"

Not one of my uppiest rambles but I never was a light person

the moon was just over
half full, and he watched it
as it floated above,
suspended in place while the earth
moved with each of his steps.
The trees surged and fell
with his feet, but the moon
was unmoving.
Yellow and unmoving.
He stared at it until he was sure
the image had etched itself
into his pupils, a yellow fleck -
not quite a circle;
a curious fleck of light
at which people would stare
and ask about,
and he’d reply,
It is the moon! It is the moon!
He wanted to be yellow
and unmoving.
Yellow and unmoving;
It is the moon!
He’d stolen the moon.

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Amongst the dying, amongst the rage,
within the thousand souls and a thousand more,
twisting in their own remorse,
I found so heavenly a voice, so powerfully calm,
not once, not twice, but again, again and again did I fall.
I fell for that voice, that voice, who?

Was it a lone soldier, finding solace in the aftermath?
Was it a villain, freed from the confines of a life long lost at the hands of rage, insanity?
Was it the common man who stayed untouched, or was it one who found dreams beyond wonder?
Was it a mother's lullaby, a sister's requiem, a daughter's salute?

Lying in blood, in smoke and scream, it swept up each fleck of horror,
carrying, in gentle hands, perhaps, every sin and every lie, obligation and grief,
to the pinnacle of truth seen just beyond the clouds;
lying there, I'd never felt smaller.
There it was, the mountain of judgement, a soldier for truth,
and the voice delivered to it every excruciating injustice and the tears of the evil, of the good and the poor.
That voice, that voice! Sing again, sing forever more,
the anthem of salvation that echoed through the burning woods.
And so I ask,

why do you sing? Who is it that hears you?
You sing for your lover, your mentor, your child?
Do you sing for every warrior lost to time's manipulation?
Do you sing for every survivor, galvanised, everlasting, immortal?
Do you sing for the gods and their reckless plans?
Or perhaps, for yourself? O Voice, god, merciful god,
the melody you shower upon these bloodied lands,
knows not how undeserving we are to hear its splendour.

I asked who you were, but now, I only ask,
that you walk past our corpses and say not a word.
But merely sing, sing as you have,
and never be weak to slip in our blood.
But to find your way out of this horror, this world of the doomed,
and find a dream long forgotten:

The dream of a soldier's unconditional smile,
the dream of a mother's undying pride;
The dream of two lovers, and their unison unhindered,
The dream of every villain to turn back the waves of time.
The dream of every fighter, for justice or survival, to find peace among the peaceful,
The dream of every sister who marched by the bodies, longing for his blissful return from our land.
The dream of every daughter who arose amongst the fallen, to live free and not fight;
And the dream of the common man, to soar victorious, to see sights unknown, to suffer and rise, to end and begin.

And as you walk, I see, you are not far.
Or perhaps, what I see,
Perhaps it's a dream.
O Voice, god, merciful god,
Sing.

your symptoms are mine. we attach dead cells to living gods, you and i.
Golgotha spawn, writhe in leather trousers
to harlequin the marrow of our dire pipes !
to leap and jeer in tandem
that's how love does the impossible
with your mundane.

we are the abattoir of our stoic cow

your symptoms are mine. i see how you might think me mad; you not i.
but this is the dream fleck of your unkissed
a sweltering bloat of frozen hope
flogging the wolf in a gleam
of campfire exodus

and dust.

your nexus is the heart of the most free, a slim gorge of Krakens
yawning fresh hell and fjords of unconquerable silence.

yours is the tomb I am used too.

where we resurrect
we die laughing.

My brow furrowed as she read my palm
and whispered of growing interest.
"What?" I asked; I had my qualms
about the foretelling of a future
I haven't decided to live.
But I smell the darkness in the incense.

I trace the tendrils of the incense
with forehead firmly within my palm.
The streets below are live
with persons of little interest,
hustling toward a fuller future.
Renew me, my qualms.

Not that I had qualms,
banana-flavored incense
replacing patois in my future.
The lurid waves slide over my palm.
instill a touch of colder interest.
With each sandy step, I live.

And as the water fills my shoes, I live.
When I quietly lose interest
the ocean shows it too has qualms.
The brine coalesces like incense
as my nails dig into the skin of my palm.
For I seek a better future

than the unforgiving future
that chose not to live.
The salt stings the holes in my palm
and instantly I have no qualms,
just a lingering fleck of incense
arousing mild interest.

The ocean betrayed not the slightest interest
being the shepherd of my future.
Rivulets of water became the incense
That I would breathe to live.
Instinct expressed fervent qualms,
as I pressed my mouth with my open palm.

It was the incense in which I held the most interest.
Her finger traced my palm, mumbling of a better future
ahead for me to live, free from petty qualms.

We ran barefoot on the grass alongside the gravel path. I’ll never run as fast as you, but I always try to keep up. The coast line looks like a fresh oil painting this time of day, and I wonder if you notice its colors the way that I do. My focus switches between you and the sun as it sinks closer to the water’s surface, beams breaking and refracting, glittering in every possible direction. There’s no need to decorate this day, I thought.

When we reach the stone cliff, I catch my breath, but the fear sinks in, and I lose it again. Beneath us is a fifty foot drop into deep, dark saltwater. While the surf chops and smacks against the sides of the rock’s base below, I know I would much rather stay up here in the soft sand dunes—safe, quiet and light. The ground I stand here, in this moment, would never hold a candle to your persuasive nature, and I found myself following your lead, stripping down to my bra and underwear. I hated feeling this naked, and the goose bumps on my freckled arms told me the harder we tried to hold on to summer, the sooner September would come.

No part of me wants to look down, but I don’t want to disappoint you either. Let me be clear when I say, I don’t expect you to grab my hand the way you do. I never asked for it, and I didn’t invite it. Yet, the second you do, we’re connected, and I know the jump is inevitable. You’re warm to the touch, and although you never say it, I know you can feel how scared I am; how unacquainted I am with this kind of risk. You fully understand that a person can’t miss something they’ve never had, and I’ve never had this. You know exactly what kind of door it is that you’re prying open; you recognize that the consequences of your introductions and explorations will be dire and deafening.

You know all of this, but you grab my hand anyway.

Despite everything, alongside you, I’m happy to run out of cliff beneath my feet, I’m happy to be terrified, suspended in mid-air. I’m happy… until you let go of my hand. A broken connection, plummeting down, down deep into chilled, murky water—I feel things brush against my legs and arms—I’m alone, and I don’t want to be here. The saltwater stings my eyes as I scour every possible inch of space in front me for some sign of you—hand, a leg—a fleck of movement. My blood pulses against the sides of my head. I need air. As I rush for the surface, I feel something pull me back down. Panic quickly coats my chest and my throat, and I wrestle my tangled ankle free from the thick patches of vegetation below.

You’re nowhere when I finally break the surface—******* up every inch of oxygen my lungs can manage—thankful, but estranged.

You grabbed my hand to jump, only to let go, and now, you’re nowhere.

I look in the distance, and I see your footprints on the beach, leading back up to the path. You’re okay. I’m relieved, but confused—so I follow them with my questions in tow. I follow them the whole way back to where we started—clothed and barefoot, talking about what we should do with the rest of our afternoon.

When I finally find you, I’m flushed and damp, and I notice that you’re not any of these things at all…including alone. She’s beside you, pretty…put together, and dry. You’re sitting still with her. No need to seek a thrill, no need to conquer heights. Although you never say it, I know you can see me silently disintegrating in front of you. Placing your hand on my shoulder, you’re cold to the touch. I pull away. I’m anchored here, but I don’t want to be—I want to run, but I’m stiff with fear as you open your mouth to speak.  I try not to hear your words, but you over articulate them, on purpose. They drip with insincere guilt as you slowly slide each of their jagged edges into my head.

“She gets me.”

*He knew, but he grabbed my hand anyway.

In days of mud and rust
The clean rain falls (in droplets)
Into my eyes (and down our throats)

Our eyes
Will catch every living (and non living)
Thing

As a piece of magic
A fleck of stardust on the horizon
A spark of energy beaming from our lives

we are conduits for pure electric
listening with our fingers
ears against the rail of time
hearing past and future echoes
ringing out past time the word once spoken is immortal
whisper secrets to the fountain of her sublimnity
listen with your eyes, drink in my body
whisper with your hands
guide me on the gentle path of the glowing garden of your sunrise
sparkles fleck the dew of delight
sweat washes clean the hesitation to love
drinking deep from the fountain of her unfolding