"fragmentary" poems
A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns
translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Oh, my love is like a red, red rose
that's newly sprung in June
and my love is like the melody
that's sweetly played in tune.
And you're so fair, my lovely lass,
and so deep in love am I,
that I will love you still, my dear,
till all the seas run dry.
Till all the seas run dry, my dear,
and the rocks melt with the sun!
And I will love you still, my dear,
while the sands of life shall run.
And fare you well, my only love!
And fare you well, awhile!
And I will come again, my love,
though it were ten thousand miles!
Keywords/Tags: Robert Burns, red, rose, translation, modernization, update, interpretation, modern English, melody, tune, seas, dry, rocks, melt, sun, ten thousand miles
Original Scots Dialect Poem:
A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
Hugh MacDiarmid wrote "The Watergaw" in a Scots dialect. I have translated the poem into modern English to make it easier to read and understand. A watergaw is a fragmentary rainbow.
The Watergaw
by Hugh MacDiarmid
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
One wet forenight in the sheep-shearing season
I saw the uncanniest thing—
a watergaw with its wavering light
shining beyond the wild downpour of rain ...
and I thought of the last wild look that you gave
when you knew you were destined for the grave.
There was no light in the skylark's nest
that night—no—nor any in mine;
but now often I've thought of that foolish light
and of these more foolish hearts of men ...
and I think that maybe at last I ken
what your look meant then.
Keywords/Tags: Scotland, Scot, Scottish, Scots dialect, night, nightfall, rain, grave, death, death of a friend, light, lights, watergaw, heart, heartache, broken heart, heart song
Apr 19, 2020
Apr 19, 2020 at 11:10 PM UTC
my darkest poems
bloodletting streams
are a kind of ******
fetishy cognitive inventory
malformed denizens
of the subconscious
a well of torments
soup of Salmonella
the souls gut
its cauldron
yet not with out lurid enticements
and voluptuous supplicants
gorgeous
like an eight legged woman
with beautiful feet
drooling **** lips
drunk on sacrificial rituals
of blood black tongued kisses
and hideous contorted pleasures
********
once
exquisite archetypes
gods and goddesses
are now
putrefied
cellar dwellers
moaning in nature bed crypts
of rock, stone
and engraved sigils
because honest pure desires
became fragmentary
and are now gimping amputees
by legions of primal disappointment
while faces blare in the world
like super bright L.E.D.s
shinning paths to others
our deep self
remains patinaed in tears
a black box pox with a lock
the skeleton key lost
in arcane seas
out of utter disgust
for those dark crawlers
that live within us
revealing them selves
as anxieties, depressions
suicides
and myriad quiet despairs
we appear undaunted
to others
and they to us
humanity
muffled ticks
and splintered sticks
my poems let my demons out
yoo who its me
my name is spray snake z
with my hooks and cries
and dark blood skies
in the misty night
i dragged out their earthen coffins
legends of the despicable
resurrected them
fed and loved those darklings
had every conceivable union with them
their healing, my own
ive sexualized them
and found love
albeit twisted
to be adored
in a hidden embrace
i bestow upon you a poetic fantasy
while obsession takes hold
bind it not
nor let it bind you*
Sep 6, 2016
Sep 6, 2016 at 9:32 AM UTC
Illustrative disregard is creating
Nervousness which controls my limbs
Fragmentary is the heart
Infected by a broken promise
Disrespect stings me
Elevating my pain
Loyalty has been compromised
Intrusion has enraged me
Trust slips into abandonment
Yielding to uncertainty
© Christopher Chronister. All rights reserved
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 9:37 AM UTC
Profile:
Yuwen Chengdu is the son of Yuwen Huaji, who was a general of the Sui dynasty. He is a warrior of Sui, only secondary to Li Yuanba, who is naturally super powerful. As recorded, he was as tall as ten feet with strong waist and body. In the appearance of golden face, long beard and thick eyebrow, he often hold a weapon as heavy as 350 pounds.
Introduction of ****** makeup:
****** makeup, or Lian Pu, refers to ****** designs for Jing and Chou roles. It originated from daily life experience, describing such changes of expression as white for fear, red for shyness, dark for suntan, and sallow for illness. Most ****** designs attach great importance to the eyes. The ****** designs for the Jing roles are made by painting, powdering and coloring in the basic forms of Zheng Lian (keeping the basic face pattern), San Kuai Wa Lian (three-section face) and Sui Lian (fragmentary face). These types are widely used to represent generals, officials, heroes, gods and ghosts. The Chou actors can be recognized by the patch of white in various shapes painted around the eyes and nose. Sometimes these patches are outlined in black, hence the term Xiao Hua Lian (partly painted face). The Chou roles fall into the following two categories: Wen Chou and Wu Chou.
Features:
****** makeup bears three main characteristics. Firstly, it is the unity and contradiction of beauty and ugliness. Secondly, it is closely related to the personality of the characters. Lastly, the patterns are stylized.
Beijing opera is one of the most popular drama widely welcomed and loved, no matter home and abroad. It is now acknowledged as a sign of Chinese traditional culture. The photos of ****** mask can be found on large buildings, product packages, various porcelains and clothes. It has gone beyond the stage, from which we can see the deep influence of ****** makeup. More and more foreigners have interest in it and begin to explore the secret of ****** makeup.
http://www.toywill.com
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 3:02 AM UTC
when you only
see the world
through the prism
of an Instagram filter,
the spectrum's
overshadowed
by black and white
vignettes.
brick-by-brick
you build that wall
around yourself,
closed off to the plight
of every one else.
who needs borders
when you refuse to see
beyond the periphery
of your iPhone's screen?
refugees? border patrol?
endless war?
merely fragmentary
snapshots
in off-kilter
snapchats
casting grim light
on contemporary
outcasts, rebels
built to outlast
the vitriol leveled
at modern-day martyrs
by tyrants and overlords.
'cause when you neglect
to read the passages
of history, you scapegoat
the brave, can't see
the forest for the trees,
reduce the complex
to Manichean binaries
of Good vs. Evil,
Left vs. Right,
an infinite etcetera
of demagoguery.
noses glued
to illuminated screens,
ignoring the visionaries
for illusionary fantasies:
one-click—purchased
happiness, bread
and circus.
advertising
has us chasing
a feeling fleeting
as a riptide when we
ought to be rallying
on the front lines,
punching Nazis.
a black bloc
tossing bricks into
storefront windows.
Apr 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2017 at 12:46 AM UTC
Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.
2k
I am tired of series of unfinished poems that scream for my return.
I am tired of internal, trenching,
desperate calls
for pen and paper.
I am tired of empty pages,
and pens being put down.
I am tired of the fragmentary
bullshit-business I have with my declaration of expression.
I want to write about rough ****** efforts
and soft
aching feelings.
I want to write about Coca Cola freezies
(because they don’t even exist, why?).
I am tired of looking at everyone else’s work,
admiring it, criticising it, admiring it, criticising it, admiring it, crying, loving it.
I want to be 60 and look at what I wrote When I was 19,
And sob.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 1:41 PM UTC
Flittering feathers write sonnets
in soaring frequencies;
taking in the ocean at once,
I felt ripples brought to standstill,
damped by second's refrain,
curled back into the
picturesque blue written ahead,
but
no cloud harbours the ceiling,
no late words shown, jotted down
by the
indifferent and
invariably disappearing breeze.
The latterwork of these days took it up,
and hung it out
on lines stretched across skies and time,
betraying tender surfeit, in moments
torn out,
and,
leaving only
vague traces of
woodworn prose,
spilling out my last sentiments:
*"we, once,
were alive,
if only for a moment."*
In dreams she holds small collections
of sandy flowers,
above the shoreline,
as the dichotomous cluster takes theirs,
behind a fragmentary grain
in the blacksmith's hide;
written, again, are those seasick letters,
wrung out
in the dead heat of the forge,
the demands of strangers,
in stone buildings by the fireplace,
electric heater, off,
the inbetween reeling
of slightened accomplishments,
the scent of oil,
left over, from the husk of noon.
Miss and want, over again,
missing beguilement in afternoon's repose.
"come back...",
but she ain't the one gone.
Apr 5, 2013
Apr 5, 2013 at 7:12 AM UTC
Marooned within a span of finitude
We claim we are lost forever!
Our hearts beat violently inside our rib cages,
Trying to tell us truths that we brush off as myths.
We paint our houses and bodies with brilliant colours and darkest inks,
Hoping that it would make up for the ugliness we harbour!
We spin fantasies locked up in self-made prison cells,
Sidelining the hideous realities as not part of 'our story'...
We carry our vulnerabilities as a taboo,
(I, sadly, would not blame each one separately for it)
We have woven this illusion together with our cloudy minds.
If a bird could judge high from the sky
It would have made out the fragmentary lives we live in...
Inside a single fortress surrounded by high walls, yet violence if we traverse the margin between two rooms!
If and only if, we would have understood that it doesn't require too much a sacrifice to unite
That we can leave our homes simply plastered and our minds simply open.
Urged by a force to change, if only we had exposed ourselves to paint graffiti on that common wall that surrounds us,
Splashing ingenious shades of love and brotherhood,
Of a fluttering feeling of oneness and entanglement.
We would have laughed together, danced with glee and holding our hands together we would have escaped unto a better reality...
If only it was true, I wonder
How spectacular a place the world would have been !
Jan 15, 2021
Jan 15, 2021 at 8:49 AM UTC
ask me what happened to make the world this way
I will say everything happened
we were put here to destroy and destroy
to obliterate all that came before us
because **** those people
We are here now
and they never will be again
so burn the museums
and tear down the landmarks
salt the earth black
and then we can build an ode
to the false idol
of the post-modern fragmentary image **********
and our cult will go on living in caves
in ***** rags
terrified of the thunder
and the night
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 9:30 AM UTC
i choose to be a misfit, it's part of my artistry. i choose to be a misfit, a pirate and a bandit. a slave to my ministry. i outwit your chemistry and scream from the pulpit. i awoke to explosions and time lapsed erosions. the air filled with fire and rainbow smoke. i couldn't find my breath, the bed was ablaze. i inhaled the nightmare and began to choke... just then, things went fragmentary. i was more than just a dignitary. i found myself in a cinerary, facing someone legendary, and they were me. so i looked up my apothecary, knowing that i should be wary. i quickly dispensed with commentary, avoiding all things monetary. but nothing's free. speaking briefly of the goings-on, i stopped to berate the hangers-on. my mouth wove a verbal marathon, it was a virtual phenomenon. lost in my ego. restless, like the myrmidon, i was unsure of my prolegomenon. when i heard the ringing carillon, i went for a swim in the phlegethon. like abednego.
Aug 29, 2010
Aug 29, 2010 at 6:35 PM UTC
You treat me as though I am glass that might crack or snap;
overprotecting me and encasing me in bubble wrap –
you’re concerned I will fall apart so easily and become tattered
but you cannot break what is already torn and shattered.
May 12, 2017
May 12, 2017 at 12:20 PM UTC
Dislocated fingers
mold figures in the dust
on old photographs, discolored
by setting suns
Their edges melt; dripping memories
that burn your knuckles
until you open your fists
and he slips from your hands.
like a film, unwinding
into fragmentary pictures
in your mind,
the only place he still exists
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 12:21 PM UTC
The lyrics of your soul
Pouring onto white parchment
Black ink covering
Melding with a soft
And sensual melody
Engulf my senses
Overflow my heart
With enlightenment
And run over once more—
Filling my soul
With wondrous dreams
Of alluring new chapters— penned
Into the fragmentary novel
That conveys my life
Dare I dream?
Dare I speculate?
Dare I lower my defenses
For one final casting of the die?
As I lay in slumber
Upon my pillow tonight
This melody echoes through me
Your lyrics
Your voice
In perfect unison—
With the rhythm of my heart
And should it cease in wake of morn
One word shall whisper
Through my parted lips—
~ Encore ~
Nov 15, 2010
Nov 15, 2010 at 1:21 AM UTC
You and I speak only in whispers
No living out loud, no shouts
The softest fragmentary conversation
Static in the wind
Slow starts and stops
Communication lost
Please try again
Whispers
Please try again
No love or living out loud
Hugs and kisses hidden in the dark
Silent screaming
Frustration & agony
In the silent gloom, our loves grows pale like mushrooms
Drops of dampness in the dark
Fizzling out the weakest spark
Only in whispers
careful looks & timid gestures
Silent, hidden prisoners
No love or living out loud
No shouts of happiness or promises
Only silence
Hushed whispers of longing
Silent screaming
Frustration Agony
You and I speak,
But only in whispers.
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 1:56 AM UTC
Wishes are like butterflies
Beautiful, astonishing, but frail
Similar to magic spells
As if from a fairy tale.
Wishes are like tears
Uncontrollable and emotional
Because they come from the heart
They are illogical and irrational.
Wishes are like fine china
When they are too much to carry
They'll become broken shards
Reactionary and fragmentary.
Wishes are like the atmosphere
Surrounding me and you
Appearing in the form of fallen stars
How I wish they'd come true.
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 6:49 PM UTC
Our souls spoke, not in words,
but in emotions deeply aroused,
in the dream language of
fragmentary fleeting sights,
disjointed leaps, even bizarre things.
But of things only between us,
never spoken of, at all, in all of life,
neither known to anyone else,
mutually shared, unacknowledged,
in our deepest and most intimate selves.
Apr 29, 2019
Apr 29, 2019 at 1:51 AM UTC
spiritual burglary
delicious minutes
unlovely products of a puritanical conscience
alcohol taken as a club with which to bludgeon into a state of insensibility
words seemed to clothe genuine honesty , they prove to be the veriest nonsense
epiphanic amorphous mind and its stream of consciousness
I imagine a neural interface that could record dreams
not brainwaves, but images
phantasmagoric films beset by the florid mind
sorry echoes in the verbosity
Too bad love has fallen out of style
now that squares rule the world
I can't express "why" in words
so unrealistic a view of themselves and the world that they become most difficult to live with
little wonder I dwell alone
everything is really fragmentary
analyzing the analyst
tripping over my words
instantaneous administration
mesmerized by the minutiae of sensations
tangles of terminology writhe in his brain
collating and sorting
assigning vectors
in hopeful sectors
where heart and love abides
Jul 14, 2016
Jul 14, 2016 at 9:40 PM UTC
Let it come, the memories, which come
up in broken waves, of times too fragile to
capture in rash stories. Moments that
fade within thoughts that try to keep
near; the image of you, words attached to
fragmentary pictures. I remember brown eyes behind
glasses, while in contemplation, and that how in
silence, one tried to examine the features on
my inside. Lying down, looking up, into dazes and
blurry reflections. Can you tell the future by the
shine in my eyes and shape of my lips? I want to know what lies
beyond your clear brown eyes, though you seem to
read like an open book, I still see pages unread, appear
unwritten in unpainted ink. Where is the earnest, how does your
mind travel through dark open spaces? Can I deepen the
effect I have on you? Make it last, and have my
self succumb to more than just your touch, which does
ripple over me like ravenous waters. I want to
swim, though formally I’m not allowed to. Would you
let me see what is beyond that horizon, when I fall off the
world, will I dive into our pages then?
© 2005
Sep 14, 2013
Sep 14, 2013 at 6:35 PM UTC
*The raging sea
Invading
My deflated spirits
In waves,
Tidal
Awakener
Of discarded sentiment
Poetry strung of
Thoughts of you
Your halo
And the grandeur
In which you swim
The alchemy impelling
The birth of ardent need
Unfathomable, unbridled
Altering sleep patterns
Find beauty in my madness
Pierce my fragmentary blue
To paint me a velvet sky.*
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 12:20 AM UTC
We thought we were the rise and fall of the world,
could we have been more wrong..
I remember an old proverb,
"*Control is foolish without batteries,
because once they run out.*
*Your stuck on
one channel,
watching
a singular view unchanging*,
Could we mould the world,
like a pottery class we're moulding it
thinking we could
paint it,
kiln it,
and it was perfection..
But we had a malevolent arrogance,
thinking we were saintly,
all though we thought we were saints.
So boastful of our accomplishments,
we never looked at the singular crack.
Barley visible to the eye, but there never the less.
After a while we ignored it, as we never
expected
Our work to falter..
I remember a proverb that paid heed to this.
*Discontinuity may be a scratch,
visually constrained
but protracted in depth. malevolent
Beneath will never show the truth till
it collapses within its self*..
Wordy I know, but a truth of now.
Never paying attention to the scratch
but not seeing the fracture just waiting for that
singular weight to
descend us to the now. So many cracks in the world.
Now no matter our skill the world is just putty,
remoulding itself with every new day..
A sunrise of reflection,
Dusk hiding the truth of our folly.
We now live in this new world of our undoing..
The poetry wheel is fragmentary,
the vase now floating, shifting in the well
we used to mould it with.
And we stare at the
sunrise seeing our
vindictive creation...
We are the evil of this world, a creation of arrogance.
Apr 12, 2020
Apr 12, 2020 at 4:35 PM UTC
Mimosa pudica retreat
Humid glasshouse, rainy day
Pane-separated from the world
Exhaling foggy vagueness
Colours run wet
World through window walls,
a distorted Monet reproduction
Morphing, mixing, mushy
Each canvas exists for a sliding second
Glass and breath
Collaborating through condensation
Our fuzzy-haze masterwork
Panoramic gossamer lens
Magically softens
spiky, scratchy, sharp, crispness
into a smudgy simulacrum
A kind deceit
Frowns, scowls, growls,
and bared-toothy rage,
all smeared
Gently redacted
Calm, dreamy, pillowscape broadcast
Impressionist buffer
In muted pastels
Reality in artful disguise
Remoulded for ease of consumption
Sugary spoonful of subterfuge
Sifting, sorting, selective
Incomplete and fragmentary
Blur-clouded brain-break
Intermittent extra distance
Breath-focused,
soupy-warm,
momentary masterpiece
Just for me
Until my leaves unfurl
Oct 4, 2024
Oct 4, 2024 at 8:32 AM UTC
*Cold dead hands
Floundering in attempts
At cultivating hope
The pursuit of reason
A mere tyrannical
Decoy to abysmal burden
Metaphors run from the mouth
Fragmentary girl
Strung of delusions.*
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 7:57 PM UTC
my brain has become inert
my thoughts fragmentary
i don’t know where to start
i’ll hold on to all that hurts
Mar 13, 2025
Mar 13, 2025 at 3:32 PM UTC
my first non self-published work is available at **** Press...I can't post a link here, so you'll have to search it. (a chapbook titled Infant Cinema)
am asking that you help it do some work for the press. it's six dollars.
some reviews:
Barton Smock’s newest book is filled with enigmatic poetry honed to the barest minimum of language, without a scintilla of excess. In one poem and elsewhere, Smock states that he “does not want to be seen as a person,” and the scant information he has shared in various publications and the rare interview certainly reveals little but that he is a father, husband, likes movies, and writes daily. Yet in infant * cinema, poems that first appear as fragmentary and surreal dreams, prayers, visions, or confessions still evoke a completeness that lacks nothing, wants nothing. Smock reveals a world filled with grief, death, suicides, disabling conditions, and a family’s complex relationships across generations. While the poems mention “lonesome objects,” “melancholy,” “numbness,” and “collected sorrows,” Smock’s masterfully minimalist poetry leaves the reader intoxicated by a rush of original details and bleakly exquisite imagery.
~Donna Snyder, author of Poemas ante el Catafalco: Grief and Renewal (Chimbarazu Press) and I Am South (Virgogray Press)
Infant Cinema can only come from the mind of one writer, Barton Smock. I’ve been following his work for 10 years, and the only thing I’ve come to expect for certain is that I will be transported to a world thick with an atmosphere of vivid imagery, and seemingly juxtaposed and ironic concepts. Infant Cinema is prose that has all those elements, and reads with heightened poetic force.
~Joseph Jengehino, author of Ghost of the Animal (Birds and Bones Press)
Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016 at 1:34 AM UTC