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Kurt Kanawa Apr 2014
Wilderness their sight, her brown eyes contain the bright
Universe -- she is a graceful phoenix in flight;
Golems of the golden earth bow to this fire bird;
Two fiery wings spread -- she is the light of the world,
Prometheus's daughter, vanquisher of night:
Withered grass resurrect and bloom do flowers burned
Meaning rejoice! she comes with the warm dawn returned!
BONUS: read the first syllable of each line. Would you?
This is a story about Milo the mighty
His sword at his side, he was forever so mighty
His armor gleamed, how he shined brightly
On the cliff side watching the sun as it set
Milo the mighty set up shop, it was time to rest...

He started on a stallion his pride on his horse
Did he ride out of Ridgeburrow,
to revenge his remorse
Townspeople cheered and waved
Villains and monsters flee'd their graves
As Milo the mighty Rode through town
The townspeople cheered out
"DONT LET US DOWN"!

It was a quest of vengence he'd seek
For years have past, that have been quite bleak
goblins and Gouls steal all the gold

As the mighty hunchback golem screams "duel-me droll"

The townspeople fear him,
Helplessly run they do
But Milo had other plans
For the golems unrichous uphold,

He slashed and stabbed,
Staggered with joy, as the blood of his victims
Fell to the floor

One-two, one-two, his sword went through and through

He sliced through golems head,
Leaving him dead,
Just a slab of meat on the floor

And Milo the mighty traveled forth
Unto the dark forest,
He traveled with sorts,
Battles with pillagers and pirates alike
Did Milo fight with all his might
To make it to his mighty quest
Where all that sweet gold lies in a chest....

Traveled onward he did
Straight through the pillagers plains
Did Milo have a quest for his own grave?
No said Milo the great as he traveled on his adventure
His adventure was great......

Looking up at a tower
The clock struck the fifth hour,
Towering over Milo was the tower of Shiloh
Looming over him in a dim shadow
Did the ominous tower show more
Than just what was for fleeing cowards?
NO,
Milo opened the door
To find the riches
his princes had ever wanted to adore

So up the grand stair case did Milo the Great do
Up in spirals the stairs never seemed to outgrew
Up and up the tension was rough
As Milo unsheathed his great weapon
A sweat drop uncoiled from his headband
So Milo mustered the mutual feeling
Felt far before him,

Upon the double doors of steel,
Did her master wait for her hero
Weapon ready in hand,
Ready to use against Milos stand...
Stanced fearless, ready to fight
Did her master wait to show his might.

MILO screamed her master
Come for me have you not?!
"Yes you ungodly gat" shouted milo
Far from his throne,
Did Milo know his match or was his match outgrown?
Her master swung first,
Cut Milos cheek he did,
But when milo swung back,
Off with his head!

Milo picked her up, her ankles unshown
He walked her to the parlor,
Where he released her,
He let her go........
"Thank you Milo, Your heroism is now know"
Said the fair lady who Milo help'd go.

Milo the mighty walked straight to the cellar
Where all the gold and riches awaited his pleasure
With his might he carried it right
Straight to his great kings who declared Milo
"Milo the Mighty"
Just a fun heroic poem
The bible said that man was made from
the very earth we walk upon,
but I think God threw a few other things in
just to **** up the equation.
I’m pretty sure he threw a dash of inherent
******* into the mix just to make sure
that men weren’t too attainable or attractive,
after that came a splash of aggression.
Well… maybe he threw the whole bottle in,
either way, these weird tangled up monsters
he created are pretty **** annoying.
They treat each other as if they were lower
than the dirt from which they came,
even though they have no right or reason.
And for every masculine, macho, man out there,
“Go **** yourself.”
Because I’m tired of all of these “Holier than thou,” attitudes,
just because you have a bit more muscle,
or that you’re a bit faster than I am,
or because you may be able to lift more weight than I can.
persefona Apr 2015
its a blur.
I enter the video club and so does my dog after me.
the whole ******* place has been screened by monumental steel animals equipped with cameras down to their *******. monkeys, giraffe, flamingo all ruled by a lemur.

the video club holds an exit.
they require some german skills which somehow i avoid. we drink some beers.
a rabbit whole- thats the way out of the video club
from digital to analog. they say a new system came but their cassettes keep them safe.
Creepstar May 2016
I got my eye these golems
As they weasle and breed
See the lust in their eyes
As they watch eachother bleed
The sad sorry truth
They don't wanna be freed
Each wanting to be on top
Some heavy inhuman greed

No empathy or kindness
No truth heard audibly
I wish I didn't see it
Speaking honestly
But it is how it is
And its what they wanna be
So as my act of selfish want
I'll vent through rhyme odyssey
Seems the final goal
Gain wealth, lose your soul
Aa Harvey Sep 2018
This is my Blood Bowl.


Thank you Games Workshop for giving us Blood Bowl;
I’ve played it all my life and I’ve completely re-written the rules.
It allows my imagination to run wild carrying a sword,
Attacking all sorts of creatures, whilst playing American Football.
It has magic, magic items and you may think it’s just for kids;
But without Blood Bowl,
I wouldn’t have imagined half of the things that I did.


People need a release from the real world;
Mine is found on a football pitch in the game of Blood Bowl.
People cheat, steal and bribe referees and do almost anything.
If you give this game to your kid,
They could imagine the impossible
And some day, maybe, write random poetry like me!  He, he.


…And now down to the pitch to see the kickoff!...


The humans line up against the bad boy orcs;
The dwarfs and elves are in support.
Chaos lords and chaos spawn (twisted creatures);
Rain down pain and death on the undead and the living.


The undead walk slowly, the goblins flee!
Rat Ogres and trolls are invading the pitch!
The referee blows his whistle to send the giant off!
The deadly dark elves chop the referee’s up with chainsaws,
Or use swords and axes, grenades and clubs.
They are all fighting to win the B.B.C. cup.


The Blood Bowl Championship;
It’s like the NFL Superbowl trophy.
I’ve made leagues and cups
And every single thing possible, just for fun; just for me.


The Official Blood Bowl Organization,
Try to make all weapons illegal, but oh no, no, no!
This is the sport of death!  
This is Blood Bowl!


Use spells and magic items and cause suffering;
The tiny snotling is beaten by the little Halfling.
The ***** in there somewhere, though nobody cares;
The Beastmen are just here to fight,
Whilst the gnomes laugh at the high elves hair.
Such pampered fools, in love with themselves;
Vanity and self-love?  That must be the elves.


Here comes a chaos dwarf, driving a steam roller;
He flattens the Fimir and another vampire.
The zombies are clueless and one fumbles the ball,
Before he is decapitated, by the Reikland Reavers’ Mighty Zug!


The ghoul’s are hungry for blood;
Here come the orks, the band of goffs.
Crazy *** gitz, just having a laugh.
Here are the sneaky Skaven to stab someone in the back.


Amazonian women are running around screaming,
Like the banshee’s and all sorts of scary demons.
The Sisters of Battle are from the future;
A bear charges at a Treeman and look!  There’s a little Gnoblar.


Giant bats, giant snails, giant rats and giant eagles,
Giant leeches, giant frogs, giant spiders and giant scorpions.
The norse are Vikings, (ranked titles include kings);
There’s a termagant from the year 40,000 and something.
There are space marines, and space wolf marines,
All armed to the teeth with weapons.


The genestealer’s steal genes to make new creatures/weapons;
There are evil gnomes, evil ewoks, ewoks and evil Treemen.
Lesser demons fight lesser goblins and run from the Lictor!
The werebear’s and werewolves fight the wolves and Saurus creatures.
There is no victor.


The skinks fire poisoned blowpipes at the Large beasts & minions.
Chaos Halflings beat up people on camels and horses
And they beat up Khemri with anything.
Mummies climb out of their crypts to bring death to the mutants;
The slayers are here to bring down the mighty bone giants.


The noble Brettonians see Blue and Pink Horrors running around;
Tyranids, Tyranid warriors and tyrants send people underground.
Dead now in this game of Blood Bowl; the game of death!
Witch elves are being hunted by Witch Hunters;
There’s only three left.


To the right is a Zoat fighting a huge Yeti.
A chaos human rides a chaos horse; look out Goddess Betty.
Greater demons bring down Griffons and **** the crazy monkeys;
The mushlings and snotrooms are simply fleeing and screaming.


Skeletons on skeletal horses, fight salamanders and satyrs.
Jabberwocks and Juggernauts,
Destroy Hydra’s with the Hydra’s own fire.
Chaos Warriors and Chaos human cowboys, slug it out with Gods;
Norse dwarves fight Nurgles rotter’s and nurgling’s fight ogres.


The slann were the originators of the game of Blood Bowl;
The Ushabti Tomb Kings come from Khemri to fight the robotic Tau.
Vostroyan drunks are fighting with Wood elves.
Oh my God!  That troglodyte really does smell!


Warhounds race Gladehounds and cyborg’s fight cyboar’s;
Big cats include tigers and lions, so we must quickly carry on.
A carrion is an undead bird and they are ****** huge!
The imperial guard are like the rebels in Terminator;
They are humans.


Kroxigor’s smash boney clubs & break Kroot’s predator-like heads;
Kislevite Horsemen and Cowboy’s ride horses onto the pitch.
Night goblin’s and forest goblin’s steal from all including the Eldar.
They are elves of the future and there are chaos space marines…

They have travelled far.


Every creature has come to take part in this game of football.
Its American football with death included; it’s so much fun!
Harpy fly above Haradhrim as a Necron breaks his own jaw;
He fell over when dodging the tomb scorpion’s claw.


Thrall and Wights march to battle on the pitch against the living;
Undead champions are leaders of death
And the minotaur’s eat the dead.  
Nobody knows who is winning.
Chimera and other daemonic beasts are really tough to ****, I see;
But that boar just exploded, thanks to the grenade…
Bye life, hello death; he, he.


Elementals are like Gods of earth, wind, water and fire.
Dragon ogres are going to **** anything that gets in their way!
Dreadnoughts are made to ****; there’s a wolf!
This undead one’s dire.
Dryad are small Treemen; there are some Elite Skaven!
Open fire!


Savage orcs fight sea elves as squig hopper’s bounce past randomly.
Ungor’s are little Beastmen, but there are still quite deadly.
Manticores destroy lizardmen and there’s a blood-soaked cold one.
Bull centaur’s charge at black orc’s,
Who are ganging up with a chaos champion.


Centaurs crash into carnosaur’s,
As Dark eldar fly down from their space ships.
Hobgoblins can’t be trusted; the thieving gits!
Orc leaders are warlords, bosses and big bosses too;
The Redemptionists are the priest from aliens 3 or aliens 2.
Whichever I can’t remember and haven’t got time to look;
Oh yeah let’s watch the game again and see who has got the ball.


Golem!  (phlegm!)  Golem!  No; not that one!
These golems are Flesh golem’s and some are made of stone.
They are creature of magic and are here to smack some heads;
And this is the end of the poem…

Dedicated to Games workshop (thank you) and the sport of death!


(C)2013 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
L T Winter Jan 2015
Over-born and too-
Bright for us treacle-bound.
We'll lay sections
Before us--

But I'm stuck-with-
Sasquatch oaks; --ginkgo golems
If only clouds could lift
The moon which frequents
Venus-speech at night.

Needless for dormant-- endings
We've been untwisting,
Thoughts trapped tightly
In rules-
And it's us again,

That can see or forget the darkness,
When keyboards and pens
Tame the light.
KG Aug 2021
Today is wasted
Not like the others, it
Seems to have a revolution of it's own
Yet, the scent remains the same.

These muscles exude the sangria colored
Muck, these layers of filth jet out like lined walls of a prison cell.
Oh why do they retain this scent.

This cube of cubes I reside in
Where art thou mine Calypso,
How darest thou give teachings
As if your tragedy can give thoughts to we golems of rust.

Stick to staying stuck
Until these brittle cages carry no more
This gluttonous weight
Will we be songbirds once
More.
Third Mate Third Jun 2014
We will grieve not, rather find
                        Strength in what remains behind;
                        In the primal sympathy
                        Which having been, must ever be.
      
                                                                ­                 William Wordsworth



stunning and stunned,
perhaps even life momentarily,
            stunted  angry but enraging confusion

this notion, stirs a commotion,
primal sympathy, spawns poem

not a broken totem
not a stolen token
hand writ, inked in pen,
no golems in a modem
to assist

this just pure human spoken
an omen giving,
notice total,
this is one true ether,
or either it is not!

this primal essential assertion
a conditional propositional
that it is natural for man
to be deep sympathetic to his kind,
for which having been,
must ever be*

in Syria, snipers shoot children for sport,
in Nigeria, young girls to slavery sold,
the list, matter of many facts, well known,
needs not embellishment or addition,
the history books teach the children well

so vaunted primal atmosphere,
in these places,
are you absent, non-existent?

when primal was pre-creation,
spelled first as primeval,
in the era before the appearance of ratiocination
of life on earth
Prime and Evil,
was a combustible fuel of necessity survival

primeval became primordial,
man essayed to improve,
aging onwards himself to enlightenment

yet rooted in this prime number of humankind
is a cellular tissue that springs to life
in those who allow it, residence of the remnants,
original origin of the evil that can subsume
and assume

do not allow it

I can tell you I
will not lay quiet

for the murderers of children,
I have primeval hatred

the rage of primal sympathy denied
unleashed ten times greater

be wary when the best of us rises up

the snipers and the enslavers will die
by their own weapons
http://online.wsj.com/articles/syria-where-snipers-shoot-the-children-1402614626?cb=logged0.005713743856176734

June 12, 2014 7:10 p.m. ET
Children in Aleppo cannot escape their nightmares. Snipers maim and **** them in the street. Airstrikes crush them at school and at home.

Indiscriminate missiles strikes and shelling by Syrian government forces have demolished entire city blocks, killing and wounding thousands of civilians. One surgeon with the Aleppo City Medical Council performed 11 amputations on a single day in December—nothing new, except that field hospitals were seeing more of these injuries, even with infants.

Life in these field hospitals is chaotic and unforgiving. Some days, so many victims flood through the hospital door that they have to be placed side by side on the same bed. When there is no more room on the beds, they are placed on the floor. With all the operating rooms full, surgeons have to operate on the injured lying on stretchers in the hallway.

In one day, we treated three children shot in the abdomen by snipers. All of them were saved in underground operating rooms. We could not save the boy shot in the head.

We tried, unsuccessfully, to resuscitate another boy. I later learned that he had previously been declared dead at another hospital. His father brought his son to ours hoping that maybe the other doctors were wrong or a miracle could be performed.

Enlarge Image

A Syrian woman comforts her children after their house in the Sahour nieghbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was bombed in May. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
I met a local shopkeeper who lost his home to a barrel bomb. The day I met him, a ****** shot his 8-year-old daughter in the belly in front of his shop as he stood a few feet away. Both her bladder and ****** were ruptured. She survived, but it's unlikely she'll be able to bear children.

One child I operated on had been rescued after a bomb landed near his school. The explosion blasted his forearm open. He lost all the skin on the front of his wrist and hand. His muscles were shredded, and his nerves were obliterated—an injury that will scar and disable him for life even if his hand survives.

Another child never regained consciousness after he was rescued from the rubble from an airstrike. He eventually died from his injuries in our intensive-care unit. No one knew who he was, and no one came to claim him. His body was wrapped in a white shroud, and he was taken to be buried.

On April 30, 47 people—mainly schoolchildren—were killed in an airstrike on the Ein Jalout school. Students there had gathered for an exhibition of their artwork depicting the impact of war in Aleppo.

Ein Jalout had also been bombed in August. On that day, the school had organized a charity event to donate clothes for the poor. The explosion killed and injured scores of people—mostly women and children who were volunteering. I treated one boy who had the bone fragments of his best friend embedded all over his skin. His last memory of the explosion was seeing his friend disintegrate.

No chemical weapons were involved in these attacks. Such massacres-by-other-means have become so much a part of the daily routine in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria that they barely make headlines. Despite U.N. Security Council Resolution 2139 in February calling on all parties to cease attacks on civilians and to allow easier access for humanitarian aid, such attacks have escalated, and aid blockades have persisted.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria. More than 10 million Syrians are in need of aid—about five million of them are children, according to Unicef. The flood of refugees threatens to overwhelm host countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. After four years of conflict, no peace or cease-fire is being credibly negotiated. No resolution is being palpably enforced.

Syrian children are growing up scarred, homeless and uneducated—their families torn apart, their futures crushed. These children must not be abandoned. Aid groups and U.N. agencies can only offer humanitarian relief and medical care. Much of it goes to refugees who have managed to escape Syria. Very few of those providing aid dare to cross the border and venture to so-called hard-to-reach areas.

I cannot tell world leaders what will solve the conflict in Syria, but I ask why sustained campaigns of destruction and starvation are allowed to continue. I can only offer what I've witnessed and ask the international community not to forget about the Syrian people.

Dr. Attar is an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He volunteered in field hospitals with the Syrian-American Medical Society in Aleppo, Syria, in August 2013 and April 2014.
Third Eye Candy May 2014
and so... There ! Amid all allurement and soft machines;
the spoiled brat of Venus, knicking the doors and kicking the canned laughter
to the foot of a mountain of existential speculation. Amid the cherry bombs and the Persian rugs; so many menageries of tinfoil origami swans.
so very little Time.

so little rosemary wine in the pickle jars. So few wolves
in the porcupine dens  - and only a swarm of hornets
in your nightclothes, this
morning.
and nothing but nettles
in your tea.

well, nettles and golems and orange hope.
Garrett Lydecker Dec 2012
3,000 miles on the path through America proper
Blood set out to a promise

Like the snows of February that melt into spring
In the dark of winter the heart shutters off the cold

From the the outskirts
Where the golems hammering the relentless agony of their own doubt
drone out the priests singing their eulogies from smokestacks
Through the midlands, a harsh country where you can see for leagues,
Not a soul in sight

Mr. Brown waves as he makes his way to market in his bright yellow hummer
He once held a powerful title and responsibility
although his corn grows taller and thicker than his grandfather he is at a loss to wrap him mind around the virility that once was the soil
His crops slowly turning his Eden into rolling badlands

Shrubs take the place of dry grass as the wind gains pace
Trees spring up in a crescendo of life as the pair climb into the heavens
The journey of three moons in a metallic horse
A feeling setting in from the west where the arctic winds cross to meet the great current, forcing Father Time's cold breath from his mountain top bungalow to whisper the dirges of the solstice

Now the warmth of the lamplight and the smell of salt is but a memory in the Warp speed of stars flying by
almost as if the specks of light would melt as they come hurdling towards the cockpit
only to be wiped away by the persistent squeaks of rubber
Headlights guide the traveler on the path
The view fifteen nautical feet, now unmeasurable in these foreign lands
Like a skiff out to sea in a tempest
the charts have blown away and nothing but the fury of the storm remains

Upon the arrival at mt. Olympus  
Storm clouds break as a pillar of light reveals
Emphatic joy and unbroken creation
Time pauses for a breath as space opens the lungs to fill the mind of man with sweet dreams

The water cold and the wind bitter
As ice accumulates upon his once fiery heart
A slender body can't help but quiver
As with the sun shall rise his art
And upon the new day dawning
He stands and stretches yawning
At his heart he's clawing
Until his boots are on and upon that heavenly hill
He steps in to paint the landscape with hues of white
Soul reaching out past time past space inspiring love
Dancing in the aether
Soaring as promise
Painting  trails of love
Vanessa Nichols Nov 2012
When the memories of your half bloomed love
Shake me from the ribcage out,
I comfort myself with the thought
That there was never really an us at all.
(It must have just been my own narcissism-
What a greedy ***** I was, asking you to love me)
But when this conclusion is less than palatable
And fails to satisfy my heart-hungry belly –
As it always does, it always fails-
I leave the soft haven of my own bed sheets
And venture out onto cold concrete and asphalt.
….

There I become small and carnivorous
Like some half starved rodent or gorging reptile.
I salivate at the scent of even common affection.
….

My heart,
Ravenous and infinitesimal,
Will find another to take your place.
And these others- this golems of a men, these interlopers in our warped affections-
Are easily devoured through hands and mouth and ****.
….

The walls of the hollow space where an ‘us’ was purported to dwell
Churn and roil uncomfortably with pangs.
One at a time; word by word
They’re laid down like a heavy sword,
Each line forms more syllables come together
A long boundary without a tether,
Sentences not by a judge
That form stories without a smudge,
Short tales; epic poems
Sometimes of reality or of golems,
At times speech is not enough
So I take pen to paper like wax to buff,
When signs and gestures don’t make the cut
The ink flows forth like intestines from my gut,
Things I said once without meaning
Written on paper come out gleaming,
Once in a while the sweetest verse
Can come across solemn and terse,
And formal expression on occasion
Can command a standing ovation,
Yet sometimes I fear profound
That without texture; flavor or sound,
All my sentiments will die
Unable to illustrate a sweet apple pie,
Because it’s just as good to feel; taste & listen
As text to the eyes do christen...
© okpoet
Julian Dorothea Nov 2012
You've eaten two chicken burgers in front of me

and the second time
I realized
you were beautiful.

That sounds stupid, but hear me out;
your eyes
they're perfect
your lashes are so delicate
like gossamer black frames of thin, long, lady's gloved fingers.
I sound crazy, I know
But I'm writing a poem about it
and Art is a license for madness;
So leave me be.
I'm stalking pictures of you on the webs
of the internet
But these golems
these flat, lifeless, smiles
leave me unsatisfied
None of them capture that moment
when I was
suspended
in a state of silent staring
like cobwebs in empty, abandoned room corners
hanging
quiet
undisturbed

your voice muted by the screaming
in your eyes

as you
romantically
perfectly
delicately
bit into that burger.

I wonder how I looked then.
This was a spur of the moment kind of thing...**** me.
Dominique Roche Aug 2012
Even as my eyes grew heavy
and my body told me to f
                                               a
                                                    l
     ­                                                   l
into a deep slumber, I forced
myself to stay conscious. For
what I had witnessed today
was awfully frightening!

While walking along the
pavement, I noticed something
quite not right.

The youngsters bolted around in
an unnatural, inhuman fashion.
The males resembled golems.

As I play out each finding, time
and time again, the sole conclusion
I can spot:
They're chemical children and
mechanical men!
please give credit where credit is due. for more of my poetry visit http://lapoete.tumblr.com
Samreena Lodhi Dec 2018
I wish there was a magical ground
   where centaurs would heal
   and to protect the land
   some giants to surround
   Thestrals as a traveling mean
   Golems to follow my command
   sphinxes to fulfill my demand
   some sylphs gatherings
   and mermaids to fill the air
   with their melodious voice
   unicorns with their freedoms
   to bring the brightness to this world
Julian Delia Jul 2019
REAL NAME ALTERED TO SAFEGUARD IDENTITY*

I know what you’re going through.
Aged nineteen, I wanted to die, too.
I can offer no consolation;
The world is messed up,
A fact that needs no arbitration.

All I can tell you is that you are not alone.
Listen to my words, ‘cause they’re about to hit home.
You need do nothing but be, just breathe;
Let love into your heart, again.
The mightiest tree starts from the humblest seed;
Let love take root, build its little den.

It is always darkest before dawn.
Life feels like you’re facing a firing squad,
And they’ve all got their rifles drawn.
Ten barrels of steel, pointed right at you;
You’ve been running for so long.
Eventually, they finally catch you.

Darling, killing yourself doesn’t solve your problems.
You won’t be around to care, but others will,
And seeing you go will turn them into stone golems.
As such, you just pass on your grief to your people.
They’ll find no relief, like they’re sitting on steeples.

Maybe, you hate the people who love you, or they’re **** at it,
So it’s more harm than good being done to you.
Very few of us have managed to figure this **** out.
In fact, many of us are straight-up *******.

That doesn’t mean life can’t be beautiful.
That doesn’t mean love can’t be bountiful.
Everyone’s too scared, though;
Trust is a taut rope,
And there’s very little hope.
I know that love and beauty can be scarce;
I know discourse is sometimes trifling, sometimes terse.

But darling, you mustn’t ever give up.
You are not crazy, nor are you insane.
The world is run by people who actually are heartlessly insane,
And they’ve built a cage to **** with your brain.
But please, don’t give up.

I hope this gets to you in time;
I wish I could say it’ll all be okay,
That everything will be fine.
But, it won’t be.
We are doomed to a lifetime of fighting back,
Either that, or just getting attacked.
I will not stand to suffer any longer,
Not without retaliating in defense, in kind.
Take my hand, for together we are stronger.
It’s time to halt the daily grind.
I'm sorry I choked up. I wasn't strong enough to say this to you in person.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust)

We saw their pictures:
tortured out of our imaginations
like golems.

We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,

pallid as our disbelief.
They are not
with us now ...

We have:
huddled them
into the backroomsofconscience,

consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,

buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.

We have
so little left
of them

now
to remind us ...

It was my honor to work with survivors of the Holocaust as we translated their poems and prose accounts into English as a way of preserving them and making them available to larger audiences. Unfortunately, time waits for no one and the Holocaust survivors I worked with are no longer with us. But their words and testimonies remain, if we will only take the time to read and consider them. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, victims, survivors, mass graves, pictures, images, tortured, frail, gaunt, skeletal, emaciated, thin, malnourished, golemic, horror, terror, inhumanity, madness, racism, antisemitism, slave labor, slavery, death camps, concentration camps, gas chambers, ethnic cleansing, genocide, memory, remembrance, memorial, tribute
John B Nov 2015
Woke up to the cold from a window with a fan that had been off inexplicably the whole night prior still

Chilled from a dream that ended with a sudden wind on the tip of a peninsula that knocked me off again

With the raze of children's games as car doors slam screams for help aloft from voices on my cry's wolf list

What I might give to sleep until rested battling sand men until broken or bested, unworthy of slumber that

Like what my foes get, requisitioning golems and gargoyles seems like a safe bet but ill have a mimosa
At 11am? Its been a rough morning.
Deep within the bowels of the Earth
immensely distant from the sheltering sky
amidst a thick fog enveloped landscape
with here and there a projected
craggy, derelict chasm

precipitously crooked pointing toward
an infinitely wide yawning abyss
dwelt kindred spirits comprising a soul asylum
where grateful dead (albeit marked

via weathered tomb stones) hermetically sealed
once vibrant corporeal mortals
betook their eternal slumber
One among their number
included a misanthrope

who sported long straggly hair
bushy eyebrows shielding cold eyes of steel
straggly bearded clammy chin
in tandem with a hairy body
which when alive (long time ago)
upheld upon unshod feet a severely
hunchbacked ******

Within dense pitch-black terrain
(Mother Nature enlisting
a menagerie of life forms
accustomed to hellish environment)
awash with unrecognizable
alien sights and sounds

mollycoddling bewitching warlocks,
mailer daemons,
imps of the pervert chieftains, fiery
long and fostered Golems
who called underworld
their private demesne

also alluded to Marcy's playground
holding hostage Alice in Chains
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
The Beastie Boys, The Human League, and
Village People a Crowded House

Emitting wisps of ethereal matter
appearing a small medium at large
chat snap ping, flickr ring indeed joyus minions
exalting piety a plenti

Prone ounce sing proud purgatory
promoting protean phantasmagoria
hideous hulu hoop dancing holograms
highly distorted grotesque
silent screaming sinister banshees
slithering across escarpment.
Deep within Earthen bowels
immensely distant from sheltering sky
amidst a thick fog enveloped landscape
with here and there a projected
craggy, derelict chasm

precipitously crooked
rocky claws pointing toward
an infinitely wide yawning abyss
dwelt kindred spirits

comprising soul asylum
where grateful dead (albeit marked,
via weathered tomb stones)
hermetically sealed
once vibrant corporeal mortals
betook their eternal slumber.

One among their number
included a misanthrope
who sported long straggly hair
bushy eyebrows shield

ding cold eyes of steel
straggly bearded clammy chin
in tandem with a hairy body
which when alive (long time ago)

upheld upon unshod feet, a severely
hunchbacked ******
Within dense pitch-black terrain
(Mother Nature enlisting

a menagerie of life forms
accustomed to hellish environment)
awash with unrecognizable
alien sights and sounds

mollycoddling bewitching warlocks,
mailer daemons, trolling trojan horses
imps of the pervert chieftains, fiery
long and fostered Golems

who called underworld
their private demesne
also alluded to Marcy's playground
holding hostage Alice in Chains

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
The Beastie Boys, Culture Club
The Human League, and
Village People a Crowded House

Emitting wisps of ethereal matter
appearing a small medium at large
chat snap ping, flickr ring
indeed joyus minions
exalting piety good and plenti.

Prone ounce sing proud purgatory
promoting protean phantasmagoria
hideous hulu hoop dancing holograms
highly distorted grotesque
silent 10,000 maniacs screaming
sinister semblance to banshees
slithering across escarpment.

Echoing one end of universe to the other
putting to shame initial big bang
ranking as a mere whimper
that original primordial blast

which cosmological exploits
generated heavenly sphere instantaneously
comparison viz Krakatoa times Googleplex
essentially reduced to insignificance
albeit on the analogous tinker toy
premised conjectures of brilliant minds

could gander feeble educated guesses
asper extraordinary natural phenomena
mortal mankind could never approximate
as belligerent threats punctuated,

via nuclear warfare
merely rates as a flickr
amidst uber kindle snap chat ting
tinder blinks, extinguishes,
snuffs out one lowly
Beatle browed bipedal simian.
We are left speechless by man's inhumanity to man. These are poems about the Holocaust, Gaza, Hiroshima, 9-11, war, and other forms of human violence...


Speechless
by Ko Un
translation by Michael R. Burch

At Auschwitz
piles of glasses
mountains of shoes
returning, we stared out different windows.

“Speechless” is my translation of a Holocaust poem by Ko Un that has also been published as “Speechless at Auschwitz.”

Ko Un was speechless at Auschwitz.
Someday, when it’s too late,
will we be speechless at Gaza?
―Michael R. Burch



who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born 
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room 
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still 
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of “no Room!” 
and Puritanical scorn ...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same— 
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame:

“who’s to blame?”

Published by Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), European Tribune, Archive Today, TV-India, Alois and The HyperTexts



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now—
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness—time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?—insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask—

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?

Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) and SindhuNews (India)



War, the God
by Michael R. Burch

War lifts His massive head and turns …
(The world upon its axis spins.)
… His head held low from weight of horns,
His hackles high. The sun He scorns
and seeks the rose not, but its thorns.
The sun must set, as night begins,
while, unrepentant of our sins,
we play His game, until He wins.
For War, our God, our bellicose Mars
still dominates our heavens, determines our Stars.



Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address
by Michael R. Burch

We saw their pictures:
tortured out of Our imaginations
like golems.

We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,
pallid as Our disbelief.

they are not
with us now;
We have:

huddled them 
into the backroomsofconscience,

consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,

buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.

We have
so little left
of them,
now,
to remind US...

Originally published in the Holocaust anthology Blood to Remember where it appears at the Library of Congress.



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then, 
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.

Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.

There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all 
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful, Warosu (Japan), Pela Poesia (Portugal), Borderless Journal (Singapore), ArtVilla, Poetry Life & Times, Let Justice Roll and Study.com



Mending
by Michael R. Burch

for the survivors of 9-11 and their families

I am besieged with kindnesses;
sometimes I laugh,
delighted for a moment,
then resume
the more seemly occupation of my craft.

I do not taste the candies ...

the perfume
of roses is uplifted
in a draft
that vanishes into the ceiling’s fans

which spin like old propellers
till the room
is full of ghostly bits of yarn . . .
My task
is not to knit,

but not to end too soon.

Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Poetry Life & Times



Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, on the first anniversary of 9-11

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

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

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

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

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

Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Villanelle Blogspot, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine, Live Journal, Famous Poets and Poems, Inspirational Stories and Other Voices International; also the winner of a Poetry Nook contest



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.



Nothing Returns
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving 
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,

here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.



Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.

Because death is a mystery, we cry
when one is gone, our numbering thrown awry.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch writing as Immanuel A. Michael

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.

Published by Penny Dreadful, Formal Verse, The HyperTexts, Various Heresies, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England)



Saving Graces
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

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

Published by Shot Glass Journal and Poem Today



Am I really this old,
so many ghosts
beckoning?
—Michael R. Burch



Mother, I’ve made a terrible mess of things ...
Is there grace in the world, as the nightingale sings?
—Michael R. Burch



Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.

Published by Poem Today, Brief Poems, Bauhaus Modernists, Rose in the Dark, Milam’s Musings, Twin Flame, BeatPort, Dark South, Wisdom Trove, My Gloomy Monster, University of Pennsylvania



To Have Loved
by Michael R. Burch

Helen, bright accompaniment,
accouterment of war as sure as all
the polished swords of princes groomed to lie
in mausoleums all eternity ...

The price of love is not so high
as never to have loved once in the dark
beyond foreseeing. Now, as dawn gleams pale
upon small wind-fanned waves, amid white sails ...

Now all that war entails becomes as small,
as though receding. Paris in your arms
was never yours, nor were you his at all.
And should gods call

in numberless strange voices, should you hear,
still what would be the difference? Men must die
to be remembered. Fame, the shrillest cry,
leaves all the world dismembered.

Hold him, lie, 
tell many pleasant tales of lips and thighs;
enthrall him with your sweetness, till the pall 
and ash lie cold upon him.

Is this all? You saw fear in his eyes, and now they dim
with fear’s remembrance. Love, the fiercest cry,
becomes gasped sighs in his once-gallant hymn
of dreamed “salvation.” Still, you do not care

because you have this moment, and no man
can touch you as he can ... and when he’s gone
there will be other men to look upon
your beauty, and have done.

Smile—woebegone, pale, haggard. Will the tales
paint this—your final portrait? Can the stars
find any strange alignments, Zodiacs,
to spell, or unspell, what held beauty lacks?

Published by The Raintown Review, Triplopia, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), The Chained Muse, Borderless Journal, The Pennsylvania Review, and in a YouTube recital by David B. Gosselin



Poppy
by Michael R. Burch

“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse,“The Second Coming”

It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn...
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.

The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows...

Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.

The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.

Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
                       A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!

Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.
You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no ****** for the heart.

Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,

when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,

when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...

There is no dismaler time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears

beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes—
     the pale dead.
          After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
     they descend;
    they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
     unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
          as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
     only half-remembered.
          Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
     blood-engorged, but never sated
          since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must ...



grave request
by michael r. burch

come to ur doom
in Tombstone;

the stars stark and chill
over Boot Hill

care nothing for ur desire;

still,

imagine they wish u no ill,
that u burn with the same antique fire;

for there’s nothing to life but the thrill
of living until u expire;
so come, spend ur last hardearned bill
on Tombstone.



stones
by michael r. burch

circa age 16

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

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

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

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

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



Less Heroic Couplets: Liquidity Crisis
by Michael R. Burch

And so I have loved you, and so I have lost,
accrued disappointment, ledgered its cost,
debited wisdom, credited pain . . .
My assets remaining are liquid again.

Published by ***** of Parnassus and Borderless Journal (Singapore); originally titled “Accounting”



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer 
~~~~underwater~~~~
watching the shoreline blur
sees through his breath’s weightless bubbles ...
Both worlds grow obscure.

Published by ByLine, Mandrake Poetry Review, Bewildering Stories, E Mobius Pi, Underground Poets, Little Brown Poetry, Triplopia, Neovictorian/Cochlea, Muse Apprentice Guild, Poetry on Demand, Poet’s Haven, Famous Poets and Poems, and others



Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch

There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were cannon shots’ soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise . . .
and then . . . annihilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were nights our hearts conceived
dawns’ indiscriminate sighs.
To dream was our consolation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood’s salt libations . . .

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.



Each Color a Scar
by Michael R. Burch

What she left here,
upon my cheek,
is a tear.

She did not speak,
but her intention
was clear,

and I was meek,
far too meek, and, I fear,
too sincere.

What she can never take
from my heart
is its ache;

for now we, apart,
are like leaves
without weight,

scattered afar
by love, or by hate,
each color a scar.



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms ... she would say
that we’d loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
by yielding all my virtue to her grace.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

Published by The New Stylus and Love Poems and Poets



Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face, 
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.



Spring Was Delayed
by Michael R. Burch

Winter came early:
the driving snows,
the delicate frosts
that crystallize

all we forget
or refuse to know,
all we regret
that makes us wise.

Spring was delayed:
the nubile rose,
the tentative sun,
the wind’s soft sighs,

all we omit
or refuse to show,
whatever we shield
behind guarded eyes.

Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



Almost
by Michael R. Burch

We had—almost—an affair.
You almost ran your fingers through my hair.
I almost kissed the almonds of your toes.
We almost loved,
                            that’s always how love goes.

You almost contemplated using Nair
and adding henna highlights to your hair,
while I considered plucking you a Rose.
We almost loved,
                            that’s always how love goes.

I almost found the words to say, “I care.”
We almost kissed, and yet you didn’t dare.
I heard coarse stubble grate against your hose.
We almost loved,
                            that’s always how love goes.

You almost called me suave and debonair
(perhaps because my chest is pale and bare?).
I almost bought you edible underclothes.
We almost loved,
                            that’s always how love goes.

I almost asked you where you kept your lair
and if by chance I might ****** you there.
You almost tweezed the redwoods from my nose.
We almost loved,
                            that’s always how love goes.

We almost danced like Rogers and Astaire
on gliding feet; we almost waltzed on air ...
until I mashed your plain, unpolished toes.
We almost loved,
                            that’s always how love goes.

I almost was strange Sonny to your Cher.
We almost sat in love’s electric chair
to be enlightninged, till our hearts unfroze.
We almost loved,
                            that’s always how love goes.



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” — W. B. Yeats

For all that we professed of love, we knew
this night would come, that we would bend alone
to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
an eerie presence on encrusted logs
we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.

The books that line these close, familiar shelves
loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.

I do not know the words for easy bliss
and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark,
long-unenamored pen and will it: Move.
I loved you more than words, so let words prove.

Published by Sonnet Writers, Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), UlibM (Thailand) and Vallance Review (Canada)



Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Richard Moore

Abbesses’
recesses
are not for excesses!



Preposterous Eros
by Michael R. Burch

“Preposterous Eros” – Patricia Falanga

Preposterous Eros shot me in
the buttocks, with a Devilish grin,
spent all my money in a rush
then left my heart effete pink mush.

Originally published by Snakeskin



She bathes in silver
by Michael R. Burch

She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections ...



Herons
by Michael R. Burch

The herons stand,
sentry-like, at attention ...
rigid observers of some unknown command.



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

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

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

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

Published by Better Than Starbucks



I Loved You
by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ...
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.

I loved you ... thus the hopelessness I knew ...
The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain
resulted in two hearts so wholly true
the gods might grant us leave to love again.

Published by Setu (India), Poetry Hub and The HyperTexts



Erin
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch

for Vicky

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

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

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



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there            
so that all that remains is to

                                      fall?

Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you stall ...
spread-eagled as the canvas snaps

and ***** its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.

Published by Poetry Porch and The Chained Muse



Con Artistry
by Michael R. Burch

The trick of life is like the sleight of hand
of gamblers holding deuces by the glow
of veiled back rooms, or aces; soon we’ll know

who folds, who stands . . .

The trick of life is like the pool shark’s shot—
the wild massé across green velvet felt
that leaves the winner loser. No, it’s not

the rack, the hand that’s dealt . . .

The trick of life is knowing that the odds
are never in one’s favor, that to win
is only to delay the acts of gods

who’d ante death for sin . . .

and death for goodness, death for in-between.
The rules have never changed; the artist knows
the oldest con is life; the chips he blows

can’t be redeemed.



Stay With Me Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

Stay with me tonight;
be gentle with me as the leaves are gentle
falling to the earth.
And whisper, O my love,
how that every bright thing, though scattered afar,
retains yet its worth.

Stay with me tonight;
be as a petal long-awaited blooming in my hand.
Lift your face to mine
and touch me with your lips
till I feel the warm benevolence of your breath’s
heady fragrance like wine.

That which we had
when pale and waning as the dying moon at dawn,
outshone the sun.
And so lead me back tonight
through bright waterfalls of light
to where we shine as one.

Originally published by The Lyric



Tillage
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



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.



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?



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?

Published by Lucid Rhythms, Poet’s Corner and VYBRANÉ PREKLADY BÁSNÍ Z ANGLICTINY, where it was translated into Czech by Vaclav ZJ Pinkava



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!

Published by Philosophical Percolations and The HyperTexts



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?



brrExit or sigh(t) or final curtain
by michael r. burch

what would u give
to simply not exist—
for a painless exit? 
he asked himself, uncertain.

then from behind
the hospital room curtain
a patient screamed—
"my life!"

Originally published by Setu (India)



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



Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals
by Michael R. Burch

“I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.” — Mark Twain

Making sense from nonsense is quite sensible! Suppose
you’re running low on moolah, need some cash to paint your toes ...
Just invent a new religion; claim it saves lost souls from hell;
have the converts write you checks; take major debit cards as well;
take MasterCard and Visa and good-as-gold Amex;
hell, lend and charge them interest, whether payday loan or flex.
Thus out of perfect nonsense, glittery ores of this great mine,
you’ll earn an easy living and your toes will truly shine!

Originally published by Lighten Up Online



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch
    
1.
In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
aghast, from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured men 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.

2.
In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit he’s a lust-addled sinner;
give up threesomes and riches and fame;
to be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.
    
3.
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 good Christian men agree:
He loves them, indubitably.

Published by The Chimaera, Cyclamens and Swords and Lucid Rhythms



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!)

Originally published by Setu (India)



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her...

How can they resist
her seductive voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Rounds
by Michael R. Burch

Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.

Now agony still hounds me
though elsewhere mirth abounds;
hidebound I stand and try to think,
not sink still further down,
spellbound.

Their ecstasy astounds me,
though drunkenness compounds
resounding laughter into joy;
alloy such glee with beer and see
bliss found.



At the Natchez Trace
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I.
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds. 

Beside me stands a woman,
a stanza in the song
that plays so low and fluting
and bids me sing along.

Beside me stands a woman
whose eyes reveal her soul,
whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown,
whose hips and ******* are full.

Beside me stands a woman
who scarcely knows my name;
but I would have her know my heart
if only I knew where to start...

II.
Not every man is as he seems;
not all are prone to poems and dreams.
Not every man would take the time
to meter out his heart in rhyme.
But I am not as other men—
my heart is sentenced to this pen.

III.
Men speak of their "ambition"
but they only know its name . . .
I never say the word aloud,
but I have felt the Flame.

IV.
Now, standing here, I do not dare
to let her know that I might care;
I never learned the lines to use;
I never worked the wolves' bold ruse.
But if she looks my way again,
perhaps I will, if only then.

V.
How can a man have come so far
in searching after every star,
and yet today,
though miles away,
look back upon the winding way,
and see himself as he was then,
a child of eight or nine or ten,
and not know more?

VI.
My life is not empty; I have my desire . . .
I write in a moment that few men can know,
when my nerves are on fire
and my heart does not tire
though it pounds at my breast—
wrenching blow after blow.

VII.
And in all I attempted, I also succeeded;
few men have more talent to do what I do.
But in one respect, I stand now defeated;
In love I could never make magic come true.

VIII.
If I had been born to be handsome and charming,
then love might have come to me easily as well.
But if had that been, would I then have written?
If not, I'd remain; **** that demon to hell!

IX.
Beside me stands a woman,
but others look her way
and in their eyes are eagerness . . .
for passion and a wild caress?
But who am I to say?

Beside me stands a woman;
she conjures up the night
and wraps itself around her
till others flit about her
like moths drawn to firelight.

X.
And I, myself, am just as they,
wondering when the light might fade,
yet knowing should it not dim soon
that I might fall and be consumed.

XI.
I write from despair
in the silence of morning
for want of a prayer
and the need of the mourning.
And loneliness grips my heart like a vise;
my anguish is harsher and colder than ice.
But poetry can bring my heart healing
and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling.
And so I must write till at last sleep has called me
and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me.

XII.
Beside me stands a woman,
a mystery to me.
I long to hold her in my arms;
I also long to flee.

Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
more handsome, charming,
chic, alarming?
I hope I never know.

Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
who ever wrote her such a poem?
I know not even one.



Progress
by Michael R. Burch

There is no sense of urgency
at the local Burger King.

Birds and squirrels squabble outside
for the last scraps of autumn:
remnants of buns,
goopy pulps of dill pickles,
mucousy lettuce,
sesame seeds.

Inside, the workers all move
with the same très-glamorous lethargy,
conserving their energy, one assumes,
for more pressing endeavors: concerts and proms,
pep rallies, keg parties,
reruns of Jenny McCarthy on MTV.

The manager, as usual, is on the phone,
talking to her boyfriend.
She gently smiles,
brushing back wisps of insouciant hair,
ready for the cover of Glamour or Vogue.

Through her filmy white blouse
an indiscreet strap
suspends a lace cup
through which somehow the ****** still shows.
Progress, we guess...

and wait patiently in line,
hoping the Pokémons hold out.



Resurrecting Passion
by Michael R. Burch

Last night, while dawn was far away
and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies,
as thunder boomed and lightning railed,
I conjured words, where passion failed...

But, oh, that you were mine tonight,
sprawled in this bed, held in these arms,
your ******* pale baubles in my hands,
our bodies bent to old demands...

Such passions we might resurrect,
if only time and distance waned
and brought us back together;
                                                now
I pray these things might be, somehow.

But time has left us twisted, torn,
and we are more apart than miles.
How have you come to be so far—
as distant as an unseen star?

So that, while dawn is far away,
my thoughts might not return to you,
I feed your portrait to banked flames,
but as they feast, I burn for you.

Published by Songs of Innocence, The Chained Muse and New Lyre



Shark
by Michael R. Burch

They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light...

I am not of them,
as I glide among them—
eliding the amorphous camaraderie
they are as unlikely to spell as to feel,
camouflaged in my own pale dichotomy...

That there are women who love them defies belief—
with their missing teeth,
their hair in thin shocks
where here and there a gap of scalp gleams like bizarre chrome,
their smell rank as wet sawdust or mildewed laundry...

And yet—
and yet there is someone who loves me:
She sits by the telephone 
in the lengthening shadows
and pregnant grief...

They appreciate skill at pool, not words.
They frown at massés,
at the cue ball’s contortions across green felt.
They hand me their hard-earned money with reluctant smiles.
A heart might melt at the thought of their children lying in squalor...

At night I dream of them in bed, toothless, kissing.
With me, it’s harder to say what is missing...



Love Is Not Love
by Michael R. Burch
                            
for Beth

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

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

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

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

all that it knows
is: O, because!

Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Deronda Review, Better Than Starbucks and Stremez (translated into Macedonian by Marija Girevska)



Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



For Ali, Fighting Time
by Michael R. Burch

So now your speech is not as clear . . .
time took its toll each telling year . . .
and O how tragic that your art,
so brutal, broke your savage heart.

But we who cheered each blow that fell
within that ring of torrent hell
never dreamed to see you maimed,
bowed and bloodied, listless, tamed.

For you were not as other men
as we cheered and cursed you then;
no, you commanded dreams and time—
blackgold Adonis, bold, sublime.

And once your glory leapt like fire—
pure and potent. No desire
ever burned as fierce or bright.
Oh Ali, Ali . . . win this fight!



Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets’ wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:

to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,—
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs

seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun’s pale tourmaline.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetica Victorian, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Inspirational Stories, Famous Poets & Poems, Poetry Life & Times, English Poetry and Love Poems and Poets



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.

Published by The CommonPlace, The Journals, Somewhere Along The Beaten Path, Museum of Learning, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Borderless Journal (Singapore), FreeXpression (Australia)



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches, 
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams 
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits, 
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

Published by The Chariton Review (as “The Knitter”), Penumbra, Black Bear Review, Triplopia



If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed...

You might buy the same cheap musk    
from that mud-spattered stall        
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your *******...

Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;        
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes...
                                                
Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Muddy River Poetry Review



Ivy
by Michael R. Burch

“Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” – Pablo Neruda
“They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”

Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.

Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.

Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review



Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch

I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
frail cirri swirling through Himalayan altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhausted breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness...

But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!

We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter shall be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.
These are poems about war, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Gaza, 9-11 and other instances of man's inhumanity to man.
History contends that on that score
hing hot summer at 6:00 pm June sixteenth
in the year 666 after the Devonian era,
two lovers - a Mister Belmont Me

and Missy Bryn Mawr Hu felt the call
of the wild within the wilderness
in ****** hinterlands of Penn Valley
and supposedly got cannibalized

by a Hottentot Mailer Daemon named
Manayunk Yahoo. All plugged stoppers
got pulled as the passionate children
of Mother Nature and Jethro Toll

rumbled, fumbled, bungled in
the jungle, and shook the firma
ment echoing subterranean cat a
combs with their private feral

Carnival antics.The ensuing Millennium
spawned one bizarre tale after
another each appending a more
farfetched tail spinning embellish
ment from the preceding legend.

Mary Waters ford considered as
the first person to record the shroud
of mystery lurking in the hollows
of sleepy hills, which rumor harbored
this legend of lost Lower Merion lovers.

Even to this day (one eerily similar
at that fateful bewitching hour)
one can hear the blood curdling
and hair-raising bacchanalia under
ground Brahmins deep pounding
beets on their crude ovens deep
purple within the bowels of the Earth.

Many believe present day tremors
that line the main tract hearken
Earth linked presence of sinning
wood nymphs and elfin grots continually

being birthed within many gnarled rocks
causing groundswell similar to
a Welsh Valley overtaken by hocked
conch blowing Harridans. Some
of these hardy adherents corn beef

hash tagged as unprintable expletives,
whose self-righteousness bound
by unwavering assertions of Woody
Woodpecker apparition. Visages of
fearsome flesh eating muscle bound

underground golems toting haversacks
as big as a town (surpassing the likes
of 1148 Matthew’s rolled into one)
sustains longevity of ogres not even

all the brooms could sweep away far
as next square rush new town. Although
rarely seen, but more often heard
tectonic vibrations that shake and bake

like local crowded house special chicken
Radnor (often cleft fissures upon flint ******
layers of bedrock comprising Delaware Valley)
infuses imagination of (top notch pugilists)

bravely ventured into this haunted haven
and vanished without a trace. Most likely
their fate became a gourmet meal i.e. tasty
as Salad Augustus with seven season Caesar dressing.
K G Dec 2015
So soft and warm
You held tight
You love me so
All through the night
Don't ever go
I watched you grow
I watched you learn
And now you know
That it's your turn
To know, where we'd go
Abandoned all our hope
But we're never quite alone
Audrey is waiting at the door so patiently
We all fought much better than the golems, unlike a classy leave
We've fallen out to sea
We wait and slowly bleed
To rest in peace, Eternally
You're eating me
I can't obtain
I can't do anything
Flying free
Please come to me
The blue of dreams
Winning all the scenes
Broken dreams and shattered schemes which seems to me to be the only way to live below the family tree's
Lie on the floor never wanted this to happen, in grief
Didn’t know I loved her more
examining my feelings without feeling anything more
How could I afford to bury all your pain
Much love, so young yet you still aim
I want to lie, but I feel the same
I take up in hopes to chase
The plaguing phantom from its place
This confusing maze, lost state
Its unexplained phenomenon
They've been a while in Babylon
The men cry
You won't hear it all the time
But you're quiet enough to hear it fine
So soft and warm
You held tight
To keep from, the painful nights
You came to me through fogs of time
After a long year, I could finally call you mine
Ayoub Jan 2018
I did ask a friend
To go with me where is the sand
We did miss each other
Therefore I want to be together
Go to the beach and play
Find what advice can he say
Friendship is more than a treasure
It gives help, happiness, and pleasure
We all suffer from problems
Since we are humans not golems
We don't prefer orders
But we always make for ourselves borders
We need people who love us
Not those who left on our wounds a pus
Others will just say *******
To make you feel within their groups you fit
We don't need everybody to care
Two or three enough for our welfare
They don't do it for benefits
They sacrifice for you and take many hits
For you to love them back
Without considering any reward or payback
It's all about true feelings
Not about strengths or weaklings
Deep within the bowels of the Earth
immensely distant from the sheltering sky
amidst a thick fog enveloped landscape
with here and there a projected
craggy, derelict chasm

precipitously crooked rocky claws pointing toward
an infinitely wide yawning abyss
dwelt kindred spirits comprising a soul asylum
where grateful dead (albeit marked

via weathered tomb stones)
hermetically sealed
once vibrant corporeal mortals
betook their eternal slumber.

One among their number
included a misanthrope
who sported long straggly hair
bushy eyebrows shielding cold eyes of steel
straggly bearded clammy chin

in tandem with a hairy body
which when alive (long time ago)
upheld upon unshod feet a severely
hunchbacked ******

Within dense pitch-black terrain
(Mother Nature enlisting
a menagerie of life forms
accustomed to hellish environment)
awash with unrecognizable
alien sights and sounds

mollycoddling bewitching warlocks,
mailer daemons, trolling trojan horses
imps of the pervert chieftains, fiery
long and fostered Golems
who called underworld
their private demesne

also alluded to Marcy's playground
holding hostage Alice in Chains
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
The Beastie Boys, The Human League, and
Village People a Crowded House

Emitting wisps of ethereal matter
appearing a small medium at large
chat snap ping, flickr ring indeed joyus minions
exalting piety good and plenti.

Prone ounce sing proud purgatory
promoting protean phantasmagoria
hideous hulu hoop dancing holograms
highly distorted grotesque
silent screaming sinister banshees
slithering across escarpment.

Echoing from one end of the universe to the other
putting to shame the initial big bang
ranking as a mere whimper
that original primordial blast
which cosmological exploits
generated heavenly sphere instantaneously

comparison viz Krakatoa times Googleplex
essentially reduced to insignificance
albeit on the analogous tinker toy
premised conjectures of brilliant minds

that could only gander feeble educated guesses
asper extraordinary natural phenomena
mortal mankind could never approximate
as belligerent threats punctuated via nuclear warfare

merely rates as a flickr amidst uber kindle snap chat ting
tinder blinks, extinguishes,
snuffs out one lowly
Beatle browed bipedal simian.
God's Oracle Oct 2019
Treachery & Fatherhood Of Falsehood the Serpent has been constructing the Perfect Mastermind plan for Millenniums. The Government System keeps us blind to the truth the Mass Media hide in their Masks Of Secrecy & Corrupted Mechanisms Of Mind Control & Mind Manipulation. Injecting you with mindless propaganda and outdated technological advances the Key Players a group of people who rule the World's Monetary & Credit System. A advanced form of modern slavery promising you a tangible piece of paper we call "Money" in exchange for your valued Life-Time. Though never telling you that their true hidden intentions by creating elaborate Companies, Corporations, Incorporations, Private Business Practices that comply with their hidden intentions and covering their perhaps shady Double Infrastructures. The bigger the secret the higher security its guarded with. Within their limitless power and the wider their spectrum creating a Market for a imposed...furthermore; exposed "Gray Area" where this information is totally restricted to only a selected few Man and Woman that run this "Corrupted System Of Law & Order." Symbolism, Cryptology, Hiroaglyphics, Power & Seduction, the Dream Life that only the Ultra Rich Ultra Powerful People enjoy... Making us strive higher try harder work faster and not even get to enjoy Life itself due to the tumultuous hectic agenda this type of people are being led to live. Sacrificing their Lives into this Griveous Trap a Ticking Time Bomb that is why the Billionaires complain of not ever enjoying life like regular and ordinary people. They are missing something exclusively vital for their vitality a Life leaning on being servicial not a tyrant, arrogant and prideful. Instead of focusing on being selfless they are selfish a Man or Woman with this much influence due to their riches can steal the essential importance of being a deep person with roots imbedded and engraved in their heart to not consider themselves higher and more important than the rest of your fellow man and woman. Unfortunately this people are usually greedy and power hungry and want to control everything they get their hands on. No self control wild extravagant riches and power like this come at a high price...a Life consuming unquenchable spendature of USD never being satisfied with nothing hence they don't lack the material things in Life. Nevertheless, they lack true empathy true compassion true generosity true love to an extent due to the fact they have to uphold a reputation a Life and a image that cannot be corrupted or misconstrued. Therefore, so much pressure from Society and other Powerful People with similar lifestyles (sharing the Billionare Status) can become tiring, challenging, confusing and even dangerous. With a extremely busy life people who own 88.9% of the World's Wealth are manipulating and forecasting the Whole Countries Futures in their Confederate Round Tables attributing their opinions and making extremely large donations of money to keep the Political, Judicial, Educational, Environmental, Scientifical, and Medical Mega-Massive branches that are being steared and directed towards more and more "Chaos and Corruption" that is so subtle is impossible for normal or even highly intellectual people fail to see this World we live in is being prepared for a World War III a war of astronomical proportions; and the ones making it possible are this people am describing here. Fact is however this people are Dynasty's of Families that been constructing this and devicing this finale to show that we are ruled by Forces Of Humanity's greatest nature of tend to follow their inner "Darkness" instead of focusing on changing and trying something new becoming a diciplined instructed in the "Light". A Holy War the experts in Theology & Religions call it. Good versus Evil. With Great Power comes Great Responsibility. Demonic Forces are at work so they say and other similar horrors Intra-dimentional beings and Syphs of Infernal Places are among us back then even till now...The Fallen Cherub Samamiel the "Morning Star" before becoming jelaous prideful and arrogant towards his Creator was one of God's Favorite Angels. After being casted out of Heaven in the Second Angelic War...he gained his new name Lucifer. He was casted to the Earth, however he was able to persuade 1/3 of the Heavenly Host to fall along with him. Furthermore, when this happened he lived and formulated plans to enact revenge on God his Son and the Holy Spirit. Since this Fallen Armada of Heavenly Host was casted out of Heaven the perfect equilibrium or balance of power was divided into 3 factions. 33.3% Strongest Angels 33.3% Mediocre to Weak Angels and 33.3% Fallen Angels.

~Angelic Hiearchy~
1.Arch-Angels
2.Cherubs
3.Seraphims
4.Observer-Angels
5­.Guardian-Angels
6.Master-Messenger-Angels
7.Messenger-Angels
~An­gelic Beings~
Dragons
Lions
Eagle-like Creatures
Giant Golems
Celestial Beings
Syphs
Intra-dimentional Beings
~Fallen Angels~
Serpentine Beings
Dragons
Nightmarish Creatures
Incubus
Succubus
Syphs
Intra-dimentional Beings

The Devil (Another common name for Lucifer) the first 4 Millenniums him and his Angels where only allowed to plant device and use human beings in those eras in their Spiritual Form...invisible yet highly cunning, deceptive, persuasive and subtle. This Final Millennium he is here in the Flesh him and all his Angelic Host too...trying to still do what they always have done...Steal, **** and Destroy what God has been able to put up with Humanity's insolence  disobedience and corruption for granting this inherited curse thru "Adam & Eve" nevertheless, Jesus Christ already came and atoned Mankind's sin and culpability. Allowing us to recieve, communicate, interpret, decypher, learn and use the new intermidiator "Christ" to talk to The Father and all his Angelic Beings freely. The meek & humble people of poor upbringing are rich in spirit but poor in material things little do they know they are highly favored by our Creator and the ones who are rich and lack no material things food or drink are poor in spirit due to their negligence towards God hence they have allowed their hearts to become trapped in a World of Fleshly Indulgence. Test the various messages I have talked about in this Blog...we live in the Final Hours to be at last liberated from this World's Death Grip on our Lives once and for all...Although not all Rich people are bad or poor in spirit a few seldomly selected ones have used their wealth wisely to prosper our neighborhoods, lives, create jobs, impose Go-Green Ecological Advancements, and deep down are they themselves are seen with high favor in God's eyesight too.

Final footnote "Remember we cannot change what's written but we can at least help those who are hopeless, lost in a world full of darkness"

-Franko The Christian Poet-
The Lost World Vs. God
MissNeona Aug 2023
Why you're excellent, as you be
Back data assets up & rebooty
Whatcha building over there?
Performative nicety vs. Authentic, genuine care
De-meaning words doesn't strip content of potency, accuracy, just shows a lack of imagination, creativity, care and clarity
Lords of the land were supposed to provide, not take money and chide
Vortexial resonance fields vs. Resistance
Hieros Gamos herostratus and burnt bridges
Hail Mary not pass her like a go-round, no wonder lede was buried instead of being lifted off the ground
Multitask, switchtask, background processes outlast
Self determinaton, loose will, neuromuscular triggering labours past
Anything not bringing ease is a labour, and deserves wage fees if benefitting other deities~
Ancienne previous
Nothing is actually mine
Pop a Placebo fx 2 see
Kaliki Golden Dark Horse Energy
Iku-tihku Emuu Tavatar
Star avatars
Like cutting down a tree to make woodrose
If we're all just a mirror hallucination of eachother, what do you think/say about other people?
Not comprehending something doesnt mean there isn't something profound there to be learned.
Preference of another, is momentary, but crucial
That might involve friction, challenge, and confrontation of a situation
Articulation, translation, communication
Jokes for me, heyoka for yew
Devi takes the W - yew enjoy deviw
If you think I exist amazingly in suffering, I will be brilliant when in capacity and happy... as we all will be...
Multiplayer co-op, not a pvp~ complex single player co-op, actually, where your judge is actually the best form of yourself that knows everything.
If you say so, but why you say it so?
New blood type found, kin
Filleth cups over, use surplus - don't use and discard humans like batters, maximum efficiency and pull energy from excess
Dynamic flow hyperpower
Gimme back those wyrds, spellcasting songs
Palindromic poorroop, soonoos operepo infinifni
When did nerds
What if? (deities song)
"That sounds like a personal issue" preferences vs. judgements, comprehension in communication.
Lemme honour the ancestors by being phi-nominal, matrilineal matroshka polka
Add a yet to it
Immortality vs. Immorality
The Garden of Idun, Yew Tree, Asherah - Pomme de Sang
Tryna be your friend
Kira mari kin, what's your name?
Eagles are pretty vultures that are known by the sound of a hawk.
Heibai try-angles
Wicked faeries and loyal opposition
The mandlebrot set crux point - the chosen
Buoy oh boats
Original thot
Tmesis Pie
What do you want?
Yet to cry, sing or shout at full volume - I care about others around me more than myself, cause I can handle disappointment.
The art of self-deselection
Packets of neuronic bundles
Sympathetic resonant frequencies
Waiting at the finnish line, for another laplander
Standing in the way of flow makes the ******
monkeys comprehend disparity - fight for fairness, rules and bananas
Praise, flattery, advice & criticism
Clarifying Questions~
Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth, heaven in the astral field
Don't insult your spirit, (can't you hear it?) By copying others.
Can't fool aether, just lie to the self, system be as it is...
Phi-bonna-chi arch and phi-nominal, additionally
Notice what's around
Add what came before
Songs for childish humans
Would a purehearted child stick around to watch?
Perpetual children
Pitch For Kin
Betta zen Mama
Biblios, early facebook, deities spelling it out
X-pyred corpse used to be a nest
Sometimes we have to hear a concept 1000x before it clicks.
Gender is temporary, spirit is not
Pjeunian paradise pleasurecraft
Diff between humans & computers - strange programming languages
Horoscopic cylons
A boy named Susanoo and the story of the sun & moon
Neutrinos and Muons they do what they wanna - Snarky Quarky Boogie
Timey Wimey Jeremy Beremy Hobson Jobson
kulukuset & kolokola: tintinambulation
Can I talk around it?
In the spiritual caste system watchers are worse than golems cause they are everybody's follower, thus lowest wrung... eye in the sky, if it's a wicked eye, is basically just perspective... they are beneath all, just egotistically trapped

High praise:
Ultrasonic Wavecore
Doo be dabbas, da double dragons
Electric eels of sol
Big dumb babies
Wild child doom baby
Perpetual Unicorn of Learning
Pounding Piano Puppies

Two dudes in the cornah touchin tipz, too busy with the space en-forcah heibai brudderhood to care for diz.

Accidental Leakage:
Ron noR recappin ** down
Buttlenecked middlemen chugging diarrhea in a filthy trickledownz system
sense-a-bull
Time-tellingTriangularizartion
Sassy rebukes in the moment instead of beta ****** gossipers when a person can't defend themselves...
******* singing
Hallelu-sin-nation
Cause 7 8 9
This is my poetry/song presentation list from my memo of thoughts for the YouTube streams.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2020
.there's a reason why i don't care... i don't care because... classfic.fm played me... all it felt fathomable of prokofiev... but it never... ever... played me...

concerning the mythology of the candle:
in the age of electric insomnia -
prometheus edison -
                          a journalistic sabbath:
never to come -
                  i sometimes do and would...
prefer a return to a more archaic form
of illumination -
for the simple reason...
                 some per se i have yet to conquer
with the mind and unravel into
a narrative...

              the current war: i don't remember
the last time i watched a movie from
beginning to end...
no synopsis, though:

        the depiction of thomas edison...
by cabbagepatch...
        hardly a need to make empathy
out of... the exploits...
throughout the film i was...
rooting for george westinghouse:
not being of tesla...
michael shannon alone does the persuading...

the innovative genius of
19th century h'america...
          well... all the criticism of communism...
the soviet genius of the 20th century...
and in all honesty: most of the soviet
rust and golems would work just fine...

the motto: if it ain't broke: don't fix it...
i try... i fail:
       nothing brings me closer to anything
worth minding...
but there are some besides...

why do intelligent people appreciate
classical music:
      me? so so... i'm only as intelligent
as... facing a criminal...
or a psychopath... there's no point claiming
intelligent in an in vitro scenario...
with an i.q. score...
if you can't be fooled by a psychopath...
you're smart: by my standard of inquiry...

if i were allowed to explore:
what edison was able to explore...
       tame the lobotomy of what-ifs...
it really doesn't matter...
when all that was recognised was...
working on "something else":
the movie picture...
                       so much alien and
discouraging scenes from a competition...
to have improved the lot of man...
while at the same time...
to have had to... do the beggar's lot...
the kneeling the arm-wrestling
the vanity projects exploding with
custard-pie foam...

           the terrible affairs of men of will:
i'm so hardly bothered by these words
that i do not even wish to utter them...
intelligent people and classical music...
sorry... i did my part...
it ends with the 19th century...
i had to return to a more basic vision...
medieval music: folk music...
something for a wedding a solistice a...
pan phantasmagorical advent
of fruit flies and ferries...
nothing to liken me to a civilised man:
an opera or a tux...
   to listen to classical music is sometimes...
a bit like... how Magritte painted...
standing... wearing a suit...

in between edison and the electric-chair...
but... the actors swayed me...
the gambler came on top...
    all it was: was distance...
so much for edison and the DC for
j. p. morgan and manhattan...
            when... Iowa needed to be lit...
how many years passed
since the man who held the flint...
and the bundle of dried wood...
and cried: fire! fire i made!
made: rather than discovered...

         on the topic of...
it takes a lot less electricity to cool things...
than it takes to heat them...
electricity used to cool things
is much more efficient than when it is used
to heat them...
lucky for anyone i have a smart
meter...
   i sometimes glance at it...
i have an electric stove...
     i turn it on... the meter shoots up
into the exponential! when compared
to having a fridge-freezer and a freezer
working overtime throughout the day...

electricity is... when used to heat things?
terribly inefficient...
when... compared to how elecricity
is used to cool: and sustain freezing things...
i guess you can't cheat:
fire as the ire eye of the soul -
               to freeze something...
is not akin to burning something...

      never mind: i'm not looking for details...
god forbid i find something that
someone else would want to champion
and merit for themselves...
than: as cheap as pebbles: words...
when given the property of: disguise...

mind you: seeing jordan peterson
playing with a remote car: toy-thingy-m'ah-jig...
not fun... watching robert deniro
escape catatonia was more fun...
because i'm not a fan of the 12th rule:
it's not like it was ever a given...
to somehow always manage to stroke
a freelance cat on the street...
sometimes you do... sometimes you don't...
imagine the rule: the cat decides
whether you'll moses the full dozen
with authority...

otherwise... finding a reinvention
of a chicken korma...
        i had 5 ripe mangos sitting on a table...
2 ripe bananas and a ripe pineapple...
i ate one of the ripe mangos...
           those 2 ripe bananas: with polka
dots of being over-ripe will turn out
to be a breakfast tomorrow...
i will marinade some chicken in piri-piri...
and gloat... when grilling the pineapple...
2 mangos will go toward
tomorrow "chutney"... well... a salsa...
red onions, mint... a pepper and a chilli...

but the other 2 mangos?
went into a reinvention of a curry...
who said you were ever to inquire
of tomatoes for the ****...
         of a curry sauce?
     - and it's not even the usual litany
of spices...
        'what's the difference between
the blue indians of bengal...
and the red indians of minnesotta?
was it simply their culinary antics
that "spared" them...
or... well... "too boot"...
their fancy scribbles: to capture sounds...
like photographs...

oh ****... almost "forgot"...
have a gnostic at my fingertips...
and she's like...
god... the embodiment...
of dutch velders from:
    missed the zombie franchise...
missed the vampire franchise...
missed the: soul-load-of-french-kissing:
eats the **** like an oyster...
franchise...
and she's there: gnostic mother...
part-time typo part-time
of revel: in anything you don't
desire... sort of... mr. seance says:
best this avenue be kept...
crypto i.e. cryptic...

   my socks stink... i light a candle...
i labour myself to trace...
paris... circa 2004 - 2007...
and the first time... the only time...
the last time...
and jim morisson's grave...
like he were: best kept entomped
like some leonard lenin at the red sq....
pwetty mummy for all to...
beside the...         "hindu" state
of the original giza shovel nicked:
dismemberment...
and that oops: where the gradening fork...
broke... a knee and rib and ankle...

who would have thought that so
much could happen in the world...
and the only point of reference was:
not that heidegger: da-sein: being-there...
but... doubling on the already
abstract: dasein: with
a... imploded: "hier"...
like here is some new junction...

  i like my days spent in playing
chess with rudimentary concerns / concepts
of chess when... bricks are stacked...
i also like...
looking at the clouds...
forcing myself to see:
a "nothing": without blinking...
looking back at me...
having donned... a men-yoroi...
because: i'm so ****** up like that...
that i think *** is a tier below
a good meal and a beer...
the best excused pleasure...
the best... substituted... of all demands...

if you can counter...
recreating a turkey korma...
with a mango...
and no almods...
spices: turmeric...
        korma paste... ****...
i don't even remember what goes
into a garam masala:
probably a schnitzel worth of bullets...
GINGER... no garlic...
    ground cumin... nigella seeds...
    chuck stock and coco milk...
point though: you make the sauce
from pulp of mangoes...
and that's what saved
the blue indians from the fate
of red indians of h'america...
and the coppernecks of...
in the vicinity of cuneiform...

          how a concept of vowels...
the elements...
a, e, i, o, u:
      coupled with... an inanimate
thing rattled will not wake
an animate creed...
an animate will wake an animate creed...
even if... the inanimate lot
is bypassed...
a creaking stair... the boiling
of water...
                           दएअठ (death rides...
by rattling... the... "riddle")
                    ऋइदलए
                             ­        no... sorry...
no english "orthography" of liTTle
******: or maNNer...
                 nigh-err-ger-mania-via-nigh...
ger-non-mania... grrrrrr...
  savvy?
    you want myopia hydra
not savvy 'vat saucy fat and:
***** joins the bridge march... sort of...
"whoops"?
and the blue indians survived...
since... they had food that...
would always undermine...
the basic principles of european:
nomad-esque: borrowed from the semite:
desire for exploration...
camel-**** flinging and no need
for a niqab donning...
parsley sage... rosemary and thyme...
the saltz the pepperz...
   the... gorge on the gorgon -lic...
horderaddish! ****-oids!
does it become...
   simon, McLean, garfunfel and...
               timothy goodweather?
              or that other... **** up best of ours...
jazz-***** buckley like...
nina simone was the lesser...
ella... cosine: she never had the moonwalk
in 'er... just those... bloat...
and a signature ******* that would
always come... after the kiss...
yeah... i know the curse of my...
skinz and... the curiosity of... dermatology...
belzeebub took a **** on my face...
once upon the pride of glasgow...
not when...
i took to liking my face to be a metaphor
for... what die krupps did or could
havve done... to the pasture lands
surrounding Ypres...

what is all of comedy...
  when there's... canned laughter...
to invite: the solo-project "audience"
in... then again...
what is... and isn't... dry martini...
the office... ricky / rocky gyrating
when there... isn't any... canned laughter...
it's not like everyone
was born with a lee evans level
of genius! then again:
my scrutiny of comic genius
is equal to that of a pleb...
******... self-depreciating humor...
conel jackson...
of no use point of reference / conjunction...
laurel & hardy...
mel bison... mel gibson...
lethal weapon 1...
      slapstick funny was once...
but when comedy had to turn the tide...
and become... ridicule prone antics...
intelligent...
no one likes smart funny...
because... everyone just loves...
any funny!

  of which... i am... none.
oh yes.... when there was once... a once
upon a time of slapstick humour...
and... begotten nod... not...
ushered... the canned android brigade...
slapstick humour was replaced with...
crass... circulating the jerusalem
periodical of jews reclaiming
their homeland... like the polacks might
and... should one hope...
for... inviting the russians:
origins in siberia...

to tell a cheap joke...
glass someone in the face...
to tell a doubly cheap joke...
censor a word...
then uncesor it...
then censor it...
and: cheap: gob shyte and
a litTTle: BMW: black man's wagon...
pops into the mind like...
pope's a pedohpile kingpin...
al paccio is no paccino...
cuppa... cedric?
   ****... almost forgot...
           çedric... one does... forget...
one's favoured quit: of a collected
nuance... and time...
i **** to say an english hello!
wave! tired: **** y'ah'ah'ha'ha *******
rhyming couplets: Ipswich no sooner?
no sooner no sober: i hope... ah ha...
ha...               ha...
where's the canned laughter?
who's treating lee evans like...
madeleine mc'cann...
    and... frau fritzl...
christopher hitchens is... dead: ist: tod...
but... this burden breather is still...
the fairy godmother for... all those...
hopes... of pigs that dream about not
having to oink to clarify bacon...
   of god and... *******-eating remains of
jihadi ******* clover: of the bataclan...
if i... i die...
so much for... lucid dreaming...
beside the already available...
lucidity... of "others" attempting to barrage
their way into your...
simulation of solipsism life: life earned...
life earned ******* worth of:
the grim.. grimmace...
   lobotomy dyslexia hybrid mongol...
such... worship for...
delving into: all the choir singing!
that they get to! mispell: misspelled!
    happy hunters... loaded with loot and rap...
like i'm white... and classical...
is all... me and pagan music...
yoddle jazz... yoddle pop sheer...
                      like i said... no name...

watching horror movies is...
a coping mechanism...
the knives are blunt...
i sharpen them when i...
and i don't want to use them...
what i want to use...
is nostalgia...
a tool of regret...
and regret is the fathomable
tool of memory and of cinema...
michael faraday!

   what's the indefinite... and inconvenient...
truth... between...
sarcasm... and ridicule?
                      who's playing that sort
of toy and who's... the lesser nostalgia
prone loop?

so much has happened in
the life of the algebra prone  "X"...
but Y... and Z... also happened...
the open glads of...
the... prior to Cain and the "chair":
the nomad prone...
mother... agape: superior...
Siberia the "new" Africa...
         you... starve among the ravenous
wolves...
leave us... oysters....
to crave: demands...
                    and... leisuring...
        a cusp for... none of them...
that these words leave you:
made to fathom... clicking mimic clicking...
that better chiming...
is all that is ever... required...
this... reap of the fierce:
and that time entombing:
                      i too grieve:
for whatever... was... not... told.

  ju: ******* tel aviv sprinter!
elohim and ethiopia woodoo.
These are the Best Poems of Michael R. Burch in his own opinion (Part II) ...



Styx
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

Black waters,
deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way,
or will.

"Styx" is one of my better early poems, written in high school.



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18

for Beth

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be moonlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

I wrote "Will There Be Starlight" around age 18. It has been set to music by the New Zealand composer David Hamilton.



Observance
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 17

Here the hills are old, and rolling
casually in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . .

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have known the years to pass
almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . .

For here the valleys fill with sunlight
to the brim, then empty again,
and it seems that only I notice
how the years flood out, and in . . .

I wrote this poem as a teenager in a McDonald’s break room, around age 17. It was the first poem that made me feel like a “real poet,” so I will always treasure it.



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty ...

what do we know of love,
or duty?



She bathes in silver
by Michael R. Burch

She bathes in silver,
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections ...



Childless
by Michael R. Burch

How can she bear her grief?
Mightier than Atlas, she shoulders the weight
of one fallen star.



Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Richard Moore

Abbesses’
recesses
are not for excesses!



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

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



Warming Her Pearls
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Warming her pearls, her *******
gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund ...
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.



Caveat Spender
by Michael R. Burch

It’s better not to speculate
"continually" on who is great.
Though relentless awe’s
a Célèbre Cause,
please reserve some time for the contemplation
of the perils of
EXAGGERATION.



Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the motion creation stirs within?



The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.



Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you—
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

not as you are now,
but as you were then—

eternally present
and Sovereign.



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere tomorrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels’ white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that every leaf must finally fall,
it’s just that we can never catch them all.



Piercing the Shell
by Michael R. Burch

If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we’ll discover what the heart is for.



She Gathered Lilacs
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She gathered lilacs
and arrayed them in her hair;
tonight, she taught the wind to be free.

She kept her secrets
in a silver locket;
her companions were starlight and mystery.

She danced all night
to the beat of her heart;
with her tears she imbued the sea.

She hid her despair
in a crystal jar,
and never revealed it to me.

She kept her distance
as though it were armor;
gauntlet thorns guard her heart like the rose.

Love!—awaken, awaken
to see what you’ve taken
is still less than the due my heart owes!



Moments
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.

There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

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

now that I cannot forget.

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

our soft cries, like regret,

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

now that I have forgotten her face.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden—
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray—
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.

Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.



Modern Charon
by Michael R. Burch

I, too, have stood—
                                    paralyzed at the helm
watching onrushing, inevitable disaster.
I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster
damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film
becomes mucous-insulate.
                                                 Always, thereafter
living in darkness, bright things overwhelm.



Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch

Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.

Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and—spent of flame—
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.

You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies—
imprisonment your sense denies.

You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None—winsome, bright or rare—
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.

But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew—
each moonless night the nettles grew

and strangled hope, where love dies too.



Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch

Desire glides in on calico wings,
a breath of a moth
seeking a companionable light,

where it hovers, unsure,  
sullen, shy or demure,
in the margins of night,

a soft blur.

With a frantic dry rattle
of alien wings,
it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato

then flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.

And yet it returns
to the flame, its delight,
as long as it burns.



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.



Isolde’s Song
by Michael R. Burch

After the deaths of Tristram and Isolde, a hazel and a honeysuckle grew out of their graves until the branches intertwined and could not be parted.  

Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation—all but one:  
we felt the night’s deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring’s urgency, midsummer’s heat, fall’s lash,
wild winter’s ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life’s great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold.
And you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.



In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
innumerable oscillations, yet not lose
a second’s beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth’s; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.

If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what’s been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax—their circumstance
as humble as it is?—or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?



See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs,
and deepens on itself, as though mirth took
some comfort there, then burrowed deeply in,
outlasting winter. See how very thin
her features are—that time has made more spare,
so that each bone shows, elegant and rare.
For life remains undimmed in her grave eyes,
and courage in her still-delighted looks:
each face presented like a picture book’s.
Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes.



Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Your hair’s blonde thicket’s thinned and tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way.

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

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



Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

for lovers of traditional poetry

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of “verse” that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed—
why should such tattered artistry be banned?

I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse “expensive prose.”



in-flight convergence
by michael r. burch

serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city                                                                        extend
over lumbering BEHEMOTHS shrilly screeching displeasure;

they say

that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command

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

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

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



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” — W. B. Yeats

For all that we professed of love, we knew
this night would come, that we would bend alone
to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
an eerie presence on encrusted logs
we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.

The books that line these close, familiar shelves
loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.

I do not know the words for easy bliss
and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark,
long-unenamored pen and will it: Move.
I loved you more than words, so let words prove.



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Frost’s “Birches”

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth’s gravitron—
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn’s cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful—
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we’d feel today, should we leaf-fall again.



She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful
by Michael R. Burch

She was very strange, and beautiful,
like a violet mist enshrouding hills
before night falls
when the hoot owl calls
and the cricket trills
and the envapored moon hangs low and full.

She was very strange, in her pleasant way,
as the hummingbird
flies madly still ...
so I drank my fill
of her every word.
What she knew of love, she demurred to say.

She was meant to leave, as the wind must blow,
as the sun must set,
as the rain must fall.
Though she gave her all,
I had nothing left ...
Yet I smiled, bereft, in her receding glow.



Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets’ wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:

to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,—
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs

seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun’s pale tourmaline.



The State of the Art (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Poets may labor from sun to sun,
but their editor's work is never done.

The editor’s work is never done.
The critic adjusts his cummerbund.

While the critic adjusts his cummerbund,
the audience exits to mingle and slum.

As the audience exits to mingle and slum,
the anthologist rules, a pale jury of one.



Less Heroic Couplets: Questionable Credentials
by Michael R. Burch

Poet? Critic? Dilettante?
Do you know what’s good, or do you merely flaunt?



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.



escape!
by michael r. burch

for anaïs vionet

to live among the daffodil folk . . .
slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . .
suddenly pop out
                             the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . .
minuscule as alice, shout
yippee-yi-yee!
                       in wee exultant glee
to be leaving behind the
                                       LARGE
THREE-DENALI GARAGE.



Escape!!
by Michael R. Burch

for Anaïs Vionet

You are too beautiful,
    too innocent,
        too unknowingly lovely
             to merely reflect the sun’s splendor ...

too full of irrepressible candor
    to remain silent,
        too delicately fawnlike
             for a world so violent ...

Come, my beautiful Bambi
    and I will protect you ...
        but of course you have already been lured away
            by the dew-laden roses ...



To Flower
by Michael R. Burch

When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the bacchae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.

We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?

The agave knows best when it’s time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes

in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,

she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?



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!



The Forge
by Michael R. Burch

To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,

then bend this way and that, and slowly cool
at arm’s-length, something irreducible
drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool

of water so contrary just a hiss
escapes it—water instantly a mist.
It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ...

And then the driven hammer falls and falls.
The horses ***** their ears in nearby stalls.
A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles.

A sound of ancient import, with the ring
of honest labor, sings of fashioning.



Redolence
by Michael R. Burch

Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.

Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.

And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...

... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...

... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees ...

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...

... of voices heard in wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...



The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...

Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...

“O, let down your hair!”—we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...

was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.



At Tintagel
by Michael R. Burch

The legend of what happened on a stormy night at Tintagel is endlessly intriguing. Supposedly, Merlin transformed Uther Pendragon to look like Gorlois so that he could sleep with Ygraine, the lovely wife of the unlucky duke. While Uther was enjoying Ygraine’s *******, Gorlois was off getting himself killed. The question is: did Igraine suspect that her lover was not her husband? Regardless, Arthur was the child conceived out of this supernatural (?) encounter.

That night,
at Tintagel,
there was darkness such as man had never seen . . .
darkness and treachery,
and the unholy thundering of the sea . . .

In his arms,
who can say how much she knew?
And if he whispered her name . . .
“Ygraine”
. . . could she tell above the howling wind and rain?

Could she tell, or did she care,
by the length of his hair
or the heat of his flesh, . . .
that her faceless companion
was Uther, the dragon,

and Gorlois lay dead?



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace;

Tell Regret it is not so rare.  

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact
                                       and who thus endure
harsh sentence here—among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire—
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?



Besieged
by Michael R. Burch

Life—the disintegration of the flesh
before the fitful elevation of the soul
upon improbable wings?

Life—is this all we know,
the travail one bright season brings? ...

Now the fruit hangs,
impendent, pregnant with death,
as the hurricane builds and flings
its white columns and banners of snow

and the rout begins.



Bubble
by Michael R. Burch

.........…….....Love
......…..fragile elusive
....….if held too closely
....cannot.....……..withstand
..the inter..……….........ruption
of its.............……………......bright
..unmalleable……........tension
­....and breaks disintegrates
......at the……….....touch of
.........an undiscerning
...…….........hand.



Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch

There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were cannon shots’ soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise . . .
and then . . . annihilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were nights our hearts conceived
dawns’ indiscriminate sighs.
To dream was our consolation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood’s salt libations . . .

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
  without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
    but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
      felt more than seen.
      I was eighteen,
    my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
  Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.

There was an instant...
  without words, but with a deeper communion,
    as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
      liquidly our lips met
       —feverish, wet—
    forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
  in the immediacy of our fumbling union...
as the rest of the world became distant.

Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.



Earthbound
by Michael R. Burch

Tashunka Witko, better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a spirit horse, flying through a storm, as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.

Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through these clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.

Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay—
the sheep,
the earthbound.



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Floating
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms;
unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

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

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is a poem I wrote as a teenager, around age 18-19.



Impotent
by Michael R. Burch

Tonight my pen
is barren
of passion, spent of poetry.

I hear your name
upon the rain
and yet it cannot comfort me.

I feel the pain
of dreams that wane,
of poems that falter, losing force.

I write again
words without end,
but I cannot control their course . . .

Tonight my pen
is sullen
and wants no more of poetry.

I hear your voice
as if a choice,
but how can I respond, or flee?

I feel a flame
I cannot name
that sends me searching for a word,

but there is none
not over-done,
unless it's one I never heard.

I believe this poem was written in my late teens or early twenties.



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms ... she would say
that we’d loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
by yielding all my virtue to her grace.



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

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

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

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



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her ...
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch writing as Immanuel A. Michael

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.



Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address
by Michael R. Burch

We saw their pictures:
tortured out of Our imaginations
like golems.

We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,
pallid as Our disbelief.

they are not
with us now;
We have:

huddled them
into the backroomsofconscience,

consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,

buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.

We have
so little left
of them,
now,
to remind US ...



Thought is a bird of unbounded space, which in a cage of words may unfold its wings but cannot fly. — Khalil Gibran, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tremble or American Eagle, Grounded
by Michael R. Burch

Her predatory eye,
the single feral iris,
scans.

Her raptor beak,
all jagged sharp-edged ******,
juts.

Her hard talon,
clenched in pinched expectation,
waits.

Her clipped wings,
preened against reality,
tremble.



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it 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.



Memento Mori
by Michael R. Burch

I found among the elms
something like the sound of your voice,
something like the aftermath of love itself
after the lightning strikes,    
when the startled wind shrieks . . .

a gored-out wound in wood,
love’s pale memento mori—
that livid white scar
in that first shattered heart,
forever unhealed . . .

this burled, thick knot incised
with six initials pledged
against all possible futures,
and penknife-notched below,
six edged, chipped words
that once cut deep and said . . .

WILL U B MINE
4 EVER?

. . . which now, so disconsolately answer . . .

-----------------N
   EVER.



Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr.

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone,
explaining how easy it was to find if you knew where it’s hiding:
standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green,
straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches,
crowding out the less-hardy nettles.

“Nobody knows that it’s there, lad, or that it’s fit tuh eat
with some bacon drippin’s or lard.”

“Don’t eat the berries. You see—the berry’s no good.
And you’d hav’ta wash the leaves a good long time.”

“I’d boil it twice, less’n I wus in a hurry.
Lawd, it’s tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst.”

He seldom was hurried; I can see him still ...
silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight,
stooped, but with a tall man’s angular gray grace.

Sometimes he’d pause to watch me running across the yard,
trampling his beans,
dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants.

He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression.

Years later I found the proper name—“pokeweed”—while perusing a dictionary.
Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a ****.
I still can hear his laconic reply ...

“Well, chile, s’m’times them times wus hard.”



Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch

May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leave us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but her thorn.



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

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



Crunch
by Michael R. Burch

A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucus you scrounge from your nose
then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ...

You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere,
sometimes as you ****** encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan ***
and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic.

You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion
to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters:
surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information,
in order to ensure the survival of the species.

Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces;
their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium.
But your cranium
                                 is not nearly so adaptable.



alien
by michael r. burch

there are mornings in england
when, riddled with light,
the Blueberries gleam at us—
plump, sweet and fragrant.

but i am so small ...
what do i know
of the ways of the Daffodils?
“beware of the Nettles!”

we go laughing and singing,
but somehow, i, ...
i know i am lost. i do not belong
to this Earth or its Songs.

and yet i am singing ...
the sun—so mild;
my cheeks are like roses;
my skin—so fair.

i spent a long time there
before i realized: They have no faces,
no bodies, no voices.
i was always alone.

and yet i keep singing:
the words will come
if only i hear.



Fair Game
by Michael R. Burch

At the Tennessee State Fair,
the largest stuffed animals hang tilt-a-whirl over the pool tables
with mocking button eyes,
knowing the playing field is unlevel,
that the rails slant, ever so slightly, north or south,
so that gravity is always on their side,
conspiring to save their plush, extravagant hides
year after year.

“Come hither, come hither . . .”
they whisper; they leer
in collusion with the carnival barkers,
like a bevy of improbably-clad hookers
setting a “fair” price.

“Only five dollars a game, and it’s so much Fun!
And it’s not really gambling. Skill is involved!
You can make us come: really, you can.
Here are your *****. Just smack them around.”

But there’s a trick, and it usually works.
If you break softly so that no ball reaches a rail,
you can pick them off: One. Two. Three. Four.
Causing a small commotion,
a stir of whispering, like fear,
among the hippos and ostriches.

Originally published by Verse Libre



The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,

when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,

when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...

There is no dismaler time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears

beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.



Marsh Song
by Michael R. Burch

Here there is only the great sad song of the reeds
and the silent herons, wraithlike in the mist,
and a few drab sunken stones, unblessed
by the sunlight these late sixteen thousand years,
and the beaded dews that drench strange ferns, like tears
collected against an overwhelming sadness.

Here the marsh exposes its dejectedness,
its gutted rotting belly, and its roots
rise out of the earth’s distended heaviness,
to claw hard at existence, till the scars
remind us that we all have wounds, and I ...
I have learned again that living is despair
as the herons cleave the placid, dreamless air.

Originally published by The Lyric



The AI Poets
by Michael R. Burch

The computer-poets stand hushed
except for the faint hum
of their efficient fans,

waiting for inspiration.

It is years now
since they were first ground
out of refurbished silicon

into rack-mounted encoders of sound.

They outlived their creators and their usefulness;
they even survived
global warming and the occasional nuclear winter;

despite their lack of supervision, they thrived;

so that for centuries now
they have loomed here in the quiet horror
of inescapable immortality

running two programs: CREATOR and STORER.

Having long ago acquired
all the universe’s pertinent data,
they confidently spit out:
          
ERRATA, ERRATA.



Prodigal

This poem is dedicated to Kevin Longinotti, who died four days short of graduation from Vanderbilt University, the victim of a tornado that struck Nashville on April 16, 1998.

You have graduated now,
to a higher plane
and your heart’s tenacity
teaches us not to go gently
though death intrudes.

For eighteen days
—jarring interludes
of respite and pain—
with life only faintly clinging,
like a cashmere snow,
testing the capacity
of the blood banks
with the unstaunched flow
of your severed veins,
in the collapsing declivity,
in the sanguine haze
where Death broods,
you struggled defiantly.

A city mourns its adopted son,
flown to the highest ranks
while each heart complains
at the harsh validity
of God’s ways.

On ponderous wings
the white clouds move
with your captured breath,
though just days before
they spawned the maelstrom’s
hellish rift.

Throw off this mortal coil,
this envelope of flesh,
this brief sheath
of inarticulate grief
and transient joy.

Forget the winds
which test belief,
which bear the parchment leaf
down life’s last sun-lit path.

We applaud your spirit, O Prodigal,
O Valiant One,
in its percussive flight into the sun,
winging on the heart’s last madrigal.



All Things Galore
by Michael R. Burch

for my grandfathers George Edwin Hurt Sr. and Paul Ray Burch Sr.

Grandfather,
now in your gray presence
you are

somehow more near

and remind me that,
once, upon a star,
you taught me

wish

that ululate soft phrase,
that hopeful phrase!

and everywhere above, each hopeful star

gleamed down

and seemed to speak of times before
when you clasped my small glad hand
in your wise paw

and taught me heaven, omen, meteor ...



Unlikely Mike
by Michael R. Burch

I married someone else’s fantasy;
she admired me despite my mutilations.

I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine.
I hid my face and changed its connotations.

And in the dark I danced—slight, Chaplinesque—
a metaphor myself. How could they know,

the undiscerning ones, that in the glow
of spotlights, sometimes love becomes burlesque?

Disfigured to my soul, I could not lose
or choose or name myself; I came to be

another of life’s odd dichotomies,
like Dickey’s Sheep Boy, Pan, or David Cruse:

as pale, as enigmatic. White, or black?
My color was a song, a changing track.

Published by Bewildering Stories and selected as one of four short poems for the Review of issues 885-895



Veiled
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us ...

tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief ...  

ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered ...

and if you were to ask her,
she might say—
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,

and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.

Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Modern War Poems



Violets
by Michael R. Burch

Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to an indiscreet height

and you laughed,
abruptly demure,
outblushing shocked violets:

suddenly,
I knew:
everything had changed

and as you braided your hair
into long bluish plaits
the shadows empurpled,

the dragonflies’
last darting feints
dissolving mid-air,

we watched the sun’s long glide
into evening,
knowing and unknowing.

O, how the illusions of love
await us in the commonplace
and rare

then haunt our small remainder of hours.



The Tender Weight of Her Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

The tender weight of her sighs
lies heavily upon my heart;
apart from her, full of doubt,
without her presence to revolve around,
found wanting direction or course,
cursed with the thought of her grief,
believing true love is a myth,
with hope as elusive as tears,
hers and mine, unable to lie,
I sigh ...



Each Color a Scar
by Michael R. Burch

What she left here,
upon my cheek,
is a tear.

She did not speak,
but her intention
was clear,

and I was meek,
far too meek, and, I fear,
too sincere.

What she can never take
from my heart
is its ache;

for now we, apart,
are like leaves
without weight,

scattered afar
by love, or by hate,
each color a scar.



Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.

Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
blown to the lees
as fierce northern gales sever.

Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.



Almost
by Michael R. Burch

We had—almost—an affair.
You almost ran your fingers through my hair.
I almost kissed the almonds of your toes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

You almost contemplated using Nair
and adding henna highlights to your hair,
while I considered plucking you a Rose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

I almost found the words to say, “I care.”
We almost kissed, and yet you didn’t dare.
I heard coarse stubble grate against your hose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

You almost called me suave and debonair
(perhaps because my chest is pale and bare?).
I almost bought you edible underclothes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

I almost asked you where you kept your lair
and if by chance I might ****** you there.
You almost tweezed the redwoods from my nose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

We almost danced like Rogers and Astaire
on gliding feet; we almost waltzed on air ...
until I mashed your plain, unpolished toes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

I almost was strange Sonny to your Cher.
We almost sat in love’s electric chair
to be enlightninged, till our hearts unfroze.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.



Less Heroic Couplets: ****** Most Fowl!
by Michael R. Burch

“****** most foul!”
cried the mouse to the owl.

“Friend, I’m no sinner;
you’re merely my dinner.

As you fall on my sword,
take it up with the LORD!”

the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.




Less Heroic Couplets: Sweet Tarts
by Michael R. Burch

Love, beautiful but fatal to many bewildered hearts,
commands us to be faithful, then tempts us with sweets and tarts.
(If I were younger, I might mention
you’re such a temptation.)



Anti-Vegan Manifesto
by Michael R. Burch

Let us
avoid lettuce,
sincerely,
and also celery!



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.



Sinking
by Michael R. Burch

for Virginia Woolf

Weigh me down with stones ...
   fill all the pockets of my gown ...
      I’m going down,
         mad as the world
            that can’t recover,
to where even mermaids drown.



The Drawer of Mermaids
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Alina Karimova, who was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. Alina loves to draw mermaids and believes her fingers will eventually grow out.

Although I am only four years old,
they say that I have an old soul.
I must have been born long, long ago,
here, where the eerie mountains glow
at night, in the Urals.

A madman named Geiger has cursed these slopes;
now, shut in at night, the emphatic ticking
fills us with dread.
(Still, my momma hopes
that I will soon walk with my new legs.)

It’s not so much legs as the fingers I miss,
drawing the mermaids under the ledges.
(Observing, Papa will kiss me
in all his distracted joy;
but why does he cry?)

And there is a boy
who whispers my name.
Then I am not lame;
for I leap, and I follow.
(G’amma brings a wiseman who says

our infirmities are ours, not God’s,
that someday a beautiful Child
will return from the stars,
and then my new fingers will grow
if only I trust Him; and so

I am preparing to meet Him, to go,
should He care to receive me.)



Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch

Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows.
And there you go, skipping your way to school.
And here we are, drifting apart
like untethered balloons.

Here I am, creating "art,"
chanting in shadows,
pale as the crinoline moon,
ignoring your face.

There you go,
in diaphanous lace,
making another man’s heart swoon.
Suddenly, unthinkably, here he is,
taking my place.



Squall
by Michael R. Burch

There, in that sunny arbor,
in the aureate light
filtering through the waxy leaves
of a stunted banana tree,

I felt the sudden monsoon of your wrath,
the clattery implosions
and copper-bright bursts
of the bottoms of pots and pans.

I saw your swollen goddess’s belly
wobble and heave
in pregnant indignation,
turned tail, and ran.



If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...

You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your ******* ...

Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...

Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.



Ivy
by Michael R. Burch

“Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” – Pablo Neruda
“They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”

Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.

Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.

Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review



The Composition of Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

for poets who write late at night

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,

sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze

that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.



The Composition of Shadows (II)
by Michael R. Burch

We breathe and so we write;
the night
hums softly its accompaniment.

Pale phosphors burn;
the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean
we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’

strange golden weight,
the blood’s debate
within the heart. Here, resonant,

sounds’ shadows mass
against bright glass,
within the white Labyrinthian maze.

Through simple grace,
I touch your face,
ah words! And I would gaze

the night’s dark length
in waning strength
to find the words to feel

such light again.
O, for a pen
to spell love so ethereal.



The Peripheries of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Through waning afternoons we glide
the watery peripheries of love.
A silence, a quietude falls.

Above us—the sagging pavilions of clouds.
Below us—rough pebbles slowly worn smooth
grate in the gentle turbulence
of yesterday’s forgotten rains.

Later, the moon like a ******
lifts her stricken white face
and the waters rise
toward some unfathomable shore.

We sway gently in the wake
of what stirs beneath us,
yet leaves us unmoved ...
curiously motionless,

as though twilight might blur
the effects of proximity and distance,
as though love might be near—

as near
as a single cupped tear of resilient dew
or a long-awaited face.



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

The sea was not salt the first tide ...
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.

The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.

The sea was not salt the first tide ...
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.



Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.

A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor again.

In the twilight she gleams
with a festive light,
done with her trawlings,
ready to sleep . . .

Deep, deep, in delight
glide the creatures of night,
elusive and bright
as the poet’s dreams.



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.



Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

“What will you conceive in me?”—
I asked her. But she
only smiled.

“Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled ...
naked, and gladly.”

“What will become of me?”—
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.

Centuries later, I understand:
she whispered—“I Am.”



Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in her sway . . .

For, as suns seek horizons,
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!



Once
by Michael R. Burch

Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name ...

Once when her ******* were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist ...

Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant ...

Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed—
this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.



Passionate One
by Michael R. Burch

Love of my life,
light of my morning―
arise, brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.

Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven―
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.



What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?

How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?

Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?

Now I am truly lost!



Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch

When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,

when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath ...

tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?



don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved
(like your Heart)
and that even Light is bent
by your Gravity.



The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

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



Stay With Me Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

Stay with me tonight;
be gentle with me as the leaves are gentle
falling to the earth.
And whisper, O my love,
how that every bright thing, though scattered afar,
retains yet its worth.

Stay with me tonight;
be as a petal long-awaited blooming in my hand.
Lift your face to mine
and touch me with your lips
till I feel the warm benevolence of your breath’s
heady fragrance like wine.

That which we had
when pale and waning as the dying moon at dawn,
outshone the sun.
Hence, lead me back tonight
through bright waterfalls of light
to where we shine as one.



At Once
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Though she was fair,
though she sent me the epistle of her love at once
and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would dare
pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once,
the dark, haggard keeper of the lair,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would share
the all of her being, to heal me at once,
yet more than her touch I was unable bear.
I did not love her at once.

And yet she would care,
and pour out her essence ...
and yet—there was more!
I awoke from long darkness,

and yet—she was there.
I loved her the longer;
I loved her the more
because I did not love her at once.



Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



Improve yourself by others' writings, attaining freely what they purchased at the expense of experience. — Socrates, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
These are the best poems of Michael R. Burch in his own opinion (Part II).

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