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Erenn Oct 2014
The mind has its boundaries
Taking every life to its pasture
You often deny your existence is valid
Drained to flout all the people-
That tried to alleviate your worst outcome
You can’t foresee what’s imminent
Yet your past hinders you to move forward

Motions of the night sky
Appeases you within
The stars glinting like they know you exist
Taking every setback that you had
Full of misery & regret
You fathom what if you didn't live
It doesn't make any difference
To be conceived into eminence or filth

The fear of disappointment escalates
Disappointing your loved ones resents you
You concealed every skin of-
Impetus that espoused
Knowing you could be
Abundantly stronger than this
Yet fluctuation compels you
To cower in distress  

'Why can't I be normal?'
You questioned this in your head everyday
Fragments that made you elated dissipates-
Every time you tried to defeat yourself
Falling again & again

You’re afraid of losing your conscience-
Into the abyss that kept drawing you in
You conjure up notions of ingenuity
Just to rupture it repetitively

*Is this who you really are?
Is this what you really wanted?
To infinitely hate yourself?
You are better than this
I know it's not easy.
But, go out! It's not easy overcoming the enemy.
When the enemy is you. I get it. But this life, the life you're breathing has so much more to give. You have so much love to give. Let the hate out.
Be free. Don't let it end you,
knowing you're better than this.
(I repost this cause I think it deserves the recognition to spread the message that i wanna bring out)
Ah, doth swayeth the grass around the heavily-watered grounds, and even lilies are even busy in their pondering thoughts. Dim poetry is lighting up my insides, but still-canst not I, proceed on to my poetic writings, for I am committed to my dear dissertation-shamefully! Cannot even I enjoy watery sweets in front of my decent romantic candlelight-o, how destructible this serious nexus is!

Ah, and the temperatures' slender fits are but a new sensation to this melancholy surroundings. How my souls desire to be liberated-from this arduous work, and be staggered into the bifurcating melodies of the winds. O, but again-these final words are somehow required, how blatantly ungenerous! What a fine doomed environment the greenery out there hath duly changed into. White-dark stretches of tremor loom over every bald bush's horizon. O-what a dreadful, dreadful pic of sovereign menace! Not at all lyrical; much less gorgeous! Even the ultimate touches of serendipity have been broomed out of their localised regions. Broomed forcibly; that their weight and multitudes of collars whitened-and their innocent stomachs pulled systematically out. Ah, how dire-dire-dire; how perseveringly unbearable! A dawn at dusk, then-is a normal occurence and thus needeth t' be solitarily accepted. No more grains of sensitivity are left bare. Not even one-oh, no more! A tumultous slumber hinders everything, with a sense of original perplexity t'at haunts, and harms any of it t'at dares to pass by. O, what a disgrace t'at is secretly housed by t'is febrile nature! And o, t'is what happeneth when poets are left onto t'eir unstable hills of talents, with such a wild lagoon of inspirations about! Roam, roam as we doth-along the parked cars, all unread-and dolefully left untouched, like a moonlit baby straightening his face on top of the earth's liar *****. Ah, I knoweth t'is misery. A misery t'at is not only textual, but also virginal; but what I comprehendeth not is the unfairness of the preceding remark itself-if all miseries were crudely virginal, then wouldst it be unworthy of perceiving some others as personal? O, how t'is new confusion puzzles me, and vexes me all too badly! Beads of sweat are beginning to form on my humorous palms, with lines unabashed-and pictorial aggressions too unforgiving too resist. Ah, quiver doth I-as I am, now! O, thee-oh, mindful joyfulness and delight, descend once more onto me-and maketh my work once again thine-ah, and thy only, own vengeful blossom! And breathe onto my minds thy very own terrific seizure; maketh all the luring bright days no more an impediment and a cure; to every lavish thought clear-but hungrily unsure! Ah, as I knoweth it wouldst work-for thy seizure on my hand is gentle, ratifying, and safely classical. How I loveth thy little grasps-and shall always do! Like a moonlight, which had been carried along the stars' compulsive backs-until it truly screamed, while the bountiful morning retreated, and mounted its back. Mounted its back so that it could not see. Invasive are the stars-as thou knoweth, adorned with elaborations t'at humanity, and even the sincerest of gravities shall turn out. Ah, so 'tis how the moon's poor sailing soul is-like a chirping bird-trembled along the snowy night, but knocked back onto abysmal conclusions, soon as sunshine startled him and brought him back anew, to the pale hordes of mischievous, shadowy roses. Ah, all these routines are similar-but unsure, like thoughts circling-within a paper so impure. And when tragic love is bound, like the one I am having with 'im; everything shall crawl-and seem dearer than they seem; for nothing canst bind a heart which falls in love, until it darkeneth the rosiness of its own cheeks, and destroys its own kiss. Like how he hath impaired my heart; but I shall be a stone once more; abysses of my deliciously destroyed sapphire shall revive within the glades of my hand; and my massive tremors shall ever be concluded. O, love, o notion that I may not hate; bestow on my thy aberrant power-and free my tormented soul-o, my poor tormented soul, from the possible eternal slumber without tasting such a joy of thine once more! I am now trapped within a triangle I hated; I am no more of my precious self-my sublimity hath gone; hath attempted at disentangling himself so piercingly from me. I am no more terrific; I smell not like my own virginity-and much less, an ideal lady-t'at everyone shall so hysterically shout at, and pray for, ah, I hath been disinherited by the world.

Ah, shall I be a matter to your tasty thoughts, my love? For to thee I might hath been tentative, and not at all compulsory; I hath been disowned even, by my own poetry; my varied fate hath ignored and strayed me about. Ah, love, which danger shall I hate-and avoid? But should I, should I diverge from t'is homogeneous edge I so dreamily preached about? And canst thou but lecture me once more-on the distinctness between love and hate-in the foregoing-and the sometimes illusory truth of our inimical future? And for the love of this foreignness didst I revert to my first dreaded poetry-for the sake of t'is first sweetly-honeyed world. For the time being, it is perhaps unrighteous to think of thee; thou who firstly wert so sweet; thou who wert but too persuasive-and too magnanimous for every maiden's heart to bear. Thou who shone on me like an eternal fire-ah, sweet, but doth thou remember not-t'at thou art thyself immortal? Thou art but a disaster to any living creature-who has flesh and breath; for they diverge from life when time comes, and be defiled like a rusty old parish over one fretful stormy night. Ah, and here I present another confusion; should I reject my own faith therefrom? Ah, like the reader hath perhaps recognised, I am not an interactive poet; for I am egotistic and self-isolating. Ah, yet-I demand, sometimes, their possibly harshest criticism; to be fit into my undeniable authenticity and my other private authorial conventions. I admireth myself in my writing as much as I resolutely admireth thee; but shall we come, ever, into terms? Ah, thee, whose eyes are too crucial for my consciousness to look at. Ah, and yet-thou hath caused me simply far-too-adequate mounds of distress; their power tower over me, standing as a cold barrier between me and my own immaculate reality of discourse. Too much distress is, as the reader canst see, in my verse right now-and none is sufficiently consoling-all are unsweet, like a taste of scalding water and a tree of curses. Yes, that thou ought to believe just yet-t'at trees are bound to curses. Yester' I sheltered myself, under some bits of splitting clouds-and t'eir due mourning sways of rain, beneath a solid tree. With leaves giggling and roots unbecoming underneath-ah, t'eir shrieks were too selfish; ah, all terrible, and contained no positive merit at all-t'at they all became too vague and failed at t'eir venerable task of disorganising, and at the same time-stunning me. Ah, but t'eir yelling and gasping and choking were simply too ferociously disoriented, what a shame! Their art was too brutal, odd, and too thoroughly equanimious-and wouldst I have stood not t'ere for the entire three minutes or so-had such perks of abrupt thoughts of thee streamed onto my mind, and lightened up all the burdening whirls of mockery about me in just one second. O, so-but again, the sound melodies of rain were of a radical comfort to my ears-and t'at was the actual moment, when I realised t'at I truly loved him-and until today, the real horror in my heart saith t'at it is still him t'at I purely love-and shall always do. Though I may be no more of a pretty glimpse at the heart of his mirror, 'tis still his imagery I keepeth running into; and his vital reality. Ah, how with light steps I ran to him yester' morning; and caught him about his vigorous steps! All seemed ethereal, but the truthful width of the sun was still t'ere-and so was the lake's sparkling water; so benevolently encompassing us as we walked together onto our separated realms. And passing the cars, as we did, all t'at I absorbed and felt so neatly within my heart was the intuitive course; and the unavoidable beauty of falling in love. Ah, miracles, miracles, shalt thou ever cease to exist? Ah, bring but my Immortal back to me-as if I am still like I was back then, and of hating him before I am not guilty; make him mine now-even for just one night; make him hold my hands, and I shall free him from all his present melancholy and insipid trepidations. Ah, miracles; I doth love my Immortal more t'an I am permitted to do; and so if thou doth not-please doth trouble me once more; and grant, grant him to me-and clarify t'is tale of unbreathed love prettily, like never before.

As I have related above I may not be sufficient; I may not be fair-from a dark world doth I come, full not of royalty-but ambiguity, severed esteem, and gales-and gales, of unholy confidentiality. And 'tis He only, in His divine throne-t'at is worthy of every phrased gratitude, and thankful laughter; so t'is piece is just-though not artificial, a genuine reflection of what I feelest inside, about my yet unblessed love, and my doubtful pious feelings right now-and about which I am rather confused. Still, I am to be generous, and not to be by any chance, too brimming or hopeful; but I shall not be bashful about confessing t'is proposition of love-t'at I should hath realised from a good long time ago. Ah, I was but too arrogant within my pride-and even in my confessions of humility; I was too charmed by myself to revert to my extraordinary feelings. Ah, but again-thou art immortal, my love; so I should be afraid not-of ceasing to love thee; and as every brand-new day breathes life into its wheels-and is stirred to the living-once more, I know t'at the swells of nature; including all the crystallised shapes of th' universe-and the' faithful gardens of heaven, as well as all the aurochs, angels, and divinity above-and the skies' and oceans' satirical-but precious nymphs, are watching us, and shall forgive and purify us; I know t'at this is the sake of eternity we are fighting for. And for the first time in my life-I shall like to confess this bravely, selfishly, and publicly; so that wherever thou art-and I shall be, thou wilt know-and in the utmost certainty thou canst but shyly obtain, know with thy most honest sincerity; t'at I hath always loved thee, and shall forever love thee like this, Immortal.
Natalie Pugmire Dec 2014
Love everything, and everyone. Thank the grass for being a soft place to fall, and those who own the arms of your safe place to crash.
Love the girl who taunts you, love the boy who tries too hard.
Love the woman who screams that you will never make it, love the man who stares a little too long.
Do not waste too much time on loving yourself, for when you exude love you will receive it.
You must love those who do not deserve it, and all the while you will receive love you do not deserve.
For love is not a feeling, but an action.
For love is not restraining, but freeing.

2. When you start to notice your reflection, remember that it does not matter. A soul needs a home, and your home is a fine home. Your body keeps your soul safe, and warm, and fed. So worry more about what you put into your mind than your mouth, and never forget that your soul cares not of the shape of it’s home.

3. When you see someone who is in need of help, they become your obligation. The only true way to understand a person is to love them, and the best way to love a person is to serve them. There is no man or woman who was born undeserved of love, and you ought to give more than you think your heart will allow.

4. When lost, know that you do not have one sole purpose. You have many facets, and many talents. Each day you may have a different purpose, and each day it may not be a grand one, but each day it is an important one. Be open to things you did not think of yourself capable, and know that nobody cares about your embarrassments more than yourself.

5. Every day of your life you will make mistakes, and if you think that you have to right to belittle others because of theirs then honey, I am here to tell you that you are wrong. Unfair judgment hinders understanding, which hinders the most important thing of all: love.  

6. Forgive all, but do not trust all. Love all, but do not pleasure all. You are to lose yourself, to emerge yourself in the work and service of others. You are to overwhelm yourself with love and kindness, so much that it spills over. You are to give more than you have, and to take less than you need.

7. Do not worry about being happy. The search for happiness is never ending, and a path that has no destination. Lose yourself, and happiness will find you. Look for happiness, and you will lose it all.
I used to step on the solid ground
The grey asphalt with li'l pebbles in black in it
I used to walk with cemented pavement
Where no one hinders me to enjoy the tack I'm in.

You led me to the boat
And together, we left the crowd
My knees are shaking, as if I'm freezing
You guided me to enter that narrow boat
And I had nothing but myself to bring
For it may sink with tons of extra things.

We started sailing
The curtained sky was the scene
With lil stars painted on it
And the depth of the ocean was present
It bounces the crescent up there.

I felt the wind brushed my hair
He sounds so mad with the clouds supporting him
My feet trembles with fear as my faith does.

You are with me, oh Jesus
And I asked you if you care
For I may fall from where we are
And you may not see it and forget I was there at all.

Words come from your mouth
And the wind listened with your sweet voice
You brought peace and calmed my raging seas.

I trust no one but You
Even if I don't know how far but I'm ready though
Oh held my hands indeed,
Let my grip be frozen upon your hands.

I'll sit and take a look at the vistas
And move the boat as we sail
You'll teach me how to act
And wherever we'll go, You are with me.

(6/4/2014 @xirlleelang)
Coz I usually dream about waves.
Cné Oct 2015
Why
Why do you love the one you do?
Arrogant as he lives
Intriguing minds have not a clue.
He cheats, he lies and receives your endless forgives

Security he cannot propose
Financially, spiritually, emotional or otherwise.
Love unfaithfully he bestows
Disguised as Christian he justifies.

Smothered in the cocoon of his limited sphere,
Hinders flight for the beautiful butterfly,
Egotistically the coward oozes insincere.
Sadly pondering, inquiring minds ask Why?
Love is blind
mEb Nov 2010
Advocate of the nonexistant
You are all bends encircling
Circuts of truth verses lies is removed
When diagram of entrails is eviscerated


Attestation that hinders, lingers beyond
Concealing, subsisting, not we
Nothings are baseless, breathing is useless
Repudiate this knowing at once


Doctrines and concepts have derrived
Theories are growing while eras moved on
Delusions set in when axiom gone
Delusions are not when one dies


Attestation that hinders, lingers afar
Concealing, subsisting, not I
Everything's baseless, breathing is useless
Repudiate this knowing at once


Prostulate the higher is there
We all crave desolate space
Subside from afar a seperate reaps
Subside from afar there is none
[Dedicated to Austin Osman Spare]

Have pity ! show no pity !
Those eyes that send such shivers
Into my brain and spine : oh let them
Flame like the ancient city
Swallowed up by the sulphurous rivers
When men let angels fret them !

Yea ! let the south wind blow,
And the Turkish banner advance,
And the word go out : No quarter !
But I shall hod thee -so !
While the boys and maidens dance
About the shambles of slaughter !

I know thee who thou art,
The inmost fiend that curlest
Thy vampire tounge about
Earth's corybantic heart,
Hell's warrior that whirlest
The darts of horror and doubt !

Thou knowest me who I am
The inmost soul and saviour
Of man ; what hieroglyph
Of the dragon and the lamb
Shall thou and I engrave here
On Time's inscandescable cliff ?

Look ! in the plished granite,
Black as thy cartouche is with sins,
I read the searing sentence
That blasts the eyes that scan it :
"**** and SET be TWINS."
A fico for repentance !

Ay ! O Son of my mother
That snarled and clawed in her womb
As now we rave in our rapture,
I know thee, I love thee, brother !
Incestuous males that consumes
The light and the life that we capture.

Starve thou the soul of the world,
Brother, as I the body !
Shall we not glut our lust
On these wretches whom Fate hath hurled
To a hell of jesus and shoddy,
Dung and ethics and dust ?

Thou as I art Fate.
Coe then, conquer and kiss me !
Come ! what hinders? Believe me :
This is the thought we await.
The mark is fair ; can you miss me ?

See, how subtly I writhe !
Strange runes and unknown sigils
I trace in the trance that thrills us.
Death ! how lithe, how blithe
Are these male incestuous vigils !
Ah ! this is the spasm that kills us !

Wherefore I solemnly affirm
This twofold Oneness at the term.
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk ; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.

This weird is of the tongue of Khem,
The Conjuration used of them.
Whoso shall speak it, let him die,
His bowels rotting inwardly,
Save he uncover and caress
The God that lighteth his liesse.
Julia Gorrie Nov 2018
Worthlessness: The state of feeling unimportant and useless. This type of feeling is one that hits you directly in the center of your core, picking at your soul. One that makes your stomach feel saggy and your eyes like craters of the sea that over flows and blurs your sight.
Worthlessness is one that hinders the passing time as well your ability to move forward and it can come out of the void of extensive thinking.
It can cause your words to errupt and crackle off your tongue, only to be washed away by the heavy rain into a puddle of regret and sorrow.
All I see on the horizon is a dark blue hue that Cascades over the whole world.
All I feel is the bitter, frozen winds and the soft snow that numbs my skin.
All I can think of is black and grey clouds that wrap me up and block out any light that reaches out to me.
All that I receive for my rescue is a big brown ship that says "I'm sorry, the weight you carry is too much for us", then sails away, leaving me to drown in the middle of the ocean.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
Komm, Du (“Come, You”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.

English translation originally published by Better Than Starbucks

Original text:

Komm du

Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne,
heilloser Schmerz im leiblichen Geweb:
wie ich im Geiste brannte, sieh, ich brenne
in dir; das Holz hat lange widerstrebt,
der Flamme, die du loderst, zuzustimmen,
nun aber nähr’ ich dich und brenn in dir.
Mein hiesig Mildsein wird in deinem Grimmen
ein Grimm der Hölle nicht von hier.
Ganz rein, ganz planlos frei von Zukunft stieg
ich auf des Leidens wirren Scheiterhaufen,
so sicher nirgend Künftiges zu kaufen
um dieses Herz, darin der Vorrat schwieg.
Bin ich es noch, der da unkenntlich brennt?
Erinnerungen reiß ich nicht herein.
O Leben, Leben: Draußensein.
Und ich in Lohe. Niemand der mich kennt.

Keywords/Tags: German, translation, Rilke, last poem, death, fever, burning, pyre, leukemia, pain, consumed, consummation, flesh, spirit, rage, pawn, free, purge, purged, inside, outside, lost, unknown, alienated, alienation



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
one of the soul’s lethal raptors, well aware of your nature.
As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance,
stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling
while the curious youth peered through the window.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps from inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to be?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar
Tyler Cobain Jun 2014
I covet the hideous cult of fame. Spending my days in despondent cafés manically scribbling passionate love letters to recognition.

I'm not in love I'm insane.

Suffering from self-diagnosed misunderstood artist syndrome. My heart cries silent. I am a shadow in the distance. Warped, distorted and dark I scream alone; never to be touched.

I am a poser, a fame ****** and a hero worshiper. My vitriol view on the world hinders me. Constantly on the verge of crying in public. Staring at train tracks, they invite me away. Looking more comfortable then a bed.

I try to live in the now but the future petrifies me. I can't escape my own mind.

Y culture, My culture, Counter culture, **** culture, Love culture, Hate culture, Phonies.

I can’t see past the haze of disappointment I have designed myself. I smoke **** because it relaxes me, makes me feel like what I assume normality feels like. I drink because it makes me feel like how I assume those happy people feel. I take heroine because it makes me feel euphoric and takes me close enough to death that I want to live another day.

A brutal fear beats my anaemic mind. A peculiar fear grips my inner-self and I can’t bear to open my eyes and see that I had survived the night. I become saddened by the thought that I might also survive the day, living to see what I will be tomorrow.

Happy in the madness. Longing for that sick feeling. In love with the sadness. Searching in the dark recesses of the mind for inspiration. I can’t see past my fate, it’s too dark. I sit and source inspiration through the emotions and physical fits of *******. Self-abuse. Clawing for red gold in the catacombs that meander through my pale arms.

Beat myself out of sight beat me out of sight beat me beat me till I float. Beat me beat me till I float.

I am a poser, a fame ****** and a hero worshiper. My vitriol view on the world hinders me. Constantly on the verge of crying in public. Staring at train tracks, they invite me away. Looking more comfortable than a bed.

Relapse is fine by me. I want this. I want this. I want this. I want this. Not a tortured artist just tortured. Not a tortured soul just a cracked shell. In the name of art but in the corner of sickness.

Beat myself out of sight beat me out of sight beat me beat me till I float. Beat me beat me till I float.
Poverty,
a dagger of thousands years,
shedding endlessly,the blood of beggars...
Striving,
suffering,
crying,
begging,
Indeed,ready they,who you call Paupers,are to do anything,
only to earn a living...

On the edge of knives,
poor ones lives their daily lives...
The children,all set to walk towards education,
but hunger hinders their concentration...
Still they are ready to do anything,
only to earn a living...
Starvation and Malnutrition are mere words,
compared to what they are really enduring...

Like us, they have wishes,
simple desires,
wants to have:
Proper water to drink,
Proper food to eat,
proper place to live...

God we are not,but their small desires,we can satisfy..
Their fate,we can change,
as their happiness,is still within range..

Together let's save the poor ones,
because a simple act of caring can create an endless ripple...
-Sharvish
A modification made to one of my written poems :)
Hope you like it!
Share if it is worth of being shared
don't if its not..
but do help the poor ones,..
not because they depends on you but because they don't really deserve the life they are living..
They deserve something better..
After all humans have equal rights..
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
    That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
    Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day’s events,
    That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
    Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,
    That makes another’s virtues less;
The revel of the ruddy wine,
    And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;
    The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings
    Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
    That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes
    The action of the nobler will;—

All these must first be trampled down
    Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
    The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;
    But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
    The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone
    That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen, and better known,
    Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear
    Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
    As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept
    Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
    Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore
    With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern—unseen before—
    A path to higher destinies,

Nor doom the irrevocable Past
    As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
    To something nobler we attain.
You feel like you want to run away,
Every time you feel you want to take a flight
But you still can't help it but to feel that fright
Believe in yourself, taking not a sway

You feel like you want to run away,
Turning you gray and showing you what may
Something hinders and tells you not
Break free and untie that knot
Nik Bland Sep 2012
She tells me of the loves she's found
She tells of the loves she's lost
And I linger to fix her broken wings
At, I wonder, what cost
So that she might go out with confidence
To find heartbreak again
It matters not, I've not forgot
That I am still her friend
That I am still her leaning post
That I am her safety net
Each night she goes whilst I stay
And each day she pours her regrets
Into my brain, Into my soul
So I might empathize
And I sit there stroking her hair
And what she doesn't realize
Is that I know her favorite color is yellow
That her favorite song is "Almost Lover"
That she went through a pregnancy scare
And a fight with her dad from which she'll never recover
That she giggles without fail whenever someone say "flabberghasted"
And I know that she's had only five boyfriends
None of which that have lasted
I know she sings inside the shower
Even though she may deny it
I know she snores and drools on her pillow
And that she prays someday Krispy Kreme doughnuts will come diet
I know that she cries whenever she thinks too much
That she looks forward to marriage
The feeling of her husband's touch
And  someday a baby in a carriage
And I know more than most about this girl
The one with her head on my lap
The one who's silent every time she cries
Yet is snorting every time she laughs
But here I sit with her alone
Barred from going any farther than friend
The girl whose afraid to lose me
Who torments me without end
The one who hinders my love for her
And therefore invokes my selfishness
Running on my brain in steel cletes
While I feign happiness
So pause time
Because my words for her are unheard and few
A chance is all I'd ask of her to show both my love and dedication are true
And yet she stands in fear of not losing me
But of getting in the deep end of the pool
And thus lies the complex irony
And why in life I play the fool
For I am the love of her life that has been there
And in heartbreak or joy, I'm all in
Yet because of fear I stay a friend
Ending where love should begin
Filmore Townsend Feb 2016
take some time to count, to verb
some syllables for some wrecked
page. a Lostman's book in ****-
tered thought; nature, and death,
and sole body. then, when she talked
about her better years as those of
drug-induced past-life. younger than
yesterday kinda years. that which finds
metronome slowing, the Universe energy
vibrating weaker while growth found in
apathy, and solid death of purposeful
movement.
                         then a shot,
that moment to break from wretched self-
criticism -- that post-idyllic criticism --
that which hinders forward movement.
           the shot,
which finds contentedness thru some
repetitious mentality . .
                                                 [lost it]
         . . repetitious fallacy?
              [got it]
let's leave some break for transmigration
in thought to prelude of forward movement.
understanding now is not enough; but
agreement in hast. but dissolution to that self-
efface hit rapid. brought back, her thought
of the younger than yesterday years; now,
now is the greatest point of any a count-
less past-life. from them, no matter a sweating
season, the Long Dark, or the cycle-seasons,
             all is now. and never
did she or i talk of the past again.
                   our foci,         [one second]
drawn to point of second and next second upon
following and on for another. now, shivery
wine-drunk, reminiscent of tiny furnace and
woolen blanket apartment. that now,
that was true striving of second successful ***** Den.
        a great thought downfall; she's been long gone.
            [next second now]
she complained of the wind. her eyes were freezing,
she said; her life has begun to bore her, she said.
we moved to playground and climbed in the
slide; a nice dampening. cold plastic barely felt for
her. this Long Dark, and in it, an always fleeting
warmth.                  [break
                        ­to **** for concision in thought]
now then, a diner, of course this face is known. they also
know a companion vacant. asked of, pleasant enough;
responded, well enough.
       [disheartened, well enough]
and then, wholly intrinsic with a blasphemous self-
Oralee while passing time trying to think. unable,
if only for sole point of trying. and epochs worth,
thought and gone; now compulsive, now unres-
ponsive, now chewing lips because they're part gum.
-JCM- Jul 2018
Your soft voice
Lifts my heavy heart
Your sweet face
Hinders my sour days
Three words I say
Are not just a phrase

-JCM-
kimin Jul 2018
At the back of my mind,
there are many thoughts,
There's always that one voice,
The voice convinced me of things,
If not all the time, it will be some of the time.
I never thought it could harm anyone,
In particular, I never thought it could,
But I underestimated the small voice,
I misunderstood its determination.
It takes control of me, feeding me,
With thoughts that hinders me from living,
Deters me from my path,
Bind me from reality.
I give in to it a couple of time,
My weak self can't seem to win over it,
Their determination overthrow my rationality,
Controls my life and action.
It tells me I'm not good enough, it tells me,
I'm not worth it, it tells me things that hurts.
It retreats sometime, and when it does,  I get so happy.
I could be happy with no second thoughts,  I can respond.
I can smile, I can laugh.  
It felt liberating to do so.
It felt as if everything are perfect;  my life is perfect.
It made me forget.
But then,  it didn't want me to forget.
The chain that held them captive wasn't strong enough,
So they broke free, they resurfaces.
"I'm back" it claims.

- ponder
my mind is in the state of chaos. I thought I should write it down.
Alice Burns Jun 2013
An exit for expression
An admittance with no fee
A mind free from excluding
An exhibition without end

The centerpiece- an installation
Ever moving within its frame
Its contents constantly disappearing
To reveal a blank canvas to be filled once more

The artist turns out to be me, and me alone
Leaving my post is an improbability
As the gallery holding me hostage is my own mind
Yet in truth, I find happiness in this prison cell

Without sleep I find energy from passers by
Who refuel my passion with their coins
Thrown into my hat beside me
Tokens of positivity that they cannot directly give

The door is always open
Even to those who find fault with the artist
Who tease me in my chained feet
And hurl their abuse with intent to delay completion

Yet still, I welcome companionship of viewers
Without noticing the deviants who scratch away at my painting
My selflessness renders me unable to notice evils
Blinding me with the future I paint before my eyes

My piece is never mastered
For I am distracted by evils constant approach
Presenting me with gifts of seeds, that grow in my soils
Only to blossom as weeds, and eat away at all goodness

But my grounds are open, and my job demands time
Rarely do I have the time to look upon works accomplished
But I steal a moment as sun and moon change shifts
Only to be met a view that gives no happiness as before

My stubborn positivity keeps defences up
Protecting myself from taunters and ghosts who take refuge in corners
I am distracted by my own optimism, the joy of what I do
But it hinders me, in ways I cannot defeat

My ability to seek vengeance was never yielded nor encouraged
So instinctively as always, I turn not to the voices behind me
And paint upon the canvas once more
The doors still open
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Poems about Leaves and Leave Taking (i.e., leaving friends and family, loss, death, parting, separation, divorce, etc.)


Leave Taking
by Michael R. Burch

Brilliant leaves abandon
battered limbs
to waltz upon ecstatic winds
until they die.

But the barren and embittered trees
lament the frolic of the leaves
and curse the bleak
November sky.

Now, as I watch the leaves'
high flight
before the fading autumn light,
I think that, perhaps, at last I may

have learned what it means to say
"goodbye."

Published by The Lyric, Mindful of Poetry, There is Something in the Autumn (anthology). Keywords/Tags: autumn, leaves, fall, falling, wind, barren, trees, goodbye, leaving, farewell, separation, age, aging, mortality, death, mrbepi, mrbleave

This poem started out as a stanza in a much longer poem, "Jessamyn's Song," which dates to around age 14 or 15, or perhaps a bit later. But I worked on the poem several times over the years until it was largely finished in 1978. I am sure of the completion date because that year the poem was included in my first large poetry submission manuscript for a chapbook contest.



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.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, this poem has since been translated into Russian, Macedonian, Turkish, Arabic and Romanian.



Something

for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which finality swept into a corner... where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

Published by There is Something in the Autumn, The Eclectic Muse, Setu, FreeXpression, Life and Legends, Poetry Super Highway, Poet's Corner, Promosaik, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse. Also translated into Romanian by Petru Dimofte, into Turkish by Nurgül Yayman, turned into a YouTube video by Lillian Y. Wong, and used by the Windsor Jewish Community Centre during a candle-lighting ceremony



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

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.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.

Originally published by Measure



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...

Originally published by Hibiscus (India)



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! "
the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.

Published by Lighten Upand in Potcake Chapbook #7



escape!

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.

Published by Andwerve and Bewildering Stories



Love Has a Southern Flavor

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle's spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume...

Love's Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations' dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree's
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight...

Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

Published by The Lyric, Contemporary Sonnet, The Eclectic Muse, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Setu (India) , Victorian Violet Press and Trinacria



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.



Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem―where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.

There's something like love
in the rhythms of night
―in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end―
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.

So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
"If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!"
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.



Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.

Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.

There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.

The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.

They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science ...
after all, what is life?

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.



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.

Published by Penny Dreadful, Carnelian, Romantics Quarterly, Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Life & Times



Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

Winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest; published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Mandrake Poetry Review, Carnelian, Poem Kingdom, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Famous Poets and Poems, FreeXpression, PW Review, Poetic Voices, Poetry Renewal and Poetry Life & Times



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?

Originally published as “Baring Pale Flesh” by Poetic License/Monumental Moments



At Tintagel
by Michael R. Burch

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 is to 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?

Originally published by Songs of Innocence, then subsequently by Celtic Twilight, Fables, Fickle Muses and Poetry Life & Times



Isolde's Song
by Michael R. Burch

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.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels' tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight, then by Celtic Lifestyles and Auldwicce



Morgause's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Before he was my brother,
he was my lover,
though certainly not the best.

I found no joy
in that addled boy,
nor he at my breast.

Why him? Why him?
The years grow dim.
Now it's harder and harder to say...

Perhaps girls and boys
are the god's toys
when the skies are gray.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight as "The First Time"



Pellinore's Fancy
by Michael R. Burch

What do you do when your wife is a nag
and has sworn you to hunt neither fish, fowl, nor stag?
When the land is at peace, but at home you have none,
Is that, perchance, when... the Questing Beasts run?



The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Northern Flight: Lancelot's Last Love Letter to Guinevere
by Michael R. Burch

"Get thee to a nunnery..."

Now that the days have lengthened, I assume
the shadows also lengthen where you pause
to watch the sun and comprehend its laws,
or just to shiver in the deepening gloom.

But nothing in your antiquarian eyes
nor anything beyond your failing vision
repeals the night. Religion's circumcision
has left us worlds apart, but who's more wise?

I think I know you better now than then—
and love you all the more, because you are
... so distant. I can love you from afar,
forgiving your flight north, far from brute men,
because your fear's well-founded: God, forbid,
was bound to fail you here, as mortals did.

Originally published by Rotary Dial



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Truces
by Michael R. Burch

We must sometimes wonder if all the fighting related to King Arthur and his knights was really necessary. In particular, it seems that Lancelot fought and either captured or killed a fairly large percentage of the population of England. Could it be that Arthur preferred to fight than stay at home and do domestic chores? And, honestly now, if he and his knights were such incredible warriors, who would have been silly enough to do battle with them? Wygar was the name of Arthur's hauberk, or armored tunic, which was supposedly fashioned by one Witege or Widia, quite possibly the son of Wayland Smith. The legends suggest that Excalibur was forged upon the anvil of the smith-god Wayland, who was also known as Volund, which sounds suspiciously like Vulcan...

Artur took Cabal, his hound,
and Carwennan, his knife,
    and his sword forged by Wayland
    and Merlyn, his falcon,
and, saying goodbye to his sons and his wife,
he strode to the Table Rounde.

"Here is my spear, Rhongomyniad,
and here is Wygar that I wear,
    and ready for war,
    an oath I foreswore
to fight for all that is righteous and fair
from Wales to the towers of Gilead."

But none could be found to contest him,
for Lancelot had slewn them, forsooth,
so he hastened back home, for to rest him,
till his wife bade him, "Thatch up the roof! "

Originally published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, then by Celtic Twilight



Midsummer-Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term "banshee") and, eventually, to the druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgause and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil's
fen...

if nevermore again.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



The Kiss of Ceridwen
by Michael R. Burch

The kiss of Ceridwen
I have felt upon my brow,
and the past and the future
have appeared, as though a vapor,
mingling with the here and now.

And Morrigan, the Raven,
the messenger, has come,
to tell me that the gods, unsung,
will not last long
when the druids' harps grow dumb.



Merlyn, on His Birth
by Michael R. Burch

Legend has it that Zephyr was an ancestor of Merlin. In this poem, I suggest that Merlin was an albino, which might have led to claims that he had no father, due to radical physical differences between father and son. This would have also added to his appearance as a mystical figure. The reference to Ursa Major, the bear, ties the birth of Merlin to the future birth of Arthur, whose Welsh name ("Artos" or "Artur") means "bear." Morydd is another possible ancestor of Merlin's. In Welsh names "dd" is pronounced "th."

I was born in Gwynedd,
or not born, as some men claim,
and the Zephyr of Caer Myrrdin
gave me my name.

My father was Madog Morfeyn
but our eyes were never the same,
nor our skin, nor our hair;
for his were dark, dark
—as our people's are—
and mine were fairer than fair.

The night of my birth, the Zephyr
carved of white stone a rune;
and the ringed stars of Ursa Major
outshone the cool pale moon;
and my grandfather, Morydd, the seer
saw wheeling, a-gyre in the sky,
a falcon with terrible yellow-gold eyes
when falcons never fly.



Merlyn's First Prophecy
by Michael R. Burch

Vortigern commanded a tower to be built upon Snowden,
but the earth would churn and within an hour its walls would cave in.

Then his druid said only the virginal blood of a fatherless son,
recently shed, would ever hold the foundation.

"There is, in Caer Myrrdin, a faery lad, a son with no father;
his name is Merlyn, and with his blood you would have your tower."

So Vortigern had them bring the boy, the child of the demon,
and, taciturn and without joy, looked out over Snowden.

"To **** a child brings little praise, but many tears."
Then the mountain slopes rang with the brays of Merlyn's jeers.

"Pure poppycock! You fumble and bumble and heed a fool.
At the base of the rock the foundations crumble into a pool! "

When they drained the pool, two dragons arose, one white and one red,
and since the old druid was blowing his nose, young Merlyn said:

"Vortigern is the white, Ambrosius the red; now, watch, indeed."
Then the former died as the latter fed and Vortigern peed.

Published by Celtic Twilight



It Is Not the Sword!
by Michael R. Burch

This poem illustrates the strong correlation between the names that appear in Welsh and Irish mythology. Much of this lore predates the Arthurian legends, and was assimilated as Arthur's fame (and hyperbole)grew. Caladbolg is the name of a mythical Irish sword, while Caladvwlch is its Welsh equivalent. Caliburn and Excalibur are later variants.

"It is not the sword,
but the man, "
said Merlyn.
But the people demanded a sign—
the sword of Macsen Wledig,
Caladbolg, the "lightning-shard."

"It is not the sword,
but the words men follow."
Still, he set it in the stone
—Caladvwlch, the sword of kings—
and many a man did strive, and swore,
and many a man did moan.

But none could budge it from the stone.

"It is not the sword
or the strength, "
said Merlyn,
"that makes a man a king,
but the truth and the conviction
that ring in his iron word."

"It is NOT the sword! "
cried Merlyn,
crowd-jostled, marveling
as Arthur drew forth Caliburn
with never a gasp,
with never a word,

and so became their king.



Uther's Last Battle
by Michael R. Burch

When Uther, the High King,
unable to walk, borne upon a litter
went to fight Colgrim, the Saxon King,
his legs were weak, and his visage bitter.
"Where is Merlyn, the sage?
For today I truly feel my age."

All day long the battle raged
and the dragon banner was sorely pressed,
but the courage of Uther never waned
till the sun hung low upon the west.
"Oh, where is Merlyn to speak my doom,
for truly I feel the chill of the tomb."

Then, with the battle almost lost
and the king besieged on every side,
a prince appeared, clad all in white,
and threw himself against the tide.
"Oh, where is Merlyn, who stole my son?
For, truly, now my life is done."

Then Merlyn came unto the king
as the Saxons fled before a sword
that flashed like lightning in the hand
of a prince that day become a lord.
"Oh, Merlyn, speak not, for I see
my son has truly come to me.

And today I need no prophecy
to see how bright his days will be."
So Uther, then, the valiant king
met his son, and kissed him twice—
the one, the first, the one, the last—
and smiled, and then his time was past.



Small Tales
by Michael R. Burch

According to legend, Arthur and Kay grew up together in Ector's court, Kay being a few years older than Arthur. Borrowing from Mary Stewart, I am assuming that Bedwyr (later Anglicized to Bedivere)might have befriended Arthur at an early age. By some accounts, Bedwyr was the original Lancelot. In any case, imagine the adventures these young heroes might have pursued (or dreamed up, to excuse tardiness or "lost" homework assignments). Manawydan and Llyr were ancient Welsh gods. Cath Pulag was a monstrous, clawing cat. ("Sorry teach! My theme paper on Homer was torn up by a cat bigger than a dragon! And meaner, too! ")Pen Palach is more or less a mystery, or perhaps just another old drinking buddy with a few good beery-bleary tales of his own. This poem assumes that many of the more outlandish Arthurian legends began more or less as "small tales, " little white lies which simply got larger and larger with each retelling. It also assumes that most of these tales came about just as the lads reached that age when boys fancy themselves men, and spend most of their free time drinking and puking...

When Artur and Cai and Bedwyr
were but scrawny lads
they had many a ***** adventure
in the still glades
of Gwynedd.
When the sun beat down like an oven
upon the kiln-hot hills
and the scorched shores of Carmarthen,
they went searching
and found Manawydan, the son of Llyr.
They fought a day and a night
with Cath Pulag (or a screeching kitten),
rousted Pen Palach, then drank a beer
and told quite a talltale or two,
till thems wasn't so shore which'un's tails wus true.

And these have been passed down to me, and to you.



The Song of Amergin
by Michael R. Burch

Amergin is, in the words of Morgan Llywelyn, "the oldest known western European poet." Robert Graves said: "English poetic education should, really, begin not with The Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin." Amergin was one of the Milesians, or sons of Mil: Gaels who invaded Ireland and defeated the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, thereby establishing a Celtic beachhead, not only on the shores of the Emerald Isle, but also in the annals of Time and Poetry.

He was our first bard
and we feel in his dim-remembered words
the moment when Time blurs...

and he and the Sons of Mil
heave oars as the breakers mill
till at last Ierne—green, brooding—nears,

while Some implore seas cold, fell, dark
to climb and swamp their flimsy bark
... and Time here also spumes, careers...

while the Ban Shee shriek in awed dismay
to see him still the sea, this day,
then seek the dolmen and the gloam.



Stonehenge
by Michael R. Burch

Here where the wind imbues life within stone,
I once stood
and watched as the tempest made monuments groan
as though blood
boiled within them.

Here where the Druids stood charting the stars
I can tell
they longed for the heavens... perhaps because
hell
boiled beneath them?



The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse
by Michael R. Burch

"I actually visited the island and walked across those mass graves of 30, 000 Irish men, women and children, and I played a little tune on me whistle. I found it very peaceful, and there was relief there." - Paddy Maloney of The Chieftans

There was relief there,
and release,
on Île Grosse
in the spreading gorse
and the cry of the wild geese...

There was relief there,
without remorse
when the tin whistle lifted its voice
in a tune of artless grief,
piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth.
And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief,
but of their faith and belief—
like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf.

When ravenous famine set all her demons loose,
driving men to the seas like lemmings,
they sought here the clemency of a better life, or death,
and their belief in God gave them hope, a sense of peace.

These were proud men with only their lives to owe,
who sought the liberation of a strange new land.
Now they lie here, ragged row on ragged row,
with only the shadows of their loved ones close at hand.

And each cross, their ancient burden and their glory,
reflects the death of sunlight on their story.

And their tale is sad—but, O, their faith was grand!



At Cædmon's Grave
by Michael R. Burch

"Cædmon's Hymn, " composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon's verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker's ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.

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

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—

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

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



faith(less), a coronavirus poem
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Habeas Corpus
by Michael R. Burch

from “Songs of the Antinatalist”

I have the results of your DNA analysis.
If you want to have children, this may induce paralysis.
I wish I had good news, but how can I lie?
Any offspring you have are guaranteed to die.
It wouldn’t be fair—I’m sure you’ll agree—
to sentence kids to death, so I’ll waive my fee.



Villanelle: Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.



Haunted
by Michael R. Burch

Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.

Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.

Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.

Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.

Published by Romantics Quarterly



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

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

This is one of my earliest poems, written around age 14-15 when we were living with my grandfather in his house on Chilton Street, within walking distance of the Nashville fairgrounds. I remember walking to the fairgrounds, stopping at a Dairy Queen along the way, and swimming at a public pool. But I believe the Ferris wheel only operated during the state fair. So my “educated guess” is that this poem was written during the 1973 state fair, or shortly thereafter. I remember watching people hanging suspended in mid-air, waiting for carnies to deposit them safely on terra firma again.



Insurrection
by Michael R. Burch

She has become as the night—listening
for rumors of dawn—while the dew, glistening,
reminds me of her, and the wind, whistling,
lashes my cheeks with its soft chastening.

She has become as the lights—flickering
in the distance—till memories old and troubling
rise up again and demand remembering ...
like peasants rebelling against a mad king.

Originally published by The Chained Muse



Success
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

We need our children to keep us humble
between toast and marmalade;

there is no time for a ticker-tape parade
before bed, no award, no bright statuette

to be delivered for mending skinned knees,
no wild bursts of approval for shoveling snow.

A kiss is the only approval they show;
to leave us―the first great success they achieve.



Sappho's Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call,
while the pale calla lilies lie
listening,
glistening . . .
this is their night, the first night of fall.

Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone . . .
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.

Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I’m alone . . .
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.

NOTE: The calla lily symbolizes beauty, purity, innocence, faithfulness and true devotion. According to Greek mythology, when the Milky Way was formed by the goddess Hera’s breast milk, the drops that fell to earth became calla lilies.



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

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

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

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

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



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.



Premonition
by Michael R. Burch

Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their forced laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...

and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...

and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.

And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
to be wiped clean, like slate, by the Eraser, Fate,
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...

You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking sagely above ...

Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.

I vividly remember writing this poem after an office party the year I co-oped with AT&T (at that time the largest company in the world, with presumably a lot of office parties). This would have been after my sophomore year in college, making me around 20 years old. The poem is “true” except that I was not the host because the party was at the house of one of the upper-level managers. Nor was I dating anyone seriously at the time. Keywords/Tags: premonition, office, party, parting, eve, evening, stranger, strangers, wine, laughter, moon, shadows



Survivors
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9/11 and their families

In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:

a shiver of “empathy.”

We too are “survivors,”
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death

like a turtle retracting its neck.



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who
was born on September 11, 2001 and who
died at age nine, shot to death ...

Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm ― I hope you hear it.

Much love I bring ― I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.

Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the evil things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.

And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.

Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short ... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here ...

I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bring them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.



The Locker
by Michael R. Burch

All the dull hollow clamor has died
and what was contained,
removed,

reproved
adulation or sentiment,
left with the pungent darkness

as remembered as the sudden light.



Tremble
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.



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue―
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise―
adagio, the music she now hears;
and we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars’ bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.



Komm, Du ("Come, You")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Precipice
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

They will teach you to scoff at love
from the highest, windiest precipice of reason.

Do not believe them.

There is no place safe for you to fall
save into the arms of love.
save into the arms of love.



Love’s Extreme Unction
by Michael R. Burch

Lines composed during Jeremy’s first Nashville Christian football game (he played tuba), while I watched Beth watch him.

Within the intimate chapels of her eyes—
devotions, meditations, reverence.
I find in them Love’s very residence
and hearing the ardent rapture of her sighs
I prophesy beatitudes to come,
when Love like hers commands us, “All be One!”



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar

Published as the collection "Leave Taking"
Silent Sanctuary Jul 2016
Life is a continuous matter of common observation. It enables us to realize, that each one of us, is a vivid and complex mortal living an epic story. One that carries on and on invisibly around you, like an anthill sprawling deep underground with several elaborate passageways to thousands of lives that you won’t have the chance to know.

As time passes us by, we can’t help the rushing flow of frightening responsibilities coming through our way. As a result, we tend to focus more on these perennially problematic things, instead of looking at the bigger picture, which hinders us from exploring the beautifully intricate world we live in. However, as human beings, even if we choose to neglect these duties and just start enjoying the moments we have to explore this diverse environment, we’d always be afraid of what’s going to happen next, or the consequences of our actions to the unknown future. It can’t be helped, as we are all fear mongering creatures, crippled by uncertainties that may never happen and not even affect us at all.    

Despite our poor condition as temporary mortals in this world, we must always keep in mind that we exist in this universe to see our world unfold on its own beyond our imagination. To be risky enough to find our own adventure to keep us sane from the struggles we face in life, to see beyond barriers that others find to be a simple dead end, to draw things you love close to empower you to do the best of what you can with your abilities, and to find your true purpose in this life to be able to feel alive with zeal and vigor. That, to me, that is the true meaning and quintessence of life.
TKO Aug 2016
It's been going on three years now,
It gets worse and I talk about it less.
Three years of swimming upstream
In a river of cognitive stress.

I don't recall what it's like
To feel rested after a restful night.
I don't remember not feeling high
Simply because all of the lights are too bright.

Friends presume that all is well
But it hinders me every day.
It is a dim room with stagnant air.
Grey clouds that never change.

I can't keep up anymore,
It's far too much of a strain,
Ever since the incident long ago
That bludgeoned and blunted my brain.

I trudge through every day
Shoes weighted with lead.
It feels like a dream
Because it's all in my head.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
it's a paradox of yevgeny zamyatin, that the true rebellion is caused by a stress of the necessity of dreaming... talk to any schizoid individual and you find they're the dream manufacturers... dreams happen in the safe environment of the laboratory of the unconscious... they're the socially acceptable hallucinations... it's even socially acceptable to interpret them... which i find very odd... why should unconscious hallucinations be socially acceptable and profitable and career crafting and conscious hallucinations be socially stigmatised? ah the safety, the environment of the freduain interpretation of dreams: well... he's ******* asleep, isn't he?! ******.

after my usual walks drinking, i tend to enter the
realm of heat and christmas tree
a little bit too brooding,
i just painted a picasso or a kandinsky,
burnt it, and then am told to "plagiarise" it...
i don't like the approach nietczsche had
taking a notebook with him
and writing his thoughts written,
i like the way my faculty memory
eats the immediacy of thinking
as counter to the translation of descartes'
theory equating existence with thought
as if thought could prove i exist
thus uncoupling it from the original:
thought and doubt.
memory is central by comparison,
i have the revision from the miscarriage of descartes'
aim: memini ergo cogito.
it makes sense, given i started the night off
buying three san miguel bottles at tesco,
buying five beers at the turk,
spotting russell the schizoid-affective man
huntched in a corner...
told him five minutes max...
started talking with him
about the ol' sailor's narrative... turbulent noons
and midnights with a bottle of jack...
wide eyed russell every time i speak to him
reflected...
i remember drinking my first coffee aged 7...
i was born with a heart condition...
i shouldn't have... live dangerously though...
drank it... magic!
i remember the taste even now.
the cognitive me is not the existential me...
odd, isn't it?
i should have kept the original kandinsky,
but i burnt it and kept the plagiarism...
why is it that the function of memory
is paramount to mental health?
this prof. of psychology itemised this girl
who's north mania south an airplane descending
from the height vector with the ears popping...
why is it that i can remember me aged 7
and most people got cheated into total engagement
in life in the orientation of satisfied or dis-satisfied
expression of puberty?
if the faculty of memory is not defended
then diseases enter...
not one of the diseased is like an original adam,
like translation of original adam, i.e. mozart beethoven
einstein...
good enough to be without plain jane as narrator
and puppeteer...
let the strings do the talking, please!
i'm in love with ****-****** literature...
take that **** of yours, that suitcase
of ***** stockings to your mother to give it a eco-friendly
spin of the washing-machine...
**** that crap should that crap enter my heart...
you heard of ****** latin? i think you have,
it's not church slavonic, it's rude latin...
the type of thing that adds oil on the cogs
and makes you adherent to the philosophy:
pause for thought or pause for fake vocabulary?
i sweat with oaths to add fluid...
if you're offended by **** and not f
ck you
must be really appreciative of pronography...
so they said: we must rid the word of a vowel
and expose the people with **** corn bits between the teeth!
well... it worked...
i didn't tell you remember the pythagorean theory
you were taught aged 12... i told you
to remember you aged 12... like i remember nathanel
with his briefcase in year 8 in math class...
like i remember this english teacher's legs
when i dropped the pen to loon inside the stash-load
of pooddles and *****...
like i remember racing a guy from bałtów
to ostrowiec and winning: he on a tour de france bike
with anorexic model tires and
my on mountain bike fatties...
i told you memory is crucial... given our thought explored
inanimate things as the perfection of our knowledge,
given our thought explored animate things
as perfectly categorising man and animal alike
thus mis-interpretating ourselves, oh the sacrifice of
the perfectly catalogised atom among the toothbrushes...
a convo of assortments...
it's perfect knowledge in relation to inanimate things...
the sort of thing which is question:
but atoms are animate things... calling them inanimate
just because they're invisible doesn't give you a
right to driftwood clung to in robinson cruseo's shakespearean friday.
hence the passing inspiration... so dull now
that i only feel inspired to pour myself another whiskey
and justify the meaning of relaxed.
associate yourself with the world,
hardly many of us will end of with the genius score of don juan,
we're in an environment of strict biology,
we're told that memory governs our world
with the world being on the quest to repeat...
and it does repeat... sounding the encore of biting frost,
sounding the encore of delighted shadows of summer
having postponed snipers to shoot them dead with night...
the world that inquires per se via repeat
only divinites man's faculty that's memory,
and quickly attacks it in revenge by dementia...
imagination is left to the murderers' who fancy
all the hues of red on the face....
this world is not pleasant to those who think,
to those who couple thought with imagination,
and to those who couple thought with memory...
alas... such few increments are left to re-discover
after being taught the uselessness of centimetre
when no centimetre knowledge is used in their
mechanisation of a profession.
that bit monkey less than man already happened
contradictory in theoretical terms
given the diversity whereby man's diversity
per se cannot explain the diversity of each thing
using evolutionary relativism, niche by-product concerns...
penguins will always make it to antarctica...
no banker or plumber on antarctica... just
scientists who started the whole expedition as
worth anything by counting penguin eggs...
indeed... ah this is going nowhere...
i don't believe in evolutionary relatvism
like socrates didn't believe in moral relativism
theft is punishable with the cutting of the hand
that stole... ****** is punishable with the cutting
of the head - it's all really related)...
and the aesthetic relativism is as true as: beauty
is in the eye of the beholder -
to that girl in the night near the church
walking with a concerned friend
concerned by her attractive panda-eyed mascara expression.
most of the time i find the inherent vice of jungian
interpretation of poets
to be a case of narration: poets don't write enough
to be valued! i respect fictional occupants of the
equivalent hammer of a labourer writing long paragraphs!
well, true enough... any idiot would suddenly exclaim
a symptom as: i differentiate that i'm a constant inspiration
for a non-existent narrator, and the symptom i differentiate
from true to fake by the fact it hinders my faculty to think...
pronoun shrapnel i call it... auxillary pronouns
that benefit me to expand my thought on a levelling
that did not want to see in monochromatic divergence
of continued with linear-ism akin to horse blinders
that only exposed a corridor where a valley could have stood
for the eyes to be inspired by.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
Das Lied des Bettlers (“The Beggar’s Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I live outside your gates,
exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;
sometimes I’ll cradle my right ear in my right palm;
then when I speak my voice sounds strange, alien ...

I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.

Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, unafraid,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.

Originally published by Better Than Starbucks (where it was a featured poem, appeared on the first page of the online version, and earned a small honorarium)

Original text:

Das Lied des Bettlers

Ich gehe immer von Tor zu Tor,
verregnet und verbrannt;
auf einmal leg ich mein rechtes Ohr
in meine rechte Hand.
Dann kommt mir meine Stimme vor,
als hätt ich sie nie gekannt.

Dann weiß ich nicht sicher, wer da schreit,
ich oder irgendwer.
Ich schreie um eine Kleinigkeit.
Die Dichter schrein um mehr.

Und endlich mach ich noch mein Gesicht
mit beiden Augen zu;
wie's dann in der Hand liegt mit seinem Gewicht
sieht es fast aus wie Ruh.
Damit sie nicht meinen ich hätte nicht,
wohin ich mein Haupt tu.

Keywords/Tags: German, Rainer Maria Rilke, translation, beggar, song, rain, sun, ear, palm, voice, gate, gates, door, doors, outside, exposure, poets, trifle, pittance, eyes, face, cradle, head, loneliness, alienation, solitude, no place to lay one's head (like Jesus Christ)



Archaischer Torso Apollos ("Archaic Torso of Apollo")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.



Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Komm, Du ("Come, You")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



Liebes-Lied ("Love Song")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
one of the soul’s lethal raptors, well aware of your nature.
As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance,
stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling
while the curious youth peered through the window.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps from inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to "be"?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar
marvin m brato Oct 2018
Just being together
opens the avenue...
surfing life to the fullest
experiences are enriched
put happiness into us
heaven it becomes!

Great love
always a privilege
rarely age gap hinders
as love is free
yes, it is ours to savor!
Big Virge Jan 2016
So what is the reason ?

The reason for WHAT … !!!

The reason I be seeing ...
"Ignorance" … in  …
Human Beings … ?!? …

Why are these … " Demons " …
…… " Breathing " …… !?!?!?!

There has to be a reason … ?!?

So Many … Seasons
So Many … Beatings
So Many … Cheating
So Many … Feelings

That …
Leave people … SEETHING … !!!!!!

You See … " Some " …
End up … REELING … !!!
and then  … end up …
…… " Kneeling " ……. !!!!!!!

Asking for … " Guidance "
to … riSE ABOVE … " Violence "

And To …
riSE ABOVE … PAIN … !!!!!

That drives … MANY …
…….. INSANE ……… !!!!!!

So ... is there a reason ?
for people left … " BLEEDING " … ??!??

I wonder … if … ?
" Heathens " …
or … Christians … ?
Be … SEEING …

A Need … for a … " Faith "
that … Relegates … " hate "
and YES …… " Separatism "

To a place where … " Religion "
Does NOT … deal in … KILLING … !!!!!
or … Visions of …. " Living " ….
That … Stand By … DIVISION …  

REASONS ……
for … " Racism " … ???

TOO MANY … to mention … !!!
But … They Need …
….. PREVENTION ….. !!!!!

Reasons for … STRESSING … ?!?

Well ….
Life can be … " Testing " … !!!
when people be … " Messing "
with … How you be … " Blessing "
yourself with … " Wise Lessons " …

Instead of … investing …
in … Spreading … " infections " … !!!!!
where … Reason is … lessened … ?!?!?
to let … "Tension" … STRENGTHEN … !!!!!

What Reason … ?
Now … Feeds … ?
My … " Poetic Themes " … ?

I've written … TOO MANY … !!!
That Prove … I Rock … STEADY … !!!

because my themes … Vary …
from vibes of what's … Scary …
to songs of ….. Chuck Berry …… !!!

So … " Johnny Be Goode "
cos it's a … " Mean Old World "

Use … " Reason " …
and ….. WOOD ….. !!!

to …
" Sweet Up " … These girls … !!!!!!

So …..
What is … " The Reason " …  ?
Girls … get your heart … BEATING …
to the point where … Your Breathing …
Then … Hinders … your speaking … ?!!!?

SUDDENLY ….
All … " Tongue Tied " … !!!!!

while guys who are … " Sly " …
Slip … between … their thighs …
and have … Kissed them … " Goodbye "
before … you can …. " Find " ….

A way to say … " Hi " … !!!!!

Ahhhh well … Never mind …

I Reason with … WOMEN … !!!!!
from end to … Beginning …
and find that … They … " LOVE "…
More than they … " Huh Hmmm " … !!!!!!

What Reason … Defines … ???
Wordplay that … Kicks Rhymes …
and flows … just like mine … !!! …

Where Expletives … " Recline "
and … Good Diction … SHINES … !!!!!

I'd say … " Education " …
Negating … " Playstation " …

and time that is … Spent …
Expressing with … Friends …
are things that … YES … " Lend " …
Themselves to …. " Poems " ….

That … " Reason " …
through verse … about this …

….. " Crazy World " ….. !!?!! …..

So …..
Here's where … These Words …
Now take a …… NEW TURN ……

I Reason with … " Heads " …
who deal in … " Good Sense " …

So ……
These heads aren't … " Common "
and … Don't take … " Offence " …
to … REASON … that … " SEASONS "
just like …… " Gourmet Chefs " ……. !!!!!

or those ….
Who have … " less " …
but … Still Do … THEIR BEST … !!!!!

to leave … taste buds … " Fiending "
for … MORE FOOD … Not … less … !!!!!

Food that is … " Ital " … !!!
and Clearly is … VITAL …
to … " Rasta Man Strength " … !!!

See ...
I Reason with … " Rastas "
who deal in … REAL CHATTER … !!!!!

NOT … " Bogus " … Gun Clappers …
or …. " Ignorant " …. Rappers …. !!!!!!!!

It's … Emcees Who … " Reason " … !!!    
Through Lyrics … They Speak …
Who … INSPIRE … me … !!! …

NOT … Rappers who deal in …
PURE … " Lyrical Treason " … !!!!!

WHAT REASON … " Allows " …  ?!?
Their Pish' … to rock … CROWDS … !?!

while mouths who speak … TRUTH …
and use …. " Soulful Grooves " ….
have to work … TWICE AS HARD … !?!
for their verse to … " Make Marks " …
in the minds of … " Weak Hearts " …
when their wordplay is … SHARP … !!?!!

SHARP and YES … " Pleasing "
to mind states … in … " Regions "
where … " Beacons of Reason " …
Shine BRIGHT … with … " Cohesion "

But … Still give out … BEATINGS …  !!!!!
to … Legions … with … LESIONS … !!!!!!!

because of their … " Teachings " …

I'm an …
" ALL BLACK " … man …
Kind of like … " Polynesians " … !!!!!!

Standing in … " Haka Stance " …

Calling on … " Gods of War " …
for lyrics that …. ROAR …. !!!!!!!!!!!

Just like those … " Maoris " … !!!
YES … Strongly and … Proudly !!!!!
  
I Reason … with … " Patience "
and … try to be … " Gracious "
when dealing with … " Haters "
Whose Reason's … " Loquacious "

Forget about … " Status "
and making those … Papers … !!!

and … STOP … for a sec …
and … REASON … instead … !!!

YES …. with …. " Yourself "
and … BETTER … Your Health … !!!

These words are … HEARTFELT … !!!!

I suggest that you … " Reason " …
for MORE … " Wealth of Self " …

It's just a … " Suggestion " …
That May … " Hinder " …

…… Stressing …… ?!?

So here's the … " Test Pressing "

More Reason with … " Logic "
that's NOT … " MICROSCOPIC "
or … Worse … " Catastrophic " … !!!!!

Will … PREVENT … More Nonsense …
and … KEEP US …… " On Topics " …….

That … We KEEP …
" WELL SEASONED " … !!!!!

To Grow … STRONGER LEGIONS … !!!
Who … EXTINGUISH … " Treason " … !!!!
and ….. " Fraudulent Speaking " …..

So that …..
We Start … " Reaching " …
for Lessons and … " Teachings " …

That …..

STRENGTHEN … our being …

to use … " Logic " …

with ….. " Reason " …..
In these days of Crazy behaviour, and little to, no reason, being shown by so many, it seems appropriate to share some questions as to the reasons why ?
Taru M Oct 2013
Born…
   with flesh that contradicts nervous system
        that contradicts skeletal system
                                                          ­             I am body
torn by its very nature
                                                          ­             I am lost
with troubled soul
   swirling in the cesspool that is life
        only hope of firm ground
                                                          ­             I am teen
with limited past                                                             ­                                          yet promising future
the result of an overbearing mother
   and a negligent father
                                                          ­             I am young black man
who has acted as a dumping ground
for words of wisdom
   and honorable ethics
                                                          ­             I am tamed chameleon
                                                       ­                I am weary traveler
yet to begin his journey
   nothing more than a loner searching for a rock
                                                            ­           I am questioning dreamer
a blind eye
   trapped on the inside looking out
                                                             ­          I am double-edged book
bound at the hems
   by veins interwoven into a heart of passionless calm
                                                            ­           I am heart
that beats once a year
   and on occasion of a pulse through my ear
                                                             ­          I am sound wave
waiting for my group
   a team of gears
        interlocking and shifting
             interlocking and shifting
                                                        ­                                                                 ­                      in constant pattern
too scared to slip outside the mold
                                                            ­           I am puppeteer’s puppet
my strings stay taut even in moments of rebellion
                                                       ­                I am slave to those who lead
because I
   am
innate follower
                                                        ­               I am pawn to those who will me
and doormat to those who seek refuge
                                                          ­             I am the lethargic day
that drags into eternity
   the deplorable boredom that hinders life
                                                            ­           I am the sad sap
that rolls down a crying tree
                                                            ­           I am the lack
that fills the vacuum
   the fluff
        that merely attracts the eye while providing nothing
                                                         ­              I am intricate façade
for bland building
                                                        ­               I am sky-filled bottle
with unscrewed cap
   an underman
        with self-contained potential
                                                       ­                I am statistic
a variable trying to escape definition
                                                      ­                 I am athlete
natural as the earth
at heart
   a quitter trained to persevere

                                                      ­                 I am carbon footprint
being slowly blown away by the sands of time

All these things I am
   yet all at once I am not
I am not what you see
   nor what you know
        for I cannot be known
I am not philosopher
   but then again
        if we count what I am not
                                                             ­                                                                 ­         then I do not even exist

                                                          ­             I am not written word
                                                            ­     because paper is constricting
This is so old it predates my poetry book. It is also not the original; if it can be believed this version is much more optimistic. In addition, I reordered/reorganized the phrases. I would like to continuously alter this piece so it reflects the changes within me.
Pax May 2015

I have stopped looking at the clouds
and start staring at cornered walls that surrounds me.

The clear skies that I would dream, wondering the complexities of its heights…

I often believed that the sky would make my dreams come true,
but in reality, all it takes to journey your dream is creating a stepping stone.
You can’t achieve anything without making any step.

I always like to jump into conclusion, fear of failure.
In this case, it hinders the optimism values we always have.

Diving into your deepest thoughts is just like scuba diving without oxygen.
We need to learn how to hold our breaths,  to accept everything
and process every obstacle in the depth of negativity.
For far beyond its deepness, there is light, shiny as pearls.
You’ll learn its wisdom, an insight that will guide you towards reaching any goal…


Written - 09/16/2013
Updated – 04/21/2014

I found this in my files while browsing  some old writes I have. one of my untitled piece that I never got to publish online, now i finally did.

thank you for reading.
shireliiy Sep 2015
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Mike Bergeron Oct 2012
It's cool to just sit
Here and deal with this ****,
But hey, its better
Where the pudding is thick,
Or so they tell me,
Along with
'Don't fall for tricks,'
They'll always get you
If your mind is weak,
Like the obliques
In my side
That've been hurting for weeks,
They're so sore from
The combination
Of boredom
And the conflagration
Of all the
Tinder inside my body
That hinders my
Lodi-Dodi
Outlook
On benders
That have become
Normality,
Like you've become
A malady,
A mother-may-I
Comedy
That keeps me laughing,
Keeps me guessing,
Keeps me passing
Up on
Rafting
Down that river,
But didn't you know
That ocean never comes?
So I'll keep drifting
And counting my ones,
And try to blame
The ones on the run
Instead of the ****
Doing the chasing
And erasing my luck,
While I deface my face
And wait
For this bronco
To buck
Me off
Into the muck
Of eternal loss.
It already happened?
You got it, boss.
Dre De Asis Feb 2013
Sadly as it all comes to an end
somehow I wish to say the words I never said
somehow I wish I could say them now
it's time to take my breath away, take it with pride and bow!

Your insecurity is so cute yet so pathetic
it prevents you from seeing your perfection, so electromagnetic!
Every bit of you is time consuming
you see not how amazing you are, reassuring.

It seems lady luck is at her side
yet she can't seem to cherish the luxury of the tide
How I wish I were her for I will know what ought
caressing you with every single thought

No longer will you feel the need to search
for the desires will cease to exist once I begin to smirch
it will no longer be the beginning or the end
but it will linger in time as what we have cannot be hastened.

Perhaps what hinders this from occurring
is the fact that's its one sided and demurring
Never can thy lips of mine express thee
the words stumble and fumble, nervous I flee

Gathering courage is all but futile
no path can influence to void the inevitable, how vile!
it can never be, never can it be!
as this is the story of a love so tragic that befell on me.

It's degrading how you fail to see
the significance of this feeling to me
to you, it's but jester's words of entertainment
to me, it's my whole world you baffled and shaken, rattled with fulfillment!

Alas I can never deny
as much as I can't defy
the immense love and care I possess
that bisects the heavens above and crosses
673

The Love a Life can show Below
Is but a filament, I know,
Of that diviner thing
That faints upon the face of Noon—
And smites the Tinder in the Sun—
And hinders Gabriel’s Wing—

’Tis this—in Music—hints and sways—
And far abroad on Summer days—
Distils uncertain pain—
’Tis this enamors in the East—
And tints the Transit in the West
With harrowing Iodine—

’Tis this—invites—appalls—endows—
Flits—glimmers—proves—dissolves—
Ret­urns—suggests—convicts—enchants—
Then—flings in Paradise—
Garrett Glenn Feb 2010
The beat, the snare, the drum
Starting in at the floor and flying to my brain
**** all the people who say I’m numb
I’m sane, oh so sane!

My thinking, once a cloudy, congested, coagulate of incoherent thoughts,
Now flows free from its once catastrophically, closed chasm,
Bringing fourth meaningless, mindless motions and movements,
Showing all, that you are who you are, don’t be afraid to fall.

As the smoke clears, the crystallized casts of crushing vocals
Radiate to my ears; all we hear is the hate, the hassle, the hustle
The bustle.  Look beyond what has spawned to see what you find fond.
Blinded we remain; we fight, frightened and furious against this foe.

Conformity hinders our ability to show individuality.  They attack us
With ambidexterity to keep us statues of our own subconscious design,
Yet we continue to follow these wrongly deified prodigies.  They’re using
Us as antibodies to cleanse what are others conformities.

Enlightened I will stay to ensure Elysium for my fellow enthusiasts.
Free from these prodigies, my persistence will not fade
To grey, black, white, withered, wretched wasted thoughts.
My mind is free, my soul deep, this music is the up-beat.
MAJD S Jul 2014
My Facebook page is a cluster of
Saturday nights drinking-
And Gaza.
The fusion of blood and alcohol
Created a fierce dichotomy
That shouldn’t exist;
My bed is a crimson clover field,
With big dreams
Attached to every leaf,
Hidden in pockets of brand new shirts
That I bought
Just to grab your attention.
My mind is doing jumping jacks
Over the thoughts
Of rebellion
And fighting for the dead youth
As opposed to-
Enjoying my own.
My head grew muscles,
As their feet
Grew tired-
Of running at night,
When the dark hinders their sight
Till they get confused between
Rocks-
And skulls;
But they run,
And dodge,
And jump,
And crack broken bones
As long as they are still alive.
In Gaza I die.
Every day,
Reading the reports ,
Calculating the number of deaths
Over the number of minutes spent
Surfing web pages
Jumping from one link to the other
Hoping that I would find
Something to hang on to;
In Gaza I die.
When I see mothers
Flustered and desperate,
Trying to cheer up their children
In a hopeless case;
And nothing would cheer a child up
Like a piece of cake,
But they have nothing left-
So they bake them a cake
Out of their broken limbs,
They gather the tears
They’ve cried on white cloth
To make them soup.
They chip a piece of their heart off
Every other night,
Because that heart will hurt
When they call their children
And they seize to answer,
Because that same heart will shatter
Like rockets in a Palestinian sky
When they prepare food for Five
But there would be no one left to eat.

In Gaza I die,
I was once four years old;
In Gaza I die,
I married your mother when I was 16,
I brought you and your sister
Before I was 25
In Gaza I die,
Yesterday he looked at me,
In the shelter,
I smiled
But not the smile that shows that I’m infatuated
But definitely interested!
In Gaza I die,
She is so into me
But
In Gaza
I wish i could just
Live.
Koggeki Feb 2016
--------------------

With Both Feet on the Ground

Hello, dear-one.
What say you in this lowly place?

"When twilight traces the terrace,
Touch the torch-sky with the tip of your lip.
               A sweet heat
Will draw your willful mind,
But watch! The torch-sky takes:
               Heart-stems
               Drip
               Drip
               Petals shower
The firelight blaze, like my root vein,
Spills languid and warm across the sky.
               Beauty in elation
               But now breathe out!"

--------------------

Then Into Deep Water

Say, dear-one,
What's all this now?

"The blue of night is sweeping over the torch-sky,
And shadows steal swiftly as silent silhouettes,
               Come coldly dancing
Do not disdain—dreams form feather-light foam,
And fade heavily in a salt-wash, flooding fervently.
                Covered darkly
                Step
                Step
                ­Shiver forward
From terrace to sea my foot falls easily.
Then the eerie eels entwine in the brine.
                Feeling supine
                Let the deep creep
                Until next time."

--------------------

But the Canvas is Brighter Still

Stay awake, dear-one.
Is there not more to tell?

"The search for halcyon has wrought hush-flickers:
Stars  staring brightly stripping night's dark domain.
               Drifting dazedly: humorous
'Theirs is a humming neatly humbling hysterias.'
Whispers Nyx, 'Dwelling hinders what dreaming may fix.'
               Sleeps slips
               Blink
               Blink
               Morning stands
Beacon! Bright butterfly, beckon bravery!
Billow boastfully—this day will be mine!
               Keep in mind,
               It's always divine."

Very good, dear-one,
A fine farewell.
Another poem I wrote awhile ago
Shawn Nov 2012
old school game
like saying exactly how i feel
when i feel it
not waiting the allocated amount
of time before responding to texts
to feign aloofness

making out outside like
when i was 17 at my parents house
afraid of getting caught
with enough surrounding trees
to obscure vision
oblivious to the freezing
nature of this rain falling upon
our skin, it's slick against
my fingers, the perfect complement
to lips connected, the sound
of rain in the background, the feel
of it falling from the brim of baseball cap
(i'm wearing one for some reason?)
the taste of peach (it was apples before)
the fumbling of hands against clothing
(where before it was inexperience,
now the cold hinders movement)
your stunted giggles as my tongue explored
the movements in sync shortly after starting

this dance feels familiar
like slow song, hands on hip
nostalgic yet current
it's something i never knew i craved
Raven Feels Jun 2021
DEAR PENPAL PEOPLE, insult salted the injury--- that was a bad day<


maybe wounds are sold
do you mean that insult can't salt injuries to a pathetic fault?
warn the poor never the guilt as it
wish the idiotic I put the limit
stepped the humiliation right out
silenced like a charity drought
now lacked it is yet still manageable
killed in the **** core when tangible
warn foolish fingers
an incoming the tremble syndrome
now secrets are whispered blind devils shrink in hinders
a car ride rains a billion on a thinker
watch me tested as God demands
lost in translation for what a paper does
and I simply don't understand
take the gesture I can't for a billion pays you see
made me squirm more like a forsaken sun in 2018


                                                          ­         ------ravenfeels
Macy Opsima Jun 2016
I am a writer, a ****** of words. I am a pen that's skipping ink but I still continue to write despite the broken lines because that's what I'm made for in the first place. Maybe the reason why I get hurt so much is that I fall in love with words a lot. I'm in love with people who is in love with literature. These poems and letters may not be made for you or because of you but their main purpose of being written is to move you. I want you to do something about that girl who works in your favorite book shop because I don't want you commiting the same regrets as I did. I want you to raise your voice and write about the oppression or the wage gap. I want you to write about something from the deepest part of your chest. I want you to write about something I cannot write about.

But some days, I feel nothing. I could write about being in love and about the color of their eyes but nowadays, their eyes look exactly the same. I could write about sadness but sadness itself is what hinders me to grab a pen. Now, I could write about happiness. But I rarely feel this way and when I feel this way, ******* I feel this way. I could gather these words about being filled with the color yellow but happiness will say that those words are not enough to fathom the euphoria I feel in me. Maybe one day, I could explore enough dictionaries to find the perfect words on what I have to say.

You don't have to be the greatest writer there is to make someone feel something through your words. Write about everything, every emotion, and every person who finds their way to your heart. When you can't write anymore, get outside and get your heart broken. Go outside and experience an experience that you never thought you would experience. Soon enough, you will write the words you never thought you would ever write. Don't hold anything other than offensive and oppressive thoughts back. Let the poetry run through your veins and drip down your fingertips. Write, write, and write until you can't write anymore. When you can't write anymore, seek a perhaps to write about then write, write, and write until you can't anymore. Even when the poem is below my satisfaction, I continue to share it anyway because being stoic and still would lead me to madness.

I am a writer, a ****** of words. I am a pen that's skipping ink and even though my lines are broken and unappealing, I continue to write anyway and because that is what I am made for in the first place.

— The End —