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Nat Lipstadt Jun 2018
why I love certain men


it’s a raining and writing Saturday,
a washout for the beach visitors who chose their
calendar lottery tickets poorly

but hurrah and huzzah for the poet
in the no-sun-today-room with
steam collecting on his face from his 20 oz. Canadian mug,
the rest of him cozied neath a
wooly mohair knitted and tasseled blanket,
from a now naked and shivering alpaca goat in Turkey or Tibet

perhaps we’ll make a tiny dent
in the 1319 poems,
in the ‘sorta started to do’ list

****.
new one sneaks in demanding immediate satisfaction
and threatening my mind’s incarceration unless,
serviced and unleashed as the Frenchies say

Frites, immédiatement!: (french fries, now!)

I love most men; certain men more than others,
not because they are soft to the touch,
look great in thigh highs, can fix a backhoe,
lay hands on animals, just as they do upon their grandchildren,
or write better poetry than me,
because
they make me weep from zealous delight at
their capricious unprecedented constancy of their
honorable actions

they are soft to the core, which is itself
wrapped in a leather soldered steel,
which defines them by their self-questing constant,
asking themselves preface and postface,
doing it well, in between,

what is the honorable thing?

this honor idea of which writ previous
doesn’t dissolve - indeed grows crescendo stronger,
like the miracle of the Yom Kippurs rams horn
crying out to heavens at the concluding end  
on the holiest judgement day,
a shofar miracle for it inhumanly grows ever louder,
ceasing only when nightfall marks a new day begun,
reminding both sinners and saviour each,
to inquire of their colluding selves on this forgiveness-giving day,

what is the honorable thing?

some are borrowers and some lenders,
of anything, the substance or the whom matters not,
but the bonding bonfire from which the deal is done,
is of a uncharted organic chemical matter unrecognized
but millennium ancient


here I stop

the call to breakfast must be obeyed,
for it’s with lovely made, menu man-poet requested,
this is too an honorable thing to do,
and the 1319 half blood~half writs poking my eyes,
can be faced with new courage afterwards
on a perfect raining and writing Summer Saturday
for the next one hopefully and woefully

may not come till the September (Rosh Hashanah/Jewish New Year) when acorns fall

certain men will greet that fall Sabbath/ New Years Day,  
when Atonement begins, a ten day process to the final conclusion,
by asking of everything living and of every act human performed,
for the forgiveness requested inherent in the absolute bar setting of

what is the honorable thing?

which by the by,

is why I love certain women too...

and all who are honorable
will read this honorific and remain
clueless as to whom it is addressed...

oh god, I do so love that best!

what could signal honor even more...
PhiWrit May 2016
Straight shot of Holy water to exorcise my demons
Got'em out on a couple legs, begs by ****** screamins
With the All Holy Trinity I walk amongst infinity
Got a Cadre of Archangels showerin' me in His Divinity
Brought a fifth of Anointing Oil to mark His Holy Royals
Seeing through the mixed lens of His sixth sense
Burnin' incense to mark the Menorah branch that toils
Ate up the Holy Communion remember that Holy Union
At the Ninth hour His might & power did devour Light
Too dark, the tent of heaven tore, bore mark of blight
Judas seeing that hell'll vent, went hellbent on death's reunion
They dwell of Herod taking  head of prophecy; Maker's cousin
He called Saul as Paul to make all apostle's, baker's dozen
Diss and spit cause of His name,  John 7:7 in the pulpit
This ain't tryin' to be flame or 15 minute fame ****
At 16 I knew I'd live eternal by His Throne, sit
John 7:7 "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me, because I testify that its works are evil."
15 minutes of fame would go up in flame from these minute three you see; get at me EL-P (@therealelp). https://youtu.be/N0ijOe3sGEk?t=3m42s
The menorah (/məˈnɔːrə/; Hebrew: מְנוֹרָה‎‎ [mənoːˈɾaː]) is described in the Bible as the seven branch lamp
Unused Quill Nov 2012
We are the genuine men
We are the fulfilled men
Standing together
Headpiece filled with ideas. Huzzah!
Our powerful voices, when
We cheer together
Are loud and meaningful
As wind in wet grass
Or dancing feet over wooden floors
In our damp attics

Shape with form, shade with colour,
Dynamic force, motion without gesture;

Those who have crossed
With indirect eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Forget  us—if at all—not as found
Peaceful souls, but only
As the genuine men
The fulfilled men.

Eyes I dare meet in nightmares
In death’s dream kingdom
These do  appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a whole column
There, is a tree standing
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More close and more bashful
Than a newly formed star.

Let me be closer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me not wear
Such obvious disguises
Silk shirt, snakeskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
Closer—

That first meeting
In the twilight kingdom

This is the living land
This is fruitful land
Here the cloudy images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a living man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a newly formed star.

It is like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking together
At the minute when we are
Shaking with excitement
Lips that would kiss
Form praise to no stone.

The eyes are here
There are eyes here
In this valley of living stars
In this flowing valley
This whole jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this first of meeting places
We ***** alone
And invite speech
Gathered on this beach of the free river

Vision, unless
The eyes disappear
As the periodic star
Monofoliate daisy
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of whole men.

Here we go round the mulberry bush
Mulberry bush mulberry bush
Here we go round the mulberry bush
At five o’clock in the morning.


Between the thought
And the implementation
Between the movement
And the deed
Rises the Light
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the inception
And the construction
Between the feeling
And the reaction
Rises the Light
                                Life is very short

Between the need
And the want
Between the potential
And the substance
Between the ingredients
And the ascent
Rises the Light
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world begins
This is the way the world begins
This is the way the world begins
Not with a whimper but a bang.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
The Quantum Poetry Theorem

from a long time ago,
a thousand poems a priori.

Dedicated to you, Albert Einstein and the cast of TBBT, special thanks to the OWS movement.,
But especially to the few, the brave, geeks who write poetry in word and in equations.


Scruffy, yet ennobled,
my own 99% invade and
occupy all my senses,
in my eyesight encamped

sensing opportunity,
the 99 demand
that each shutter eye snap,
all nominal exhalations,
every quantum minutia perception,
be live streamed,
direct tv to you

Everything I witness,
transformed into an
acoustic guitar rocking vision,
a levitation of poetic expression,  
set to a primitive three-chord
rock & roll overture,
and my iPad,
appointed Recording Secretary,
compiles exhalations as ecrivations

a preservation society of the verb,
strings of words emanating non-stop
within my head, from a guitar playing
twenty four seven, ironically,
expressed mathematically

Street strolling,
busy brasserie bar,
a Pinot Noir arrives,
a large pour of
stanzas and a
napkin upon to scribble

mind in ferment but
A Capella smooth cool,
my bossy brain requires
incident reports,
a "write me down, please,"
and

no matter how much I drink,
ain't anti-matter enough to
stop my eyes from seeing
every human interaction
as a poetic, probabilistic,
verbal equation,
quantum expressions of sensory upload

The brain revels and reels from overload,  
no mas, no more,
poetry fatigue incurable,
caplets and ointments,
string theory,
can't cure or explain
the compulsion I feel,
and the 1% of me
protests my
overtaxed mental capacity,
and

hear the, see the, masses,
the shouts, the placards,
outside my home,
shut it down, no one cares,
no one wants your transplanted mechanics
in their eardrums

Huzzah, found in my gut,
a Grand Unifying Theory
to coordinate, gauge  and harmonize
my internal asymmetries,
yes, a coupling factor required,
but still,
one equation that explains everything!

my fatigued, pointy, index finger
refuses to tap any more,
my Theory of Everything,
and my poetry, forgot, overlooked.
in my library buried,
black holed, forever silence-stored
I wish they made cocktail napkins bigger, for this was born on one such white invitation, at
Demarchelier NYC, and finished on the mirrors there
Extra...extra...Trumpasaurus Extinction

(Only a pipe dream)
Obsolete "FAKE" news
Extra...extra...Trumpasaurus Extinction,
Now Putin Rules As De Facto Leader!

Pastor Of Muppets – shout huzzah...
no mo' Trump he's Gone er re: ya
especially “father figure” for Miss Piggy
-----------------------------------------------------------­----
More'n a ***** dozen deeds done dirt cheap moon units ago
since presidential election took us down the highway to hell  
emotional, social repercussions still reverberate
how reprobate Trump triumphed

graduating magma *** lug head
to become leader of free world
acing highest score (via cribbed cheat sheet)
per Electoral College examination.
noah yam aghast (still feel nauseated) as
Donald trump got nominated president elect,

or more apropos an inept apprentice,
though a teetotaler delirium tremens,
brings corporeal bris
ling foretelling premonition
oven approaching crisis
as one basket of deplorable,

whose shell shocked eggs ess
tints did not peter out
re: fate rigged 2016 election appalled hike con fess
at prospect outsize bully nabbed
most sought after house seat - ugh guess

thine psyche fearful that arrogance, indecency,
pomposity, and vivacity will break ranks and restore Hess
shun militaristic modus operandi crowning himself
King Kong of amerika - applauded
by a *** dread locked Klansmen less
or more, with spirit of a jolly roger intent

shredding sacred documents, and creating a mess;
ages will require to restore righteous, and officious,
amazing gracious steeped ford did legacy
of forefathers and mothers
(against trump driving the country
into wah hell in a hand basket),

which democratic rubric Paine stay king lee
easel lee trampled oh press
sieve lee in sync with missteps
made during on the job training

at national ex pence augments ominous
ramping up of tess toss tear roan,
wherefore if happenstance finds Czech mated express
train tearing down the tracts,
we the people of the United States might vouchsafe
for a veep ping Petsmart prodigy to take over - YES!
-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
Reince Priebus promises to hold sway,
while hi yam rez hind tune augur
race shin, more than approximately 300 hours ago,
a fate worse than death doth bode

despite hangover lingering effect
unable to shake mice elf sober
despite chugging nary an ale
memory summons back,

hide dashed hoof well-healed poem express
sing reaction while shuttered in me man cave dale
how Democratic Party did fail
to clinch nomination,

thus with measured words this male
wants to air and share his non-rapacious sentiments
others no doubt harbor various
seas sinned reactions that might pale

in terms - their private tear ring expressions
explicitly rant and rail against unexpected
and unacceptable result, where scale
of moderation heavily tilted
toward possible global travail

armaments stacked as thee Barron doth un veil
bombardiers carpet bomb
(whoops....accidentally kilt Trump heathen)
while manning his Taj Mahal casino gun whale.
-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
ABOUT ONE MILLENNIUM LATER
-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
what cha red back in history class i.e. yes...
that traitorous treacherous treasonous tale,
but truth told since time immemorial
whom sever decreed demise
of terrible lizard beasts aye

moost upend long entrenched theory,
and bid good bye
sans foursquare extinction reeks foul,
cuz one pea brained reptilian

o’er shadowed all as fiercest, he ranged free
amidst a cut throat rogues gallery
thee unnamable overlooked
sinister species sought supremacy

(gamut of miniature game pieces
model available at sundry department stores
wherever schlocky plastic model toys sold)
popular trapping of childhood imagination –

imbue vainglorious ventriloquist
inciting fiendish cry
such kiddy paraphernalia
forever a top selling plaything
snapped off shelves leaving allocated space bone dry.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Since time immemorial dinosaur makeshift gewgaws
did cap cha ominous jaws,
and populated fertile land of cave dwellers
whereat swaddled kinder babes bellowed believable
farcically feigned ferocious fabrications foraging bankrupt

foretold foreclosure to espy real McCoy
perhaps assembled from mud, rocks and sticks
noisome predators snatching
voice some innocent prey  -

ripping to tatters and shreds
unlucky victim rarely escaping
in fizz hicks of time – witnessed first hand proof positive
how I came that close (pinch thumb with index finger)

simian snack aye haint fool’n witch cha,
nar doth this medieval troubadour –
spin a yarn approximating
verity of nasty Hobbesian brute

trumpeting fiercely bruited
his bombastic buzz hard
carrion feed small fry to Golgotha donning topface,
could dice in a flickr emulate, and twitter

rang one excited live hotmail riding Pegasus,
while those in his Isis Petsmart warpath
on outlook to avoid get linkedin,
per imp (of the pervert) pale’n maws

simultaneously masticating and able to shutterfly
hither and yon, to and fro rousing
seditious twittering rogues gallery
of reprobate ruthless minions -

ruminants to become  apprenticed
fired up en mass thru the art of the deal
vis a vis venal pet peeves
pygmy male hominids revered
his racially stirred debacle

while straddling as a humungous towering hill,
he pill or reedlike lex Lucifer usurpation,
whence auld dish diehard don nah sore
dominated as demented species,

thus, he didst not perish from this earth
boot yielded rubric of emperor by the peep hole,
four the pea pull, of the peep pill.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This older ville lad spurs rumor -
more than just food for thought or eating crow
does generate quite a wishful after thought to flow
whence sum divine

wind blown comedic act, an inflow
of furies rise from Dante's hell - don bell low
aye wood pine fate to hammer
sic culled swathed headline oh
brings joy to the world wide webbed land,

where Rob zombie i.e. Ivan Ca Rho
into dustbin of hiss tory;
stuffing of legions of legends
recollection and object lesson to hooligans woe
full derelicts, who might be forced
to cease clowning around like - bo Zoë.
Lucky Queue Nov 2014
In a glade the size of a potted plant,
On a blanket the size of a napkin,
There sat a pair, the queerest of all,
Pieris and little Rotkaepptchen.

One was a goldfish,
But not just a goldfish.
The other was a plant,
But not just any plant.
(He was a fern, get it right.)

These two had a mission only they could complete,
The Quest for the glorious NumNums.

The legend of NumNums
Was told far and wide,
And all NumNum lovers
Wanted them inside.
(Their tummies that is, don’t be inappropriate)

ANYWAY,
The NumNums were glorious,
Such a yummy treat,
Until they were poisoned,
That wasn’t so neat.

Pieris and Rotkaepptchen,
The task now at hand,
Set off on their journey,
Through strange, distant lands.

They navigated bedrooms,
They slid down the halls,
They were chased by vacuums,
And trapped by LEGO® walls!

This impossible mission continued,
Until, at last, success!
They found the trail’s end!
What joy! What bliss!
(Huzzah)

Now all that was required
Was to figure out the poison.
So they, without the antidote,
Could eat NumNums again

What a task that would be,
What work, what a chore!
Yet near the store of NumNums,
Upon the ***** floor,

They found a scrap of parchment,
With clues inscribed in black,
To reverse the candy’s poison
And bring them NumNums back
(Hollah!)

Into the woods they ventured,
They searched day and night
To find the precious antidote
And to relieve their plight.

For days, the land they scoured,
For ingredients rare and odd
Until they finally saw it,
Held captive by the frog!

The gleam of silica crystals,
The shine of his mucus
His curious croak was answered
With a meek “Help us.”

“Why should I?” he croaked again,
Staring them down drearily.
“I know not your quest,
I’ve only hints at the best.”

“Then surely you can help,
Surely you can try!”
Little Pieris yelped,
Looking about to cry.

“Don’t worry my friend!”
Rotkaeppchen declared
“For I’m he cannot resist
our plea, and most surely will assist.”

“Then, my dears, I solemnly swear
To help you in your need.
For here, this little draught of pear,
Will help you to succeed!”

And then, procuring a vessel
of the clearest glass
The wise old toad
Cleared his throat,
And promptly passed some gas.

“Excuse me,” he rumbled.
“Excuse me for that faux pas.”
And then he amphibiously
Handed over the pear draught glass

“Egads!” the two exclaimed,
Taking the glass cautiously.
But at last! They had the pear
And thanked him graciously.

At long last they had the cure,
The pear to fix the poison.
They took it back to the glade,
Where their lips they proceeded to moisten.

And that, my friends, is the last of our tale,
The tale of Pieris and Rotkappchen
The daring elves of yore.
With NumNums three,
Under the TumTum tree
They lunched and brunched once more.
And now, we’ve reached the end.
11.5-6.14
Written with my darling dear Storm for our Creative Writing class as a narrative poem
Junebug Feb 2015
Hooray Hooray!
The day has finally come
I have been waiting so long for this day to come
And now its finally here
I want to drink a bier
But not just yet
Not until i get my television set
Huzzah Huzzah
Today is the day
Yes the day has come
Im finally thirteen
Im finally a teen
happy birthday to me!!!
feb 3 2015
Storm Nov 2014
In a glade the size of a potted plant,
On a blanket the size of a napkin,
There sat a pair, the queerest of all,
Pieris and little Rotkaepptchen.

One was a goldfish,
But not just a goldfish.
The other was a plant,
But not just any plant.
(He was a fern, get it right.)

These two had a mission only they could complete,
The Quest for the glorious NumNums.

The legend of NumNums
Was told far and wide,
And all NumNum lovers
Wanted them inside.
(Their tummies that is, don’t be inappropriate)

ANYWAY,
The NumNums were glorious,
Such a yummy treat,
Until they were poisoned,
That wasn’t so neat.

Pieris and Rotkaepptchen,
The task now at hand,
Set off on their journey,
Through strange, distant lands.

They navigated bedrooms,
They slid down the halls,
They were chased by vacuums,
And trapped by LEGO® walls!

This impossible mission continued,
Until, at last, success!
They found the trail’s end!
What joy! What bliss!
(Huzzah)

Now all that was required
Was to figure out the poison.
So they, without the antidote,
Could eat NumNums again

What a task that would be,
What work, what a chore!
Yet near the store of NumNums,
Upon the ***** floor,

They found a scrap of parchment,
With clues inscribed in black,
To reverse the candy’s poison
And bring them NumNums back
(Hollah!)

Into the woods they ventured,
They searched day and night
To find the precious antidote
And to relieve their plight.

For days, the land they scoured,
For ingredients rare and odd
Until they finally saw it,
Held captive by the frog!

The gleam of silica crystals,
The shine of his mucus
His curious croak was answered
With a meek “Help us.”

“Why should I?” he croaked again,
Staring them down drearily.
“I know not your quest,
I’ve only hints at the best.”

“Then surely you can help,
Surely you can try!”
Little Pieris yelped,
Looking about to cry.

“Don’t worry my friend!”
Rotkaeppchen declared
“For I’m he cannot resist
our plea, and most surely will assist.”

“Then, my dears, I solemnly swear
To help you in your need.
For here, this little draught of pear,
Will help you to succeed!”

And then, procuring a vessel
of the clearest glass
The wise old toad
Cleared his throat,
And promptly passed some gas.

“Excuse me,” he rumbled.
“Excuse me for that faux pas.”
And then he amphibiously
Handed over the pear draught glass

“Egads!” the two exclaimed,
Taking the glass cautiously.
But at last! They had the pear
And thanked him graciously.

At long last they had the cure,
The pear to fix the poison.
They took it back to the glade,
Where their lips they proceeded to moisten.

And that, my friends, is the last of our tale,
The tale of Pieris and Rotkappchen
The daring elves of yore.
With NumNums three,
Under the TumTum tree
They lunched and brunched once more.
And now, we’ve reached the end.
Written with my dearest friend Ginger (aka undeadfairiegirl) for creative writing.
Third Eye Candy Oct 2012
cathode
box frog. lung dead
in a deep heap of old suns
simply the rival of Hate's hate... a mute huzzah !
the treacherous velvet
of a dead sleep

masquerading as a chance in dyslexia......
You are trapped in the world.

Your vision is our vision.
You are trapped in what breathes.

.
is the meaning of our meaning.
The answer to the question is
yourself.

You are the Answer to everything.
(Everything does not matter.)

Meaning is Itself.
This is a display to amuse Itself.
Meaning is meaning.

And there is no meaning
except That which Means.

There is no "is".
"Is" is *******.
Huzzah!

You are meaning,
meaning: Be.
Or stop.


We're all blowing wind
until we stop.
Divine moments of truth.
Received Wednesday, March 29 2014ev,
approximately 11:30pm.
These are poems about shadows, poems about night, and poems about darkness...



Hiroshima Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

The intense heat and light of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts left ghostly shadows of human beings imprinted in concrete.

Hiroshima shadows ... mother and child...
Oh, when will our hearts ever be beguiled
to end mindless war ... to seek peace, reconciled
to our common mortality?



War
stood at the end of the hall
in the long shadows
—Watanabe Hakusen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch




Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge...then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low

for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men...
when we were men, or almost so.



Where We Dwell
by Michael R. Burch

Night within me.
Never morning.
Stars uncounted.
Shadows forming.
Wind arising
where we dwell
reaches Heaven,
reeks of Hell.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



What is life?
The flash of a firefly.
The breath of the winter buffalo.
The shadow scooting across the grass that vanishes with sunset.
—Blackfoot saying, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



As the moon flies west
the flowers' shadows
creep eastward.
—Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Leaves
like crows’ shadows
flirt with a lonely moon.
—Fukuda Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Snapshot
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Earth’s least trace of life cannot be erased;
even when you lie underground, it encompasses you.
So, those of you who anticipate the shadows:
how long will the darkness remember you?



Bound
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14-15

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.



When last my love left me
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

The sun was a smoldering ember
when last my love left me;
the sunset cast curious shadows
over green arcs of the sea;
she spoke sad words, departing,
and teardrops drenched the trees.



Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch

Where you have gone are the shadows falling...
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
...do you not hear me calling?

Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen...
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
...is silence at last your anthem?



Sharon
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15

apologies to Byron

I.

Flamingo-minted, pink, pink cheeks,
dark hair streaked with a lisp of dawnlight;
I have seen your shadow creep
through eerie webs spun out of twilight...

And I have longed to kiss your lips,
as sweet as the honeysuckle blooms,
and to hold your pale albescent body,
more curvaceous than the moon...

II.

Black-haired beauty, like the night,
stay with me till morning's light.
In shadows, Sharon, become love
until the sun lights our alcove.

Red, red lips reveal white stone:
whet my own, my passions hone.
My all in all I give to you,
in our tongues’ exchange of dew.

Now all I ever ask of you
is: do with me what now you do.

My love, my life, my only truth!

In shadows, Sharon, shed your gown;
let all night’s walls come tumbling down.

III.

Now I will love you long, Sharon,
as long as longing may be.



In the Twilight of Her Tears
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 19

In the twilight of her tears
I saw the shadows of the years
that had taken with them all our joys and cares ...

There in an ebbing tide’s spent green
I saw the flotsam of lost dreams
wash out into a sea of wild despair ...

In the scars that marred her eyes
I saw the cataracts of lies
that had shattered all the visions we had shared ...

As from a ravaged iris, tears
seemed to flood the spindrift years
with sorrows that the sea itself despaired ...



Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch

In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.

Great pyramids, the looted tombs
—how still and desolate their wombs!—
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.

Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?

Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?

or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
   out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



The Beautiful People
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

They are the beautiful people,
and their shadows dance through the valleys of the moon
to the listless strains of an ancient tune.

Oh, no ... please don't touch them,
for their smiles might fade.
Don’t go ... don’t approach them
as they promenade,
for they waltz through a vacuum
and dream they're not made
of the dust and the dankness
to which men degrade.

They are the beautiful people,
and their spirits sighed in their mothers’ wombs
as the distant echoings of unearthly tunes.

Winds do not blow there
and storms do not rise,
and each hair has its place
and each gown has its price.
And they whirl through the darkness
untouched by our cares
as we watch them and long for
a "life" such as theirs.



Shadowselves
by Michael R. Burch

In our hearts, knowing
fewer days—and milder—beckon,
still, how are we to measure
that wick by which we reckon
the time we have remaining?

We are shadows
spawned by a blue spurt of candlelight.
Darkly, we watch ourselves flicker.
Where shall we go when the flame burns less bright?
When chill night steals our vigor?

Why are we less than ourselves? We are shadows.
Where is the fire of our youth? We grow cold.
Why does our future loom dark? We are old.
And why do we shiver?

In our hearts, seeing
fewer days—and briefer—breaking,
now, even more, we treasure
this brittle leaf-like aching
that tells us we are living.



Once Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness . . . or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka . . . if I wished
upon a frozen star . . . that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm . . .
yet something still not love . . . if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove . . .

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.



Transplant
by Michael R. Burch

You float, unearthly angel, clad in flesh
as strange to us who briefly knew your flame
as laughter to disease. And yet you laugh.
Behind your smile, the sun forfeits its claim
to earth, and floats forever now the same—
light captured at its moment of least height.

You laugh here always, welcoming the night,
and, just a photograph, still you can claim
bright rapture: like an angel, not of flesh—
but something more, made less. Your humanness
this moment of release becomes a name
and something else—a radiance, a strange
brief presence near our hearts. How can we stand
and chain you here to this nocturnal land
of burgeoning gray shadows? Fly, begone.
I give you back your soul, forfeit all claim
to radiance, and welcome grief’s dark night
that crushes all the laughter from us. Light
in someone Else’s hand, and sing at ease
some song of brightsome mirth through dawn-lit trees
to welcome morning’s sun. O daughter! these
are eyes too weak for laughter; for love’s sight,
I welcome darkness, overcome with light.



Shark
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s—
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and although I hear,
he says nothing that I understand.

The moon shines—maniacal, queer—as he takes my hand and whispers
Our time has come . . . and so we stroll together along the docks
where the sea sends things that wriggle and crawl
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight in great floods washes his pale face as he stares unseeing
into my eyes. He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine,
and my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard. His face is bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we fear the dark, but the light destroys them . . .
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross—such common things.
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we heed his voice.

Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.

We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he prays to find us,
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Few legends have inspired more poetry than those of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These legends have their roots in a far older Celtic mythology than many realize. Here the names are ancient and compelling. Arthur becomes Artur or Artos, “the bear.” Bedivere becomes Bedwyr. Lancelot is Llenlleawc, Llwch Lleminiawg or Lluch Llauynnauc. Merlin is Myrddin. And there is an curious intermingling of Welsh and Irish names within these legends, indicating that some tales (and the names of the heroes and villains) were in all probability “borrowed” by one Celtic tribe from another. For instance, in the Welsh poem “Pa gur,” the Welsh Manawydan son of Llyr is clearly equivalent to the Irish Mannanan mac Lir.

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.

Published by Borderless Journal, Celtic Twilight, Celtic Lifestyles, Boston Poetry and Auldwicce



Ibykos/Ibycus Fragment 286, circa 564 BCE
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come spring, the grand
apple trees stand
watered by a gushing river
where the maidens’ uncut flowers shiver
and the blossoming grape vine swells
in the gathering shadows.

Unfortunately
for me
Eros never rests
but like a Thracian tempest
ablaze with lightning
emanates from Aphrodite;
the results are frightening—
black,
bleak,
astonishing,
violently jolting me from my soles
to my soul.



Dunkles zu sagen (“Expressing the Dark”)
by Ingeborg Bachmann, an Austrian poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I strum the strings of life and death
like Orpheus
and in the beauty of the earth
and in your eyes that instruct the sky,
I find only dark things to say.

The dark shadow
I followed from the beginning
led me into the deep barrenness of winter.



Annual
by Michael R. Burch

Silence
steals upon a house
where one sits alone
in the shadow of the itinerant letterbox,
watching the disconnected telephone
collecting dust ...

hearing the desiccate whispers of voices’
dry flutters,—
moths’ wings
brittle as cellophane ...

Curled here,
reading the yellowing volumes of loss
by the front porch light
in the groaning swing . . .

through thin adhesive gloss
I caress your face.



Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

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

Tell Regret it is not so rare.

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

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



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.



Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.

I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your ******* like almonds, whole.

I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.

I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.



Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I do not love you like coral or topaz,  
or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame;
I love you like phantoms embraced in the dark ...
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed.

I love you like shrubs that refuse to bloom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now thanks to your love an earthy fragrance  
lives dimly in my body’s odors.

I love you without knowing—how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care;
I love you this way because I know no other.

Here, where “I” no longer exists ... so it seems ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,  
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Violets
by Michael R. Burch

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

and you laughed,
abruptly demure,
outblushing shocked violets:

suddenly,
I knew:
everything had changed ...

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

—the dragonflies’
last darting feints
dissolving mid-air—

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

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

then haunt our small remainder of hours.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



At Once
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Though she was fair,
though she sent me the epistle of her love at once
and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would dare
pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once,
the dark, haggard keeper of the lair,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would share
the all of her being, to heal me at once,
yet more than her touch I was unable bear.
I did not love her at once.

And yet she would care,
and pour out her essence ...
and yet—there was more!
I awoke from long darkness,

and yet—she was there.
I loved her the longer;
I loved her the more
because I did not love her at once.



Drunken Morning, or, Morning of Drunkenness
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare wherein I won’t stumble!
Oh, rack of splendid enchantments!

Huzzah for the virginal!
Huzzah for the immaculate work!
For the marvelous body!

It began amid children’s mirth; where too it must end.
This poison? ’Twill remain in our veins till the fanfare subsides,
when we return to our former discord.

May we, so deserving of these agonies,
may we now recreate ourselves
after our body’s and soul’s superhuman promise—
that promise, that madness!
Elegance, senescence, violence!

They promised to bury knowledge in the shadows—the tree of good and evil—
to deport despotic respectability
so that we might effloresce pure-petaled love.
It began with hellish disgust but ended
—because we weren’t able to grasp eternity immediately—
in a panicked riot of perfumes.

Children’s laughter, slaves’ discretion, the austerity of virgins,
loathsome temporal faces and objects—
all hallowed by the sacredness of this vigil!

Although it began with loutish boorishness,
behold! it ends among angels of ice and flame.
My little drunken vigil, so holy, so blessed!
My little lost eve of drunkenness!
Praise for the mask you provided us!
Method, we affirm you!

Let us never forget that yesterday
you glorified our emergence, then each of our subsequent ages.
We have faith in your poison.
We give you our lives completely, every day.
Behold, the assassin's hour!



Rêvé Pour l'hiver (“Winter Dream”)
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come winter, we’ll leave in a little pink carriage
With blue cushions. We’ll be comfortable,
snuggled in our nest of crazy kisses.
You’ll close your eyes, preferring not to see, through the darkening glass,
The evening’s shadows leering.
Those snarling monstrosities, that pandemonium
of black demons and black wolves.
Then you’ll feel your cheek scratched...
A little kiss, like a crazed spider, will tickle your neck...
And you’ll say to me: "Get it!" as you tilt your head back,
and we’ll take a long time to find the crafty creature,
the way it gets around...



Dawn
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I embraced the august dawn.

Nothing stirred the palaces. The water lay dead still. Battalions of shadows still shrouded the forest paths.

I walked briskly, dreaming the gemlike stones watched as wings soared soundlessly.

My first adventure, on a path now faintly aglow with glitterings, was a flower who whispered her name.

I laughed at the silver waterfall teasing me nakedly through pines; then on her summit, I recognized the goddess.

One by one, I lifted her veils, in that tree-lined lane, waving my arms across the plain, as I notified the ****.

Back to the city, she fled among the roofs and the steeples; scrambling like a beggar down the marble quays, I chased her.

Above the road near a laurel thicket, I caught her in gathered veils and felt her immense body. Dawn and the child collapsed together at the edge of the wood.

When I awoke, it was noon.



Catullus LXV aka Carmina 65
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hortalus, I’m exhausted by relentless grief,
and have thus abandoned the learned virgins;
nor can my mind, so consumed by malaise,
partake of the Muses' mete fruit;
for lately the Lethaean flood laves my brother's
death-pale foot with its dark waves,
where, beyond mortal sight, ghostly Ilium
disgorges souls beneath the Rhoetean shore.

Never again will I hear you speak,
O my brother, more loved than life,
never see you again, unless I behold you hereafter.
But surely I'll always love you,
always sing griefstricken dirges for your demise,
such as Procne sings under the dense branches’ shadows,
lamenting the lot of slain Itys.

Yet even amidst such unfathomable sorrows, O Hortalus,
I nevertheless send you these, my recastings of Callimachus,
lest you conclude your entrusted words slipped my mind,
winging off on wayward winds, as a suitor’s forgotten apple
hidden in the folds of her dress escapes a ******'s chaste lap;
for when she starts at her mother's arrival, it pops out,
then downward it rolls, headlong to the ground,
as a guilty blush flushes her downcast face.



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Passport
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

They left me unrecognizable in the shadows
that bled all colors from this passport.
To them, my wounds were novelties—
curious photos for tourists to collect.
They failed to recognize me. No, don't leave
the palm of my hand bereft of sun
when all the trees recognize me
and every song of the rain honors me.
Don't set a wan moon over me!

All the birds that flocked to my welcoming wave
as far as the distant airport gates,
all the wheatfields,
all the prisons,
all the albescent tombstones,
all the barbwired boundaries,
all the fluttering handkerchiefs,
all the eyes—
they all accompanied me.
But they were stricken from my passport
shredding my identity!

How was I stripped of my name and identity
on soil I tended with my own hands?
Today, Job's lamentations
re-filled the heavens:
Don't make an example of me again!
Prophets—
Don't require the trees to name themselves!
Don't ask the valleys who mothered them!
My forehead glistens with lancing light.
From my hand the riverwater springs.
My identity can be found in my people's hearts,
so invalidate this passport!



“The Moon Festival”
by Su ****
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“Where else is there moonlight?”
Wine cup in hand, I ask the dark sky,
Not knowing the hour of the night
in those distant celestial palaces.

I long to ride the wind home,
Yet dread those high towers’ crystal and jade,
Fear freezing to death amid all those icicles.

Instead, I begin to dance with my moon-lit shadow.
Better off, after all, to live close to earth.

Rounding the red pavilion,
Stooping to peer through transparent windows,
The moon shines benevolently on the sleepless,
Knowing no sadness, bearing no ill...
But why so bright when we sleep apart?

As men experience grief and joy, parting and union,
So the moon brightens and dims, waxes and wanes.
It has always been thus, since the beginning of time.

My wish for you is a long, blessed life
And to share this moon’s loveliness though leagues apart.

Su **** wrote this famous lyric for his brother Ziyou (1039-1112), when the poet was far from the imperial court.



Wu Tsao aka Wu Zao (1789-1862) was a celebrated lesbian poet whose lyrics were sung throughout China. She was also known as Wu Pinxiang and Yucenzi.

For the Courtesan Ch’ing Lin
by Wu Tsao
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

On the girdle encircling your slender body
jade and coral ornaments ****** like chimes,
like the tintinnabulations of some celestial being
only recently descended from heaven’s palaces.

You smiled at me when we met
and I become tongue-tied, forgetting how to speak.

For far too long now you have adorned yourself with flowers,
leaning nonchalantly against veiling bamboos,
your green sleeves failing to keep you warm
in your mysterious valley.

I can imagine you standing there:
an unusual girl, alone with her cryptic thoughts.

You exude light like a perfumed lamp
in the lengthening shadows.

We sip wine and play games,
recite each other’s poems.

You sing “South of the River”
with its heartrending verses.

Then we paint each other’s fingernails, toenails and beautiful eyebrows.

I want to possess you entirely:
your slender jade body
and your elsewhere-engaged heart.

Today it is spring
and enmassed mists, vast, cover the Five Lakes.

Oh my dearest darling, let me buy you a scarlet boat
and pirate you away!



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 casual lover.

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their bright 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 we know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
carved out to stand like strange totems in sand
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 brightly 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.

Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of apples
far from the bustle of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the dream-filled sleep of the child
who longed to cut out his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear how the corpse retains its blood,
or how the putrefying mouth continues accumulating water.
I don't want to be informed of the grasses’ torture sessions,
nor of the moon with its serpent's snout
scuttling until dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
whether a second, a minute, or a century;
and yet I want everyone to know that I’m still alive,
that there’s a golden manger in my lips;
that I’m the elfin companion of the West Wind;
that I’m the immense shadow of my own tears.

When Dawn arrives, cover me with a veil,
because Dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me;
then wet my shoes with a little hard water
so her scorpion pincers slip off.

Because I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of the apples,
to learn the lament that cleanses me of this earth;
because I want to live again as that dark child
who longed to cut out his heart on the high seas.



Insomnia
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In my enormous city it is night
as from my house I step beyond the light;
some people think I'm daughter, mistress, wife ...
but I am like the blackest thought of night.

July's wind sweeps a way for me to stray
toward soft music faintly blowing, somewhere.
The wind may blow until bright dawn, new day,
but will my heart in its rib-cage really care?

Black poplars brushing windows filled with light ...
strange leaves in hand ... faint music from distant towers ...
retracing my steps, there's nobody lagging behind ...
This shadow called me? There's nobody here to find.

The lights are like golden beads on invisible threads ...
the taste of dark night in my mouth is a bitter leaf ...
O, free me from shackles of being myself by day!
Friends, please understand: I'm only a dreamlike belief.



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;
if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads
uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;
if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams
of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise
to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,
as children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies . . .

it's Halloween!



El Dorado
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

It's a fine town, a fine town,
though its alleys recede into shadow;
it's a very fine town for those who are searching
for an El Dorado.

Because the lighting is poor and the streets are bare
and the welfare line is long,
there must be something of value somewhere
to keep us hanging on
to our El Dorado.

Though the children are skinny, their parents are fat
from years of gorging on bleached white bread,
yet neither will leave
because all believe
in the vague things that are said
of El Dorado.

The young men with outlandish hairstyles
who saunter in and out of the turnstiles
with a song on their lips and an aimless shuffle,
scuffing their shoes, avoiding the bustle,
certainly feel no need to join the crowd
of those who work to earn their bread;
they must know that the rainbow's end
conceals a *** of gold
near El Dorado.

And the painted “actress” who roams the streets,
smiling at every man she meets,
must smile because, after years of running,
no man can match her in cruelty or cunning.
She must see the satire of “defeats”
and “triumphs” on the ambivalent streets
of El Dorado.

Yes, it's a fine town, a very fine town
for those who can leave when they tire
of chasing after rainbows and dreams
and living on nothing but fire.

But for those of us who cling to our dreams
and cannot let them go,
like the sad-eyed ladies who wander the streets
and the junkies high on snow,
the dream has become a reality
—the reality of hope
that grew too strong
not to linger on—
and so this is our home.

We chew the apple, spit it out,
then eat it "just once more."
For this is the big, big apple,
though it’s rotten to the core,
and we are its worm
in the night when we squirm
in our El Dorado.



The Composition of Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”—W. B. Yeats

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



Photographs
by Michael R. Burch

Here are the effects of a life
and they might tell us a tale
(if only we had time to listen)
of how each imperiled tear would glisten,
remembered as brightness in her eyes,
and how each dawn’s dramatic skies
could never match such pale azure.

Like dreams of her, these ghosts endure
and they tell us a tale of impatient glory . . .
till a line appears—a trace of worry?—
or the wayward track of a wandering smile
which even now can charm, beguile?

We might find good cause to wonder
as we see her pause (to frown?, to ponder?):
what vexed her in her loveliness . . .
what weight, what crushing heaviness
turned her auburn hair a frazzled gray,
and stole her youth before her day?

We might ask ourselves: did Time devour
the passion with the ravaged flower?
But here and there a smile will bloom
to light the leaden, shadowed gloom
that always seems to linger near . . .

And here we find a single tear:
it shimmers like translucent dew
and tells us Anguish touched her too,
and did not spare her for her hair’s
burnt copper, or her eyes’ soft hue.



Mending Glass
by Michael R. Burch

In the cobwebbed house—
lost in shadows
by the jagged mirror,
in the intricate silver face
cracked ten thousand times,
silently he watches,
and in the twisted light
sometimes he catches there
a familiar glimpse of revealing lace,
white stockings and garters,
a pale face pressed indiscreetly near
with a predatory leer,
the sheer flash of nylon,
an embrace, or a sharp slap,

. . . a sudden lurch of terror.

He finds bright slivers
—the hard sharp brittle shards,
the silver jags of memory
starkly impressed there—

and mends his error.



They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch

“We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”—George W. Bush

We will not forget ...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment),
still flashing grins they could not quite repent ...
Nor should they—anguish triumphs just an instant;
this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope—the shriveled chrysalis
that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then ***** about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. “Survive”
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s
awakening ... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.



Her Slender Arm
by Nakba, an alias of Michael R. Burch

Her slender arm, her slender arm,
I see it reaching out to me!—
wan, vulnerable, without a charm
or amulet to guard it. "FLEE!"
I scream at her in wild distress.
She chides me with defiant eyes.
Where shall I go? They scream, “Confess!
Confess yourself, your children lice,
your husband mantis, all your kind
unfit to live!”
                       See, or be blind.

I cannot see beyond the gloom
that shrouds her in their terrible dungeon.
I only see the nightmare room,
the implements of torture. Sudden
shocks contort her slender frame!
She screams, I scream, we scream in pain!
I sense the shadow-men, insane,
who gibber, drooling, "Why are you
not just like US, the Chosen Few?"

Suddenly she stares through me
and suddenly I understand.
I hear the awful litany
of names I voted for. My hand
lies firmly on the implement
they plan to use, next, on her children
who huddle in the corner. Bent,
their bidden pawn, I heil "Amen!"
to their least wish. I hone the blade
“Made in America,” their slave.

She has no words, but only tears.
I turn and retch. I ***** bile.
I hear the shadow men’s cruel jeers.
I sense, I feel their knowing smile.
I paid for this. I built this place.
The little that she had, they took
at my expense. Now they erase
her family from life’s precious book.
I cannot meet her eyes again.
I stand one with the shadow men.



The Fog and the Shadows
adapted from a novel by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“I began to realize the fog was similar to the shadows.”

I began to realize that, just as the exact shape of darkness is a shadow,
even so the exact shape of fog is disappearance
and the exact shape of a human being is also disappearance.
At this moment it seemed my body was vanishing into the human form’s final state.

After I arrived here,
it was as if the danger of getting lost
and the desire to lose myself
were merging strangely inside me.

While everything in that distant, gargantuan city where I spent my five college years felt strange to me; and even though the skyscrapers, highways, ditches and canals were built according to a single standard and shape, so that it wasn’t easy to differentiate them, still I never had the feeling of being lost. Everyone there felt like one person and they were all folded into each other. It was as if their faces, voices and figures had been gathered together like a shaman’s jumbled-up hair.

Even the men and women seemed identical.
You could only tell them apart by stripping off their clothes and examining them.
The men’s faces were beardless like women’s and their skin was very delicate and unadorned.
I was always surprised that they could tell each other apart.
Later I realized it wasn’t just me: many others were also confused.

For instance, when we went to watch the campus’s only TV in a corridor of a building where the seniors stayed when they came to improve their knowledge. Those elderly Uyghurs always argued about whether someone who had done something unusual in an earlier episode was the same person they were seeing now. They would argue from the beginning of the show to the end. Other people, who couldn’t stand such endless nonsense, would leave the TV to us and stalk off.

Then, when the classes began, we couldn’t tell the teachers apart.
Gradually we became able to tell the men from the women
and eventually we able to recognize individuals.
But other people remained identical for us.

The most surprising thing for me was that the natives couldn’t differentiate us either.
For instance, two police came looking for someone who had broken windows during a fight at a restaurant and had then run away.
They ordered us line up, then asked the restaurant owner to identify the culprit.
He couldn’t tell us apart even though he inspected us very carefully.
He said we all looked so much alike that it was impossible to tell us apart.
Sighing heavily, he left.

Keywords/Tags: shadow, shadows, the dark, darkness, shades, ghosts, specters, spirits, hauntings
These are poems about shadows, poems about night, and poems about darkness.
betterdays Sep 2014
roll up! roll up!!
you fine hearted boy.
time now to put down,
the store made toys.
time to make magic...
with the inside,
of your mind
roll up! roll up!!
to the dream circus
let's see what we find....


melamine monkeys
mimic monstrousity's
mangling, minor majorities
in musical mayhem
symphonies, sublime
playing  mozart in part on
a shiny yellow kazooo

meanwhile marshmallow
crocodiles smile with
mincing beguile
at ****** moo cows
meandering miles
in crooked zig-zag lines
making milkshakes
all the while...

mouses and mices
are avoiding becoming
itty bitty pieces of
rodent and crabapple pie
by milling mindlessly
around the mound
of milliners, by the by.

now to
meet and greet at the
zoo
mrs hippopotomus
has ginger biscuits and
mango milk ready for you
while you watch the fleet of zebras  and their plataypi  crew,
sail in the xebec regatta
twice around the isle of goo.
before saying
huzzah and hooroo
they won the championship
whoohoo!!!!
it's all a happenin,
at the bing **** bingle zoo


but for all these
amazing thing to occur
my lad
you have to pay your dues
so close your eyes,
and sleep .....
and you  will see
a wonderful dream or two....
Malcolm McGill May 2013
night has passed
clanking and exhaling,
small talks of large projects, conundrums;
oak wood canines roam in bliss
new found love found lager
new found lover found a big stomach in the morning
and a smile on his face, not penetrating his soul.
deep and shallow, bodies of water dig going with the flow.
perhaps a bowl of cereal is in the general direction we're floating,
huzzah, brumah, and lack-lack.
lilac Dec 2016
hurrah, hurrah!
cue to cheers!
for the long writing program
has ended.

quite a journey it
has been!
spilling out words
squinting at pages
and conquering the
flame breathing dragon
in the very end.

so hurrah, hurrah
huzzah, huzzah,
it's over!
WOW NANO IS OVER YES
betterdays Jul 2014
these are the thoughts
of Clive,
the neighborhood curmudgeon...

how do i know this,
i am the imp that put them here....
in the garden, you folks
call a brain......


take this, sodding life
and it's meaningless struggle.
i set my face to this wall
and brick myself self in
to this useless stall.

the old man, Clive,
grumbled with a,
set and sour grin.

you...you're all pathetic,
thinking you can win.
death's the only victor...
over us, one
and sodding all.

and you can take,
your sodding...
flowers and cards
and sodding, casseroles too!!

there was,
one ray of sunshine
in my life
and now she is gone.

and she is not,
sodding around in another room,
or waiting for me up there.
she is not, in greener pastures
cause she was never..
an effin cow.

she is,
six footdown,
underground,
in a cheap wooden box,
making fodder,
for worms and beetles.
slowly, they are,
breakin her down.

and it will not be,
sodding fine
and time will not heal...
a heart smashed to smithereens.
a life torn asunder
**** me it's time,
for you pathetic
do-gooders...
to get ****** real....

no i am not,
a happy man,
and yes i am,
greiving the greatest loss.
and a ******, sausage
and bean casserole,
is not going to be,
making me believe,
that the world,
is a fair and just place...

don't you, worry about me.
i reckon i'll soon be,
leaving, my home
and my goods and chattels
and be recieving last rites,
farewells and a deep,dirt bed.

and that will be,
fine and dandy,
as long as it is,
close and handy,
to my beloved, Mandy.

what?
you're worried...
about my,
state of mind...

will ya, just *******,
haven't i
made myself clear,
i am way, too busy dying,
to pay you any attention...


this garden just going gangbuster
hey¡¡yah huzzah!!!
we will call this one,part experiment, part memory
and be done with it.
It was just on the stroke of midnight,
I was going to go to bed,
But I had to pass by Charlie’s room
So I hung back there, instead,
I could hear the rattle of drums that came
From under his bedroom door,
And then the sound of a French ‘Huzzah!’
From a Napoleonic war.

I thought, ‘He’s at it again, he’s got
The Frenchies marching east,
He’s going to Borodino, where
He’s got a chance, at least,
He’s leading the French Grand Armée
As Napoleon did before,
But I couldn’t get in to stop him, as
He’d locked his bedroom door.

I shook my head and I went to bed,
There was no point hanging round,
For Charlie, he’d be up all night
‘Til the Armée went to ground,
By dawn he’d have them dragging back
From the Russian ice and snow,
And wouldn’t be fit to go to school
‘Til he’d had a sleep, you know.

He wasn’t a kid like other kids
He wouldn’t play with a phone,
He didn’t get into computer games
But he spent his time alone.
He didn’t make friends so easily
For he never went out to play,
But stuck his head in a history book
And would read and read all day.

They said he must have been gifted in
Some strange, abnormal way,
He used his imagination for
The games he wanted to play,
His mind reached back to another time
Where the personae were dead,
And brought them back for a second chance
On the counterpane of his bed.

I caught a glimpse of the action once
In a crack through his bedroom door,
A galleon moored in a harbour by
An armed Conquistador,
He saw me there and he slammed the door
And he said, ‘Don’t interfere!
I’m trying to raise the English Fleet
And I can’t if you’re standing there!’

His mother took him to town one day
To see a psychologist,
Who said, ‘He lives in a world of his own,
I think he’s really blessed.
We all grow out of our childish ways
And I think he’ll be the same.’
He thought it was all in Charlie’s head
‘Til the day that ‘Little Boy’ came.

He’d read and read of the second war
For a month until that day,
When I heard the aircraft engines I
Just knew, the ‘Enola Gay’,
I beat and beat upon Charlie’s door,
Broke out in a cold, cold sweat,
But the plane took off, and I grabbed the wife
And we’d still be running yet.

We were out in the road when the roof blew off
With a mighty blast and roar,
And the mushroom cloud was curling up
While we lay, flat out on the floor,
Charlie had gone from our lives for good
With his gift, and his bag of tricks,
Hard to believe that he had the power,
For Charlie was only six!

David Lewis Paget
Brent Kincaid Mar 2018
Rickrack, got cataracts
My vision is so blurry.
Surgery done, not much fun
I wish healing would hurry.
Zip zop, roota zoot.
Hate backless hospital suits!
Clap clap, standing ovation.
For a successful operation.

Wave pompoms, ziss boom bah
For magic modern medicine
In just one day, as they say.
The right eye is all fixed again.
Go back in a few weeks
And have the left one done.
Huzzah hurrah and yippee kai yay
And the healing has begun.

Colors I never noticed before
Are now bright and shiny.
If I had known that before I
Woulda been petulant and whiny.
But, nothing noticed, nothing lost
I am looking forward to the day
When I can see completely better.
Harroo and blinking hurray!
xmxrgxncy May 2016
Unity.
Hands, rings, fingers
Smelly perfume and the swishes of gowns
That take us back
To a time period without pain
Caused by one another's insufferability....

Today is my day,
Ours,
And with a final
Huzzah
And a final
Amen
We will all become
One
Prom and Ring Ceremony today XD
That dormant feeling of insecurity arose,
when travel journal got ****** adjacent
     to my tattered (holey tattooed) clothes
while I knew with crossed eyes

     aroused anger from peaceful doze
my younger sister felt about her
     globe trotting exploits, an over expose
jour ever since voyaging out on her own

     after graduating top of her class
     where mine hatred glows
indirectly snidely sneering
     at ma dough less brother hoboes

(a 1979 Methacton High School alumni),
     unanimously chosen valedictorian
     dressed in Calvin Klein
     Harris tweed, couture

     and silk ***** hose
like me prolonging, promoting
     on par with quasi staff sergeant, who knows
artful disciplinarian gingerly launching
     Cider House rules,

     asper formerly commanding G.I. Joes
     and pronouncing, predilection
     exhaling natural highs no lows
traveling solo, with surviving Wilburys,

     or just mows
zing nonchalantly
     (though a foreigner) with swarthy skin color
     easily camouflaging as civilian
     all points on the compass,

     where minute needle doth nose
upon returning home (being honorably feted
     at once glorious estate of Glen Elm,
     where she did propose

to the Lord Taylor (swiftly), which location
     situated at 324 Level Road, Collegeville,
     Pennsylvania 19426),
     thence a great huzzah a rose

an immediate nauseousness welled
     within from me head tummy smelly toes
I did not want to here, or see any details,
     which would accentuate personal woes

popping, snapping, and smarting,
     and slapping skin raw tib bits,
     ache'n to yanked strings
     of mama's heirloom yo-yos!

Poet Script:

trials and tribulations,
     visited upon head of young
concocted ("FAKE") gusty and gutsy
     kid sister enterprising ingenue,

     christened easy on the tongue
Sharodd (not her real name),
     to top off talents sung
like a professional opera singer, which rung

a shiver along small hairs of spine did tingle
heard all the way to Lake Woebegone
where bachelor farmers did mingle

every Christmas, a decreasing
     number donned Kris Kringle
hit with blitzkrieg of yawping brats
     hoof pranced to bell weather jingle!
wordvango Feb 2015
KnobNess
By Finnius Dilkington


KnobNess is upon us

Altho my KnobNess is not nu

been working on my KnobNess for some time now

37 years & a few

My KnobNess is incomplete.

Incompetent

untrue

I am certain I have more KnobNess

More KnobNess

more than you

At times you'll see my KnobNess

At the luncheon table and such

I'll tell a joke & mess about

You'll laugh out of politeness

And

"not very much"

My KnobNess is like a steaming plastic packet

fresh ripped from the Microwave

a packet Inside a black plastic bag,

un clean and un true
Here's the the thing that thing I do

Make an insulting racket; Hussle,

Huzzah and harangue too

is my technique

is nothing new

KnobNess in my acting actions

Like the malevolent Sir Richard Chamberlain

fancy in some vile and delinquent role

Dolled up, ****** arresting

With grasping grabbing

Needful hands.

"Yon knobNess is thus"

"And thus"

(wrists bent)

And the dark black circles about his actors eyes

create no illusion

I remain at the centre of my KnobNess

Assured in my self believing belief

frequent feeling of my own genitals Is

no more,

no less

than any others.
This poem , I read back in May 2014, it is one of the few staying in my memory. TY Finnius
Q Nov 2014
I thought I'd found it
Found you
Found the one.

You fit me
Completed me
Like the moon and the sun.

But you wanted more
Wasn't content
Couldn't be satisfied.

And I hated that
Hated you
And your useless lies.

See, we could have ruled the world
I made a spot in my plan for you
I could have had one of everything
You could have had it too.

Doll, I never quite wanted to break someone
As much as I wanted to put them together
And, no, you didn't manage to hurt me
But you've got me more than bitter.

I wasn't good enough
But here's one last huzzah; we tried
Because you don't get what you did
But here's one last hurrah and goodbye.
Sometimes I write things to remind myself why some people are bad for my general health even though I don't care but I feel like I need to reprimand myself and god this sentence is a run on but you cant judge me because I'm just being a good healthy person and telling myself in poetry form that i cant dwell on this anymore. jeez.
betterdays May 2014
'free butlers for everybody'**

yippee!! hooray!! huzzah!!

i would so love,
somebody to follow me
around all day.
doing the mudane and
boring things,
all that daily guff.
to be at my beck and call,
for just about anything at all.

but then,
if there are 'free butlers for all'

would my, butler,
not have a bulter, of his own
to order about from,
his butler throne
and so on and so forth
and if we all had butlers.
would anything, ever,
really get done?

OR, would we all be,
passing ***** laundry
about in a neverending,  
linen chain.
drinking tepid tea from each others ***** tea cups.
polishing silver for some one other than us ...
would i end up,
being a bulter to you.

my god!  

this, idea of

'free butlers for every one.'  

is spiralling,  out of control

this  factotumnal conudrum,
is going to  drive me insane.

JEEVES ! please, please be so good
as, to bring me a calming tisane.
this, was inspired by an advertising blitz campaign for a cruise company... one of the main selling points...
was "free butlers for everybody"
got the noodle thinking and this doodle the product.
raingirlpoet May 2017
i want to talk with someone
but i don't know how to say it
i want to talk just talk
not about specific life events or what i ate for dinner last night
please don't ask me about my family or my academics
ask me why my replies get short when you ask me how i am
tell me more than
well i'm glad you're still breathing
when that's my response to your short question
i know
that i can twist my words into appearing positive even when they're not
i know that my sarcasm doesn't always transcend beyond the computer's algorithms
i know that you don't know how to mitigate my suffering
and that's fine
really
it is
so we'll talk about you and your great life adventures
even though right now
i want to talk about the poem i just read by andrea gibson
i want to talk about my writing professor and her brilliant mind and how i've never been more motivated to get to class just so i could sit there and take in the simple grandeur
i want to talk about the night sky and i know it's overrated woohoo the stars and moon huzzah for the earth's night light but have you ever noticed
how when you stand out in the middle of the road at 2 am in the morning,
the world down here is silent and flat but up there, the galaxies stretch and bend beyond the eye can see, the stars are all placed so perfectly
hapharzardly scattered about but in the right places
sometimes they're so dim, you know?
i will never stop aweing over the miracle of the sky nor will i ever not stand in the middle of the road at 2 am in the morning on a rough night just to be reminded of the beauty that's still there within each and every one of us even though sometimes we can't see it
i want to talk about the dream i had last night
and the night before that and how i am scared to fall asleep because my mind is a ******* complex and ***** thing that can thread unimaginable hypotheticals through something that was supposed to be peaceful
i don't want to sleep
i want to talk
i want to talk with someone
because i'm tired of talking to myself
-
-rgp
Jihad Donald Trump Style
The glory of America, now heats up
with agitation poised to strike on the brink
sans legislation incites humiliation,
which goads desecration as fete accompli *****
in armor of Democratic rubric, constituting capitalistic
ethic, generic iconoclastic, and jingoistic logic,
nor budging an inch when mandating masses swallow his drink
what huff huck – this belligerent, dominant and
fervent hell raiser doth bungle in the jungle
decreeing tacit Mar shall law fast as a shutterfly eyewink
as his cosmic crotch grab doth put Venus under his sway
with his Mercury hill temperament
pitches the orbit of planet Earth tubby comb out of balance
infected by hiz anti Ju pit er damnations, excoriations, fulminations
Huzzah sing how **** derriere didst Sat urn simultaneously
crushing crucible as an Uranus
indiscriminately plop ping two hundred fifty pounds off flesh
dub ling down snapchatting and humming his favorite Neptune
that dost affect Pluto hoc crass sea
repeating a self coined motto – I yam all mighty, therefore no fink
simply commandeering the reins of control,
a one man military intelligence groupthink
hut triad and true dyed in the wool rip pug in ant guise zing rogue
rejoicing tuff fool, governing and hoodwink
Fake king the die hard fans of dictatorial, linkedin and monarchist ink
cube bus thriving on wielding indomitable aggression
practiced in the Art of the Deal incorporating an unanticipated jink
iron fist rule reigning down vis a vis
pro pens heave lee and prop hen city
flashing hiz seal of approval, which scribbled signature
doth not smooth monkey serve hay puzzling kink
boot his frenzy to bulldoze catastrophic, formulaic, and illogic
spells these United States of America twill become hell
in a hand basket worth repeating with nary a trace of the grit of link
kin, the sixteenth president
(whose ruggedly pioneering frontier existence)
found him steady and strong, plus soft hearted as pelt o’ mink
the epitomy of this forty fifth elected commander in mischief.
Alan S Bailey Jun 2015
You turned out to be real "cute," sure,
I'm the one who's need of love is impure,
I'd like to tell you how I feel
Before this banquet becomes my last meal.
Huzzah! I'm past the point of no return,
Only space is left in for our concern,
You could care less what I think it's my eyes
That wait on your every word until I can blink,
Don't forget that pain you put into me!
All you said was "don't come over, don't bother,
No I don't want to see you or hear from you again,
I've already got a "perfect" boyfriend till the end.

Many forms of pain they come and go, you know,
But that pain it follows me wherever I may come or go.
Until the end of time...forever after...into tomorrows of tomorrow,
I feel nothing but hurt, loss, despair and endless sorrow...
James M Vines Dec 2015
Speaking gibberish and tongue twisters huzzah! Peter picked a something. Look there comes a pink dog, no wait it is a cat. Words have no meaning then they mean something else. Language is confusing, what was I saying. Never mind, I think I will move on to something else. Emotions get tangled with gum in my hair. I don't know whether to cry or scream. Nothing goes right, just look at Picasso's blue period. How depressing can you get. Just cut off an ear why don't you. In all things be vigilant and clean up your room. What is the point of life, I am not sure but I think it is ice cream.
blood rushes under my skin
as you leave me in a panic
my eyes blur at the sight of you leaving me
alone, again
stuck in this heat.
I could do without the teasing
but I see it has no meaning

It is familiar but new
like visiting an old park
where you are my new swing
and I am sitting where I always sit
wrapped around another finger

but even at this desk we are too close together
you say little and I fear I say too much
you study stats as I study the way you sigh,
how you look away when you talk,
and how tired you look right now.

I will stay because  
I feel something strange when we embrace
enough to make me want you after hours
we cuddle ****, huzzah! but do you even like me?
OnwardFlame Jun 2016
The night before
We felt dizzy in our lace up poetic combat boots
Our twirling white dresses
As the rain gushed and thunder bolts raised their voices
We're getting married
We're getting married!!
Hooray, hurrah, huzzah
Like a troop of lightning bolt ridden
White blossoms blown from the pedestals
Of feminine prison
We rang and threw ourselves against all the bells.

Bells chimed
And my shoes were slightly too small
As I gave into the deep sensation of--
Of--
Of
The fact that I attempted with such vigor
To place myself with such demure language
Into the foot steps of a role I simply could not
Take on just yet
And never
With you
Sweet wrong one.

Rising from a rustic old abandoned ship
Strewn into a meadow like broken shards of glass
The image of birds a flame reigniting their own souls
You appeared and disappeared
Like a tuxedo I never even allowed myself to miss
An epic love story
My feminine warriors and I would pick apart
Dissect with sharp eyes and knowing hands
I can't get too excited
Not just yet

I'm the one who wears white tomorrow night
First and last
Like an entourage of bridal parties and forget me nots
Frozen bananas make up my new reality
I go to bed, the lighting slightly blue
Male perspective so strong and angry lately
I'm so blonde
Like a new born baby
I'm the one who wears white
As I trickle and admit at times
I hope you see it
I hope you read it
I hope you recognize every bit of it
All of you

But it was never about you
Never really at all
As thunder outside my warm windows agrees with me
Like a siren call
Face down in a perfect gown
Limb by limb
Coming to
Be my own bride.
Happy 83rd birthday to thy cremated mom

Harriet Harris fought tooth and nail
Mother succumbed
to terminal illness without fail
Ovarian/ Uterine Cancer to no avail
hosted by death feasted fancy
at Oyster Bay metastasized inducing this male
the sol son to grapple as psyche didst ail.
***********
Major organs compromized grim reaper and
carried corpse into dead zone as a keeper brand
donned as one Canarsie flashy dame grand
ball room dancer didst skittered in right hand
side o' me noggin, the idea flit ta left land
of gray matter thru me mined task didst ex panned

foregoing bidding on e-bay, ruminate how trite
online shenanagins, never asking nor knowing spite
most likely raged within yar being,
which lack of filial duty haint right
to be near where psyche flails quite
understandably, but no matter matthew scott

never did ask, how emotions most clear aflame
with anger writhing asper your terminal plight
vis a vis injustice to ****** desire with shroud of night
arising each morning to brilliant light

ye, thy lover of life becoming ashen gray
with recurring incomplete bucket list that may
already, a dozen plus years ago - neigh
aye methinks, so much deprived of grandchildren ply
their oars thru the time stream, how **** sigh
to partake whence thee drew final breath thy
avoid seeing thee stiffen with rigor mortis, why...

did unlucky dice throw of fate
rob and steal unattained goals ye strove with grate
fully before out bidden by dead souls, who hate
mortals to complete, thus truncate a lifelong mate
to papa, whom recouped severe loss, though his pate

undoubtedly flits with remembrance
of thee one he did highly rate
despite occasions, where spats hood did vitiate

this son feels he did not booster morale at all
with Huzzah, but stood mute in proximity
when ye didst call
in kitchen of century old stone
mansion built and hall

ways echo wing the absence sans pall
in droning sounds of silence, a squall
vacuumed a key per, a gal fairly tall
whose son now reflects how many a wall
he figuratively erected shuttered from y'all

that home razed, yet memory of complex edifice
still intact, averse to let eyes sweep, the home I miss
analogous to house at Pooh’s Corner
viz shared with a younger and older loving sis

both edging into their twilight zoned time on earth
re: the outer limits of expected longevity, yet stoking
the coals essence of each their respective hearth
324 Level Road Collegeville above recaptured
with recollections of merriment and mirth
oft occasions this sol heir withholding telling worth

thee ness, and must therefore purge such grief
considerably less than when pages
of me life seemed like a shuffled sheaf
or soon after yar demise, a sense of drowning
without recourse to being rescued,
nor near enough to grasp hold of any reef

that home stead, blessedly played important role
constituent key residence like quasar pole
sated light years removed from civilization, when goal
acquisition February 28th 1968 won land slide cole

essence tract of idyllic radiance upon open space
already slated tubby outfitted, transformed for race
sing urbanity asper mobile Americans at a pace
greater than mother nature shows amazing grace
as commercialization takes charge and doth efface,

the once bucolic, ecologic, and idyllic
forces this sentimental sir
to latch upon steady brace
bemoaning and tempted to take ace

hip of hemlock to forego discontent with bing hue
man, who cherished tender mother-son glue
and wondrous tribulation, 
I harbored enshrined and unwittingly flew
from pristine sanctuary secured
deeply in consciousness,

which access to retrieve circumstances
of myself as a boy still dwells in this man shun - clew
less nothing can recreate, nor reconstruct boyhood,
teenage and adult hood pangs
scare me wide-awake
whar frightful dreams serve as boo

stirring of dormant sentiment,
especially thee 13th day n 11th month
of each year
the aura, charisma, and persona, veer
dims sum milk of human kindness bequeathed tear
ring inner sanctum, where
this offspring doth miss his mum, he doth rare
lee shed light, only when faux pause (all faux)
aye scrawl a mini opus knowing you will

never be cognizant, extant, for me to grant mere
cathartic expunging in situ flowing emotions hear
able only to live kith and kin or
akin to Rapunzel unfurling tress buffeted hair

inside my being for love unspoken dare
ring father hood got taught true value, sans two beautiful
grand daughters ye would marvel
poignant traits, and disbelief that this bare
wren wove within DNA lasses who usher an air.

— The End —