"limned" poems
★ ✰ ✪ ★ ✰ ✪ ★ ✰ ✪
The Baby-Hole, her baby-hole!
Turn back before you lose your soul.
Those walls of pink, those gates of pearl
grant entrance to each boy and girl
who come through this organic portal:
newly-born and merely mortal.
Mystery to be dignified—
explored, adored, objectified:
the baby-hole’s expanding chasm,
promising celestial spasm,
is limned in deliquescent love
and fits the soul as hand in glove.
Beware her tantalizing pull
where poetry turns vaginal.
From depths profound, God can create
(where man would merely **********
hitting Mother Nature’s high note
as the gamete turns to zygote).
Semi-seconds’ spurting passion
years of living baby fashion.
After pleasure’s jest, gestation
thus augments the population;
teenage dads recalibrate,
unsure just what to celebrate.
Yet, if they knew the daring risk
their ***** endure, they’d slip a disc;
to realize what threatening odds
confront these flagellated gods:
(see Luke in Star Wars, [number IV]
battling fascists in the war
alone in the zone to shoot the shot
that blows the death star up. Let’s not
miss out on noting, in this theme,
life’s true conception. So the team
of X-wing pilots flew the run,
eliminated one by one
save Luke, who penetrated deep
the death-star’s ovulated keep
and overcame the egg’s defense
and hit the mark. It all makes sense.
The spheroid bursting in his sight
depicts Conception's glorious might).
Therefore, show the matrix honor.
Shoot and leave—your star’s a goner:
nurture growth while life allows you,
while your star can still espouse you.
Seek her core of hidden gnosis
don’t just set off cell mitosis…
not, that is, unless you are sure
that the three of you won’t end up poor.
Feb 9, 2017
Feb 9, 2017 at 8:02 PM UTC
The land was a body. Aching bones of mountains limned with boreal forest
veined with iron.
Men dwelt on the body. Erecting altars, howling and dancing round fires
their patriarchal beards knotted and waving
Men killed on the body. Waving crude axes like ancient trailblazers of war
Would wave mammoth club-like femurs
Bodies slay different bodies so they may die somewhere on this body
That heaves with the rock
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 12:18 PM UTC
His shoulders fascinate you;
Both mechanical and organic,
Soft, capable, broad
Like the horses of your youth and just as shy.
Invisible breaths and phantom winds caress the fine divots of your vertebrae:
Divots never loved by tangible lips.
Your skin bristles, hair rises,
Prickles come in waves down the limbs.
You wish you knew each muscle’s scientific classification
To give as a gift,
A mantra,
A prayer to whisper against his delicately whorled ear.
His eyes
Bottle green and limned with straw debris
They rest in shadow beneath sloping brows,
Lashes as long and thick as yours when you use lacquer,
Tunnels to the mind you idolize,
Panes through which you search for the pulse of his soul.
You think of his eyes open,
Think of what dreams are projected against their lids
At night, when yours struggle to escape the sheets.
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 11:45 PM UTC
Where did you go my queen,
Sun eluded,darkness hued the sky,
Clouds amalgamated and the sounds emerged,
Thunder tingling the mother earth,
Where did you go,you two little foot with your graceful fingers and celestial hands,
Wandering in the cosmos of obliviousness,
My mind envisaging your pastiche presence,
I see ur smile drifting on the rays of the imbued rainbow:
When the mellows of the zephyr that carried the voice of your breathe that breezed in to my breathe,
The ecstasy of tears cracked through the clustered clouds,
My hair winding as the zephyr roving through synecdoche strands...
My palm is under the influence of the dripping water,
and my eyes caught you floating, like the foliage leaf,
The ellipsoidal life carried your simulacrum,
I asked the drops of globular life that where did she impersonate you,
She limned with the bubbles that spoke chirpily:
"I saw her While I was in jaunt trip with the chariot clouds and lilting thunder,
she was strolling in the frolic fields fuddled with wallowing winds....
Her long hirsuite was in harmony with the zephyr,
As the brother zephyr was billowing in to her hair...".
I don't know where the place is,even my mind tends to imagine it,,
but I feel I too could fuse with you in the midst of that perpetual bliss,
I am waiting for you as my body transferring heat to the dripping life,
Didn't u hear those imbued silences that yelled your name...
Where did u go you plenary pulchritude,It is from you that I read what undulations are.....
If you don't come,I will...when I do...you wouldn't...
We will melt as one to the one....
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 11:48 PM UTC
I paid for the two coffees and brought
them back to the table, swear they
chinkled in my hands like the music
in my teeth jouncing around when I
see you. You wrote letters in your
bright notebook and as I sipped you
asked me to discover them. High task.
Could barely read your cursive boughs
and sinewy slippery esses, slip slip
sliding off the page as you smiled
with a pixieish shrug—see, can’t do it.
But I sipped a little more deliberately,
slitted my eyes back to you, wrote
you some mischief on a napkin and
you laughed. It was buoyant and I
floated for a second above the wooden
bench, sustained by other voices like
cushions of marzipan I could dip in
your coffee and you would love it.
And back then you were really in
front of me, I should have limned your
lines and ridges onto your notebook,
just to show you. Should have taken
out my camera in a way you wouldn’t
have seen and taken a picture of those
eyes, the way you looked right there,
right then. Maybe you’d have seen
mine being created then—suddenly
rushing, flushing blood to a created
thing, made out of thin air, substantive.
Seen how you gave me my flesh, how
you made me an unknown drinker of
all life’s subtle blessings, peacefully,
even while within the mist of its
peaceless ecstasy and fury.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:14 PM UTC
Cruel nuances of misplaced futures,
Arc far beyond time’s twisting fabric,
Spiralling across splitting ends of reality,
Teasing the churning moments that are now.
What will be, will be, shadows within shadows,
Shimmering, through subtle shades of life.
Shifting, fading before finally blossoming.
Then it burns, shakes with unleashed rage;
Whilst on a whim, sharing of a gentle smile,
Glance of a stranger, an inappropriate kiss,
Promises in dreams of unchained desires,
Ride free on dark horses, wind in their hair.
Bodies limned beneath a harvest moon,
Nakedness admired by breathless lust,
Sated innocence writhes, dances as one,
A pleasurable alloy of heart and soul,
Blended within imagination’s crucible,
Cruel nuances of misplaced futures.
© Paul M Chafer 2014
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 10:21 AM UTC
... he points his toes
like a swan stretching its neck :
smooth calves in fish-nets
to slip into stiletto heels,
performance art of a deceptive nymph
... grace on fine-point tips : his gift - in stiletto heels,
impersonation or personification of feminine beauty
leporine lithely limned
delicate dancer
it is almost as if floating across water
he mimicked once more before
some inner mother's nature took over
façade of savoir face - voila! a star in it's place ...
... It is her face when the night creates a cape
borne with Van Gogh plumes sufficed with self
she paints upon his face : starry nights
sun-flowers, irises covering the welts...
comparably museum worthy, imitation flames
yet like any other canvas
beneathe it could lie disappointment and mistake
drafts of inspiration, cover-ups of cynicism
another creature - some creation unlike him
what was before / the curtain / is unseen, but what if ...
... the truth and process to what presently one sees
or believe
could be / only an amateur attempt:
moments unfelt under layers & layers
of trial and errors / contempt?
would you wipe away Mona Lisa's
smile and devilish wicked secret ?
just to uncover blemished a masterpiece:
an ugly Danish duckling underneath
to prove that swan-lake
a gent
... to evolve from broken eggshells
become a song timely hummed & remembered well
priceless history murals' on passing face
all spoken thoughts performing down the lace
define yourself, how the flight of life from embers
happiness pursuant to tender
Fully free with grace,
it is the power of creativity / the spirit's ability
to overcome adversity
the art of divinity - that is
what he is practicing
This trumpeter
swan in stiletto heels...
Apr 26, 2016
Apr 26, 2016 at 6:21 PM UTC
Die Maske des Bösen (“The Mask of Evil”)
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A Japanese woodcarving hangs on my wall—
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not unsympathetically, I observe
the forehead’s bulging veins,
the strain
such malevolence requires.
Original German text:
Die Maske des Bösen
An meiner Wand hängt ein japanisches Holzwerk
Maske eines bösen Dämons, bemalt mit Goldlack.
Mitfühlend sehe ich
Die geschwollenen Stirnadern, andeutend
Wie anstrengend es ist, böse zu sein.
Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956] was a major German poet, playwright, novelist, humorist, essayist, theater director and songwriter. Brecht fled Germany in 1933, when ****** assumed power. A number of Brecht's poems were written from the perspective of a man who sees his country becoming increasingly fascist, xenophobic and militaristic. Keywords/Tags: Bertolt Brecht, German, translation, Holocaust, poem, Japanese, carving, mask, demon, evil, malevolence, sympathy, compassion, understanding, feeling, forehead, veins, swollen, bulging, effort, strain, exhausting, concentration, suggest, suggesting, suggestive, demonstrating, revealing, showing, wall, gold, golden, lacquer, paint, woodwork, totem, malice, hatred, enmity, spite, spitefulness, animosity, anger, maliciousness, malignancy, venom, spleen, viciousness
Bertolt Brecht Epigrams and Quotations
These are my modern English translations of epigrams and quotations by Bertolt Brecht.
Everyone chases the way happiness feels,
unaware how it nips at their heels.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The world of learning takes a crazy turn
when teachers are taught to discern!
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Unhappy, the land that lacks heroes.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hungry man, reach for the book:
it's a hook,
a harpoon.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Because things are the way they are,
things can never stay as they were.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
War is like love; true ...
it finds a way through.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
What happens to the hole
when the cheese is no longer whole?
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
It is easier to rob by setting up a bank
than by threatening the poor clerk.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Do not fear death so much, or strife,
but rather fear the inadequate life.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Keywords/Tags: Bertolt Brecht, translation, translations, German, modern English, epigram, epigrams, quote, quotes, quotations
Mar 20, 2020
Mar 20, 2020 at 11:50 PM UTC
I move through days
Of limned frost
Of silent rain
Piecing moments of coherence
Through the whispered voice
And a sharpened pencil
Making my sense
By leaving my mark
Each poem
A little-used corner
Of life—
Mine, or another’s—
And as I do so,
I see myself
on the periphery,
a veil between us.
Perhaps it must be so
for the whispered voice
to come in advance of life’s to-do list
and for me to incline my head enough to hear it.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 5:44 PM UTC
Umbridging the gap
and the platitudes of word-whores
as well as the Encyclopedic pimps of posh
spiced with lingual ice...
Because I am a simpleton
with a thirst for the Beloved
and its discriptive meanings, I am
scholarly lacking
Juxtaposing my script to refer
to references Grecian or urn,
enflagrante artisan
spurts with superlatives and
personified iambics of rhetorical lines
limned with deep shagrin
because my verbs are linear
even when my chicken scratch
struck midnight a match stick
flame to illuminate
my poetic fluffer's formulae
schisms from my own mind's magician hat...
Not to be-little or slight those hands walking
that yellow the pages
with slothly seeking rote
for meandering bibliographies
a librarian's histology fingers for Captain
Cook / exploration's verbose
exploitation if at most
connecting dots treasured maps
of purposeful / placement for imagery
in the textiles
of poetry's destined and enlightening
cloak & dagger or a Throw
or a goose-down warmth
of Love / to blanket the night away
just as would a mother's / tucking in
from the day's overwhelming
lack of reverances, referenced
oh how to closely listen / or live
beyond the history
to be in the moment
comparing and sharing
our joys and the power of now . . . keep it simple
because I am a simpleton with a thirst
with a thirst for the Beloved,
the Truth of a promise / endowed Tao of Us. . .
Dec 25, 2015
Dec 25, 2015 at 1:22 PM UTC
Non descript hedge rows sculpted into
ornamental animal via botanical artist
wielding pruning shears and chain saw
carved, limned and sculpted with wrist
wrought voila uber prestidigitatiously
head turning botanical picturesque Sun
kist animals at an exhibition transformed
miraculously via Te Deum divine fist ***
ping, whence realistic fauna burst alive
with an explosion of colorful twist and
shout of foliage, where scalloped super
flu us detritus manna for naturalist de
cid Jew us detritus capacious carpet boar
animation punk chew waiting groundswell
Liszt ghost would arise from the grave to pro
deuce magnum opus without a beat missed
such shrubbery mimicking the likeness, sans
glistening fleshy sin yew, and gist about ready
to become bone a fide (green behind the ears)
thriving vox populist, per species and genus
wrought thrashing into birth as delicate crafts
man promised to imbue life, liberty and pursuit
of happiness whittling away leavings, thus did
exist the nascent then omnipresent visible entity
emerging from cocoon an herbalist meta morph
hosed from imagination of skilled, practiced and
mentalist conniver viz extracting the initially
obscure blessed beast, where with august magic
wielding tools of this specialty vis a vis bringing
breathing manifest destiny ala Pinocchio (trans
formed from wood to flesh), whereby finest
dexterous chiseling blistering hands baffle on
lookers as coterie of topiary harvest breaths mind
bogglingly astoundingly authentic rooted ready
to frolic in the grass menagerie a gamesome group
of linkedin live progeny, the MichelAngelo of
dirtiest canvass, an earthen tabula rasa of sorts
where application threshing re: electric cool laid
ahs hid test brings out chlorophyll doppelganger
green hued key luster.
May 18, 2018
May 18, 2018 at 8:03 PM UTC
when you are waiting
as passive as the glass you drink from
calcined, corralled
into your adequate shape
stand,
skin of your temples limned
by fluorescent,
until your legs ache
and while you are waiting
biding your time until they lift their heads
every disparate form you've taken
sends off their own light
a wild sunbeam toward each coast
broad, bolder-boned
your spine the rock entrenched here, there, wherever
those loafers become one with the floor
melt into it, you
the offshoot of spit
from a rallying cry;
the last good drop of Pentecost
pooling into the terrazzo
Oct 8, 2019
Oct 8, 2019 at 8:23 PM UTC
Joy stills the pen that gushes forth in sorrow.
Happness is lived, not written down.
Tears can best be dried on ink soaked paper.
Happiness will dance off of the pages.
Heartbreak rides on words into catharsis.
The butterfly of glee can not be captured.
Pain is limned in black and trapped by parchment.
Happiness is painted on the sky.
Sadness wallows in the dirt of midnight.
So my pages overflow with misery
While gladness hides away inside my heart.
ljm
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 10:38 AM UTC
Drag/Queen
... he points his toes
like a swan stretching its neck :
smooth calves in fish-nets
to slip into stiletto heels,
performance art of a deceptive nymph
... grace on fine-point tips : his gift - in stiletto heels,
impersonation or personification of feminine beauty
leporine lithely limned
delicate dancer
it is almost as if floating across water
he mimicked once more before
some inner mother's nature took over
façade of savoir face - voila! a star in it's place ...
... It is her face when the night creates a cape
borne with Van Gogh plumes sufficed with self
she paints upon his face : starry nights
sun-flowers, irises covering the welts...
comparably museum worthy, imitation flames
yet like any other canvas
beneath it could lie disappointment and mistake
drafts of inspiration, cover-ups of cynicism
another creature - some creation unlike him
what was before / her soft curtain / kept unseen,
but what if ...
... the truth and process to what presently others see
to believe or not
could be / only an amateur attempt:
moments unfeeling under layers & layers
of blush / trial and errors / sharp contempt
would you wipe away Mona Lisa's
smile so devilish with wicked secret
just to uncover blemished a masterpiece:
an ugly Danish duckling underneath ?
To prove his swan-lake / a gent
... to evolve from broken eggshells
become a song sung timely
hummed & remembered well
(hells bells and *****
Drag queens’
priceless history / murals' on passing face
No broken naughts
While performing down his lace
define yourself, she affirms her mirrors...
The harsh flight of life from the embers,
happiness pursuant to tender
Fully free with goddess grace,
it is the power of creativity / the spirit's ability
to overcome adversity
the art of divinity - that is
what he is practicing
This trumpeter
swan in stiletto heels...
Nov 27, 2017
Nov 27, 2017 at 6:55 PM UTC
i have a little dream
of you in the moonlight
my fingertip tracing
poems upon your back
words limned in luminance
braiding foxgloves into your hair
it’s just an idea,
it’s all just ideals:
ideal you...moonlight, skin, words
a little dream of “could be”
prickled with starlight
tinged with a berry scent
a tangled glow
I stay drunk on dreams,
I stay inflamed on dreams,
my ear pressed to the walls of the worlds
listening to the whispers from the universe next door.
don’t force me sober.
reality tastes like concrete.
Nov 24, 2020
Nov 24, 2020 at 7:57 AM UTC
Non descript hedge rows sculpted into ornamental animal
via botanical artist wielding pruning shears and chain saw
carved, limned and sculpted with wrist wrought voila uber
prestidigitatiously head turning botanical picturesque Sun
kist animals at an exhibition transformed miraculously via
Te Deum divine fist bumping, whence realistic fauna burst
alive with an explosion of colorful twist and shout of foliage,
where scalloped superfluous detritus manna for naturalist
deciduous detritus capacious carpet boar animation punk
chew waiting groundswell Liszt ghost would arise from the
grave to produce magnum opus without a beat missed such
shrubbery mimicking likeness sans glistening fleshy sin
yew, and gist about ready to become bone a fide (green be
hind ears) thriving vox populist, per species and genus
wrought thrashing into birth as delicate craftsman promised
to imbue life, liberty and pursuit of happiness whittling away
leavings, thus did exist the nascent then omnipresent visible
entity emerging from cocoon an herbalist metamorphosed
from the imagination of a skilled, practiced and mentalist
conniver viz extracting the initially obscure blessed beast,
where with august magic wielding tools of this specialty vis
a vis bringing breathing manifest destiny ala Pinocchio (trans
formed from wood to flesh), whereby finest dexterous
chiseling blistering hands baffle onlookers as coterie of
topiary harvest breaths mind bogglingly astoundingly
authentic rooted ready to frolic in grass menagerie,
a gamesome group of linkedin live progeny, the Michel
Angelo of dirtiest canvass, an earthen tabula rasa of sorts
where application threshing re: electric cool laid ahs hid
test brings out chlorophyll doppelganger green hued key luster.
Nov 28, 2017
Nov 28, 2017 at 1:41 AM UTC
The Mask of Evil
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A Japanese carving hangs on my wall –
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not altogether unsympathetically, I observe
its forehead’s bulging veins, noting
the tremendous effort such malevolence requires.
Keywords/Tags: Bertolt Brecht, German, translation, Holocaust poem, mask, evil, Japanese, carving, demon, totem, forehead, veins, bulging, effort, concentration, focus, malevolence, malice, hatred, enmity, spite, spitefulness, animosity, maliciousness, malignance, venom, spleen, viciousness
Mar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020 at 4:49 AM UTC
Chloe
by Michael R. Burch
There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
********** tall elms ... she would say
that we'd loved, but some book said we’d sinned.
Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.
Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.
What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall.” Keywords/Tags: Night, onyx, skies, love, *** sin, thunder, lightning, virtue, grace, moons, lakes, winds, mountains, Chloe
Mar 29, 2020
Mar 29, 2020 at 12:22 AM UTC
No One Knows
what it’s like to live in shame, to have no name,
to be labeled the fool by those so cruel, with their insidious
laughs, behind your back. No one knows
what it’s like to have lost it all, intrepid enough to try
again because you have nothing. And nothing
to lose, except your dignity. No one knows
what it's like to live in anguish, maintain the
smile behind unfilled desires. People refuse to see the message
you're putting out, because it's limned in idiosyncratic
ways that don’t embrace their priggish beliefs. Don’t get
entangled in their callow beefs. Living soporific lives
they’ve nothing better to do. You’re like the leaves
that stick to the grass after an autumn rain, a blanket of
orange, crimson and gold stain for labile feet to *****
upon. No one knows. Underneath, there's green that gets
covered up in winter frost.
Nov 13, 2018
Nov 13, 2018 at 6:40 AM UTC
Within Pantheon Of Classical Gods
stricken with affliction,
sans amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(also known as ALS,
or Lou Gehrig's disease)
in the prime of his youth wrought
underestimation, vitiated termination,
targeted sequestration,
solidified rigidification,
rendered quandary,
per paralyzation obliterated,
nixed navigation,
morphed motivation,
marked limitation
kickstarted infatuation,
jinxed immobilization,
induced intellectual hyperfunction,
garnered fundamental fascination,
fanned fabled exploration,
devastation demonstrated
delectable declaration,
cosmological constant comet
clinched, chained certain capitulation,
brainstormed benefaction,
benediction attribution assured.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
his longevity (marked by bing permanently
linkedin, hitched, drafted
to a custom made wheelchair,
his brilliant unsullied scientific genius)
endured seventy six orbitz veer
ring round the nearest star,
though seemingly motionless, he freed their
ret tickle physiochemical insight
encompassing, revolutionizing,
and jaw-dropping, revelations
with mortals he did share
transcendent seeded plentifully
mental limitless groundswell
fed his fecund rare
if eyed cogitated, formulated, insulated
(infinitesimal nook and cranny) force queer
lee disproportionate overly endowed capacity
bracketed with mar ching madness peer
ring with laser, razor, and taser sharp mind
(or a minuscule approximate near
facsimile thereof) scrutinizing, positing,
and discerning astronomical phenomena mere
via concentrating gifted limned, and rapacious,
though processes affixed
with a visage mordantly like King Lear.
Mar 14, 2018
Mar 14, 2018 at 11:55 PM UTC
things are crusting,breaking
mud dun-colored
cracks in sheets like pottery
thrown by the world in the shape of drought
arid, dry and barren
crunching beneath my old boots
they have carried me well nigh seventy years
of wandering
I stamp down to break the honeycomb
of parched mud
some syrup of past rains
oozes through
now limned in dust
forgotten
an echo of rain
a memory rises up sharp and sudden
your face lined and creased in grief
your mouth moving
my ears frozen
silence in my dead heart
an echo
of us
C Patricia Sky Bellefleur 2017
Dec 5, 2017
Dec 5, 2017 at 9:26 PM UTC
hitherto a poem
with vision and precise wording
limned all our dreams
poetry - a haiku - a follow up
Now it seems to me
two fingers and a keyboard
wow! anything goes
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 10:47 AM UTC
tracing the stone throbbing in silence.
they're just shoes.
they're just letters rid of ripostes.
shades fleeting tell no significance.
again, they're just (more than) shoes.
insignias emblazon carnage.
the Earth is prone. it's just land
seeking fill. supine on bed,
it's just
a
land
seeking
fill —
they're just shoes
worn by
flesh and by thinning air.
light toppled on the grave of my fingernail. it's no paroxysm of macabre.
they're just
there, sitting idly,
like beasts in final stands
limned by sudden emergence of woods.
just some
of its non-existence,
my mind's concept of I and
all things refuted
its sorry
plaything.
Nov 6, 2015
Nov 6, 2015 at 11:10 AM UTC
Envy
how I hate it
It makes me want to **** a man for
dreaming, for asking me to dream.
What use is it, what use have you
in dreaming, in presuming
that I am not in my very essence
capable only of glimpsing the edges
the light-limned outline of the door
leading forward
and falling back again.
May 30, 2022
May 30, 2022 at 11:34 PM UTC