My mind is under the glacier
Waiting for it to combust
As I try to gain sanity
I get propelled into madness
Every time I try yo understand
I only accept less
Every time I confess
My darkest sins
Everyone else comes from within
To admit their faults
So I'm kicking my issues to the vault
Accept that my mistakes are my fault
And realize that I should never quit
But I'm a defendant tryo g to acquit
Please God give me strength
So I don't channel my anger
In the wrong way
I'm trying to be good today
But tomorrow is a different story
Renounce my glory
Only when I deserve it
So far I'm not sure I have
But then yet, I can be too skeptical
This a search to be happy
And I can't find much
For now
But I know I have to wait
And for the impatient part of me
That's too difficult to work
But I do know
That I have to conspire against my most loathed tasks
And paint it with the pathway to what I love
That's the only way I'll make it
I'll survive, just give me time to work the kinks out
So far I'm in prototype

Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear . . .

once starlight
languished
in your hair . . .

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret . . .
a pain
I chose to bear . . .

unleash
the torrent
of your hair . . .

and show me
once again―
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse



White Goddess
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.

Published by Carnelian, The Chained Muse, A-Poem-A-Day and in a YouTube video by Aurora G. with the titles "Ghost, " "White Goddess" and "White in the Shadows."



The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.

Originally published by The Lyric



If
by Michael R. Burch

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

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

now that I cannot forget.

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

our soft cries, like regret,

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

now that I have forgotten her face.

Published by Poetry Magazine, La luce che non muore (Italy), Kritya (India), The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Carnelian, Triplopia, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Strange Road, Inspirational Stories, and Centrifugal Eye



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

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

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

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

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

Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Eclectic Muse, Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine and Other Voices International



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Absence
by Michael R. Burch

Christ, how I miss you!,
though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips.

Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips
and the dishes are all stacked away.

You left me today ...
and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets.



Having Touched You
by Michael R. Burch

What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.

And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west,
another remained,

suspended in memory
like a flower in crystal
so that eternity

is but an hour, and fall
is no longer a season
but a state of mind.

I have no reason
to wait; the wind
does not pause for remembrance

or regret
because there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget...

Forget we were utterly
happy a day.
That day was my lifetime.

Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine:

the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root and I grew.
Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife,

and yet I can bear it,
having touched you.

I wrote this poem as a teenager after watching "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble"



Circe
by Michael R. Burch

She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.
She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.
And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



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.



Come!
by Michael R. Burch

Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?

When my womb has conformed to the chastity
your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,
will you finally be pleased that my *** was thus rendered
unpalatable, disengendered?

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so
have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow
with the approval of God that I ended a maid—
thanks to a *****?

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

This is a poem that I believe I wrote as a high school sophomore.



Every Man Has a Dream
by Michael R. Burch

Every man has a dream that he cannot quite touch ...
a dream of contentment, of soft, starlit rain,
of a breeze in the evening that, rising again,
reminds him of something that cannot have been,
and he calls this dream love.

And each man has a dream that he fears to let live,
for he knows: to succumb is to throw away all.
So he curses, denies it and locks it within
the cells of his heart and he calls it a sin,
this madness, this love.

But each man in his living falls prey to his dreams,
and he struggles, but so he ensures that he falls,
and he finds in the end that he cannot deny
the joy that he feels or the tears that he cries
in the darkness of night for this light he calls love.



Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen.
By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.
With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.
Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.
In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.
I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.
I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no man has sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.
And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing . . .
But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray . . .

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs that I used to climb
when the wind was **** with a taste of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.
Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright.
Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-aged wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.
Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam . . .
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!
It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then . . . what then?
I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach . . .
And then, what then?
Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.
When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.
Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.
The distant cooling clouds.
Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over different lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.
Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that rush into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams . . .
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18, circa 1976-1977.


He Lived: Excerpts from “Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death erases.

II.
He built the great ramparts of Uruk-the-Sheepfold
And of holy Eanna. Then weary, alone,
He recorded his thoughts in frail scratchings called “words”:
But words made immortal, once chiseled in stone.

III.
These walls he erected are ever-enduring:
Vast walls where the widows of dead warriors weep.
Stand by them. O, feel their immovable presence!
For no other walls are as strong as this keep’s.

IV.
Come, climb Uruk’s tower on a starless night—
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
The Goddess of Ecstasy and of Terror!

V.
Find the cedar box with its hinges of bronze;
Lift the lid of its secrets; remove its dark slate;
Read of the travails of our friend Gilgamesh—
Of his descent into hell and man’s terrible fate!

VI.
Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild bull of the mountains, the Goddess his dam
—Bedding no other man; he was her sole rapture—
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I am!”



Enkidu Enters the House of Dust
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

I entered the house of dust and grief.
Where the pale dead weep there is no relief,
for there night descends like a final leaf
to shiver forever, unstirred.

There is no hope left when the tree’s stripped bare,
for the leaf lies forever dormant there
and each man cloaks himself in strange darkness, where
all company’s unheard.

No light’s ever pierced that oppressive night
so men close their eyes on their neighbors’ plight
or stare into darkness, lacking sight ...
each a crippled, blind bat-bird.

Were these not once eagles, gallant men?
Who sits here—pale, wretched and cowering—then?
O, surely they shall, they must rise again,
gaining new wings? “Absurd!

For this is the House of Dust and Grief
where men made of clay, eat clay. Relief
to them’s to become a mere windless leaf,
lying forever unstirred.”

“Anu and Enlil, hear my plea!
Ereshkigal, they all must go free!
Beletseri, dread scribe of this Hell, hear me!”
But all my shrill cries, obscured

by vast eons of dust, at last fell mute
as I took my place in the ash and soot.



Reclamation
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me—progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically—her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure

to a consuming emptiness.
We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture—
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts

to the first note.
Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.



Everlasting
by Michael R. Burch

Where the wind goes
when the storm dies,
there my spirit lives
though I close my eyes.

Do not weep for me;
I am never far.
Whisper my name
to the last star ...

then let me sleep,
think of me no more.

Still ...

By denying death
its terminal sting,
in my words I remain
everlasting.

Keywords/Tags: Epic of Gilgamesh, epic, epical, orient occident, oriental, ancient, ancestors, ancestry, primal

Vomiting talk on love, greed and politics
Obsessing about pain, loneliness and metaphysics
The delusionist prophet in his unslumbering mind
Wandering over to you to let you in on a revelatory find
That you may or may not want but will come to know
While you raise the glass to your sweet red lips trying not to show
How bored yet fascinated you are with the next word or forty
Because it’s life before it happens or a coda to some other story
Told in a way that you cannot ignore because it’s the truth that blows
Flooded with the tears that you dried before they stained your pretty clothes
To mask the vacuousness of Saturday night boys who can only look
Acting **** sure in banter they memorized from a dead man's book
No more or less meaningful than anything I’ve ever said or could reveal
Of all things that I believe about life that I can no longer conceal
From my solitary existence where no man can stomach or stand
The constant state of thought rejecting out of hand
Trendy desperation of approval and shrewd thievery
Faith sales, unkindness and notorious celebrity
The things that make me sick with disgust over the human race
As I run through the cavities of another poet's dark place
I see men bragging and living on vicarious pleasure
Accepting ill-gotten gain for an earthly treasure
And emotionally immature desires fueling a mob’s fury
In reckless celebration causing injury
I see the down-hearted unable to find love
Because they are different or unattractive
I see two men born of the same mother
Begging on Christmas day leaning on one another
I see the bitterness I feel towards a woman
The one I thought was the only one
I laugh as I pass the things I once desired
And sneer at the people I once admired
I see adults talk while my child sings
And block my view to rearrange their things
I see a happy ******* her wedding day
But soon to be divorced with nothing to say
I see the only thing that makes people able to cope
Is to drink, smoke and **** while death tightens the rope
I see good people adopt a young boy
And then cancer robbing them of their joy
I see reality TV and a material girl become rich
Because of a *** tape and being a *****
I see a man go to war and learn about the horror
And then speak loudly with truth that causes furor
I see praying, evangelizing and moralizing
By men of sin taking advantage of true believing
I see selfish behavior in search of a feeling
Become useless activity devoid of meaning
But then I touch you and you turn to me
With the look of love that I want to see
And I wonder why I burden you
With the injuries my mind cannot subdue
I continue to kick the apple core in your garden
And curse the snake that made my mind harden
As your desperate beauty dances within my burning soul
Mocking it almost as if superficiality is in control
A lightness that incubates within the flame
Impervious to all its trauma and pain
Waiting for madness to end
And for sanity to begin

Master Magician

I'm afraid of my shadow
Most of the time
Wandering up and down,
And all around
The pathways of my mind

What do I see
And what do I find
I only see me
And my own mind
À mirror of madness,
Alice holding up a looking glass

Showing me things that are not there
Things that won't be found anywhere
Dream-like manifestations
From the hands
Of a master magician

Sean Hunt  
Windermere May 2015

I loved you for every reason one shouldn’t fall in love.

Every word, every action you lashed out forced my heart to long for you even more.

It never was a conventional love filled with dreams and hopes for a better tomorrow.

Rather it was a love of the fallen clinging desperately onto the failed perception of him.

Days and weeks whooshed by in a storm stinging my skin with subtle reminders of your betrayal.

Yet I clung onto a moment of the past and loved you even more.

Brutal words raining down like piercing knives made no difference.

The mistakes, the faults, the cruelty; I loved these more than the possible beauty you could have been.

This never was a love of lovers set to last an eternity.

It was a pained love meant to cease one way or another.

This love of madness and stupidity would soon leave this tortured body.

Leaving it cleansed and pure of all the pain it caused.

It was and always would be a selfish love never meant to be returned.

Just meant to heal and strengthen the once wrecked soul.

And if by a sick twist of fate you could turn around and love me, you would have to let go.

I’d kiss you chastely on those childlike lips that have felt countless many and walk away.

You would finally be whole with the knowledge that that mess of feelings and actions had a purpose.

Walking down your own set path as I on mine you would smile at the glimmering hope of a future of honest love promised to you.

This madness to love
Stealthy is almost suicidal

Temptations and
Intentions blurred in a
World where you are mine

Pervesity is seductive
But honesty ruins the ambiance
You are forbidden

The fabric of my life is a tapestry
Woven together with tragedy

There are black threads of loneliness
Blue threads of sadness
Red threads of the angriness
Yellow threads for my minds sickness
Orange threads for craziness
Purple for my madness
Gray threads for deeds of heartlessness
Pink threads for those rare moments of tenderness
Of course there is clear, see through thread for the emptiness

Now look really close, fine little silver threads can be found of happiness
As well as shiny bright golden threads of hopfulness
It's what holds it all togeather
So no matter what storm I must weather
My beautifully tragic tapestry will be wrapped tight around me
The picture in the end will be so wonderfully sad and beautiful, it will make your eye's tear just to see

Your mind will have trouble comprehending how something so sad and tragic
Can create something so darkly beautiful, it seems like magic
It's because I've lived in the dark so long
I've learned to see beauty were it seems to not belong
Out of place and wrong

But in the darkness the silver and gold threads shine so bright
You would of never even seen them in the light

Death casts her spell
Madness me overtakes
Misery within does swell
And Hell's lyric she spake

Where conflicting strength forms sadness
there I find my inner child,
as the myth gives way to madness
and I find myself reviled.
If the truth is just a mystery
and the lies are bare and plain
then the fiction of our history
slowly drives us all insane.
Now the small hands form hereafter
and the politicians sleep,
there is silence in their laughter
while the rest of us just weep.
Bombs **** strangers and **** brothers
but WAR never brings us peace.
Born as fighters not as lovers,
now the bloodshed will not cease.
I see hunger in their dark eyes.
I know disease fills their veins.
Form a superficial disguise
act like you don't see their pains.
Teachers decide what we all think;
Preachers teach but what they know.
We are chains that can't form a link
and this life is but a show.
Breathing air from under water
drinking clouds of acid rain,
Earth is mother nature's daughter
and humanity its stain.
Here a dollar buys existence
but mankind is still too cheap,
so no one offers their assistance
and of faith there is no leap.
Never trusting, always searching,
wanting more but not enough:
In the darkness evil lurching
but all goodness we rebuff.
Then this life crawls into evening,
we lie in waiting for the morn'
for as daylight comes we're leaving,
but with death new life is born.

Your Arms Around Me

Purple Jacaranda Spilling Thru the Wall
Tumbling Window of Timelessness
Desires Delight

Black Puma Chardonnay
A Thousand Years of Gratitude
Our First Kiss

Circling Madness
Of Fire Within
Silken Pelt of Completion
Stalking This Beginning Touch

Leap!!!!!!
...............

With a Bite
The Bird is Caught

My eyesight is fuzzy
My thoughts are static;
Tonight's show is on:
Depression and Madness.

I remember, countless times I asked God
"Fix me, get this madness out of my head
Help me think right, push me to be strong"
What I heard back was silence instead
So now I pray for all in this world
For peace, light, a clear path for every life
For hope in unimaginable darkness
That every soul finds what I can't, in strife.

The day rolls over as the winds blow in
sullen in the sky from a grey dark moon
darkness in the air yet still in the eve
moon is my enemy this fullness maddened dream

This dredge to awaken another blackened morn
yellow in my sunshine din dry these tears nor gorn  
This life brings another day bore out the grin
forgotten pleasures given in to sin  

A sigh from a future that mentored the past
into the middle as cold from the glass
drink to the bottom forget all the gloom
Dark moon is still waiting my madness consume

My face in the picture you don't understand
the darkness of madness hidden command
smile to the flash that reddens these eyes
out comes the devil you've seen his disguise

Relish the day when the moon hides its shadow
break out the party and dance to the fiddle
sing to the stars that bless you a twinkle
open your arms to the world
be the riddle

i am standing at a high window

it overlooks the city

i attempt to correlate the emptiness

of the thin blue sky with the vacuum

that is my life

one of desperate predicaments

I think of poems and poetry hear them voiced

become confused, for I don't know if

poetry is the poison or the cure

i feel an evocation of madness

suffer its reckless inner portent

struggle with its urgent transformations

breathe a continuity of collective emotions

and fear the mediocritized collective of life

i am standing at a high window

it overlooks the city

a city elliptically compressed

in my stampeding mind

i am standing in a city

it overlooks a high window

there is a poem involved in a violent scene

a confrontation with the inexpressible

I am standing in a poem

There is no city just a high window

Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance
  And madness, thou hast forged at last
  A night-long Present of the Past
In which we went thro' summer France.

Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
  Then bring an ****** trebly strong,
  Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That so my pleasure may be whole;

While now we talk as once we talk'd
  Of men and minds, the dust of change,
  The days that grow to something strange,
In walking as of old we walk'd

Beside the river's wooded reach,
  The fortress, and the mountain ridge,
  The cataract flashing from the bridge,
The breaker breaking on the beach.

Black mood ring reflecting
A grizzly scene of hysteria's;
Madness swells and fills me up,
The senses scattering.  

Ludicrous, somewhat insane, and
True;  what's this collision
That speaks through you?
Bleeding incoherent babble
Has been making you anxious; no one
Can understand the happenstance of
A living breathing chaos.

The heights and depths don't freak me out!
Life on the edge's what life's about!
A problem bandaged
To a bed..
Drawn up as
A raving lunatic and
Imprisoned in your own mind.
Searching for something you couldn't find,
Endlessly...

They said
"Go get some wrest"
(Course sleep is for the dead)
"Don't you feel tired?"
(It's all in my head.)
Lingering by the window,
Dreaming.

The dark dungeons of
My psyche;
I always felt pushed into a corner,
In my soul,
I felt far away;
On some minuscule forgotten island,
Where the Sun is pale blue
And the Moon is clay.

This is me
I'm that girl staring back
It's a distortion.
A figment of my imagination.
No, this isn't me.
But it's real and it exists.
How could it possibly be fabricated?
It isn't fictitious. It's genuine.

A smile so infectious
A blank expression
Body present
Eyes vacant
Life absent
The mind it screams

Poison
Innocence
Addiction
Guilt
Freedom
This is madness
This is me.


© maria.who

(Comment below please)

J.
Ah, J.
A love I hath excitedly longed to find,
A love t'at previously had no name.
J.
A love too thrilling for my sights to feel,
and perhaps th' only love t'at couldst make me thrilled;
A love so genuine and benevolent,
A love so talented and intelligent.
Ah, J.
A love t'at just recently landed on my mind;
And made all my lyrical days far more splendid;
A love t'at briefed, and altered me more and more;
A love so chilly and important, with subt'leness like never before.
Ah, J.
My very, very own J.
Perhaps my future king, my precious, but at times villainous-darling.
Oh, J.
And perhaps I am just not as virtuous as I might be,
But t'is poem shall still be about thee;
For thou art-within my minds, still awkwardly th' best one,
With a pair of oceanic eyes too dear; and a civil charm so fine.
J.
J, o my love.
If only thou knew-how oceans sparkles within thy eyes,
And 'tis only in thy eyes, t'at any of t'ese complications might not become eerie,
And then t'is destiny is true, as well as how truth is our destiny;
So t'at any precarious delicacy is still faint-perhaps, but not a lie.
Oh, J.
A bubble of excitement t'at my heart feelest;
But if consented not, shall be the wound no blood couldst heal;
Ah, J, if the heavens' rainbow wert fallen, t'an thou'd be purer;
Born as a sin as us all humans, thou art cleaner to my heart still, and canst but love me much better.
Ah, J.
If only thou knew-how madness floweth and barketh and drinketh from our spheres,
But even th' devil cannot spill its curse on our strangled love;
At least until everything is deaf-and we duly cannot hear,
As skies descend onto th' sore earth; and our dumb sins are t' be sent above.

J.
How pivotal thou art to me-if only yon foliage couldst understand;
If only t'ose winds were not rivals, but one-or at least wanted to be friends.
Ah, J, even only thy words filled my comical ******* to th' brim;
And as far as heavens' angels canst hear, I am no more in love with him.
Ah, J.
'Tis cause my verses are seeking thy name, and his not;
I may create th' words, but thou deviseth my plots;
Ah, and him, the bulk of egotism, and whose frank misery;
Are but too disastrous to me, and in possession of too much agony.
Oh, J.
Thus thou art th' only one who remaineth solemn;
Th' one to remain ecstatic, and as less aggressive as calmness;
But of the broad thoughts I used to think of him, I feel shame;
He is just some unborn trepidation at night-though on fine mornings, he is tame.
Ah, J.
Let me disclose th' egress of thy journey, and tellest me now-is which towards mine?
Ah, thee, thou who art so bounty, and deliciously fine;
And t'ese thoughts of thee-are often tasty, and oft'times generous;
'Ven when thou'rt mad, and thy chanting is vigorously serious.
Ah, J.
Thee, a soul of painless blood;
Whose disgrace hath been buried;
Whose vanities hath been laid off;
Whose miracles hath been lavished on.
Ah, J.
Thou art one bright portrayal of my merit;
I fell'n love with thee in a single bit.
Thou bore my tears, and scorned away my guilt;
And in th' swaying summertime, thou wert my protective shield.
Thus my, my very own J.
My gale-like, and unutterably luscious poem;
About whom my thoughts are jolly, but mindful and insensible;
Ah, J, I wish I were more frail, paler, and gullible;
Ah, but if only being so couldst make me more compatible.
Oh, J.
And compatible, compatible with thee alone;
Fleshly be thine whenst all is borne on thy own;
Be thy only trusted companion, and thy eloquently verified wife;
Be thine, and thine in wifery only, throughout and for th' rest of thy life.
J.
All Let me then guess but the tranquility of thy thoughts-hath thou gone mad?
Behind us are rainbows, and thus thy songs should not be sad;
But even though they were sad, I wouldst lend thee my heart;
So t'at no summer sunshine couldst further tear us apart.
J.
Ah, J, why are th' blue skies far too impatient in thy eyes?
Just as how thy deep scent is febrile in my air;
Thy gushes of breath are thick in my young weather;
As buoyant as yon summer itself; as voluptuous as lingering daisies.
J.
And t'is ****** scream, within my heart, needs indeed-t' be fulfilled;
And its vulnerability t'ere always, to be killed;
Ah, J, t'ere is 'finitely no poem as beautiful as thee;
T'ere is no writing yet as such, as trivial and distant-as my eyes canst see.
J.
Ah, J, darling, and my very fine darling; is chastity to thee virtuous?
About which my soul is hungered-and t'ereby curious;
But if 'tis so, I shall be merry-and ever meekly laborious;
I shall make it tender, and maketh it a reliant gift, to thee.
J.
Ah, J, and thou came to me one aft'rnoon, with a sweet muteness;
For to thee, poems are far more pivotal to a young poetess;
Yes, and far prettier t'an a beastly bunch of words;
Whose curse is whose sweetness itself-and whose whole sweetness is curse.
J.
Ah, J, so shall I be thy pure lady t'en?
For purity is a curse-and related not within t'ese walls;
Walls of discomfort-irresolute and at certain times foreign still;
Walls t'at shun us-and be ours not, due to t'eir own reserved castigations.
J.
Oh, querida, my random rainbow-but still my dearest querida;
My poetry in th' morning, and th' baffling flute, for my evening sonata;
And as it is sounded, I shall be thy private lonely prelude;
But th' one who maketh thee singular, and nevertheless, handsomely proud.
Ah, J.
And thy perfect red lips are th' stillettos of the sun;
Critical but radiant-all too agonising in t'eir inevitable shape;
So t'at kissing might be just too much fun;
And from which, o my love, t'ere is no such a famous escape.

J.
Ah, J, thou knoweth not-I am asleep only within thy remembrance;
As how I am awake only in thy life, and partake of my justice, in thy glory.
Ah, J, but if satire were the only choice we had, shalt thou be with me?
Ah, my J, for be it so-I shall never regret anything, I shall never say sorry.

J.
Ah, wherefore art thou now, my love? I am now cursed. My dreams are mad.
I am now crawling out of whose realms; I wanteth but'a stay no more in my bed.
Ah, J, but in my dream thou wert too miles and miles away, and indolently anonymous;
I hatest sleep t'ereof, for t'ey piercest me so tiringly, with a harm they deemest as humorous.

J.
Ah, sweet darling, and in our dreams, t'ere is no strain, nor piety;
Even thou-in th' last one, despised my pyramids-and my chaste poetry;
Ah, querida, I am but afraid our loneliness shall be gone 'fore long;
For its temporariness is not sick, and canst work its way along, with a belief so strong.

J.
Ah, love, but t'is loveliness itself-is indeed tyrannous,
And its frigid poetry is randomly perilous,
As how th' daydreams it bringeth forth-which are luminous,
But as love is innocent, by one second canst all turn perilous!
J.
Ah, J, thus our story is brilliant, and in any volume real' magnificent,
With curves palatable, but with some greyness too fair-and too pleasant!
Ah, J, if passion dost exist, and thus maketh it all real;
And at once I shall understand thee; and listen only, to how we both feelest.

Ah, J.
My very, very own little J.
My dearest J.
The harbour of my ultimate love.
My most cordial, and serene spring of affection.
My most veritable nirvana, my vivid curiosity-and shades of frankness.
My dream at heart, and my sustainable ferocious haste.
Th' love in which my ever fear shall subside,
And be overwhelmed by its unfearing light.
J.
Oh, J, my glossy, exuberant darling.
And as more winds sway, and amongst the green grass outside,
I canst but feel thy eyes here watching;
Thy eyes t'at widely grinneth, and flirtest with my poetry itself;
Thy eyes t'at forever invitest, yet are all more daring than myself;
Ah, J, even though t'is love may be a secret scene,
But I hath felt, even vulnerably, not any provoking passion so keen-
For though they couldst my flowed veins hear,
They were still delicately unseen-with a serenity t'at was ne'er here.

Upon a crest of ruby flames,
  Was writ a list of seven names:
Of gods and goddesses untold
  Whose quiet tenets never sold.

Mavis was the nymph of pallor,
  Patron saint of putrid squalor.
Watching, with a tender eye,
  The lives of those resigned to die.

Beatrice, with hair of scarlet,
  Took the throne of seething harlot.
Harbinger of crippling sadness;
  Queen of darkness, death, and madness.

Paul, whose eyes had never wept,
  Ensured that secrets would be kept.
Cursed with blindness, deafness, dumbness,
  A walking vault of tortured numbness.

Talim broke her mother's heart,
  And many others from the start.
She, the deity of glee,
  Knew ignorance and apathy.

Alastair, the golden thief,
  Toed the boundaries of grief,
He sang to people with his flute
  That there was more to life than loot.

Tess won't look you in the eyes;
  Mistress of the compromise;
Smiling, even as she hums,
  That "maybe next time" never comes.

Alex comes to break the silence,
  God of wishes, drugs, and violence.
Crashing through with mighty clamour;
  Hope the nail, and he the hammer.

Of all the deities we cherish,
  Even those whose memories perish,
None are sad as those who don't
  Beget belief. Or can't. Or won't.

And on a crest of ruby flames,
  Another list of seven names,
Whose carvings have been long forgot,
  Will sit amidst our trash and rot.

Can I be forgiven for my impulsive need
to present my love to you
as a viking would after a day hard at work

I’m physical about it
and chaos theory is the dress
I choose to wear to ****** you
not those flimsy night-sky black things
or a cliché of words tucked up behind your ear


I'm dressed up in an imaginary beard
with a palm full of unpredictability
that makes you buckle
underneath forgotten desires
and we destroy ourselves this way for hours
only to wake up and repeat.

I absorb you alpha and you become invisible
like a woman over 50
I'm a force to be frightened of
and you are an empty shell.


Never love someone
who isn’t stronger than your darkness.
You will **** them every time
and spend the rest of your days
explaining the head on a stick
at the end of your bed
to your next lover
it can become tiresome.


But you never asked questions.
You accepted my grit
my madness
and lust for emotional bloodshed
so i kept going.


You just waited patiently
to see if the sword in my hand
would fall away in the face of your delicate beauty
unnatural for a man admittedly
more suited for a goddess
speaking ancient Greek from magic lips.

You could have spoken
incoherent babble for all i cared
as i marvelled at your fingers
just trophies on hands not from this world.


Again, I’m physical about it
and i saw myself arrange quickly
your internal magnificence
to match the outer shell, so perfect
whether real or imagined
I indulged my vanity
that you were mine
washed with your sunshine
every time we moved
into each other’s view.

Addiction to beauty
it’s akin to a serial art buyer
I’d bid my blood to have that prize
next to me each night
and that’s all you were to me
it must have seemed.


Your love was more than mine i thought
so i could afford to be careless
I was a swashbuckling hero to myself
because i never believed you knew how to be
so just lie there and look the part
and be there when I come home
from severing heads of out-dated ideas
about how to move through life.


Quietly though, you were writing secret sonnets to yourself
about the possibility of our “maybe” love
I rode right over that
like a warlord blinded by personal victories
making my way to a new precipice
another conquest
forgetting with eyes wide open
how to encase another in perfect intimacy.


You just waited patiently
to  see if the sword in my hand would fall
until one night, alone again
you saw the space at the end of the bed
where your own head would stand
and you ran into the night
dancing over misplaced dreams
now scattered all around like forgotten tombstones
as I returned home to my future of regret.


Now this weighty silence between us
has me filling the empty space with love songs
to myself
just to hear us again.

After all this time,
All this pain,
This stupid tears,
This broken heart,

It's always been you.

After all of my madness,
All of my ignorance,
All of my rejections,
All of my anger,

It's always been you. Still.

I just...
don't want you to hurt me again,
**carelessly.

When I say I’m a nudist
I am told I’m disgusting
But then, I keep forgetting
It’s that “people don’t ****” thing.
And people don’t ****
And nobody ever craps.
They just keep their napkin
Tucked safely in their laps.
They don’t belch, not ever,
And nobody picks their nose.
It’s the way of polite folks
And that’s just how it goes.

Well, let me remind you
Where you were born,
And where you came out of,
And that you were shorn
Of any kind of clothing
Both mother and the child.
You were born like the animals
Both domestic and wild.

You are naked one assumes
When you shower your body
So, please quit acting like
****** is something shoddy.
Your parent put such madness
Inside of your innocent head;
Things like getting re-dressed
Each night when you go to bed.

The insanity of Europeans
Who came to American soil
And wore LAYERS of clothing
In the heat while they toiled.
Then they went to other lands
And warped the people there
With the strange brand of madness
They had been taught to share.

They were taught to be ashamed
Of what god had given them;
That their private parts were evil
And turned you into a golem.
And when asked for a reason
For this weird kind of crazy
They started talking about god
When their logic got all hazy.

So you “people don’t ****” folks
Can just kiss my naked ***.
That thinking might work for you
But for me it won’t pass
For anything but brainwash
And the programming of the sick.
So wake the hell up, the rest of you
And get on the natural stick.

If I want to be naked all day
And you want to wear clothing
That should be each of our choice;
A personal ‘go or don’t go’ thing.
I mean, for a perfect example here
Think of laundry bill savings
So, you can just stop harassing
And gnashing and raving.

Brent Kincaid
4/12/2015

In tunnelled darks, pastes of reminisce
Outward disjoint points to irrelevance
Spooned and coned in cold mountaintops
The darks of sorrows and trails of struggles

Persistence patterns of self satire in gloom
Sunken in identity crisis of broad oceans
Stormy seas spotlighted by beatific stars
Trajectory of spilled ice in recurrent motions

A mere past cocooned by fears and tears
Clouded in thoughts that cruise and decline
Greyed white imprinted by sudden sadness
Madness echoes on arched ancient bricks

Checkered maniacs of fulfilled passions
Filed and iced in cased prolific memories
Cascades of sunshine tickles to warmth
Orchards of glow that bloom and grow

Picked, ticked and unpacked from boxes
Attacked, nurtured and stored in bliss
Eventful lessons unfolds in untold augury
A mission as the known permeates and fade

Windowed eyes all line up in parade
Mirrored lights digest the haunted haste
A stranger to self, an ally to another
A dance of bright entwine a twist of blur

It was a dream.
It was.

When you held me in your arms;
a sweet minute of slumber
and abated fallacy.
When you looked at me
with digestive eyes; I guess
never was I impervious.
When you planted
a damp kiss: Illusion's flower
and saw me off.

It was a dream.

When you sighed into my ear
a madness so warm yet
so morosely beautiful. (I...)

It was a dream.

When you drove under the stars
above asphalt black and cold,
on that crying night of June. (Save...)

It was a dream.

When I watched your
lips darken with the ashen sky;
and you laid unmoving. (...me.)

And it was a dream.
It was.

I just never was able to rouse.