The intermittent, distant rumbling in the skies was suggestive of chronic flatulence. The sun struggled in futility to shine – like a crying child who had been forced to smile. Lightning flashed in quick successions, momentarily throwing brilliant streaks of white light across the room. The angry growl of thunder that followed was enough to send a troop of Howler monkeys scampering for safety.

The lights flickered as though unable to make up their minds to stay or not to. But apparently, the wind had zero tolerance for such petty indecisiveness. And like an enraged, stimulated, demented animal, it gusted through the windows and doors, hauling loose papers, light bulbs in every direction, shattering the bulbs to smithereens, as if to punish them for being so fickle. The lights died.

Thick black blankets eerily stretched across the skies with gusto, menacingly extinguishing whatever was left of the sun’s brilliance. More rumbles and flashes followed in royal herald of the impending storm. And in no time, slick sheets of rain torrentially came pouring down, cascading the roofs to form puddles almost as soon as they hit the ground.

​I looked in horror, fervently praying that whoever God had appointed to build the ark in our time had not diverted the funds. I was trapped in the office, and I knew exactly what this meant…flood, scarcity of buses, hiked transport fares, heavy taffic and very likely, at least one month of blackout.
It would be another three hours of steady downpour before the rain eventually stopped, as gracefully as it had been ushered in.
I picked up my bag, rolled up my trousers in earnest anticipation of the inevitable flood, and made my way home.

​To my utter bewilderment, there were no floods! The lights from the street lamps cast a soft golden glow on the slick roads, seemingly creating mirages of pools of water from afar off. But they were mere illusions. The gurgling sound coming from the underground drainage was proof of where all the water had gone. It was a strange sight. Like some alien cyborg from space had been fiddling with a time machine that had accidentally propelled us twenty years into the future.

My new world was a three-fold utopian dream. So surreal!
I could see beautiful, high-rise, state of the art edifices with mind-blowing architectural designs that blatantly seemed to defy the laws of gravity. I could see world-class hospitals that admitted ailing dignitaries from around the world and top-notch schools that offered scholarships to deserving indigenous and international students.
Sure enough, this was Nigeria! The Nigeria we all dreamed of.

And there was light…electricity! - In myriad of colours that seemed to have been dispersed from several colossal disco ***** via *“wireless fidelity” technology. I strained to hear the noise from generators, but I was disappointed. I couldn’t even hear the all too familiar cacophony of horns blaring, conductors shouting, loud discordant music, rattling vehicle engines etc. It was like everyone and everything had taken a crash course on orderliness.

I saw a vibrant transportation system that included high speed railway lines, paved road networks that looked like a child’s doodles, first-class air strips and efficient sea transportation.
I saw a working government - one that had provided the critical infrastructure for her people.

I saw a nation with a large industrialized economy, where the dividends of democracy had been delivered to the people by their government. One consciously founded on equity and honesty of purpose, and courageously sustained by unfaltering faithfulness and unwavering patriotism.      
A nation whose economic boost did not come solely from crude oil exploration and production, but also from crude oil refining, agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, food, services, tourism, automobiles, transportation, education etc.
A nation that thronged with international investors from all walks of life, who were not in the least afraid to invest in her.

And then, I saw her people. A people proud of their citizenship.
A people proud to be called NIGERIANS.
A people who were not given to religious, political, or tribal bigotry.
A people who individually and collectively, gallantly bore the torch of the vision of their heroes past.
A people who earnestly and persistently worked to see only goods “Made in Nigeria” sold in their markets.

Where there was once despair, I saw hope. Where there was once fear, i saw security. Where there was once disgruntlement, I saw satisfaction. Where there was once poverty, I saw wealth opportunities and where there was unemployment, I saw jobs. Death had given way to life and life to hope.

I started, as I felt something cold and wet trickle down my forehead. It was droplets of rain from a leak in the roof just above my head. I was still in my office, I never left. The rain had lulled me to sleep. Even more sadly, I realized it had all been a dream.
Slowly and regretfully, I packed my things and left for home. It was pitch black outside as I carefully waded through the polluted waters, jauntily holding my bag, more because I was afraid to lose it in the flood than in a hopeless bid to dignify the situation.

Two hours later, I crawled into bed. I did not have to turn the lights off…the electric poles had gone for a swim. A very long one.


© ONUGHA EBELE VICTORIA

Martin Narrod  just now
I started working on a comment in response to "Filling A Bottle With A Tundish"

Sadly I must admit, that even for an American with a college degree, who is a self-proclaimed non-Philistine that grew up in a suburb of Chicago, IL. Where I'm from I've been told is much like some parts of Sussex(I believe it's Sussex), my friend Lili Wilde described it to me on an occasion.

So I must say martin, that for having a voracious appetite for language, language of all sorts, from **** to sin, to cinephile to cynosure, pulchritude to tup, exsuphlocate to masticate, irate, irk, perfervid, wan ewes thwapping their tails, nearly stridulating like the cricket in the thistle. The advanced undulate troche of domesticated shadows, and the sesquipedelien dulciloquent surreptitious diction and other floccinaucinihilipilification and tomfoolery about.

martin, please do tell me what a 'Tundish" is? If you haven't yet, there is a phenomenally interesting reverse dictionary, entitled onelook.com/reversedictionary , and quite contrary as it may seem, and for all the Virginia & Leonard Woolf I enjoy reading, especially his somewhat innocuously underrated novella he wrote, I also read with extraordinary gratitude Ted Hughes's The Birthday Letters, Take of a Bride Groom, The Complete Works, Sylvia Plath's Unabridged Journals, Ariel, Johnny Panic, Ariel, and other poems by writer Richard Matthews. I am still unfamiliar with this word, Tundish. Online dictionaries don't give the best explanation.

As I was mentioning earlier. The OneLook Dictionary-Reverse, will let you for example, search: beach sand. And in response it will give you up to thousands and thousands of word which relate to those two words, together, seperately, and opposing each other. Such as: water, swell, wave, arenose, peat, dirt, seagull, Pacific Ocean, suntan, bikini, The Beach Boys, vitrify. It's very fun indeed. From one Martin to another, I hope you'll stay in touch. I'm excited about your work!

Best Regards

Martin

P.S. The text below is the original message I typed before learning that my presumptions of you being Anglican were correct. Have a great day!

Another Martin, YES! How exquisite, I've never met another one. I have so many questions I barely know where to start. I love marigolds, nose-bags with oats, and as I started feeling the essences if equus and what lurking prurient pedagogy for the didactic zoology that took me and the mind of me to wonder perhaps if though I am quite certain(though not 100%) that your native tongue is English, but using that ridiculous skill-set of immense benality I seem to someone have, am I wrong for asking dear Martin, are you from Scotland or Wales, or maybe even from a country where you learnt English as a native tongue but it's your secondary language?

As aforementioned, there are a plethora of questions that this runnel of sludge and dross that've now arisen in the turpidity of your antiquary of delightful speech. To whomever invited me to play along in the debauchery, and dance merrily with merriment, mine younger docile succubus's slendering beside me, puking up their tissue paper and vegetable soup, so that my pretty girls can fit into Size 2 TuTu's, and learnedly imprison themselves into the tatterdemalion of portentously lurid self-****** and abuse. , and the opprobrious trollop-gossip the gaggle of my skinny victim women eschewing food groups, in order to appeal to my conservative eyes, thrice the child's wild idling to absorb the rancor of their stoic and noisome sedentary lifestyle in the polluted sudatorium that I myself don't use, but that these nonparticular Philistines would serve as Surf & Turf with glazed Christmas Hams for the Hebrews to eat, and another sad storm surge on another deserted quay of sea sands, and our vessel and our deserters, worshipping the Virunga, sacrificing the ghost skeletons of the million year old ape. So I ask you. If even you're capable of expressing yourself under the maddening yet advesperating evening listening to Miles Kane and The Arctic Monkeys, followed by listening to Black Sabbath play Fairies Wear Boots while we drink our childhoods free of the rod and **** the war out of our teenage girlfriends. And in the morning when awoken by the sound of Sopwith Camels arriving on the early, frost-strewn milky, azure-banded stripes of moonlit ecstasy that make for this unquantifiable gesture of succinct believers driving in Summer get stopped for blowing a rice-white swiveling consortium of dishonest affair rivaling ****** addicts, with hummus, plastic bags, and forks in their sphincters, while they autoerotically asphyxiate themselves in a plastic knockoff Mickey Mouse hat, and a Pirates of the Carribbean bandana wrapped around the ***** eyed nightmare of having unsuccessfully sedated a 400-lb crabby, Lowland living-room Silverback Gorilla. More than a primate and a prostate exam. It's like posthumously straining to push tingling 119° Vaseline through the grey and white coffee stirrers which spilled all over the floor while I was saying goodbye to our daughter, while also explaining to you why it's so important to me you love me back enough so that everyone has enough of a grasping glint at understanding yourself, that in managing to reason the arithmetic of such a conundrum and confusing calamity, a phone call free of dial tone happens to be surrendered to an independent Christian organization of the state while myself and my wife's two sons, our sons, Thomas and James, have enough free time from complaining to hire an attorney to disclose the arraignment reiterated by both legal council, city council, and the Screenwriters Guild of counsellors struggling from methamphetamine addiction.

Peace Be With You.

Martin Narrod
martin.narrod@gmail.com

It was the twilight of the iguana.
From the rainbow-arch of the battlements,
his long tongue like a lance
sank down in the green leaves,
and a swarm of ants, monks with feet chanting,
crawled off into the jungle,
the guanaco, thin as oxygen
in the wide peaks of cloud,
went along, wearing his shoes of gold,
while the llama opened his honest eyes
on the breakable neatness
of a world full of dew.
The monkeys braided a ******
thread that went on and on
along the shores of dawn,
demolishing walls of pollen
and startling the butterflies of Muzo
into flying violets.
It was the night of the alligators,
the pure night, crawling
with snouts emrging from ooze,
and out the sleepy marshes
the confused noise of scaly plates
returned to the ground where they began.
The jaguar brushed the leaves
with a luminous absence,
the puma runs through the branches
like a forest fire,
while the jungle's drunken eyes
burn from inside him.
The badgers scratch the river's
feet, scenting the nest
whost throbbing delicacy
they attack with red teeth.

And deep in the huge waters
the enormous anaconda lies
like the circle around the earth,
covered with ceremonies of mud,
devouring, religious.

You've heard this tale
A thousand times,
Take one more spin,
This version's mine.
And this telling tale
Is its first time.
My theme is fitting,
The message sublime,
For the Season of giving,
And gifting one's time.

For my first Christmas
I was three,
But the warmth on that night
Never cooled,
And indeed,
It was
A cold Christmas Eve.

We stuck branches of pine
In a bucket of sand,
That's the snapshot I've got
Of our Christrmas tree then.
Here's the memory that Eve
Of a lad of three,
Yet this story is true,
It's a family heirloom.

We weren't many then,
There was Mammy and Daddy
And six children, soon seven.
Daddy was an Operator
Of cranes and loaders
Dirt packers and graders.
He was working North,
Far North,
Manning a dozer,
Distant from family
Near the Quebec border.
That's where he was
Days before,
When his pant-leg caught fire,
When the diesel was spilled.

We were only three months
In our chosen homeland,
It was 1958,
And fresh from Ireland.

No way to get to him,
Nor him to get home,
No car,  no friends yet,
Little money, no phone.
Yet somebody knew
We were out on our own.

And the snow started falling,
It was Christmas Eve,
I stood at the window,
Saw the snow fill the trees.
I was still and staring,
At what I don't know,
But I remember quite vividly
All that I saw.

Like a scene from a movie
Starring Barry or Bing,
A fire-engine red no-top
Stopped and parked with high beams,
Highlighting the snow,
On that Christmas Eve.

A big man in a red suit
Slid off of the trunk,
Literally carrying a sack,
And calling, **! **!
The family joined me
At the window to see
The big man's helpers
Carry a big Christmas Tree.

When they entered the house
Kevin, Sean, Gerald and I,
Cowered and crouched
Behind the second-hand couch.
We must have resembled
Three monkeys plus me;
I hadn't a clue,
I was dumb-founded and three.

In through the front door
They clattered and sang,
Unloading their boxes
Of food, clothes and toys,
*****, bats and dolls
For two girls and four boys;
And I'm sure there was something
For the coming bundle of joy.

I don't remember their departure,
Or where he went,
But they called Merry Christmas
And left all else unsaid.

Mammy understood
Some good persons had called,
Who'd heard of our plight
And couldn't be calmed
Til they knew for certain
We'd some peace in our storm.

So, that's my first Christmas,
Since then this my creed:
The gift of giving
Isn't under the Tree.

This year has just begun
The Year of the Monkey
on Chinese lunar calendar
When monkeys are out
and about, leaping above
and bouncing around
all with that careless smile
Those lucky monkeys
will bring wishes to reality
All the promises we've made
to others and to ourselves
If not then, it must be now
to count and sort things out
Shouldn't wait anymore
Just let all the monkeys out
Let's all smile a monkey's smile
and act like we've never feared
before in paradise, because
at the end, it's about nothing
but how to keep that big
mischievous monkey's smile
when our wishes suddenly
become superfluous

On a summer morning,
Monkey had awoken early,
His eyes all sleepy,
And his hair wildly curly.
Swoosh,
He opened the door,
He had to use his mouth,
Because his tail was way too sore.
  Slam,
Monkey shut the door behind him,
His friend Panda,
Was called hungry, hungry Jim.
Monkey was off to work,
His tail dragging on the floor,
He was sure to be back in time,
To feed his family of four.
Although monkey was guilty,
He missed work twice,
Monkey was confidently sure,
His boss would be all nice.
Monkey had walked to the glass,
It said no dogs allowed,
For sure he was a monkey,
He walked in and proudly bowed.
His boss said he had to leave,
For he was not a monkey,
But monkey had explained,
He was very chunky.
The boss escorted his out,
Angry as could be,
For sure he was a monkey,
Can’t his work boss see?
He decided to go food shopping,
At the nearest grocery store,
He wanted to get home quickly,
So his family wouldn’t be that poor.
Monkey walked to the grocery store,
His feet were aching,
It was 10 miles away,
This was a big risk that he was taking.
Monkey got there very fast,
Quick as in running,
It said only monkeys allowed,
Wow that sign was stunning!
Monkey had barged in,
All the monkeys were looking at him,
He was told to get out,
So then he visited his old friend,
Hungry, hungry Jim.
When monkey had arrived,
Jim had told him he was a dog,
So Monkey left ashamed,
In the new deep fog.
Monkey had decided to go home,
And Comfort his 3 young ones,
He’d see his wife,
Oh, he loved them all a ton.
Hungry, Hungry Jim smiled,
As if he was really, really bad,
He decided not to eat him today,
He saw him so sad.
Monkey’s house
Was just around the corner,
It was a pretty color white,
But most of the time,
There was not much light.
He had opened his house door,
So lonely and ashamed,
He was a monkey,
He had claimed.
Monkey flickered on the light,
Nobody was there,
His wife and kids left him a note,
“You are a dog, we could not bear”.
Monkey was so depressed now,
He walked to hungry, hungry Jim’s house
He had tiptoed in,
And was as quiet as a mouse.
Jim had caught him,
And asked why he was not home,
Monkey had explained,
His house is just a comb.
Monkey said his family had left him,
Because he was a dog,
They think I don’t belong,
And am just a plain old hog.
All of a sudden,
The panda ate him whole,
And the only thing that was left,
Was his sad little soul.

Find yourself a cliff to swan-dive off of. Somewhere picturesque like the coast of Maine or Ireland. Look down at the water, so much like terrified horses, one hundred feet below where you stand. Feel the wind as it pulls your hair, throws it into your soft, blue eyes. Stormy. Night time. On the edge of this cliff you've made for yourself, with a Surgeon General's warning printed in ten-foot tall letters, black like death, and thus, ignored. Isn't erosion a beautiful thing? The waves eat at the letters of the government-mandated label, warning against use by pregnant women or while driving. The wind blows over the limit of 0.08. Find your cliff and jump, arms outstretched, reaching for the sky that is the sea because you are upside down, with perfect posture. Find your cliff and hurl yourself from it like a rag doll. You never have been able to dive well. Pell mell, racing for the knife's edge where the open-space free-fall consumes everything, each memory and prized, forgotten possessions, and photographs of cats that you chereished, then lost. Yes, find your cliff and jump if you want.
My tongue can only say so much, and my teeth are utterly useless. My fingers can not hold this hand any longer, and it is time for you to jump or not. Wait, what am I saying? You have jumped, and I am just now catching up to the reality, looking over the edge of your cliff, the taste of last night's beer festering in my mouth like the corpse of the awful evening. I am speaking to a dead woman, as she lives those last sceonds before the frightened horses devour her. White stallions, angry and scared. Angry and scared, just like you. Or me for that matter. I am yelling to deaf ears. Over the roar of the ocean, you would not hear me anyway.
My only hope lies within iron skin and bitter determination that I drink like raspberry *****, in the bathroom, taking shots like it's the only thing that can save me. Determination that singes the tongue and releases flames in the stomach. Pure resiliance and dumb luck, for I have seen the depths of that ocean, and know just what monsters dwell there. They have heads like vultures and the teeth of hyenas. They are called monkeys, because they cling to your back as you sink down into the black, where the floor of the ocean is not a floor at all, but a giant mouth full of razors, fire, and sweet oblivion. I felt the fire once, and fought these "monkeys" all the way to the surface, being birthed out of the water with my hair knotted and my eyes filled with horror, stubble on my chin. I have seen the waters you are heading for, but you can still grow wings. There's always that. The "monkeys" are leaping from the water like great whales of despair, or the flying fish in that old Mario game. Biting at the open air only feet below you now, but you can not see them, becuase even though you are falling, you still believe that you are running, and you can't stop looking over your shoulder to try and see the thing that chases you. Your eyes see nothing though. I stand atop the cliff, watching you fall through the rain, writing this poem in blood over the ******* warning label, and you can not see me. You imagined your persuer and now see him everywhere except the only place he really lives, inside your mirror.
It is with a tear and a final drop of blood that I turn from the cliff, and arrest your motion in my mind, taking a photograph just before you passed out of sight, so I can remember what you looked like before breaking the water's already unstable surface. I hear the jaws of "monkeys" snap, but I saw nothing, so nothing happened. Denial. I walk away as the tear falls from my chin where it has rolled down to, mixing with the blood of the poem, which has extended beyond the warning label all the way to where I stand now. I close my eyes for one, long moment, remembering what I knew and what I thought I knew, and what I now know that I did not know.I take one step. Another. Another. I am running from the scene of this death like it was my fault. But really I am simply scared.
If you can swim, swim for your life, friend. I can do nothing more, only be here when and if you make it out from under the surface alive.
I'll be sitting on this rock, under the lightning struck tree trunk that is split open in the middle, branching out in the most unnatural fashion. It looks like electricity itself. I will be sitting on this rock, chain-smoking, lighting the tip of one with the **** of the last, watching the edge of your personal cliff, waiting.
All I can say now is, "Good luck."

Extra Extra ...Read all about it!!!..The time for the righteous ***** is dead...You claim Your stature of limitations..But all you got is knowledge...Let me reconstruct the past...That the ones you preaching to don't see...Slavery...to share croppers.. to steal mill workers...Cotton pick en...to bootleg ‘en...to crack rock..**** ‘en...They got Aids from monkeys..So lets give it to all the monkeys..They know to much lets bury the smart ones under all the dummies...Rise up you righteous *** Shabazz..With more medals then Marcus Garvey...but this dispositions is thicker than the stash on Steve Harvey. Cuz the kids they love the Wiz...and all the green he smoke...Forget the yellow brick road...its these white bricks they see as Gold...But you so righteous with black power on Your bumper sticker...And so sweet that your water start to be thicker...then blood...with a hood that attack your own progression..You Been righteous for so long..with hope you feel depression..that you accuse your brother of mental retardation...urban gentrification...when he still live in the same house he did the year before...but you been moved to the east side on the top floor..You righteous *** ***** you been pronounced dead...back when them bombs hit over Bagdad...they waved the white flag..but you just made it easy...cuz you still so righteous...you done Got Fat, Turned Gay...and rallying for pride marches...Cuz you don’t know what else to do...your time is over..Them black cats use to be panthers, now you dress them up...and placed us all in a new minority...just to keep your righteous priority...Are You still looking East, or have you finally excepted the West..

What I love about Star Trek isn’t the plots or even the characters. It’s their casual, daily use of fantastic technologies (think replicators) - for them, the ordinary. It mirrors our own banal use of magic-like wireless, google searches and air travel.
We are marvelous monkeys.

I’m a teenager. I am new and agog - Jesus, I have a lot to learn. How are the many marvels that elevate our lives actually made? The millions of cars, the fuel distribution systems, our skyscrapers. Who thought of all this?
We’re marvelous monkeys.

We can almost cheat death - I saw Marilyn Monroe on TV last night.
It wasn't the real star - just the image of her purring sexuality. The her without the messy adopted-child neuroses, chemical dependencies, loneliness and deeper longings. But it's early days - her DNA is lying around here somewhere.
We’re marvelous monkeys.

In a broken down hut
In the middle of the wood
Nor pizza hut nor Squirrel's nut
Can calmly describe that, that could

And somewhere within thy
Lies a seemingly twisted fate
Where two old hags bye and bye
Will simultaneously copulate

It would arise my suspicion
Should there be a banana
and henceforth there be a petition
To Outlaw that Repulsive banana

For one to see into the future
Monkeys would be granted intelligence
Causing bananas to nurture
and my brain to be punctured by a fence

If you still can't see
That bananas are a fruit
Then I guess you will have to ***
While gassing toot toot

Dear Mister Splee, I have a story for thee.
A man of humble attire, went fo’ a walk on a dull wire.
Skilled he kept balance, with nothing but a lance.
With a great long stride, he made it to the other side.

Back he went from one side to the other,
he grabbed nineteen polar bears and a ladder.
He carried them across just for fun.
Amazingly it was all at once not one by one.

The whole audience,awed with just a glance,
While monkeys surrounded and began to dance.
He dropped the ladder down, until it reached ground.
And the monkeys climbed up, pouring tea in a cup.

The polar bears climbed down with elegant ease.
I swear one of them sneezed.
But skilled he kept them balance, with nothing but a lance.
The acrobats were on the trapeze, they looked humbly appeased.



Thirty elephants all whiny and giddy.
Climbed the ladder all silly nilly.
Rhinos and Tigers performed ballet.
I hope you might get to see their performance someday.

The monkeys now on tightrope now hung,
By their tails they now flung.
The humble man on tightrope did sat,
collecting the teacups into his hat.

The elephants dove from the top,
into a pool, splish, splish, splop! splop!
O how I wish fo’ you to see the Tigers dancing.
O how I wish fo’ you to see the Rhinos prancing.

A lion or two just fo’ show,
Jump through hoops caught on fire
And a smile caught my eye from the man on the wire
He jump off, down the ladder.

He walked up to me, with glee
and told me to “tell this to Mister Splee:
Come visit me O’ Mister Splee
This circus was designed just for ye”

I told Mister Splee
And a tear rolled down his cheek
Sadder than he could be
He said: “That circus has long since been dead.”

Ganges, dawn, a luminous haze
over the water. The bathing ghats
are busy with the faithful. (But India
is inconceivable without faith.)  
The robed bathers, raising river water
to the sun, pouring it back
to mother Ganges, are they worshipping
the sun or the river?
For them God is everywhere
and everything.  Water, sun,
the river and the twinkling lamps floating on it
are part of one consciousness.

The burning ghats too (such quantities of wood
stacked ready) are beginning their day.
The funeral party approaching in respectful haste
have a job to do. They build their pile,
move the body to the wood,
start the fire. I watch, but not for long.
This moment, so intimate, so public, reminds me
I am an intruder here. The ashes
will return to Ganga unwitnessed by me.

Away from the river, the vendors of tea
do their trade among the stalls. Monkeys,
cheerfully pilfering, are chased away
half-heartedly, for they are Hanuman’s representatives,
and they, with the sacred, garbage-clearing cows,
are part of the one consciousness. In this land
all are “the faithful”, everything is God’s creation.
In this poverty is richness.

On a summer morning,
Monkey had awoken early,
His eyes all sleepy,
And his hair wildly curly.
Swoosh,
He opened the door,
He had to use his mouth,
Because his tail was way too sore.
  Slam,
Monkey shut the door behind him,
His friend Panda,
Was called hungry, hungry Jim.
Monkey was off to work,
His tail dragging on the floor,
He was sure to be back in time,
To feed his family of four.
Although monkey was guilty,
He missed work twice,
Monkey was confidently sure,
His boss would be all nice.
Monkey had walked to the glass,
It said no dogs allowed,
For sure he was a monkey,
He walked in and proudly bowed.
His boss said he had to leave,
For he was not a monkey,
But monkey had explained,
He was very chunky.
The boss escorted his out,
Angry as could be,
For sure he was a monkey,
Can’t his work boss see?
He decided to go food shopping,
At the nearest grocery store,
He wanted to get home quickly,
So his family wouldn’t be that poor.
Monkey walked to the grocery store,
His feet were aching,
It was 10 miles away,
This was a big risk that he was taking.
Monkey got there very fast,
Quick as in running,
It said only monkeys allowed,
Wow that sign was stunning!
Monkey had barged in,
All the monkeys were looking at him,
He was told to get out,
So then he visited his old friend,
Hungry, hungry Jim.
When monkey had arrived,
Jim had told him he was a dog,
So Monkey left ashamed,
In the new deep fog.
Monkey had decided to go home,
And Comfort his 3 young ones,
He’d see his wife,
Oh, he loved them all a ton.
Hungry, Hungry Jim smiled,
As if he was really, really bad,
He decided not to eat him today,
He saw him so sad.
Monkey’s house
Was just around the corner,
It was a pretty color white,
But most of the time,
There was not much light.
He had opened his house door,
So lonely and ashamed,
He was a monkey,
He had claimed.
Monkey flickered on the light,
Nobody was there,
His wife and kids left him a note,
“You are a dog, we could not bear”.
Monkey was so depressed now,
He walked to hungry, hungry Jim’s house
He had tiptoed in,
And was as quiet as a mouse.
Jim had caught him,
And asked why he was not home,
Monkey had explained,
His house is just a comb.
Monkey said his family had left him,
Because he was a dog,
They think I don’t belong,
And am just a plain old hog.
All of a sudden,
The panda ate him whole,
And the only thing that was left,
Was his sad little soul.

monkeys are rainbow dogs are homeless i have no life because im homeless

it's scary what people want to hear,
i feel, nothing at all, to be honest,
whenever i think of fame
i feel all famous people speaking the words:
don't become even by our standards moderates...
szlafrok: bathrobe -
              szuja: lizard-like-homeless person -
then again chattering ratty too -
does that mean: if i write i'll
get a penny for a structure where a brick is
worth just as much to the letter, the word
           or the line or the paragraph?
                  cukier: sugar...
   for every brick i'll get a penny's worth?
      writing discourages you from dreaming...
only the most adapted
                   who get encouraged by
   advertisement and who fake writing will ever get
the technicolour coat of Joseph...
         writing erodes your perspective of dreams,
it actually censors your ability to do so...
    i hear them, make novels from their body-language...
        and get an itch... nothing finicky... just
barring without baritone...
      poet's alphabet st. - barring without baritone...
antinomy of anecdote... false impression memorisation,
nothing rubric bound nothing alphabetical,
         nothing Pythagorean...
      antinomy... and there was me thinking of
antimony...                  there's no cascade of the sound
encoding of b or of a...
    there's the alphabet... and then there's
the dictionary... na na mmm, ma ma nun..
                    so cool with it, fit-bit....
      or should i claim you a toyo-bot?
           a ******* Hamleys' jack-in-the-box
     chuckles?
            either way... it's all a strategic **** -
or a macaque - or mà-cá-qé!
         herald the surgeon!
             grave a in the first syllable?
a delay... let's term yhwh as surd invocations -
           mà! (and yes, exclamation marks
are part of the necessary progress -
   unless you'd prefer anti-German anti-compound
allocation of a word to be turned into syllable mince...)
         mà! alternatively that's non-ambiguous -
what's ambiguous is the second syllable...
   mà!... cà!     màcà!        it's almost like holding-off
*******...          màcà!
      and then there's the qé!        or for optical reasons
as well as for reasons for the priestly monopoly
written as macaque - my-khaki-haka...
  (haka is a dance in rugby by the new zealanders,
   and khaki is diarrhea brown, diluted brown) -
   it's almost Spanish in a sense, huh?!
   well, because it's not exactly queue -
  or: que(h)? i.e. qweh?
well yes, it's a monkey, a tiny little bonsai
of a gorilla... cute... funny... loves tea-bags
and sugar... great company on a hot Kenyan night,
gets pestered with slingshots by the courtesan
   "bodyguards" of a tourist hanky-panky free whiskey...
  the time those kenyan entertainer girls
came up to me i sorta wished to play the
white-guy-****-history-joke...
stood my ground, went to sleep on one of the lounge
chairs one night... could have been stolen by pirates...
and i kinda wished it, but it didn't happen...
   still, the application of diacritical marks to
define syllables... the grave mark above vowels is
a bit like "holding back"...
         for some reason i first wrote mà-cá-qé...
but i realised... the avalanche only comes with
the acute marking above eh!....
        grave markings means restriction, a holding back...
and by this i mean that when the acute stress is
added, no number of optically adequate spellings
can erase it...
     in this case qé for what's encoded as -que -
   and still the four surds appear whether invited or
uninvited - softened laugh, eh? as in the asphyxiating
form of breathing, and then relaxed: ha ha ha ha!
       then again, i'm wrong,
they call them macaque: ma-ca-qac....
         so as a good revisionist does:
                grave and acute without a macron:
      má-cà-qàc - ma-cac-cac - not ma... ca-que!
   macaque!          Fawlty Towers and Mánuèl...
i know... nothing - hairspray romance,
and a horse called dragonfly...
   macaqué! olé!              
                          mácáquè -
    for the love of u - or parabola...
                 truth be told? i'll never know!
why? because no one taught us the rules of how
or when to apply such demands!
   let alone semicolons or commas...
                   macaque - barbarism sentenced to:
ma       ca              qak
                or simply my kayak...
**** me... it's still a monkey whether you like it or
not taking a **** and calling that chocy part of
its inverted intestines' toad-stool.
  let's just call it a mácàq monkey... because
the -ue suffix is just getting unbearable, like
an umbrella unfolded in one's **** -
   and applying diacritics to a suffix of pure-vowels
is beyond missing an ******, and making
rationale (the part where you miss stating an olé -
the part where rational is elongated into rationál
or the non-diacritical addition of -e)....
and then they worried why people never punctuated
correctly... maybe because people never applied
diacritical marks that they went beyond,
and didn't punctuate correctly?
                       humpty-dumpty hmm hmm:
                   eggs St. Benedict's, and a falafel Sunday!
me? trying to invoke a vocab that transcends
the ******* cool, however condescending i can be,
without trying or eating rye bread to boot,
    and then wear a balaclava calling it a Gucci neckwear,
drinking rather than throwing Molotovs.

got these ideas while reading a opinion column, about how Mossad employed the die-hard SS spy after the war, a herr otto skorzeny (what a pretty "german" surname, anyone mention the former french president monsieur Sarkozy? let the syllable cutting-up dance appear: sar - ko'h - zee, or, sar - cosy, something like that... so they ****** the middle men, the butchers and the clerks... but got hold of the sly shadows without bodies but minds.

thus the ideas, i call them a necessary parallelism,
i can't claim them to be a duality,
this whole evolution / adaptation process...
by eating the fruit of knowledge what was awoken
among man was: well, **** being a vegetarian!
darwinism and the big bang theory don't work
suitably (together), they contradict...
the former delves into history
with some sensible estimate in the thousands of
years... the latter delves into no history,
well imagine your everyday monday through
to friday and some ******* physicists
stating facts like: billions of years ago,
in a galaxy far far away...
what the species **** sapiens is doing is creating
what it thought unnecessary beside itself,
no, forget man evolving from monkey,
you're looking at it as a progression,
the actual pop picture doesn't read like
western man reading from left to write, as a progress,
it reads inwards / upwards like chinese, so:

hominid primates | **** habilis **** erectus neanderthals -
     (kept them)            (genocide via **** sapiens
                                           to extinction                          etc.)

indeed, by us, **** "sapiens", more like **** insapiens,
we killed the ******* off, kept the large diversity of
monkeys because they were all vegetarians,
the whole march of progress is so so ****** demeaning,
we kept the overly furry humanoids for a reason,
we didn't fear them, they had no primitive methods
of hunting... we feared the lesser furred because of our
nakedness and our need to unearth raw materials...
but once we killed the species mediating us
and monkey we turned into **** insapiens,
a weird breed of our former entitlements as ****
sapiens... we wanted agriculture and an effective
mass slaughter of animals for wasted food
via exponential provisions, they retained a sense
of environment, we didn't...
the march of progress is *******,
Leonardo da Vinci is cursing you right now...
'so now you want me to reconstruct my ******
features, flatten my nose, grow hairs outside
the realm my armpits, just so you can make
a "march of progress"?'
*******... seriously... evolutionary biologists
are like teenagers and their experience of
puberty... "oh i dunno, i dunno why",
i mean, you heard about the genocide of the hobbits,
**** floresiensis*?
i need to stress parallelism within darwinism,
i see no dualism... no left to right,
just from up to down, the segregation of nations;
it's demeaning to the acrobats as agile as monkeys
on trees to call them a post-construct primate;
we killed the ******* off, one by one,
because they weren't vegetarians as monkeys...
but in so doing, i wonder why we thought
they'd attack us... since now man attacks man,
**** sapiens, killing off the breeds in
between those resembling a monkey
and himself, has indeed "evolved",
by creating **** insapiens - and this
breed is not going anywhere,
it's the breed above man... which involves the
need to over-breed - because of the resolute
karma of the genocide done to these humanoid
in-between species... we desperately wanted a garden...
now the garden is sort of: ah, mm, maybe,
have a tsunami - engage in conversations about
conservationism of endangered species...
while some madman comes along and slaughters
about twenty people, with satan's encouraging
quote: 'i'm like a god.'
no wonder we're sort of, say, educating people
into a stupidity, i know, a crude word,
but why would anyone need to learn the Pythagoras
theory in the 21st century? mind you, it was
a catholic school... but we're recreating
these humanoids in ourselves through guilt...
and these guilt ridden "replicas" are there for
**** insapiens to slaughter like we slaughtered
the species that resembled a half-way point between
us and monkeys... we really didn't like that...
Darwin's theory of evolution... is just a nice way of
putting it, esp. in drawing -
and by killing the humanoids due to a jealousy
of their primitive prowess or a natural advantage
we created new humanoids through ourselves,
i mean, all those deformities of syndromes...
we were thieves rather than gods - indeed the original
intent of the sacred temptation from the lizard epoch
was to be taught by the ancients, via the remnant of
lizard limbs abstracted into a slithering spine...
we were the ones in ordeal of the highest insecurity,
so ardently expressed now, among so many.

The jungle makes its calls, welling up from hollows beyond.
Monkeys and wild things make their way through the spaces in between,
rapping from unseen places on long barriers
and marking their territory.

Sounds of birdsong fill the air calling out to all too few.
Others prowl the paths looking for prey in caves and behind walls.
Packs of banshees laugh as the chorus grows until the final call.
The last bell rings all are free run for home.

this table in the
shade
these commune hippies
in the river
I wrote a poem
in my sleep
I looked at the mountains
and thought
rain
staccato
metronome
irrigation
and caps
melting
but enough of this
nature
let’s go back
to the concrete
mouth
where we walk
through the city
full of cake
bloated like
balloons
but rolling
because
cake doesn’t make
you float
no
cake only makes you
fat
the conversation turns
to the stench
there’s something dying
in the air
we leave
and roll joints
spot magnums
on tree branches
and think
only monkeys ****
in trees
and we would never
want to see
monkey ***
and ******?
no
we’d never try it
and the homeless man next to us
puts his spoon
away
but god
why do we sleep
when we just wake up?
why do we sleep
to dream
such ******-up
things
where celebrities
feed us salami in
back alleyways
and we see our mother
pooping on
world maps?
time rips of
lyrical grass
conductive smile
soap bubbles
these beautiful
dreamtime mornings
spent thinking of you
in playhouse mountains
like a child
you smile
like a friend
I offer you my hand
and we walk
to the white
together
bill withers is there
he is singing
in his yellow
turtleneck

theres a place where animals play
in animal park they play all day
there are lots of animals there
lions and tigers and even a bear
theres giraffes and monkeys too
these are only just a few
there are swings and a slide
where the monkeys love to glide
roundabouts and a climbing frame
where everything is just a game
they just to love to play away
in animal park they play all day

/notably concerning graduate education at the university of Edinburgh: why do these doctors think they can teach, who made them so, well, what's the word, useless, demeaned at having to teach? every time a doctor of chemistry was asked to teach it was like watching someone being tortured in an iron maiden... sure, a professor of chemistry could teach, just like every single post-graduate, PhD student should have taught, a doctor of chemistry didn't teach, unless he taught as Americans are prone to speaking in acronyms, and they say the Scots speak an undecipherable english... like **** they do, understood them like I might understand the zest pinch of a hobskotch chili! after all, the chemistry doctor doesn't exactly make use of his PhD students, but since they were the sheep first to the slaughter before the guillotine of knowledge, they could translate the higher tier chemistry to the undergraduates... no one sane enough would want to learn chemistry from a doctor of chemistry... those men and women are lost to their own enterprises, to their own Faustian romance, to teach chemistry at university, it would be best to be taught by those inclined to further adhere to advanced pedagogy... post-graduates ought to replace doctors in teaching undergraduate material... balanced out by the fact that the said doctors would not require the help of PhD students in research, with what already is time wasted on lecturing, what to them is, the ****** obvious... but then again... the supply and demand isn't there... even though PhD students could teach, they don't, smug chemistry doctors lecture in the guise of solipsism... theyd rather be engrossed in their research than give lectures... but since those trained PhD monkeys do all the trial and error, wasted time, which the doctors themselves could do... they waste their time on giving undergraduate lectures... because these recent protests at universities, where students complained about not having enough time spent with doctors in the field... I'd start by bemoaning not being given enough post-graduate time... after all, the people who closest to jumping over the waiting benchmark.../

in vino veritas:
due proof that snobbery
and that indie collection
of the smiths' reissue
only goes so far,
    comparatively,
Miles Davis' kind of blue
isn't overrated nor is
it overplayed,
notably a conversation
with Boris, the Russian
in Edinburgh,
who had to pick sketches
of spain as his favourite...
pop music versus ******
fetishes... people will be
ashamed of pop song guilty
pleasures than any bedroom
"deviances",
the boat the boat, whatever floats
yours...  
mine? seven years late,
Britney spears' criminal...
because John Coltrane'
a love supreme is easier
to digest than ******* brew?
fudged packed *******
and a perpetuated crescendo...
Boris could have took to
Porgy and Bess...
         or the birth of cool...
whatever it was,
high above Steppenwolf
   desiring the immortality
of a Bach... still:
       there's Händel...
but let's face it,
both sides lost something,
whatever the iron curtain
was, there was also
something akin to the,
jazz window...
                  because can you
even imagine jazz being learned
at a music liceum?
       i still don't know why
the Japanese love classical music,
or why it's Chopin rather than
List embedded in their heads,
not the gentle fingers of Satie
or Debussy...
         two Portuguese jesuits did
little to spread Christianity,
but music written by Chopin
found its atom, its universality
of translation...
                  even withe the Higgs...
something that is non-divisible,
not atomic, not sub-atomic,
                               über-atomar...
supra-atomic, which includes
the sub-atomic spectrum...
         a perpetuated ad continuum
     of ad per se, in addition to:
an addition, an addition,
        a void brimful of a lost
paraphrasing...
                          in the name of...
in the direction of (the) ortho-
   and of (the) meta-
    and of (the) para-...
                  amen.
                       the upright,
rigidness of: jump off a building,
see pancakes at the bottom...
the desire for a hier-und-nach...
well.. telegram cipher from 1930s
**** Germany,  in response
to heidegger's da-sein...
     da-nach...
                 no need to explore
the paragraph, just enough tease
to block out images of, "paradise"...
       para or besides norms,
    a phenomenon and
      an anomaly that's a res per se,
Kantian for: noumenon...
          a proposition without a school,
or tree of logic, which,
Husserl did manifest...
    in phenomenology...
              I can't help but notice
that classical music is only
relevant today because of movies...
listen to any classical music chart,
7/10 times it's music accompanying
a movie...
               comparing
kind of blue to midnight sonata?
yep, the later is overplayed...
   it's no longer a piece of music,
but a literary cliché...
      even in such wonderful books
like geek love by Katherine Dunn...
jazz is the only genre of music
that comes close to prog. rock,
    id est, no song: an album...
      even though I admit
king crimson's in the court...
     with children of men
      as a backdrop...
once upon a time the iron curtain
and the jazz window...
    rap, shmap, shpindle me dingo...
and the old man still lectures me
on work, born in 1939,
who still remembrance the Soviet army
of boy-soldiers and black-clad SS-men...
oh there was work just after the war,
given what Aries took with
the harvest just years prior...
                       woe to the aspiring poets
born in a cocoon of a father
who laboured by perfecting a trade
that, apparently,  no future Englishman
would take up! or if they did...
only via the trickling down
of the plutocratic, extended family...
and a ****** job they did too...
         well... if everyone is willing
to be and only be, a pop star entertainer...
I'd hate to imagine this piece
to be an instruction manual,
   a cohrent: whip and stirrup
demanding a gallop...
                       perhaps less cabaret voltaire,
and more jackson *******,
because why should painters be
allowed all the excuses under the sun?
and when will I see a poetry anthology
written solely by critics?
          oddly enough:
or rather, the pitfall...
     reading a poem never manifests
itself in a drive to write one myself...
an enzyme of a blank,
      a substrate of a butcher's novel...
or rather... a meaty novel, preferably
historical, notably one
that serves as an answer to Muslims
with regards to:
   remembering the Crusades,
forgotten the Golden Horde...
           and never really bothering
to look into the other crusades
against the Prussians, Lithuanians,
Kashubians et al.
                   such feral lands...
perhaps if you speak the language
as well as Norman Davies...
  you might, just might, not stand out
like a sore thumb in these parts.

Sand on the seashore,
Wand and a bezoar,
Rustle of lace,
Legolas’ face,
Dragon’s and ghouls,
Monkeys and fools,
Knights, and Queens and fights

When I am with you I try
so ****** hard to act cool
to pretend that I no longer care
to pretend that it does not hurt.
But when you leave my head spins.

I pretend for your sake, or so I
tell myself but inside I want to *****.
The floor rushes up to make contact with
my skull. The pain splits my vision in two.

A cacophony of noise invades my mind
screams of rage, "Say Something", Skilled
monkeys intoxicated on the trapeze, Clanging,
Clanging, Clanging, just a few simple word
could make it all stop. Make all the pain go away.
I tell myself I am being brave to keep it in
but really I am just too scared to say those words.
Afraid of the reaction, afraid of what will happen
when the clanging stops.

the grass quiver tantalized
well tuned strings
plucked by those hands
of the churning wind
passing by…. passing by.

the leaves gyrate in tune
dancing on the chords
echoing in the stillness
whispering then and then
to go on…. to go on.

the sound of monkeys
adding leafy rhythms
with their jumps and turns
a mad crescendo
high and low…. high and low.

floating with the song
joy an ocean in each pore
my mind still and yet
on a magic carpet that swirls
here and there…. here and there.

© Malintha Perera 2014

that hat seller
he’s a Maverick
itinerant, wanderer
no monkey business
no dependence, his own man
busy, he has one thing to do:  
to sell his hats

Hats, hats, hats
hats for sale
Blue hats, black hats,
gray ones -
will lend you some dignity
while on your heads

they’d not want to help him
they liked to brand him
so he said: **** you,
I’d rather go on my own

moving from one place
to another
like a masterless samurai, a ronin
no monkey business for him
but the monkeys do come to him

he knows the monkeys
they’re everywhere the same -
pinching, covetous, not giving
but eager hands for taking;
and he throws his own hat down
and the monkeys imitate;
and he collects what is his
and he moves on, as he must
for his work is everywhere
busy, he has one thing to do:  
to sell his hats

*Hats, hats, hats
hats for sale
Blue hats, black hats,
gray ones -
will lend you some dignity
while on your heads

On a summer morning,
Monkey had awoken early,
His eyes all sleepy,
And his hair wildly curly.
Swoosh,
He opened the door,
He had to use his mouth,
Because his tail was way too sore.
  Slam,
Monkey shut the door behind him,
His friend Panda,
Was called hungry, hungry Jim.
Monkey was off to work,
His tail dragging on the floor,
He was sure to be back in time,
To feed his family of four.
Although monkey was guilty,
He missed work twice,
Monkey was confidently sure,
His boss would be all nice.
Monkey had walked to the glass,
It said no dogs allowed,
For sure he was a monkey,
He walked in and proudly bowed.
His boss said he had to leave,
For he was not a monkey,
But monkey had explained,
He was very chunky.
The boss escorted his out,
Angry as could be,
For sure he was a monkey,
Can’t his work boss see?
He decided to go food shopping,
At the nearest grocery store,
He wanted to get home quickly,
So his family wouldn’t be that poor.
Monkey walked to the grocery store,
His feet were aching,
It was 10 miles away,
This was a big risk that he was taking.
Monkey got there very fast,
Quick as in running,
It said only monkeys allowed,
Wow that sign was stunning!
Monkey had barged in,
All the monkeys were looking at him,
He was told to get out,
So then he visited his old friend,
Hungry, hungry Jim.
When monkey had arrived,
Jim had told him he was a dog,
So Monkey left ashamed,
In the new deep fog.
Monkey had decided to go home,
And Comfort his 3 young ones,
He’d see his wife,
Oh, he loved them all a ton.
Hungry, Hungry Jim smiled,
As if he was really, really bad,
He decided not to eat him today,
He saw him so sad.
Monkey’s house
Was just around the corner,
It was a pretty color white,
But most of the time,
There was not much light.
He had opened his house door,
So lonely and ashamed,
He was a monkey,
He had claimed.
Monkey flickered on the light,
Nobody was there,
His wife and kids left him a note,
“You are a dog, we could not bear”.
Monkey was so depressed now,
He walked to hungry, hungry Jim’s house
He had tiptoed in,
And was as quiet as a mouse.
Jim had caught him,
And asked why he was not home,
Monkey had explained,
His house is just a comb.
Monkey said his family had left him,
Because he was a dog,
They think I don’t belong,
And am just a plain old hog.
All of a sudden,
The panda ate him whole,
And the only thing that was left,
Was his sad little soul.

They bounce, they swing
On crazy trees
Hewn and formed for sleep.

They screech and scream
and kiss and sing
As they lay their heads

They pray, they giggle
and like to snuggle
And often beg for drinks

A Parent's joy,
that nightly chore,
Handling monkeys.

Three monkeys swinging in a row
Two swinging high, one swinging low,
Then six more monkeys joined the flow,
Nine monkeys in the sunset’s glow.

after that i'll let you wear my kneecaps for
prayer after that pagan harlot of a wife told me
it didn't rain because i wasn't a good enough ventriloquist
to her schizophrenia. i mean: **** just never stops!
(i actually like this line, apologies for vain-thought).*

"68% of Canadians respondent said that minorities
should be doing more to fit into mainstream society
instead of keeping to their own customs and languages..."

53% of American dittoed likewise...*

              a failure of multiculturalism is a failure
because: it didn't celebrate bilingualism -
i call that the Gaelic effect in Scotland just so
you know it was spoken in over-shadowed Gaelic
within a Glaswegian dialect...

  multiculturalism failed because it was easier to
make a lot of people deemed as schizophrenic
rather than have the ability to be bilingual...
multiculturalism is a failure because it made bilingualism
taboo and instead said: ah... be bisexual!
multicultural societies actually gambled on bisexuality
being more needed than bilingualism,
and anyone still bilingual and not bisexual
was ripened to be harvested by psychiatrists.

but i do wonder what these post-colonial societies
would have made of what the natives might have asked
them...
              i think the natives of America would have liked
the immigrants to appropriate at least some of their
cultural traits... and no keep them in natural reserves like
some talking monkeys...

it's not enough that i have to give up a part of my soul
that i then have to twang the tongue like a banjo
with all that Texan ma'am ******* like those Arabs
in Lebanese American Universities...
oh please, stop this *******,
   i'm puking with the French on the question:
if globalisation is to be arrived at, why is English
the language of choice in achieving it?
              it's not a minority language, that's for sure...
the most poker-laden expression? sure, it is...
but i thought that within a framework of globalisation
(as Napoleon said): if a man speaks two tongues
the first head of the hydra is cut, and two emerge,
hence            the ambiguity of god
      and the proud expression of lizards
and their spies (cats) and why the first letter of
the tetragrammaton is shaped as      Y....
          hence the ambiguity of god and his Machiavelli
in terms of whether there is a world beyond this
one, and whether that diabolical Machiavelli (in all
his despair) did so on purpose to show god the sifting
process...
                    yes, that face of the marine iguana:
smiles like a cat,
              sitting proud on the rocky beach...
yet it has unfamiliar mammalian eyes instead of
those slit-eyes of noon akin to serpents and cats...
            and as Machiavelli said: first time round was great,
second time round: i just don't understand why your
first incentive is somehow better?
        they simply can't know if the first version
is better than their own...
         got to feed them the knowledge of nothing,
so at least they can better what they're been given...
as did Milton, make him less of the two evils...
   what with inhospitable earth and the dream of
colonising mars... or as the history of stars suggests:
stellar evolution sort of does away with Darwinism...
Darwinism is the one form of paper that you
wipe your *** with... it's not a napkin for your mouth:
that ****'s for your ***.
                 at the centre so too iron: as in haemoglobin.
     and we never say stars in a constellation of stars:
those are white dwarfs...
                 is our stellar nebula origin to be resurrected
for a moment into a planetary nebula and then into
stellar ivory of the dwarf?
     personally i think we'll end up being a black hole
unless our right / left politics will lead us into ending
as a neutron... which can only be seen with subatomic
particle goggles... of when Mars and its two moons
housed all thing stable, we are at the stage of the dying
star: hence all our Apocalyptic thinking and bring together...
   Mars experienced the average / massive stage of
a star's life... it's the only planet that shares our common
thread of being solid rather than gaseous...
                    Mercury is equivalent of being the sun's moon
and not a planet if Plato is a declassified planet...
         that's my suspicion concerning u.f.o. sighting and
governments showing us the output of NASA
and then lying that they have this "capacity"...
    old Martians... after all: there were only volcanos on
earth, and then the dinosaurs...
      ******* about with time gets you into these
custard clots of: huh?! i didn't invent the Darwinistic
concept of history worthy noting, Darwinism invented
itself, it's just that after being popularising
the humanities' aspect of the theory came once
the science was debunked... which always sounds like:
see next year, after they told you i'd be
       using a chicken leg fibula for a toothpick:
oh sure, let's get together the Friday after that,
by then i'll be scratching one twig against another twig
to get the fire going...
             after that i'll let you wear my kneecaps for
prayer after that pagan harlot of a wife told me
it didn't rain because i wasn't a good enough ventriloquist
to her schizophrenia. i mean: **** just never stops!
the point is: multiculturalism failed because
  it created a toxic environment for language...
it didn't respect bilingualism...
         it respected bisexuality: isn't that the talk of the town?
all your home-grown terrorists? they only speak
a few words of Arabic... they have been harvesting
the toxicity of a multiculturalism that didn't deem
two language in man to be acceptable...
        and no one cared for the trade benefits?!
how the **** did they miss that sort of plus?
         surely if you're going to trade with the Chinese
you'd send a merchant to China who spoke Mandarin,
and not Swahili, right? common sense.
   if the multiculturalism of England embraced my
bilingualism, i'd be selling English crap in Poland
and perhaps vice-versus... but they said: nope, nadda,
n'ah... you schizoid... da' ****?!
               oh right, so i'm a slot machine or earnings or
those ******* farmers of the urban wheatfield of
thought that psychiatrists are?
   am i talking Dutch or something? me integrating
not good enough? a multicultural system that doesn't
respect bilingualism... deserves what history gives it;
and by now... i'm at Drury Lane: fanning the flames.

I watch people in the world
Throw away their lives lusting after things,
Never able to satisfy their desires,
Falling into deeper despair
And torturing themselves.
Even if they get what they want
How long will they be able to enjoy it?
For one heavenly pleasure
They suffer ten torments of hell,
Binding themselves more firmly to the grindstone.
Such people are like monkeys
Frantically grasping for the moon in the water
And then falling into a whirlpool.
How endlessly those caught up in the floating world suffer.
Despite myself, I fret over them all night
And cannot staunch my flow of tears.

If dreams were monkeys
They would swing on the vines
Over a landscape covered in moon

If dreams were dinosaurs
They would be prehysteria
And have two ton funny bones

If dreamsssssssssssssssssss. . .
Were continuous
They would be exclusive as TV on reruns

No one dreams small
No one dreams medium
Everyone is in on the "BIG"

But at the end of the day
All of our dreams are
the ice cream we forgot to put away

On a summer morning,
Monkey had awoken early,
His eyes all sleepy,
And his hair wildly curly.
Swoosh,
He opened the door,
He had to use his mouth,
Because his tail was way too sore.
  Slam,
Monkey shut the door behind him,
His friend Panda,
Was called hungry, hungry Jim.
Monkey was off to work,
His tail dragging on the floor,
He was sure to be back in time,
To feed his family of four.
Although monkey was guilty,
He missed work twice,
Monkey was confidently sure,
His boss would be all nice.
Monkey had walked to the glass,
It said no dogs allowed,
For sure he was a monkey,
He walked in and proudly bowed.
His boss said he had to leave,
For he was not a monkey,
But monkey had explained,
He was very chunky.
The boss escorted his out,
Angry as could be,
For sure he was a monkey,
Can’t his work boss see?
He decided to go food shopping,
At the nearest grocery store,
He wanted to get home quickly,
So his family wouldn’t be that poor.
Monkey walked to the grocery store,
His feet were aching,
It was 10 miles away,
This was a big risk that he was taking.
Monkey got there very fast,
Quick as in running,
It said only monkeys allowed,
Wow that sign was stunning!
Monkey had barged in,
All the monkeys were looking at him,
He was told to get out,
So then he visited his old friend,
Hungry, hungry Jim.
When monkey had arrived,
Jim had told him he was a dog,
So Monkey left ashamed,
In the new deep fog.
Monkey had decided to go home,
And Comfort his 3 young ones,
He’d see his wife,
Oh, he loved them all a ton.
Hungry, Hungry Jim smiled,
As if he was really, really bad,
He decided not to eat him today,
He saw him so sad.
Monkey’s house
Was just around the corner,
It was a pretty color white,
But most of the time,
There was not much light.
He had opened his house door,
So lonely and ashamed,
He was a monkey,
He had claimed.
Monkey flickered on the light,
Nobody was there,
His wife and kids left him a note,
“You are a dog, we could not bear”.
Monkey was so depressed now,
He walked to hungry, hungry Jim’s house
He had tiptoed in,
And was as quiet as a mouse.
Jim had caught him,
And asked why he was not home,
Monkey had explained,
His house is just a comb.
Monkey said his family had left him,
Because he was a dog,
They think I don’t belong,
And am just a plain old hog.
All of a sudden,
The panda ate him whole,
And the only thing that was left,
Was his sad little soul.

It been a while now I'm back,
playing the beat on a track,
Lyrically I attack,
I'm an M C,
So naturally,
That's how I react,
You might not get my psych,
goin ape shyte crazy,
chasin these monkeys of my back,
I guess opposites still attract.
Rapidly rapping raps,
spitting facts,
I'm what these other cats lack,
cut from another cloth,
Can't cut'em no slack,
This rifts, rat,
I'm way better than that
I master my craft
Like captain kirk taking a bath
higher than an aircraft
Plotting my path
like a hovercraft
Fully prepared for the crash.
These other guys, think they fly,
I just laugh. They get puff up,
While I pass by, getting
Roughed up, crossing my path
Iooking like ironman with this mic in my hand,
Feels like I'm hold a staff.
Like a titan, I clash.
I am the better man,
check my clasp,
I got a better plan,
Better lyrical grasp,
I'm so smooth,
These other rappers, rap sound like ***.
I land minds, no gymnastic class
my geographic quadgraphics better than a veteran
with a can of V8 in his hand
Still crazy from the war,
tasted the blood of a warrior,
Now I'm thirsty for more.
I'm dropping bombs like the army core in 94
With more confidence than Al b sure on tour
Finding common sense scattered all over the floor
Picking up feed back on channel 4
Turning the microphones up,
Then slam it to the floor,
Cause I don't want to rap anymore,
Back and forth I go,
It's all a part of the flow,
I'm just putting on a show,
rhythm book, pinned up,
It's a wrap, flow after flow,
Pulling up, getting my spins up,
The treble and bass doing chin ups,
While I'm spitting rhythms galore,

Fish, reptile, human embryo
Take your pick of what we are
The romance of god
The sterility of science-
A match not made in heaven
He made something out of nothing-
Sun, the light-bearer
But also blow-your-mind light
And plural heavens
As he hovered upon the face of the deep
And caused immense vibrations
You’re either here by mistake
Or here with a purpose
You’re either higher than monkeys
Or lower than angels

when i was born within the Chernobyl aftermath, and the nurse tried to **** me, in that she almost choked me, enlarging my heart, and when that didn't **** me, and they attempted to befriend me, and gave me a brain haemorrhage... and that didn't **** me... i started to think: what will? i can't say i'm in hell, i can only assert limbo: i'm not a monster, just yet... it's only later that i became *******, when they wrapped me in a blanket of denials, to ensure their society was a beacon of false hope and even more false love... that last bit is the cherry on the top... i once hated ridicule: now i started to loath playground like games of lies... i just started thinking: these people are a bit worthless... how could people i once respected become so... so... pointless? it's not a case of: oh poor me... i'm laughing... asking for the next quickened allotment of epitaph in marble... i prefer the pain rather than this kiddy game of denying something being true... that sort of **** just makes up for being thought about too much... it exhaust my mental capacity... limbo is quiet fine, i'm apprehensive where these people think they live... utopia isn't exactly a best-described vicinity... but when did people start to become so ugly? it's slow down here, the big bang just happened, or as i say: with the kettle boiling water... biology's darwinism timescale for a reaction, and physics's timescale of the big bang theory are not exactly fascinating for me, boiling my water to make a cup of tea... i am literally split-mind concerning these two "barometres"... it's just hard juggling these two (0, 0) coordinates... to stress a beginning... evidently juggling these two narratives leaves us living our lives on amphetamines... insect like... it's hard to even make time or emotional investment in: a death in a village... it's doubly hard to make adjustments for a tomorrow, giving our input in beginning: no one knows, billions and billions... years... and then back toward the befitting cranium... it really is man with an omni-characteristic, well... at least one of them... which clarifies itself in a way: given that we're no longer exploring this orb, globalisation ensured the tribe died... we can go in circles: round and round... there's never a clear vector in sight... no real unknown land to challenge... it's all been tamed... once the savannah, now the zoo... as one german noted: the melancholy of the completed house... all the work gone into constructing it, the thrills, all gone... it just stands as perfect, as it is already derelict... hard to keep track of a two-beginnings system... it's hard to find awe these days, i mean awe that might allow an Aristotle, rather than just looking stupid... i think that England really does require an invasion to shake it up a little bit, it looks so docile in its arguments... so certain: "poised" to conquer... i can get (0, 0) of the big bang, a big blank... my brain just became scrambled eggs... i store that **** in my head: i'll see forever-never-tomorrow... i store the monkey-suit in my head (the other (0, 0) beginning) - i'll begin to wonder: but the monkeys have it so easy! me panda! me and bamboo! darwinism has either killed of history that we made in the centuries a.d. / a few centuries b.c., or what they're prescribing us really can't fit into one head, or into a few, to make it into a crowd... because when a few ditto-heads ingest one wise monkey talking over another monkey... the atheistic crowd is the quickest to disperse... as with the constant banging on about the number of stars in the universe... i like to look at the number of carbon dioxide bubbles in a glass of Perrier water.

well, maybe because they aren't
my contemporaries... but i despise Chopin
like despise Liszt... the fact that the latter
smoked cigars is just asking
for me to abhor him... and that a poet
   succumbed to his virtuoso skills
with dire tears of
       a jealous thread (matt arnold)...
for me Liszt and Chopin battered the piano,
literally, battered the piano...
     could have slaughtered a cow also...
but then again there's a part of my that says:
well, if the god argument is infantile,
how about the nation argument, is that infantile also?
are we to be bleached entities,
or merely abstract pronoun users? you see,
   they stole Copernicus from the Poles,
and Mickiewicz, and evidently Chopin is no Pole...
but a prize nonetheless... so they keep him
as that rare thing: something born into an almost
inescapable state prone to disintegration...
   what with the monarchy being
     one of import, either a Swedish electer ruler,
or a Hungarian, or a Russian, or a German (e.g.
house of Sas) - a monarchical brothel,
   otherwise known as an aristocratic "democracy"...
    it's just a good thing i don't like him... i don't see how
a piano can be ***** as it has been by either Liszt or
Chopin, sure enough, nimple fingers,
joseph ii hapsburg, mozart, the film amadeus citation:
                                                               too many notes...
    a bit like me... for its worth, the piano is so delicate,
    so so delicate... how it becomes an instrument that
requires competitors, how you need more virtuosos
who can play the **** music than original from-scratch
composers... piano: it just asks for gliding hands,
it's not asking for these megalomanic
tunes that might leave you with a wish from an audience
memember: to break your fingers...
evidently nothing more than a death / ******* stare...
or why the true resting place
of Chopin is Japan... as odd as it might seem...
           plays the piano great... plays a woman
  like a bagpipe...
                  aren't the two related?
     and when i first heard *ola gjeilo on the radio
i was a woman watching a romcom...
                              the whole northern lights album...
my: a feast!
         just one of the few contemporary composers
that i can invoke...
     so coming back to the piano:
   me more of a Debussy and Eric Satie palette...
they just glide... i can only imagine
       a flight of migrating swans,
   or ice-skating...
    Chopin and Liszt is a mathematical headache...
        solo piano and the gentleness of approach...
    and only today,
   a lesbian couple travelling to manchester...
one of them phoned the radio station
and asked for a request...
      i've been dying to note this song / composer
down for a year or so... always heard the song:
never the composer's name...
                   ludovico einaudi,
much to my taste: the piano still remains
   a wardrobe item of the orchestral architecture,
rather than a door of your fridge...
constantly yapping for: more, more, more.
you glide across it,
tease it, rather than taste it,
  or subject it to a rubric of quickened calculation,
it stuff the room,
the best you can do is make it sound airy,
    make diacritical echoes from it,
than actual letters...
           say: the acute above the o, rather than
the o and acute in ó....
such a delicate thing: the piano:
which is why i never understood Chopin,
or felt a need for a national argument
       needing him, propping him on a peddlestool...
having him as a national treasure...
                  i always remained true to
those who settled for gliding over the alphabet...
    rather than immersing themselves in it...
that kind of composition, that simply fakes lazy...
     they are the ones i admire...
     and yes, given that dialectics has been
completely forsaken,
   the best we can do is give an indulgence
in an opinion, and make comments of
diacritic...
   women, chocolates,
men: dialectics...
                    or at least that's how i find myself,
making diacritic comments...
   akin to piano (contra chess,
    white notes consonants,
black notes vowels,
or should i say: any letter with a diacritical
distinction is the black note,
vowels and consonants are uniform in white)...

Thinking of Eve Seeing First the Shiny Thing
The subtile beast, she saw eating of the tree she was
told
would **** her
if she ate it and she believed,
if she even touched it, she would die,
though die was something of a mystery.
What, she thought, is happening here?

The shining serpent thing
is living and eating the fruit of knowing
some thing known to this thing,
unknown to me, this shining serpent can't speak, needn't, but 'tis a beguiling
creature,
a scoff-god swallowing forbidden fruit
as nothing happens. Not dead,
what ever that may be,
why should I? Curioser
and curiosum it says, with its eyes,
"you shall know, as God knows, you shall not
surely die".
(those Kachinas, I imagine dancing off in time,
singing as the chorus of snakes,
"we hold such things as men can't hold in hands")

Oh, no, wait and see. We, you and me, we play no
past roles, no deed is redone, thoughts are rethought.

Everything has been thought, the object of thinking
is to think them again. Mr. Goethe made note of that fact,
when he thought, everything, excepting what I know,
is temporary at the moment, I recall the idea of

God knows what, but it ain't accidental,
and it ain't the misperception of decept-icons dancing
on the head of a pen.

You got that right - question - quest ions symbolize what
you do not know, so, who knows? Question marks
Symbolize the act of questioning. It's a primal need,
Wisdom, the principal thing of which
more is always desire-enabling.
Somebody beyond your knowing imagined that  right.
Would you believe the algorithm needed to program
perception of a who'll-go-rhyme,
or an I'll-go-rhythm positive knee-**** response
to the ***** of a pen or the whisper of a word,
which it is supposed, was written
by 100 monkeys with typewriters,
whacking away endlessly, balancing precariously
on the edge of the first 100 turtles
in the stack? What are the odds, eh?

Life has a plan with no plot, ought we think?
We shall not surely die, we know now, that's a lie.

Beyond believing lies, we know now, how and why
we are naked, by our own cognition.
We told us we are naked.
We, now, know that,

but here, in the pages of the book of life,
we are no longer subject to the ******* of fearing death.
Here, there is no more condemnation.
Believed lies re-cognized here,
affect no fear, we know,
the final foe fell. "It is finished" was no lie.
Take comfort here. Be still, and know,
rest prevents any
re-triggering viruses left by
the lying messenger's old fables, told as prophecy
or fair-tales oft sung as epics
pre-determining the possibility of evil winning in the end.
The words that built the lies remain,
not the lies. Evil never had a chance, life isn't fair.

The basic plot is a man-made thought, the purpose is not.
Life goes on, death never could have won
and now its power serves
to make eternal waves that keep thinkers thinking things differently.
Loneliness, after all is said and done,
is not
as common
as one might think. There's always
Details, details, details
God only knows.
Saying such a thing idly is vain.
Unless, you know, God knows.
****, that, too.
None of that here, you know.
no condemnation
Socrates was a joke, nothing new under the sun,
beyond that is no mortal's concern. Believe me.
Knowing nothing is far more difficult than men imagine.

Tongue in cheek was an old clue in fair play,
your gramps
could poke out his cheek like he had a snake in his mouth
struggling to break through sealed lips.  
Then he' tells a
fish-story and claims the magi know it true.
Tongue in cheek, so to speek, I see some missed conceptions
fructify from spores spat idly as ****** hells and damns
from tinkers tinning pots with crazy making lead solder.
Which meandered my other me to lead
Lead soldiers. I led the boys to war, that's what they were for.
It's all in the plot to make men of boys so we can help God
defend Heaven, in case…

What?
Good versus evil and all that whole lie.
Or is it faith we must defend?
How reasonable is that? What can **** an idea like
one of the big three?

Eve knew knowing good and evil cost her.
She paid attention to
the truth of all she so suddenly knew.
Otherwise,
she could not attempt the task of bringing
Able into the world, after the pain of Cain.

Oh, please, let Cain fulfill the promise, I cannot bear the pain,
said Adam in his shame.
Eve, on the other hand,
knew hope for joy she found in every
birth, and there were many twixt Able and Seth, all girls.
Cain had been gone for decades ere Seth came along.
Eve was o'er-joyed at the boy whose son would somehow
bring to bear the final sacrifice of travail and pain to
manifest the sons of God to play the role pre-ordained
for sons of God and their sons to play, wombed and un,
each, in his own way, the one creation groaned for,
the missing, wanted, desired, one, an
only begotten with just exactly your DNA,
one in 8 billion, a rare element, indeed.
You know.

Heretical Poems by Michael R. Burch

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

NOTE: I came up with this epigram to express my conclusions after reading the Bible from cover to cover, ten chapters per day, at age eleven.



Saving Graces
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

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



Multiplication, Tabled
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

“Be fruitful and multiply”—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, “WHEN!”



***** Nilly
for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah
by Michael R. Burch

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and Plunder?

For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please . . .
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!



gimME that ol’ time religion!
by michael r. burch

fiddle-dee-dum, fiddle-dee-dee,
jesus loves and understands ME!
safe in his grace, I’LL **** them to hell—
the strumpet, the harlot, the wild jezebel,
the alky, the druggie, all queers short and tall!
let them drink ashes and wormwood and gall,
’cause fiddle-dee-DUMB, fiddle-dee-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee . . .
jesus loves and understands
ME!



Red State Religion Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

I’d like to believe in your LORD
but I really can’t risk it
when his world is as badly composed
as a half-baked biscuit.



Evil Cabal
by Michael R. Burch

those who do Evil
do not know why
what they do is wrong
as they spit in ur eye.

nor did Jehovah,
the original Devil,
when he murdered eve,
our lovely rebel.



The Heimlich Limerick
by Michael R. Burch

for T. M.

The sanest of poets once wrote:
"Friend, why be a sheep or a goat?
Why follow the leader
or be a blind *******?"
But almost no one took note.



Be very careful what you pray for!
by Michael R. Burch

Now that his T’s been depleted
the Saint is upset, feeling cheated.
His once-fiery lust?
Just a chemical bust:
no “devil” cast out or defeated.


Practice Makes Perfect
by Michael R. Burch

I have a talent for sleep;
it’s one of my favorite things.
Thus when I sleep, I sleep deep ...
at least till the stupid clock rings.

I frown as I squelch its **** beep,
then fling it aside to resume
my practice for when I’ll sleep deep
in a silent and undisturbed tomb.



Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.

But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.



Redefinitions
by Michael R. Burch

Faith: falling into the same old claptrap.
Religion: the ties that blind.



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur God’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).



Defenses
by Michael R. Burch

Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.

Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.



fog
by michael r. burch

ur just a bit of fluff
drifting out over the ocean,
unleashing an atom of rain,
causing a minor commotion,
for which u expect awesome GODS
to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION!
... but ur just a smidgen of mist
unlikely to be missed ...
where did u get the notion?



thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch

GODD is great;
GODD is good;
let us thank HIM
for our food.

by HIS hand
we all are fed;
give us now
our daily dead:

ah-men!

(p.s.,
most gracious
& salacious
HEAVENLY LORD,
we thank YOU in advance for
meals galore
of loverly gore:
of precious
delicious
sumptuous
scrumptious
human flesh!)



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see ...



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

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



You
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though a communion between us.

For thirty years You would not open to me;
You remained closed, hard and tense,
like a clenched fist.

For thirty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways and Your distance.
Like a child dismissed,

I have watched You prey upon the hope in me,
knowing “mercy” is chance
and “heaven”—a list.



I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt.
     And I uphold the Law,
     for Grace has a Flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.

I’ve got ten thousand reasons why Hell must exist,
and you’re at the top of my fast-swelling list!
     You’re nothing like me,
     so God must agree
and slam down the Hammer with His Loving Fist!

For what are the chances that God has a plan
to save everyone: even Boy George and Wham!?
     Eternal fell torture
     in Hell’s pressure scorcher
will separate **** from Man.

I’m glad I’m redeemed, ecstatic you’re not.
Did Christ die for sinners? Perish the thought!
     The "good news" is this:
     soon My vengeance is his!,
for you’re not the lost sheep We sought.



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



jesus hates me, this i know
by michael r. burch

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
"little ones to him belong"
but if they use their dongs, so long!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus fleeces us, i know,
for Religion scams us so:
little ones are brainwashed to
believe god saves the Chosen Few!
    yes, jesus fleeces!
    yes, he deceases
    the bunny and the rhesus
    because he's mad at you!

jesus hates me—christ who died
so i might be crucified:
for if i use my active brain,
that will drive the "lord" insane!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
first priests tell me "look above,"
that christ's the lamb and god's the dove,
but then they sentence me to Hell
for using my big brain too well!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!



and then i was made whole
by michael r. burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he’s a sinner;
give up ***, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.

In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak!,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably.



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“what rough beast...slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a streaked glass pane,
jeers jubilant,
mocking.

Brutality is shocking―
tiny orifices torn
by cruel adult lust,
the fetus unborn
tossed in a dust-
bin. The scarred skull shorn,
nails bloodied, tortured,
an old wound sutured
over, never healed.

Brutality, all its faces revealed,
is legion:
Death March, Trail of Tears, Inquisition . . .
always the same.
The Beast of the godless and of man’s “religion”
slouching toward Jerusalem:
horned, crowned, gibbering, drooling, insane.



I AM
by Michael R. Burch

I am not one of ten billion―I―
sunblackened Icarus, chary fly,
staring at God with a quizzical eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I.

I am not one life has left unsquashed―
scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched,
pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache.
I am not one life has left unsquashed.

I am not one without spots of disease,
laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees
from begging and praying and girls sighing "Please! "
I am not one without spots of disease.

I am not one of ten billion―I―
scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly
staring at God with a sedulous eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they'll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there's decent ** in jail.
Don't fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We'll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don't make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)



Unwhole
by Michael R. Burch

What is it that we strive to remember, to regain,
as memory deserts us,
leaving us destitute of even ourselves,
of all but pain?

How can something so essential be forgotten,
if we are more than our bodies?
How can a soul
become so unwhole?



Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).



evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

does GOD love the Tyger
while it's ripping ur lamb apart?

does GOD applaud the Bubonic Plague
while it's eating u à la carte?

does GOD admire ur intelligence
while u pray that IT has a heart?

does GOD endorse the Bible
you blue-lighted at k-mart?



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche's sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Alien
by Michael R. Burch

for  a "Christian" poet

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices "speech"
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro―
far colder than Jesus's words
over the "fortunate" sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until its sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love's tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem's retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man's beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

"... so let your light shine before men..."

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but―immaculate―shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity,
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time―an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you'd convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
I'm upwardly mobile; this one thing I know:
I can only go up; I'm already below!



Shock and Awe
by Michael R. Burch

With megatons of "wonder, "
we make our godhead clear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The world's heart ripped asunder,
its dying pulse we hear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Strange Trinity! We ponder
this God we hold so dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The vulture and the condor
proclaim: The feast is near!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Soon He will plow us under;
the Anti-Christ is here:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

We love to hear Him thunder!
With Shock and Awe, appear!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

For God can never blunder;
we know He holds US dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.



Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go...
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.

Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin...
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will "win."

Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through...
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast?

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer?

What brings them here―
pale, tearful congregations,
knowing all Hope is past,
faithfully, year upon year?

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask:

why is it God that they fear?



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love's wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man's tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs'
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men's frozen genes convene...
there is no answer―death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth's "highest species"―
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.



Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be ******,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me―
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.



Tonight, Let's Remember
by Michael R. Burch

July 7,2007 (7-7-7)

Tonight, let's remember the fond ways
our fingers engendered new methods to praise
the gray at my temples, your thinning hair.
Tonight, let's remember, and let us draw near...

Tonight, let's remember, as mortals do,
how cutely we chortled when work was through,
society sated, all gods put to rest,
and you in my arms, and I at your breast...

Tonight, let's remember how daring, how free
the Madeira made us, recumbently.
Our inhibitions?―we laid them to rest.
Earth, heaven or hell―we knew we were blessed.

Tonight, let's remember the dwindling days
we've spent here together―the sun's rays
spending their power beyond somber hills.
Soon we'll rest together; there'll be no more bills.

Tonight, let's remember: we've paid all our dues,
we've suffered our sorrows, we've learned how to lose.
What's left now to take, only God can tell.
Be with me in heaven, or "bliss" will be hell!

I do not want God; I want to see you
free from all sorrow, your labor through,
a song on your tongue, a smile on your lips,
sweet, sultry and vagrant, a child at your hips,

laughing and beaming and ready to frolic
in a world free from cancer and gout and colic.
For you were courageous, and kind, and true.
There must be a heaven for someone like you.



I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse―a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard―a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim―
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech's brilliant slide, I *****,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear―
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don't quite understand) ,
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).



Gethsemane in Every Breath
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, we have lost our way, and now
we have mislaid love―earth's fairest rose.
We forgot hope's song―the way it goes.
Help us reclaim their gifts, somehow.

LORD, we have wondered long and far
in search of Bethlehem's retrograde star.
Now in night's dead cold grasp, we gasp:
our lives one long-drawn rattling rasp

of misspent breath... before we drown.
LORD, help us through this spiral down
because we faint, and do not see
above or beyond despair's trajectory.

Remember that You, too, once held
imperiled life within your hands
as hope withdrew... that where You knelt
―a stranger in a stranger land―

the chalice glinted cold afar
and red with blood as hellfire.
Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember―we are as You were,

but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.



A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember-we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,
Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;
come dwell again,
happy child among men―
men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger's cool
sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,
with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love
in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land
planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe
in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.
Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright―
just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope's long-departed star!



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly―
away, away...

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination―

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.



The Gardener's Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away."

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least...

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies...

Faint scent of roses, then―a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true? "

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call―ecstatic crew!―
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of "morality" around me.
Surround me,

not with law's restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Cædmon's Face
by Michael R. Burch

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

while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked here too, their spirits freed
―perhaps by God, perhaps by need―

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



He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike―as father unto son.

But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father's face becomes his own.



He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker's might, man's lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth

suspended under heaven's roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:

his face was Poetry's, from youth.



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?



Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for living?
Blind, unforgiving,
unworthy of heaven
or this planet red, reeking and reft?

NOTE: While “hoofed” is the more common spelling, I preferred “hooved” for this poem. Perhaps because of the contrast created by “love” and “hooved.”



Modern Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

after David B. Gosselin

I dreamed that God was good, but then I woke
and all his goodness vanished—****!—
like smoke.

I dreamed his Word was good, but then I heard
commandments evil, awful, weird,
absurd.

I dreamed of Heaven where cruel Angels flew
above my head and screamed, the Chosen Few,
“We’re not like you!”

I dreamed of Hell below, where prostitutes
adored by Jesus, played on lovely lutes
“True Love Commutes.”

I dreamed of Earth then woke to hear a Gong’s
repellent echoes in Religion’s song
of right gone wrong.



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.




Well, Almost
by Michael R. Burch

All Christians say “Never again!”
to the inhumanity of men
(except when the object of phlegm
is a Palestinian).



O, My Redeeming Angel
by Michael R. Burch

O my Redeeming Angel, after we
have fought till death (and soon the night is done) ...
then let us rest awhile, await the sun,
and let us put aside all enmity.

I might have been the “victor”—who can tell?—
so many wounds abound. All out of joint,
my groin, my thigh ... and nothing to anoint
but sunsplit, shattered stone, as pillars hell.

Light, easy flight to heaven, Your return!
How hard, how dark, this path I, limping, walk.
I only ask Your blessing; no more talk!

Withhold Your name, and yet my ears still burn
and so my heart. You asked me, to my shame:
for Jacob—trickster, shyster, sham—’s my name.



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know you as Mary,
when you spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard you exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



ur-gent
by Michael R. Burch

if u would be a good father to us all,
revoke the Curse,
extract the Gall;

but if the abuse continues,
look within
into ur Mindless Soulless Emptiness Grim,

& admit ur sin,
heartless jehovah,
slayer of widows and orphans ...

quick, begin!



Bible libel (ii)
by Michael R. Burch

ur savior’s a cad
—he’s as bad as his dad—
according to your strange Bible.

demanding belief
or he’ll bring u to grief?
he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival!

was the man ever good
before made a “god”?
if so, half your Bible is libel!



stock-home sin-drone
by Michael R. Burch

ur GAUD created this hellish earth;
thus u FANTAsize heaven
(an escape from rebirth).

ur GUAD is a monster,
**** ur RELIGION lied
and called u his frankensteinian bride!

now, like so many others cruelly abused,
u look for salve-a-shun
to the AUTHOR of ur pain’s selfish creation.

cons preach the “TRUE GOSPEL”
and proudly shout it,
but if ur GAUD were good
he would have to doubt it.



un-i-verse-all love
by Michael R. Burch

there is a Gaud, it’s true!
and furthermore, tHeSh(e)It loves u!
unfortunately
the
He
Sh(e)
It
,even more adorably,
loves cancer, aids and leprosy.



yet another post-partum christmas blues poem
by michael r. burch

ur GAUD created hell; it’s called the earth;
HE mused u briefly, clods of little worth:
let’s conjure some little monkeys
to be BIG RELIGION’s flunkeys!
GAUD belched, went back to sleep, such was ur birth.



wee the many
by michael r. burch

wee never really lived: was that our fault?
now thanks to ur GAUD wee lie in an underground vault.
wee lie here, the little ones ur GAUD despised!
HE condemned us to death before wee opened our eyes!
as it was in the days of noah, it still remains:
GAUD kills us with floods he conjures from murderous rains.



Untitled ur poems

since GOD created u so gullible
how did u conclude HE’s so lovable?
—Michael R. Burch

limping to the grave under the sentence of death,
should i praise ur LORD? think i’ll save my breath!
—Michael R. Burch



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 ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down
by Michael R. Burch

each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival.

the fiercer and more perilous the wrath,
the wilder and wickeder the weaponry,
the better the daily odds
(just don’t bet on the long term, or revival).

so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically,
if indeed He exists
as ur Bible insists—
the Wildest and the Wickedest of all
with the brightest of creatures in thrall
(unless u
somehow got that bleary
Theo-ry
wrong too).



The Strangest Rain
by Michael R. Burch

"I ... am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur?and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves ..."?Emily Dickinson

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

The strangest rain, a few bright sluggish drops,
unsure if they should fall, run through with sun,
came tumbling down and touched me, one by one,
too few to animate the shriveled crops
of nearby farmers (though their daughters might
feel each cool splash, a-shiver with delight).

I thought again of Emily Dickinson,
who felt the tingle down her spine, inspired
to lifting hairs, to nerves’ electric song
of passion for a thing so deep-desired
the heart and gut agree, and so must tremble
as all the neurons of the brain assemble
to whisper: This is love, but what is love?
Wrens darting rainbows, laughter high above.



Note to a Chick on a Religious Kick
by Michael R. Burch

Daisy,
when you smile, my life gets sunny;
you make me want to spend all my ****** money;
but honey,
you can be a bit ... um ... hazy,
perhaps mentally lazy?,
okay, downright crazy,
praying to the Easter Bunny!



lust!
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled ...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god’s creation
then spoke for the Beast:

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne’er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
“the ***** jezebel.”

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.

Published by Lucid Rhythms, The HyperTexts and Black Waters of Melancholy


A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some distant “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.

Keywords/Tags: god, Jesus, Christ, Christian, prayer, Bible, angel, atheist, faith, blasphemy, heresy, heresies, heretic, heretic, heretical, pagan, pagans, god, gods, mrbhere



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.

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



Double Dactyls

Sniggledy-Wriggledy
Jesus Christ’s enterprise
leaves me in awe of
the rich men he loathed!

But should a Sadducee
settle for trifles?
His disciples now rip off
the Lord they betrothed.
―Michael R. Burch

Donald Double Dactyl

Higgledy Piggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
saying upside is down!"
―Michael R. Burch



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

I.
If I should die,
there will come a Doom,
and the sky will darken
to the deepest Gloom.

But if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

II.
If I should die,
let no mortal say,
“Here was a man,
with feet of clay,

or a timid sparrow
God’s hand let fall.”
But watch the sky darken
to an eerie pall

and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and scoffs at quaint churchyards
littered with roods.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

III.
If I should die,
let no man adore
his incompetent Maker:
Zeus, Yahweh, or Thor.

Think of Me as the One
who never died—
the unvanquished Immortal
with the unriven side.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

IV.
And if I should “die,”
though the clouds grow dark
as fierce lightnings rend
this bleak asteroid, stark ...

If you look above,
you will see a bright Sign—
the sun with the moon
in its arms, Divine.

So divine, if you can,
my bright meaning, and know—
my Spirit is mine.
I will go where I go.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.



Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and white is white
and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words?
They come to him:
the moon's illuminations,
intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now,
and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell,
and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen,
or cut off your ears,
for I Am weary.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

2.
Listen to me now: I had a Vision.
An elevated train derailed, and Fell.
It was the Church brought low, almost to Hell.
And I alone survived, who dream of Mercy:
the Heretic, who speaks behind the Veil.

3.
Listen to me now: I saw an airplane
fall from the sky. And why should I explain?
The Visions are the same. It is my Heresy
that I survive, because I sing of Mercy,
while elevated "saints" go down in flames.

4.
Listen to me now: I saw in Nashville
how those who "soar" will plummet―Fame in flames!―
and fall on those below, as if to **** them.
The lowly, saved, will understand their names.

5.
Listen to me now: I heard another
say, "That which died shall Resurrect and Live."
An angel with a Rose bestowing Mercy!
What can it mean, but that my Visions give
fair warning to the world that God wants Mercy.
My Heresy is that we must forgive!

6.
Listen to me now: she heard god calling―
O, who will love me, who will be my friend?
Does he want Perfect Saints, the whitewashed Purists,
who frown down on their "brothers," without end?

7.
Listen to me now: you are not perfect,
and your "wise counsel" helps no one at all:
unless it's sweetened with the sweetest Mercy,
it's pure astringent antiseptic gall.

8.
Listen to me now, and learn this lesson:
If God wants mercy, why dig at the speck
in your brother's eye, when even now the Beam,
your lack of mercy, spares, no, neither neck,
becomes the Hangman's Millstone. We're all children,
all little ones! Be patient with the fleck!

9.
Listen to me now: for the Announcer
explained that wars have given Presidents
the precedents to soon assume all Power.
Vote, citizens, or be mere residents!

10.
O, listen to me now: I saw the Warheads
stored safely underground, except for One.
A red-haired woman with a bright complexion
seduced the guard. Translucent blouse, red thong,
white bra―these were her fearsome antique weapons.

I saw the Skull and Crossbones! Heed my Song!

11.
O, listen to me now, and hear my Gospel:
three verses of such sweet simplicity!
God is Light: in Him there is no darkness.
In Christ, no condemnation: Liberty!
God want no Sacrifice, but only Mercy.
O, who could ask for sweeter Heresy?

12.
Theology? I swear that I disdain it!
If Love can be explained, why then explain it!
If Love can't be explained why, then, should God,
if God is Love? Nor hell nor cattle ****
is needed, if God's good, and God's supreme.
Ask, children, what "re-ligion" truly means:
"return to *******! " Heed the bondsman's screams!

13.
Heed, children, which Theologies you dream
when Hellish Nightmares wake you, when you Scream
for comfort, but no comforter is there.
Which Voices do you heed, which Crosses bear?
If god is light, whence do Dark Visions come
which leave the Taste of Venom on your Tongue,
with which you **** your brother for one Sin
you do not share, ten thousand underskin
like Itching Worms that Squirm and Vilely Hiss:
"Your brother's sin will keep him from god's bliss,
but You are safe because god favors You! "
If God is Love, how can this voice be true?

14.
For God is not a favorer of men.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.