She is like no other, always in her necktie.
I knew her before the necktie, before many
the body manipulations, but not all. I'd stare,
engrossingly, at elongated lobes, the wardrobe.
I, now, her technophobe, longing to digital
age do her. "It's complicated," we call it.

How I long to stand next to her at the bus stop,
like we used to do. Waiting, staring, baiting,
glaring, like we used to do, at Fillmore and Haight,
while we'd wait. Didn't care if my bus came and
left, sometimes I'd just wait for hers, to follow
her aboard. I think she liked the way I stalked her.

Me in my blah corporate attire and necktie,
her in her outlandishly wonderful. Going to work  
those days were keen broad bean, where we'd  
convene, sometimes out on the scene, or where
folks ought not be seen. And we'd just look,
for long periods. If we spoke, it was  egg white polite.

But that was then and this is now and now we
chat all naughty fun. I call her my baby, my honey-bun,
my long distance impassioned one. Virtual realities
do often please, something I like about the tease.
If ever again together, I'll be on my knees. She's
my fiancée and we plan to tie the knot.

Guess I'll be tattooing a matching necktie.

Either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to ***** and rail
at, I had no male
friends,

I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,

I didn't have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'I am going
to have to let you go'

'it's all right' I tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, *******,
singing,the
works.

(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I made them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
****.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

I kissed her in the
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

There is blood beneath my tips
Nothing escapes it

This city exists
Atop a backbone
Splitting its own flesh

We are all guilty
We are all ******* guilty

Big ****, The Head *******,
was the head of all the ******* in the ******* Shed.
What made Big **** so skilled and keen
at dickheadedness was to be seen.
Big **** had a certain ******* flair,
for tugging at everyone's short and curly hair.
He never had an important specialty,
except for being a type-A personality.
His skills were near to nothing great.
He kinda looked like a backward ape,
with a necktie 20 years gone out of style,
and his middle-management bullshitty wiles;
"I'm better than any ******* here!"
He'd proclaim everyday with a prickish sneer.
So they put him on his own cocky shelf,
where he could reign all by himself,
and every *******, ***** or *******-wanna-be,
would come to the ******* Shed just to see,
what they could achieve if they'd observe instead,
the ways and means of Big ****, The Head *******.
___
Dedicated to every single uptight, middle-management, pain in the ****
you have ever had to work with or for.

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
        A persona che mai tornasse al mondo
        Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
        Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
        Non tornò vivo alcun, s’i'odo il vero,
        Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to ****** and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
  So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the ****-ends of my days and ways?
  And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
  And should I then presume?
  And how should I begin?

     . . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

     . . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
     upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
  Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all;
  That is not it, at all.’

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail
     along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
  ‘That is not it at all,
  That is not what I meant, at all.’

     . . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

You are a flame inside me
Flickering,
Teasing,
Caressing,
Smoldering.

You are far away
Yet so close
Teetering on the edge of my imagination.

The yearning is the knowing
The mere knowledge of you
That you are existing somewhere
Somewhere my reality can’t touch.

My words spill out of me
Like candy from a piñata
Pages and pages
Poems scattered about like hungry pigeons.

You make me so hungry
So eager to express
To spill my inner self onto empty pages.

You are my muse
My cruel inspiration
The tears staining my pillow.

I am dancing on a cloud
Unnoticed by you
As you live your life
Unaware of mine.

My words are endless
My thoughts knowing no bounds
As I imagine your eyes
Penetrating through me.

You are my fantasy
My never forever
My drug of choice.

You are the fuel that keeps me writing,
Feeling,
Expressing.

You are my special light
Turning on inside me
When all my creativity is turned off.

I want to ravish you
Bite the buttons off your shirt
Loosen your necktie
Drown in your eyes without a life jacket.

You are my muse crush
The smile on my face
The pain in my heart
The hello that never comes
The inevitable goodbye.



© 2014 Stacey Handler

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.

this is my disease
here i am age 6 stealing candy from a shop on Broadway
here i am age 7 pulling a girl’s ******* down around her knees while she’s swinging upside down from jungle gym bars
here i am age 8 Jackie K shows me how to ******* to this day i’ve never looked back
that’s me age 9 creeping into my sister’s bedroom into her sleeping girlfriend’s adjoining bed concerning my sister she’s a great gal but i’ve never been physically attracted to her
this is my disease
here i am age 10 with 4 grammar school buddies shoplifting at Marshal Fields department store we got caught sent home and severely punished
here’s me age 11 erasing and altering test scores in my 6th grade teacher’s grade’s book while class is out to recess
here i am age 12 repressing my true voice and lying to my parents about everything
this is my disease
this is me age 13 being shipped off to boarding school
that’s me age 14 getting kicked out of boarding school then shipped off to another boarding school
there’s me age 15 with Kent stealing girl’s purses from Pink Panther lounge in Rogers Park
here i am age 16 stealing Mom’s sleeping pills trading to score my first heroine fix sick as a dog vomiting by the side of the road
this is my disease
this is me age 17 running away from home to Haight Ashbury CA waking up with ants crawling in my hair strung out on methadrine and acid in Berkley crash house
and there i am age 18 running from tear gas and police Billy clubs in Lincoln Park and rioting in Grant Park at the 1968 Democratic Convention
that’s me age 21 getting tricked by my parents into 3 month lockup at Institute Of Living Hartford CT
this is my disease
there i am age 23 practicing Transcendental Meditation and yoga with Cathleen at Hartford Art School
there’s me age 24 kissing with Cathleen in photo booth at the Century Theater in Chicago
there’s me age 25 working for my Dad while Cathleen is away with her family in Indonesia
there i am age 27 holding a teacher’s certificate from SAIC Mom’s idea i never wanted to discipline kids
that’s me age 30 wearing necktie working at CME and selling coke on the side
that’s me age 32 drunk slurring words telling Elizabeth and her Mom at expensive seafood restaurant i wasn’t fit to marry anyone
this is my disease
here i am age 32 stealing money drugs to support my urges
that’s me age 34 with my first puppy Taters
there’s me age 37 awarded Illinois Arts Council Grant spitting peeing splashing blood on charcoal drawings reading Marquis de Sade dismissing many girls
here i am age 41 exhibiting my first one-man show at Deson Sainders Gallery Chicago Dad dies 6 paintings sold
that’s me age 44 leaving Chicago after too many dropped ***** opportunities chances at love success no destination other than hope prayer of becoming a better person
there i am age 48 burying Taters deep in dirt in Wilmington NC
this is me age 49 working at a record store in Tucson AZ running in the mornings feeling so alone crying
this is me age 50 ******* about **** *** peeing hairy females questioning to myself do any of those fixations actually matter in a real relationship
this is my disease
there i am age 55 living without drugs for more than 10 years swimming every day awarded yoga certification
this is me age 61 without  the affections of a woman for 15 or more years wondering if i’ll ever find love
here i am age 62 returning to Chicago worried about Mom’s illness hoping praying begging for just one more possibility to prove myself
this is my disease
this accounting does not include surviving throat cancer Hepatitis C severe compound fractured wrist and 2 suicide attempts
this is my disease

THEY were calling certain styles of whiskers by the name of "lilacs."
And another manner of beard assumed in their chatter a verbal guise
Of "mutton chops," "galways," "feather dusters."
  
Metaphors such as these sprang from their lips while other street cries
Sprang from sparrows finding scattered oats among interstices of the curb.
Ah-hah these metaphors-and Ah-hah these boys-among the police they were known
As the ***** Dozen and their names took the front pages of newspapers
And two of them croaked on the same day at a "necktie party" ... if we employ the metaphors of their lips.

Stripping You of Your Privilege
YOU!

Tall and lean and impossibly handsome
and Corporate

In your magnificent pinstriped business suit
and perfectly tied silk tie
and your hundred dollar haircut
your privileged male feet hidden
inside impeccably polished black
English dress shoes

Staring at me through your
designer sunglasses

Haughty, confident, insolent
Stepping out of your Porsche
before you enter your office building

So smooth, clean, assured and perfect
Maybe you are 35 years old, maybe 40
the world is yours


Transformation
I have news for you
The tables are turned

YOU have been the one in power.
The one in control.
So proud, so arrogant, so confident

Starting at me, a total stranger
Just part of your usual day
I am just an object to you
I am an OBJECT to you!

Your beautiful smooth shaven
face turns...
but wait...

Wait! No more

NO MORE!

The world has turned upside
down

Now YOU are the OBJECT

I have the POWER to make things happen

NOW LISTEN TO ME

You have a new future

LISTEN. OBEY
Quit your important executive job
Leave your successful corporate career

That's right – now
QUIT!
Call from your phone
Don't enter the
building
Tell them you’re quitting

You are stunned and repelled and horrified
You resist and argue
You refuse and try to leave
Your pride and anger rise
But there is no escaping your destiny

Your power is gone
You are helpless to resist

Forget your MBA
Forget you ever went to a university
Slide the business school ring off your
long finger

Give me the keys to that Porsche
And take your Rolex,
your gold wristwatch,
off your
wrist
You won't be needing a watch
I will tell you the time
We will sell your watch

You slide off your watch and surrender it

Get those fancy, expensive,
polished handmade shoes off
Your pampered, privileged male feet
Yes, your black dress socks too

YOU, barefoot on the sidewalk!

Leave the shoes right there on the
sidewalk, in front of your former
office building, shining in the sun.
Empty and crying for their former owner

Shocked, unable to resist,
you untie and remove your shoes,
peel off your long dress socks

Put your expensive socks inside the shoes
and drop the briefcase too

Now get back into the Porsche
you used to own
Yes, in your bare feet
Your smooth, clean size tens
No - NOT the driver's seat
Get in the passenger side
I am driving

I'm taking you to your own home
as my Trophy

How many times
have you
had a woman in your passenger seat?

You behind the wheel,
smiling your proud smile
your perfect white teeth gleaming

Straightening your necktie as
your bragged about your corporate successes
You and your car the proud conquerors
Your handmade black leather shoes pressing the pedal
of male power and privilege

Now you - just a passenger!
along for the ride in your own car
the rich carpet of your Porsche
under the smooth soles of your bare privileged feet

Now the plan!
We will marry
and you will clean and cook and look very beautiful

Now your LIFE LESSONS:
Dumb down your smug,
expensively high-class male executive
SPEECH.
More slang. Much less education in your voice
Don’t talk – just listen to ME

And you have to wipe off
That arrogant male grin
like you own the world.

Destroy that haughty attitude
of conquest - so much a part of you until today

Replace it with humble respect
And attitude of submission and obedience

Give me those sunglasses
You can't wear them anymore
Look at me
with submissive adoration in your clear, blue
eyes

No need to make decisions now
I will take care of that

I will take away your ambition
Your self-assertion
Your independent thinking

We'll take apart your self-confidence
and throw the pieces in the trash
All of your initiative and desire to succeed
will be replaced
by the desire to make me happy

I will change your prestigious upper class name
You will take MY last name now
Your identity will disappear
What is your first name? William?
You are Billy boy from now

Your male executive image and power clothes
No longer have
Any place
In your new existence

We'll pick up some nice tight cheap jeans and
some nice tight undershirts for your
new look - the one I choose
Show off your chest and your arms
Flip flops and work boots
and sweatshirts and flannel.
You will LOVE them!

I want you tougher, grizzled
Blue collarized
Working class male
You’re too clean, too smooth, too perfect
We’ll fix that...

And your clean-cut corporate haircut is
now forbidden
I hate it. Too perfect

Grow out your golden brown hair into
A scraggly ponytail
a beard too...
Put some dirt under those clean fingernails
Calluses on those smooth clean palms
An earring in your ear

And no more SUITS!
I hate suits
symbols of white male power and authority
and no more ties
those symbols of oppression
your neck and long male
throat will be open and exposed
for the world to see

No, that pinstriped suit you're wearing
that you had made for yourself in London
and the silk tie
and the starched white shirt
will all be sold to a second hand clothing shop

The monograms taken off your
cufflinks before they are sold
Your golf clubs – sold
Your tennis rackets and
sports equipment - sold

Your credit cards in my name
Your condo is now ours
Your Porsche is now mine
You will drive my beat-up old Ford

All of your fancy clothes will be sold off
That will be tomorrow



You're gonne be barefoot in my kitchen
You won't be needing shoes anymore
on your privileged, pampered feet


Now - your soles on your own kitchen floor
Making dinner for me

I DON'T know how he came,
shambling, dark, and strong.
  
He stood in the city and told men:
My people are fools, my people are young and strong, my people must learn, my people are terrible workers and fighters.
Always he kept on asking: Where did that blood come from?
  
They said: You for the fool killer, you for the ***** hatch and a necktie party.
  
  They hauled him into jail.
  They sneered at him and spit on him,
  And he wrecked their jails,
  Singing, "******* your jails,"
  And when he was most in jail
  Crummy among the crazy in the dark
  Then he was most of all out of jail
  Shambling, dark, and strong,
Always asking: Where did that blood come from?
  They laid hands on him
  And the fool killers had a laugh
  And the necktie party was a go, by God.
They laid hands on him and he was a goner.
  They hammered him to pieces and he stood up.
They buried him and he walked out of the grave, by God,
  Asking again: Where did that blood come from?

YOU!

Tall and lean and impossibly handsome
and Corporate

In your magnificent pinstriped business suit
and perfectly tied silk tie
and your hundred dollar haircut
your privileged male feet hidden
inside impeccably polished black
English dress shoes

Staring at me through your
designer sunglasses

Haughty, confident, insolent
Stepping out of your Porsche
before you enter your office building

So smooth, clean, assured and perfect
Maybe you are 35 years old, maybe 40
the world is yours


Transformation
I have news for you
The tables are turned

YOU have been the one in power.
The one in control.
So proud, so arrogant, so confident

Starting at me, a total stranger
Just part of your usual day
I am just an object to you
I am an OBJECT to you!

Your beautiful smooth shaven
face turns...
but wait...

Wait! No more

NO MORE!

The world has turned upside
down

Now YOU are the OBJECT

I have the POWER to make things happen

NOW LISTEN TO ME

You have a new future

LISTEN. OBEY
Quit your important executive job
Leave your successful corporate career

That's right – now
QUIT!
Call from your Iphone
Don't enter the
building
Tell them you’re quitting

You are stunned and repelled and horrified
You resist and argue
You refuse and try to leave
Your pride and anger rise
But there is no escaping your destiny

Your power is gone
You are helpless to resist

Forget your MBA
Forget you ever went to a university
Slide the business school ring off your
long male finger

Give me the keys to that Porsche
And take your Rolex,
your gold wristwatch,
off your
wrist
You won't be needing a watch
I will tell you the time
We will sell your watch

Get those fancy, expensive,
polished handmade shoes off
Your pampered, privileged male feet
Yes, your black dress socks too

YOU, barefoot on the sidewalk!

Leave the shoes right there on the
sidewalk, in front of your former
office building.
Empty and crying for their former owner
Put your expensive socks inside the shoes
and drop the briefcase too

Now get back into the Porsche
you used to own
Yes, in your bare feet
Your naked size tens
No - NOT the driver's seat
Get in the passenger side
I am driving

I'm taking you to your own home
as my Trophy

How many times
have you
had a woman in your passenger seat?
You behind the wheel,
smiling your proud smile
your perfect white teeth gleaming
Straightening your necktie as
your bragged about your corporate successes
You and your car the proud conquerors
Your handmade black leather shoes pressing the pedal
of male power and privilege

Now you - just a passenger!
along for the ride in your own car
the rich carpet of your Porsche
under the smooth soles of your naked privileged feet

We will marry
and you will clean and cook and look very beautiful

Now your LIFE LESSONS:
Dumb down your smug, expensively high-class male executive
SPEECH.
More slang. Much less education in your voice
Don’t talk – just listen to ME

And you have to wipe off
That arrogant male grin
like you own the world.

Destroy that haughty attitude
of conquest - so much a part of you until today

Replace it with humble respect
And attitude of submission and obedience

Give me those sunglasses
You can't wear them anymore
Look at me
with submissive adoration in your clear, blue
Male eyes

No need to make decisions now
I will take care of that

I will **** your ambition
Your self-assertion
Your independent thinking

We'll take apart your self-confidence
and throw the pieces in the trash
All of your initiative and desire to succeed
will be replaced
by the desire to make me happy

I will change your powerful upper class name
You will take MY last name now
Your identity will disappear
What is your first name? William?
You are Billy boy from now

Your male executive image and power clothes
No longer have
Any place
In your new existence
We'll pick up some nice tight cheap jeans and
some nice tight undershirts for your
new look - the one I choose

I want you tougher, grizzled
Blue collarized
Working class male
You’re too clean, too smooth, too perfect
We’ll fix that...

And your clean-cut corporate haircut is
now forbidden
I hate it. Too perfect

Grow out your golden brown hair into
A scraggly ponytail
a beard too...
Put some dirt under those clean fingernails
Calluses on those smooth clean palms
An earring in your male ear

And no more SUITS!
I hate suits
symbols of white male power and authority
and no more ties
******* symbols of oppression
your neck and long male
throat will be open and exposed
for the world to see

No, that pinstriped suit you're wearing
that you had made for yourself in London
and the silk tie
and the starched white shirt
will all be sold to a second hand clothing shop

The monograms taken off your
cufflinks before they are sold
Your golf clubs – sold
Your tennis rackets and
sports equipment - sold

Your credit cards in my name
Your condo is now ours
Your Porsche is now mine
You will drive my beat-up old Ford

All of your fancy clothes will be sold off
That will be tomorrow



You're gonne be barefoot in my kitchen
You won't be needing shoes anymore
on your privileged, pampered male feet

A Necktie for Fathers' Day

Roaming around lost in the 1970s
Dull advertising writers still forbid
The purchase of neckties for Fathers’ Day –
As if  DNA ever wears a tie

It’s all knee-pants and advertising now
On cartoon tees and baseball caps and sneaks
Admiring his tattoos in his MePhone
And cadging guy-support from his live-in

While watching his collection of action films:
“I’ll look for a job tomorrow, babe, okay?”

I write in public,
to be seen,
I need these preppy girls,
and closeted high schoolers,
and trophy wives,
to see me,
at my laptop,
clicking away.

Because I'm "artistic",
and "deep".

I am sensitive and must
be very beautiful
on the inside,
just like the outside.

That's why I do it.
It's all about the glory.

If only the knew the truth,
the real writing,
the words that smack the
inside of your skull
at 3 AM
when you have to be at
your minimum wage job
at 7.

The lit you need to get out
before the pressure builds up
and your head explodes
in a rainbow of creativity
on the four walls of your
too small
efficiency apartment.

The dark nights that
make you doubt the sun
will appear again

O muse, you cannot be
stifled. I hear your voice
even in my
starched white shirt
and necktie noose,
making lattés
and serving time
until The End.

The End. Times wing'ed
seraphim, the bell
tolling, tolling,
constantly,
Am I doing the right
thing with my life?

Every soul ******* interaction
with the over-privileged,
self-righteous soccer moms,
screams injustice.

My place, here,
is not to work to write,
but write to work.

My place, here,
is to live authentically,
to my own self be true,
and true, to those voices,
who came before,
who had the courage
of their convictions,
and the pounding of
text on the interior
of their cranium,
to write.  

Writing is raw,
and obscene, and
beautiful.

Standing naked,
exposed, raw,
ugly
in front of your peers.
wolves.

A vow of poverty
a release of material claims
and a gain of authenticity
Living truly and truly living,
This is why I write.

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!”



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

Isn’t it silly, Wlly 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 Rage 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 send 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!



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.



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 loud 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 just 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.



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 caught up
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 s-x, 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!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can 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 d-mned,
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 gr0pe,
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.



Post-Nashville Covenant
by Michael R. Burch

We love our God.
We love our guns.
We despise the weak.
Don’t call us Huns!

We love our kids.
We love our schools.
We love our guns.
Don’t call us fools!

We pledge ourselves
to the strong defense
of the Constitution
and our Mensch.

Once re-elected,
Trump will rule
with God and guns
and safer schools.



Wonderworks
by Michael R. Burch

History’s
mysteries
abound
& astound,
found
(profound)
the whole earth ’round,
even if mostly
underground.



uv been had
by michael r. burch

uv been had;
ur Dad’s a cad;
His priests are mad,
His pastors lying.

they only want your money, chum,
so why play dumb
and give it to ’em?
give them the boot and send them flying!



Come Spring
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Come spring we return, innocent and hopeful, to the ******,
beseeching Her to bestow
Her blessings upon us.

Pitiable sinners, we bow before Her,
nay, grovel,
as She looms above us, aglow
in Her Purity.

We know
all will change in an instant; therefore
in the morning we will call her,
an untouched maiden no more,
“*****.”

The so-called Religious Right prizes virginity in women and damns them for doing what men do. I have long been a fan of women like Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, who decided what’s good for the gander is equally good for the goose.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to "believe"?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where our kids will stick their (k)no(w)'s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud's a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



twin nuggets of ancient ****-dumb
by michael r. burch

oh, let it never once be said
that love for Gaud is dead!

wee love the way he murdered eve!
such awesome love! wee must believe!

wee love the way he sent a FLOOD
to teach wee babies to be good!

wee love the zillion births he aborted!
such awesome love cant clearly reported!

(so never mind the embryos
who died in their mommies’ drowning throes!

the unborn babes, the unborn lambs
all drowned for Gaud’s divinest plans!)

“do as I say, not as I do!”
cruel Hippo-Crit! does Jesus rue?
(if Christ were good he’d rue Gaud too.)

no! wee must love our abusive Father
and follow hymn meekly, mild lambs to the slaughter,

or he’ll burn us forever in Hiss terrible hell.
it’s so much safer to tell hymn he’s swell!

thus wee love our Gaud so loverly
hovering over us so smotherly!

wee love the TITHES his cons abscond.
wee love the Big Fish in Hiss pond.

And so wee say “whee!” to all this and that!
PS, also the earth is flat!



Why do faith, hope and love
always end up PUSH and SHOVE?
—Michael R. Burch, lines from “Christ, Jesus!”



Yet another Screed against Exist-Tension-alism
by Michael R. Burch

Life has meaning!
Please don’t deny it!
It means we’re ******.
Why cause a riot?



Evangelical Fever
by Michael R. Burch

Welcome to global warming:
temperature 109.
You believe in God, not in science,
but isn’t the weather Divine?



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!).



The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

Here I am, talking to myself again . . .

******* at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!

Still, I remember when . . .

planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity

worth a chuckle or two.

Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;

Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;

Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;

Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .

for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,

and they fill the world with their pale derision

of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,

reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all ******.



The King of Beasts in the Museum of the Extinct
by Michael R. Burch

The king of beasts, my child,
was terrible, and wild.

His roaring shook the earth
till the feeble cursed his birth.

And all things feared his might:
even rhinos fled, in fright.

Now here these bones attest
to what the brute did best

and the pain he caused his prey
when he hunted in his day.

For he slew them just for sport
till his own pride was cut short

with a mushrooming cloud and wild thunder;
Exhibit "B" will reveal his blunder.



God to Man, Contra Bataan
by Michael R. Burch

Earth, what-d’ya make of global warming?
Perth is endangered, the high seas storming.
Now all my creatures, from maggot to man
Know how it felt on the march to Bataan.



The Less-Than-Divine Results of My Prayers to be Saved from Televangelists
by Michael R. Burch

I’m old,
no longer bold,
just cold,
and (truth be told),
been bought and sold,
rolled
by the wolves and the lambs in the fold.

Who’s to be told
by this worn-out scold?
The complaint department is always on hold.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to "believe"?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their (k)no(w)'s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud's a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I’m already below!

“Heaven Bent” is a pun on “being bent on Heaven” and the heaven/hell thing being bent into a different version, with the dying escaping hell here on earth. That would make death “heaven” even if there is no afterlife. “This life is hell,” “upwardly mobile” and “how the hell” are also puns that can be read two ways. I wrote this poem in high school, around age 16 in 1974, but was unhappy with the third line and forgot about the poem. I stumbled upon it on on July 4, 2006 —ironically, Independence Day — and the third line occurred to me.



The beauty of the flower fades,
its petals wither to charades...
—Michael R. Burch



the U-turn poem
by michael r. burch

Life so defaulty,
Life so unfair,
why do wee prize U,
what do U care?

LORD who lets unborns
drown in a flood,
CELESTIAL ABORTIONIST,
r U sure Ur understood?



Hellion
by michael r. burch

cold as stone,
cold to the bone,
so cold inside even icebergs moan,
such is ur Gaud on hiss icy throne.

lines written for a luverly Gaud who cant be bothered to save pisspot peeple who guess wrong about which ire-ational re-ligion to believe.

“Hellion” is a pun on “he-lion” as in the “Lion of Judah” and “hell-lion.”



yet another ode to a graceless faceless Creator albeit with thoughts of possibly rescinding prior compliments
by michael r. burch

who created this graceless universe?
why praise its Creator? who could be worse?
why praise man’s Berater with obsequious verse?
job’s wife was right: he’s nobody’s nurse.



ur-Gent prayer request
by michael r. burch

where did ur Gaud originate?
in the minds of men so full of hate
they commanded moms to stone their kids,
which u believe (brains on the skids)
was “the word of Gaud”!
                                         debate?
too late & of course it’s useless:
please pray to be less clueless.

The title involves a pun, since the “ur-Gent” would be the biblical “god.”



Religion is regarded by fools as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Non-Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

The wise will never cry, “Save!”
The wise desire a quiet grave.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense/nunsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to “believe”?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their no’s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud’s a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of ****.



We Know It All
by Michael R. Burch

We rile. We gall. We know it all
because we’ve read the Bible,
which tells us genocide’s “God’s will”
along with bashing in kids’ skulls
and other forms of libel.

The earth is flat, our Book says so!
The Lord will torture our rational foe!
(We lack the compassion to tell the fiend “No!”)

God’s on his throne, the Angels are winking,
applauding our lack of critical thinking.
We’re drowning in crap. We’re stinking and sinking.

Eve once petted friendly T-Rexes!
A “witch” should be ****** for unprovable hexes!
It’s a “sin” to make love if one’s lover has exes!

Girls were enslaved and ***** by their “masters”!
Our Book is the source of so many disasters!
The earth’s overheating? Let’s burn it up faster!



Yet Another ****** Ditty
by Michael R. Burch

Here’s my ditty:
Life is ******,
Then you get old
And more’s the pity.

Truth be told,
We’re bought and sold,
Sheep in the fold
Sheared lickety-splitty.

But chin’s up,
What’s the use of crying?
We’ve a certain escape:
Welcome to dying!



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 compassionless “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.



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 k-ll 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.

YOU!

Tall and lean and impossibly handsome
and Corporate

In your magnificent pinstriped business suit
and perfectly tied silk tie
and your hundred dollar haircut
your privileged male feet hidden
inside impeccably polished black
English dress shoes

Staring at me through your
designer sunglasses

Haughty, confident, insolent
Stepping out of your Porsche
before you enter your office building

So smooth, clean, assured and perfect
Maybe you are 35 years old, maybe 40
the world is yours


Transformation
I have news for you
The tables are turned

YOU have been the one in power.
The one in control.
So proud, so arrogant, so confident

Starting at me, a total stranger
Just part of your usual day
I am just an object to you
I am an OBJECT to you!

Your beautiful smooth shaven
male face turns...
but wait...

Wait! No more

NO MORE!

The world has turned upside
down

Now YOU are the OBJECT

I have the POWER to make things happen

NOW LISTEN TO ME

You have a new future

LISTEN. OBEY
Quit your important executive job
Leave your successful corporate career

That's right – now
QUIT!
Call from your Iphone
Don't enter the
building
Tell them you’re quitting

You are stunned and repelled and horrified
You resist and argue
You refuse and try to leave
Your pride and anger rise
But there is no escaping your destiny

Your power is gone
You are helpless to resist

Forget your MBA
Forget you ever went to a university
Slide the business school ring off your
long male finger

Give me the keys to that Porsche
And take your Rolex,
your gold wristwatch,
off your
wrist
You won't be needing a watch
I will tell you the time
We will sell your watch

Get those fancy, expensive,
polished handmade shoes off
Your pampered, privileged male feet
Yes, your black dress socks too

YOU, barefoot on the sidewalk!

Leave the shoes right there on the
sidewalk, in front of your former
office building.
Empty and crying for their former owner
Put your expensive socks inside the shoes
and drop the briefcase too

Now get back into the Porsche
you used to own
Yes, in your bare feet
Your naked size tens
No - NOT the driver's seat
Get in the passenger side
I am driving

I'm taking you to your own home
as my Trophy

How many times
have you
had a woman in your passenger seat?
You behind the wheel,
smiling your proud smile
your perfect white teeth gleaming
Straightening your necktie as
your bragged about your corporate successes
You and your car the proud conquerors
Your handmade black leather shoes pressing the pedal
of male power and privilege

Now you - just a passenger!
along for the ride in your own car
the rich carpet of your Porsche
under the smooth soles of your naked privileged feet

We will marry
and you will clean and cook and look very beautiful

Now your LIFE LESSONS:
Dumb down your smug, expensively high-class male executive
SPEECH.
More slang. Much less education in your voice
Don’t talk – just listen to ME

And you have to wipe off
That arrogant male grin
like you own the world.

Destroy that haughty attitude
of conquest - so much a part of you until today

Replace it with humble respect
And attitude of submission and obedience

Give me those sunglasses
You can't wear them anymore
Look at me
with submissive adoration in your clear, blue
Male eyes

No need to make decisions now
I will take care of that

I will **** your ambition
Your self-assertion
Your independent thinking

We'll take apart your self-confidence
and throw the pieces in the trash
All of your initiative and desire to succeed
will be replaced
by the desire to make me happy

I will change your powerful upper class name
You will take MY last name now
Your identity will disappear
What is your first name? William?
You are Billy boy from now

Your male executive image and power clothes
No longer have
Any place
In your new existence
We'll pick up some nice tight cheap jeans and
some nice tight undershirts for your
new look - the one I choose

I want you tougher, grizzled
Blue collarized
Working class male
You’re too clean, too smooth, too perfect
We’ll fix that...

And your clean-cut corporate haircut is
now forbidden
I hate it. Too perfect

Grow out your golden brown hair into
A scraggly ponytail
a beard too...
Put some dirt under those clean fingernails
Calluses on those smooth clean palms
An earring in your male ear

And no more SUITS!
I hate suits
symbols of white male power and authority
and no more ties
******* symbols of oppression
your neck and long male
throat will be open and exposed
for the world to see

No, that pinstriped suit you're wearing
that you had made for yourself in London
and the silk tie
and the starched white shirt
will all be sold to a second hand clothing shop

The monograms taken off your
cufflinks before they are sold
Your golf clubs – sold
Your tennis rackets and
sports equipment - sold

Your credit cards in my name
Your condo is now ours
Your Porsche is now mine
You will drive my beat-up old Ford

All of your fancy clothes will be sold off
That will be tomorrow



You're gonne be barefoot in my kitchen
You won't be needing shoes anymore
on your privileged, pampered male feet

© 2011 (by Jim Sularz)
(The true tale of Frank Eaton – “Pistol Pete”)

At the headwaters of the Red Woods branch,
near a gentle ***** on a dusty trail.
On an iron gate, at the Twin Mounds cemetery,
a bouquet of dry sunflowers flail.

In a grave, still stirs, is a father’s heart,
that beats now to avenge his death.
Six times, murdered by cold blooded killers,
six men branded for a son’s revenge ….

Rye whiskey and cards, they rode fast and hard,
the four Campseys and the Ferbers.
With malicious intent, they were all Hell bent
to commit a loving father’s ******.

When the gunsmoke had cleared, all their faces were seared,
in the bleeding soul of a grieving son.
Ain’t nothin’ worse, than a father’s curse,
to fill a boy with brimstone and Hell fire!

Young Eaton yearned and soon would learn,
the fine art of slinging lead.
Why, he could shoot the wings off a buzzin’ horsefly,
from twenty paces, lickety split!

Slightly crossed eyed, Frank had a hog-killin’ time,
at a Fort Gibson shootin’ match.
Upside down, straight-on and leanin’ backwards,
he out-shot every expert in pistol class.

By day’s end when the scores were tallied,
Frank meant to prove at that shootin’ meet.
That he would claim the name of the truest gun,
and they dubbed him - “Pistol Pete.”

In fact, Pistol Pete was half boy, half bloodhound,
a wild-cat with two 45’s strapped on.
In District Cooweescoowee - bar none,
he was the fastest shot around!

Pistol Pete knew his dreaded duty had now arrived,
to hunt down those who killed his Pa.
He vowed those varmints would never see,
a necktie party, a court of law.

Where a man is known by his buckskin totem,
in hallowed Cherokee land.
There, frontier justice and Native pride,
help deal a swift and heavy hand.

Pete was quick on the trail of a killer,
just south of Webber’s Falls.
Shannon Champsey was a cattle rustler,
a horse thief, and a scurvy dog!

Pete ponied up and held his shot,
to let Shannon first make a move.
The next time he’d blinked, would be Shannon’s last,
to Hell he’d make his home.

With snarlin’ teeth and spittin’ venom,
Pete struck fast like a rattlesnake.
Two bullets to the chest in rapid fire,
was Shannon’s last breath he’d partake.

Pete galloped away, hot on the next trail,
left Shannon there for a vulture's meal.
Notched his guns, below a moon chasing sun,
and one wound to his soul congealed.

There’s a saying out West, know by gunslingers best,
that’ll deep six you in a knotty pine casket.
One you should never forget, lest you end up stone dead,
“There’s always a man – just a shade faster.”

Doc Ferber was next to feel Pete’s hot lead,
“Fill your hand, you *******!”
With little remorse, Pete shot him clear off his horse,
left him gunned down in a shallow ditch.

After getting reports, Pete headed North,
to where John Ferber hunkered down.
A Missouri corner, in McDonald County,
filled with Bible thumpers in a sinner’s town.

Pete rode five hundred miles to shoot that snake,
with two notches, he welcomed a third.
He carried his cursed ball and chains,
to **** a man, he swore with words.

But John Ferber was plastered, and he didn’t quite master,
deuces wild, soiled doves and hard drinkin’.
Someone else would beat Pete, the day before they’d meet,
sending John slingin’ hash in Hell’s kitchen.

There’s a night rider without a father,
under a curse to settle a score.
In all, six murderous desperados,
Three men dead - now, three men more ….

Pistol Pete was now pushin’ seventeen,
just a young pup, but no tenderfoot.
With two men in the lead, he was quick on his steed,
to **** two brothers who killed his kin.

Pete rode up to their fence, with a friendly countenance,
spoke with Jonce Campsey, but asked for Jim.
“There’s a message from Doc, that you both need to hear,”
Pete readied his hands – both guns were cocked!

Pete continued in discourse, and got off his horse.
all the while in an act of pretense.
Jim came to the door and Pete read them the score,
and shot them both dead in self-defense.

With the help of the law, they verified Pete’s call,
then gathered any loot they found.
Laid Jim and Jonce out, in their rustic log house,
and burnt them both and the house to the ground.

Might have seemed kind of callous, but weren’t done in malice,
that those boys were burnt instead of swingin’.
They just sent them to Hell, sizzlin’ medium well,
besides, it “saved them a lot of diggin’.”

There was one man to go, he’d be the last to know,
that a hex is an awful thing.
That a young boy would grow, with a curse in tow,
to **** a man, was still a sin.

Pete garnered his will, with the best of his skills,
to take on the last of the Campsey brothers.
It would be three to one, Wiley and two paid guns,
Pete knew his odds were slim and he shuddered.

At nearly twenty-one, Pete knew he may have out-run,
his luck as the fastest gun.
This would be the ultimate test of his shootin’ finesse,
only a fool would stay to be outgunned.

But Pistol Pete weren’t no liver lilly,
and he loaded up his 45’s.
He rode into town with steely nerves,
maybe no one, would come out alive!

Pete knocked through that swingin’ bar-room door,
Wiley stood there with a possum eating grin.
He said, “Hey there kid, who the Hell are you?”
and Pete shouted, “Frank Eaton! You killed my kin!”

All four men drew quick, with guns a’ blazing,
Wiley got plugged first from two 45’s.
The bar-room crowd dispersed in a wild stampede,
everywhere, ricochetin’ slugs whizzed by!

When the shootin’ had stopped, there was just one man standin’
all four men got plugged, includin’ Pete.
But only a shot-up boy rode out of town that day,
and a Father’s curse, that played out complete –
was a bitter mistress to bury….

At the headwaters of the Red Woods Branch,
near a gentle ***** on a dusty trail.
On an iron gate, at the Twin Mounds cemetery,
a bouquet of morning glories flail.

In a grave, still deep, is a father’s heart,
that lays quiet in a peaceful sleep.
And six men dead, who now burn instead,
compliments of Pistol Pete!

I don't need a necktie-
I don't need a wallet-
I don't need a thingamajig-
or a whatchamacallit!

I have what I want,
a wonderful son, daughter-in-law,
and the two most powerful vitamins
known to mankind---my grandchildren.
AND, last, but not least, my "Guardian Angel",
Brie!(as in cheese)--(my cat!!! :):):)
for they make everyday, Father's Day!

copyright: richard riddle: June 21, 2015

Written approximately1890-1899 by American poet Will Carleton, and is shown as it appeared in the Sacramento Daily Union Newspaper on July 15, 1899. Even in his elder years, my grandfather, Odis Riddle, could recite this word for word, and not skip a beat, mesmerizing all of us grandchildren that had gathered around his chair for the performance.

Enj­oy

"If the weary crowd is willing, I've a little word to say of a lightning-rod dispenser that dropped down on me one day; with a poem in his motions,; with a sermon in his mien, with hands as white as lilies, and a face uncommon clean. No wrinkle had his vestments and his  linen glistened white, and his new-constructed necktie was an interesting sight; Which I almost wished his razor had made red that white-skinned throat, and the new-constructed necktie had • composed a hangman's knot. Ere he brought his sleek-trimmed carcass for my women folks to see and his rip-saw tongue a-buzzin' for to gouge a **** in me.

But I couldn't help but like him, as I always think i must, The gold of my own doctrine in a fellowheap of dust, When I fired my own opinions at this person, round by round, they drew an answering volley of a very similar sound; I touched him on religion, and the hopes my heart had' known; he said he'd had experiences quite similar of my own. I told him of the doubtin's that made dark my early years; he had laid awake till morning with that same old breed of fears; I told him of the rough path I hoped to heaven to go, he was on that ladder, only just a round below. I told him of my visions, of the sinfulness of gain, he had seen the self same picters, tho' not quite so clear and plain;

Our politics was different, at first he galled and winced. But I arg'ed him so able, he was very soon convinced. And, 'twas getting toward the middle cf a hungry summer day, There was dinner on the table, and I asked him would he stay? And he sat down among us, everlasting trim and neat. And asked a short, crisp blessing, almost good enough to eat; Then he fired upon the mercies of our Great Eternal Friend, and gave the Lord Almighty a good, .first-class recommend; And for full an hour we listened to this sugar-coated scamp, Talking like a blessed angel—eating like a blasted *****.

\My wife, she liked the stranger, smiling on him warm and sweet, (It always flatters women when their guests are on the eat), and he hinted that some ladies never lose their early charms. And kissed her latest baby and received it in his arms.

My sons and daughters liked him, for he had progressive views, And chewed the quill of fancy, and gave down the latest news: And I couldn't help but like him, as I fear I always must, The gold of my own doctrine, in a fellowheap of dust.

He was spreading desolation through a piece of apple pie, when he paused and looked upon us with a tear in his off-eye. and said. O, happy family! your blessings make me sad: You call to mind those dear ones that in happier days I had, a wife as sweet as this one; a babe as bright and fair; a little girl with ringlets, like that one over there; I worshiped them too blindly! My eyes with love were dim! God took them to His own heart and now I worship Him. But had I not neglected the means within my way, Then they might still be living, and loving me to-day.  

.-.• One night there came a tempest; the thunder peals were dire; The clouds that tramped above us were shooting bolts of fire; In my own house, I, lying, was thinking to my blame. How little I had guarded against those shafts of flame. When crash! through roof and ceiling the deadly lightning cleft. And killed my wife and children, and only I was left. Since that dread time I've wandered, and naught for life have cared, Save to save other's loved ones, whose lives have yet been spared; Since then, it is my mission, where'er by sorrow tossed, To sell to virtuous people good lightning rods—at cost."

" With sure and strong protection I'll clothe your buildings o'er, 'Twill cost you fifty dollars (perhaps a trifle more), What little else it comes to at lowest price I'll put, (You signing this agreement to pay so much per foot). I signed it, while my family all approving stood about. And dropped a tear upon it (but it didn't blot it out).

That very day with wagons came some men, both great and small; They climbed upon my buildings just as if they owned 'em all. They hacked 'em and they hewed 'em, much against my loud desire, They trimmed 'em up with gewgaws, and they bound 'em down with wires:

They trimmed 'em and they wired 'em and they trimmed and wired 'em still, t And every precious minute kept a-run-nlng up the bill. My soft spoke guest a-seeking, did I rave and rush and run; He was supping with a neighbor, just a-three mile further on. "Do you think," I fiercely shouted, "that I want a mile o' Wire, To save each, separate hay-coclc out of heaven's consuming fire? Do you think to keep my biuldin's safe from some uncertain harm, I'm going' to deed you over all the balance of my farm?"
He looked up quite astonished, with a face devoid of guile. And he pointed to the contract with a reassuring smile. It was the first occasion that he disagreed with me, But he held me to that paper with a firmness sad to see; And for that thunder story ere the rascal i finally went, I paid two hundred dollars, if I paid a single cent. And if any lightning rodder wants a dinner dialogue. With the restaurant department of an enterprising dog, Let him set his mill a-runnin' Just Inside my outside gate, And I'll bet two hundred dollars that he won't have long to wait.

Our Town

This is a reminisce exclusively dealing with childhood so let’s skip about the hood
Were any of you standing in the alley at Rudows Friday night with a raffle trying to win a pony?
I never won but by the picture she shared Donna had a horse to ride thanks to her shutter bugging
We have a photo journal of sorts that preserve our precious memories and I thought Reed handled it
I guess he holds the distinction for Pana news Photography and over the years has done a fine job
Can’t forget George’s how about Mr. murry from murry’s TV skating at Price skating rink I bet every one
Got one of those famous rides home Mr. Price and his wife would have that little truck full almost
Dragging the bottom and I swear it didn’t matter where you lived you had a free ride home. That was
Pana sorry girls will leave you out a moment but Whities pool hall any one for cut throat or a little game
In the back, or watch his son the pool shark clean out a sucker who tried to beat Greg. I could never get
My head around and miss prim and proper school teacher misses white is mother and wife all those
Years if she went there she was dressed like Jackie Onassis dark sunglasses London fog rain coat and
Head scarf remember those I don’t care there are two killer women one in a silk colorful head scarf and
A long haired beauty in a cow boy hat I guess it would look better in jeans. Can’t leave this out on that
Note a long skip out of our town into our country Colorado Springs at a chevron gas station sorry here I
Go boy talking this vision picture Raquel Welch I can’t believe I didn’t miss spell her name I got from
School what was important then add Sophia Loren blue jeans so tight if she gave you change and
Dropped a coin and hit those pants any where dude, do some serious ducking because its ricochet time
That sounds French how appropriate those French think of everything even the speech therapist at
Lincoln school wa la one heart attack at a time please even this flash light I use to type in the dark is
Getting hot back to this vision now finish with a Dolly Parton top without going to a weird extreme then
Long black raven hair and don’t dare ask me what did she sound like who was listening my Cherokee
Eyes probably were clear back past my ears. Then the most gorgeous cooperies skin I want to know how
In the red man’s crap did they lose, First Colorado and then the rest of the war? Well I had my own set
Of problems the girl in the my car would have been a little up tight if I would have hailed her a cab it was
A long way back to Pana and I don’t think this was a liberal section of Colorado Springs where her
Husband over in the gas station would let his wife date. By this time I didn’t look to bad and I started
My life long effort of mastering the use of words but on the inside I was pretty much a dufus I will take
An out the stars were not lined up I couldn’t even figure out some way if only the gas tank would run
Down the gutter you no a never filled tank well two things my jaw was tired of laying on the ground and
Wearing a gas hose and nozzle for a necktie I didn’t think I could pull it off literally sorry after that
Recounting this fool isn’t going back to our town as the hippie mixed with a beatnik would say I’m gone.

I met Virginia in a wave of sleet.
On Decatur, a hundred winters ago,
with a black iris, black hair in ponytail,
with a tongue like a nightcrawling widow,
Virginia whispered tornados behind the backs of the
grey-suited saxophone players, going blue in the cheeks,
under their blackface.

Under a flimsy sheet of moon sliver sky and a dim streetlight,
Virginia kicked a soda can along the cracking concrete.
With each bar we passed, I hollered, "Thank God we're alive!"
and danced a shapeless jig.

Near Williamson cemetery, Virginia's white knuckles laced into mine.
"The amount of time we have cheapens whatever purpose we have,"
Virginia hissed.

I caressed her serpentine neck.
A lone car's high beams
made Virginia's silhoutte tower above the cemetery gates,
made Virginia's black irises madden to poisonous yellow.

She loosened my grey necktie.
I let down her hair.
A sea of collected strands fell
like a closing curtain.
The distant saxophone ascended to heaven,
leaving me below,
leaving me below,
leaving me to spend the night bellowing for above.

They imagined Him again
And again
And again

They tried to replace Him with Her
But They couldn’t
He just kept coming back

They Never took interest in Dolls
Or Castles
Or princes and Princesses

They played King of the hill
with the Guys
Pretended that They were a Knight

They felt and looked awkward in Dresses, the Feminine makeup
Or Long hair

They wore button ups tucked into black, Combing Back hair
And tightening a Necktie

They would cringe at the sound of Their voice,
Their laugh

And hope that They could slip by as Their self
Despite it all

They had denied
Denied
Denied

Just androgynous
Repeatedly
They lied

They lied
They lied
They lied

Make Him go away

Make Her go away

What were They supposed to tell Their loved ones

I never drove by that was the ***** way,
             half time trying to hit a wet spot blind.
or killing the time of those who were never
meant to fall...

Got honor between the lines, I'll stop the car,
              open the door, walk out suited
not you average gangster, look like the others
and no one running till I pulls out your
friend it anit here for a meet and greet.


More like say hello to, goodbye...
   you bleeding on the floor, I'm a good shot...
One to the chest, you fell now one to the head,
   you aint paid you bills now your blood
                                           stained in the wind.


Casually walking back to the car signing
         autographs of his followers.  
This meet and greets been productive,
   Family signing you off on the morgue...

I aint going to lie the only necktie I be
           tightening is yours...

Tied to a chair, if I need information,
   asking as politely with a ball hammer
                                   and some pliers...


I had a few mouths shout off,
now they walk the street silently,
  never **** disrespect.

Show what silence sounds like,
respect is fear
         and I'm the scarecrow in the
field.

And you crows,
    you worm eaters ain't seen nothing yet..

Counterclockwise asphalt necktie
Broomstick moonshine... one busted tail-light.
Hard luck crust -
on a crumb of starlight.
Cross-stitch moonbeams and nothing
but midlife.
Ain't nothing to
mood swing.-
With nothing to feel like.
Get born. Get dead.
Fix **** -
tail-light.

Life begins.

A simple beginning,
That quickly blackens,
And fills with lies.
Insincerities fly.

Mother tries and tries,
But father dies
And the world corrupts my eyes.
*** and violence and filth disguise
Themselves Like spies.
Insincerities fly.

Several birthdays pass,
A great relief:
They do not last.
Candles burn and blister,
Trying to erase and cover
The grief.
People thanking,
People wishing,
People praying,
All for my
Wellbeing.
Insincerities fly.

Out on my own,
Meeting new people,
Still somehow alone.
A door opens and closes.
A necktie
Adorns my clothes.
“Hello, Hello.”
Insincerities fly.

My father’s tombstone,
My mothers Aching, breaking bones,
A lack of numbness.
Sadness.
The ringing of a door,
The knocking of a visitor.
Sickness.
A doctor.
Pills and plugs and prying,
All with A false reply.
Insincerities fly.

Everyday, without fail.  Insincerity.  People saying hello and goodbye. People are born and people are dead.  At each occasion they say “I'm well” and they say “I'm fine.”  They say “good day” and “thanks.”  
Insinceritas

I was never good at tying knots
Until you came along
And taught me every way to tie
A necktie, a bow tie, a scarf
And then we would untie them;
I like that you wear scarves;
You quickly taught me how
To tangle sheets in the thick of darkness
And we then learned how to untangle
Arms, legs, fingers and toes
While the sun rose
And baked us in possibility;
When neckties and sheets
Were no longer a challenge
We tackled tying heartstrings
And very quickly those knots were made
Fastening your heart to mine
A beautiful mass of present and past
And a little of what could be;
We practiced our little knots
Of fabric flesh and feelings,
All day, everyday
Eight months of days
We had them perfected
As perfect as we needed them to be
There's no way they'd come undone
And now as you're leaving
And I don't know if you can feel it
But those strings are tight
They're holding good,
But I'm feeling a little ripping,
Right there in my chest;
Maybe you should untie them
Because you always tied best.

I didn’t mind the incongruence of our hearts
as we melted together like sticky-sweet ice cream
on a nostalgic summer day, and I wore your
fingerprints on my collarbone like a proud
working man’s necktie as our molecules collided
between our bodies in a miniature mosaic we
couldn’t see – but we could feel

Our bloodstreams were helium and our
organs were neatly-knotted balloon animals
and trumpets pounded behind our eardrums
as we tried to stay afloat in our makeshift raft
in the turbulence of Maybes and What Ifs
but you choked on reality as I tried to
breathe you a sonnet

And the piano burdened our lungs as
I tried to free the confusion from your eyes
but they hid in your lashes and fluttered
against the tip of my nose and invited a
cathartic sneeze, and I felt like a jagged
paper cut-out but you were smooth lines
and symmetry

I don’t know when the yelling started or
when it ceased but the red stains on my face
were the only recollection I needed and
I packed my things in an origami suitcase
and treaded down the spiral stairs and exited
from the top story on wilted-flower wings

You put on your coat and you go down the stairs
Open the door but there's nobody there
Voices call clear 'cross the cold city air
Merry Christmas

I wonder if Jesus is happy right now
They say it's His birthday today
And candles are burning all over the world
And Calvary's so far away

Judas, I stand by the tree on which you hang
Why did you do it? You promised to take me out tonight
To watch the Crucifixion

Judas, I hope I don't have to cut the rope
You tied it like the necktie you would have worn tonight
As we watched the Crucifixion

Judas, my friend, you were so like other men
The difference was you struck a God, so I'll go
To watch the Crucifixion alone, so alone

The people chanted words I couldn't hear
The voice was indistinct but the meaning was clear
Now I don't know why there's a strange kind of sky
Will someone please explain?
It looks so bare but I feel the air
Just doesn't seem right for rain

I go from the scene, the words of despair
"Crucify Him" ring in my ears
And Judas, my friend, we're approaching the end
Explain my unreasoning tears

I wonder if Jesus is happy right now
They say it's His birthday today
And candles are burning all over the world
And Calvary's so far away

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter ***
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour;
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

no wonder i watch *******, it's a moral struggle these  days  downing a whiskey trying to down america 1930s. al capone would  have  laughed with me i'm sure, and shouted: cuba! cuba! fiddle  castrato!  well, there was the violin to mind in tao when the  castratos  masturbated;. oh look... the pope! where’s my bishop purple  and cardinal red? down the toilet, with the goldfish i’m assured: bobs  the necktie password concerning the onomatopoeia the bubbles made when  appearing: bubbles are called bob... ok?*

it was only an old man attired
in the usual monochrome of gray,
so i walked,
scratched a stone wall,
and by the 2nd gesture similis i
pulled my hand scratching toward my chest
to resemble a stone heart:
equivalent chinese? small is european stone:
writing this i missed six knuckles and felt the rest.

One night in Provincetown
@2013 Linda Barrett


On my niece Jessica’s wedding
in the middle of July
The three of us weren’t invited
for the wedding rehearsal dinner
Instead of staying around the hotel,
That night
we went out on our own fun
just Alex, Kathy and I

We walked into Provincetown
searching for a place to eat
Looked at all the menus
and what entree to buy
discovered Pepe’s Wharf
sat on its deck
watched the Coast Guard’s fleet
ate boiled lobster and french fries
just the three of us
Alex, Kathy, and I

Our waiter, Derek, adored Alex
with his excellent restaurant manners
Two Lesbians admired his etiquette
A young straight couple made it complete
with their unified, approving sigh
Everyone on the deck admired us
Alex, Kathy, and I

On the Deck,
We linked our glasses in a toast
Alex with his Shirley Temple cocktail
Kathy with her white wine
Me with my diet Coca Cola
Smitten Derek played the host
told us of the pirates museum
the one that made Alex hum
we all thought it was fine
to see it with him
We left Pepe’s wharf
with our spirits high
toured the rest of Provincetown,
Alex, Kathy, and I







We walked upon cobblestone streets
still the same since
the 18th century
Ancient homes stood as witnesses
to the tall woman in
her Sonoma  sun dress
the red haired boy with the necktie
the middle aged woman
Clad in turquoise and white
and black high heeled sandals
' wandering on a Friday night
wondering residents passed us by
as we walked on the pavement
we impressed them all
Alex, Kathy, and I

The evening grew dark
we walked wherever we went
Motorcycles roared on the street
Drag queens dressed to the nines
We went into the stores
Stared at by dogs and artists
Kathy led me to a boutique
called Toho
bought a bracelet for my wrist
something unique
Alex got a Bear Claw pie
We astounded the parade
with our differences
and the commotion they made
at  Alex, Kathy, and I
We found out of the night
footprints of some African cat
from some bright yellow paint
followed their shiny way
down a side street
Kathy tried not to laugh
where it ended
A place called
the Kofu Kafe
Seretta the owner entertained us
with her South African thrills
displayed for Alex
Kalahari porcupine quills
We drank coffee
and South African sweets
let the time slowly fly
under the cafe’s sparkling ceiling
Just Alex, Kathy and I





At around ten
We three took off
Down the dark streets
To roam
I led  the way
with my feeble flashlight
Shining upon uneven cobblestones
walked past hand holding men
try to get ourselves
to our temporary home
silently say good bye
to our new found friends
and return to our beds
Alex, Kathy, and I

A prisoner of the hallucination,
hardly happy, quick to open a floodgate of personal misery,
talking often of unique pain, of places before been,
asking only for sympathy and creative license-
Past Ring Bearer/Future Funeral Singer,
you're selfish to think you mean much at all.
What was always is,
greater wisdom is greater sorrow,
ask the holograms begging on boulevards,
ask the nihilists and the naysayers,
or even the understanding heart of Solomon.

Life is a pastoral play using pastels,
washed away and rewritten over and over again.
Your superior melancholy is the loudest cliché.
If you've got any love, cradle it like a newborn babe.
It's the reason that will make you glad you stayed.

For every headstone,
there once was a bouquet.
For every brown, breaking leaf,
there once was a summer breeze.
For every noose-a necktie,
for every slave-a free.

No need to trudge the trough,
no need to join in the polyphonic symphony
of 7 billion people drowning under the current of time,
there is only personal progression,
but you have to shut up and dream for a second.

mad mad mad is what you make me
knowing i'll never call you my own
i've been unwinding my heart with glee
yet you still won't pick up the phone

watch watch watch as i empty my chest
burning burning feels like i'll die
now pretend your giving me your best
next scene: hung up with a necktie

sing sing sing your beautiful song
lull me back into your arms
quick, what's that? what's taking so long?
bye bye bye, goodbye to your charm

it's killing me
can't you see

Stripping You of Your Privilege
YOU!

Tall and lean and impossibly handsome
and Corporate

In your magnificent pinstriped business suit
and perfectly tied silk tie
and your hundred dollar haircut
your privileged male feet hidden
inside impeccably polished black
English dress shoes

Staring at me through your
designer sunglasses

Haughty, confident, insolent
Stepping out of your Porsche
before you enter your office building

So smooth, clean, assured and perfect
Maybe you are 35 years old, maybe 40
the world is yours


Transformation
I have news for you
The tables are turned

YOU have been the one in power.
The one in control.
So proud, so arrogant, so confident

Starting at me, a total stranger
Just part of your usual day
I am just an object to you
I am an OBJECT to you!

Your beautiful smooth shaven
face turns...
but wait...

Wait! No more

NO MORE!

The world has turned upside
down

Now YOU are the OBJECT

I have the POWER to make things happen

NOW LISTEN TO ME

You have a new future

LISTEN. OBEY
Quit your important executive job
Leave your successful corporate career

That's right – now
QUIT!
Call from your Iphone
Don't enter the
building
Tell them you’re quitting

You are stunned and repelled and horrified
You resist and argue
You refuse and try to leave
Your pride and anger rise
But there is no escaping your destiny

Your power is gone
You are helpless to resist

Forget your MBA
Forget you ever went to a university
Slide the business school ring off your
long male finger

Give me the keys to that Porsche
And take your Rolex,
your gold wristwatch,
off your
wrist
You won't be needing a watch
I will tell you the time
We will sell your watch

Get those fancy, expensive,
polished handmade shoes off
Your pampered, privileged male feet
Yes, your black dress socks too

YOU, barefoot on the sidewalk!

Leave the shoes right there on the
sidewalk, in front of your former
office building, shining in the sun.
Empty and crying for their former owner
Put your expensive socks inside the shoes
and drop the briefcase too

Now get back into the Porsche
you used to own
Yes, in your bare feet
Your naked size tens
No - NOT the driver's seat
Get in the passenger side
I am driving

I'm taking you to your own home
as my Trophy

How many times
have you
had a woman in your passenger seat?
You behind the wheel,
smiling your proud smile
your perfect white teeth gleaming
Straightening your necktie as
your bragged about your corporate successes
You and your car the proud conquerors
Your handmade black leather shoes pressing the pedal
of male power and privilege

Now you - just a passenger!
along for the ride in your own car
the rich carpet of your Porsche
under the smooth soles of your naked privileged feet

We will marry
and you will clean and cook and look very beautiful

Now your LIFE LESSONS:
Dumb down your smug, expensively high-class male executive
SPEECH.
More slang. Much less education in your voice
Don’t talk – just listen to ME

And you have to wipe off
That arrogant male grin
like you own the world.

Destroy that haughty attitude
of conquest - so much a part of you until today

Replace it with humble respect
And attitude of submission and obedience

Give me those sunglasses
You can't wear them anymore
Look at me
with submissive adoration in your clear, blue
Male eyes

No need to make decisions now
I will take care of that

I will **** your ambition
Your self-assertion
Your independent thinking

We'll take apart your self-confidence
and throw the pieces in the trash
All of your initiative and desire to succeed
will be replaced
by the desire to make me happy

I will change your prestigious upper class name
You will take MY last name now
Your identity will disappear
What is your first name? William?
You are Billy boy from now

Your male executive image and power clothes
No longer have
Any place
In your new existence
We'll pick up some nice tight cheap jeans and
some nice tight undershirts for your
new look - the one I choose
Show off your *** and your arms

I want you tougher, grizzled
Blue collarized
Working class male
You’re too clean, too smooth, too perfect
We’ll fix that...

And your clean-cut corporate haircut is
now forbidden
I hate it. Too perfect

Grow out your golden brown hair into
A scraggly ponytail
a beard too...
Put some dirt under those clean fingernails
Calluses on those smooth clean palms
An earring in your male ear

And no more SUITS!
I hate suits
symbols of white male power and authority
and no more ties
******* symbols of oppression
your neck and long male
throat will be open and exposed
for the world to see

No, that pinstriped suit you're wearing
that you had made for yourself in London
and the silk tie
and the starched white shirt
will all be sold to a second hand clothing shop

The monograms taken off your
cufflinks before they are sold
Your golf clubs – sold
Your tennis rackets and
sports equipment - sold

Your credit cards in my name
Your condo is now ours
Your Porsche is now mine
You will drive my beat-up old Ford

All of your fancy clothes will be sold off
That will be tomorrow



You're gonne be barefoot in my kitchen
You won't be needing shoes anymore
on your privileged, pampered feet

I’ve got a beautiful view of our disgusting city
And I can't even enjoy it with this necktie choking me
The phones ring like school bells; loud and inharmoniously
Hell, I’d probably jump out the window if it weren’t for the coffee
*Hi, how may I help you today?