I will tie you up
and torture you,
in all the best ways.
It could last hours,
possibly even daze.
I will leave you dehydrated,
aching,
sticky,
and sore.
I will leave you physically unable to say you want more.
It will be too hard,
too soft,
j u s t right,
not enough,
tease tease choke bite spit gag pull              s q u e e z e.

Lie back, if you please.

a princess sits in her royal lounge
troubled at mind, restless of heart
trembling limbs and parched tongue
the rivers in her eyes betray
the sorrow that drowns her soul
with shaking fingers she struggles
for a firm grip on her quill
her heart pours out in fluid words
to express a love nursed for years

“My Lord, from childhood I have heard
of your courageous acts and kind character
of your handsomeness and perfectness
and I am unable to draw my mind away
from thoughts of you and yours
I am shamelessly besotted by you
Like a sunflower that is drawn to the sun
I am drawn to you
It is against the common notion
for a woman to ask a man
to take her hand in marriage
I break every tradition,
but Mukunda, answer my question-
which woman, high-born
and well-versed in all the arts,
will not wish to be your consort-
and besides I have already considered myself
wedded to you, in thought and spirit
is it not immoral then
when I consider myself a married woman
and when I am already yours
body, mind and soul,
to allow me another marriage?
My brother Rukmi has arranged
a marriage for me, and it is in the morrow
my heart sinks in sorrow
you are my saviour-
it behooves you to come
and claim what is yours
and how to accomplish it without needless bloodshed
need not cause you worry, for I have a plan
tomorrow morning I shall go for my pre-nuptial prayer
at the temple in the outskirts
away from curious eyes
and it is from there
that you can take me
please do come Krishna and save me
from this mockery of a marriage
I have already said that I am yours
and if you do not come, I shall
with no second thought ensure
that I am no longer alive
to be the object of another man’s desire
and if not in this birth, we shall
in another birth be man and wife”

she seals the letter with  burning tears
and entrusts in a priest’s willing hands to deliver
this receptacle of her hopes and fears
a sliver of hope begins to glimmer
as exhaustion finally takes over
and sleep beckons with gentle hands
to distant happier lands

In the morning she awakes
mind no more clouded or deluded
a faith unshaken that strengthens
as her messenger arrives
bearing happy news
her heart gladdens

Krishna will come – of that she is sure
a love denied will now be hers
the blush of excitement gives way
to shyness - kept so far at bay
the letter was written boldly enough
but now her maiden coyness asserts its sway
with eager pulsing heart she awaits
the moment of freedom and fastening
with her love – it seems too long a day!

In her best finery she is bedecked
a bride blossoming like a flower
eyes shining like diamonds
in their excitement
nocturnal hair that falls to her waist
in a tidy plait
lips tinged with a secret smile
an accompaniment to her glowing face
her blush spreads
like a rose amongst jasmines

with slow sure steps
and comely gait
eyes glistening with hope
and conviction strengthened with faith
she proceeds towards the temple
with sincere emotion she prays

“Devi Parvati, with your motherly grace
look upon me with your kind gaze
as once through penance you gained
your true love as a husband
I too embark today
on a quest to find my way
to him who is my very soul- I pray
let Krishna me my husband”

As every minute passes hope grows
and then she hears his majestic roar
like  a dark thunder-cloud he appears
his turmeric vestment blowing in the wind
and like lighting in the night sky
suddenly and nimbly he hoists her
onto his chariot and they are away

and then the powerful anticipation of this moment gave way
to its pure enjoyment, the company of the loved one

and thus it was that the unflinching Rukmini
wedded Krishna one day.

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
        10.9.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

O Sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze,
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks--all dimly fades
Into some backward corner of the brain;
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!
Swart planet in the universe of deeds!
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds
Along the pebbled shore of memory!
Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be
Upon thy vaporous *****, magnified
To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,
And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.
But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly
About the great Athenian admiral's mast?
What care, though striding Alexander past
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers
The glutted Cyclops, what care?--Juliet leaning
Amid her window-flowers,--sighing,--weaning
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,
Doth more avail than these: the silver flow
Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen,
Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den,
Are things to brood on with more ardency
Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully
Must such conviction come upon his head,
Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread,
Without one muse's smile, or kind behest,
The path of love and poesy. But rest,
In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear
Than to be crush'd, in striving to uprear
Love's standard on the battlements of song.
So once more days and nights aid me along,
Like legion'd soldiers.

                        Brain-sick shepherd-prince,
What promise hast thou faithful guarded since
The day of sacrifice? Or, have new sorrows
Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows?
Alas! 'tis his old grief. For many days,
Has he been wandering in uncertain ways:
Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks;
Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes
Of the lone woodcutter; and listening still,
Hour after hour, to each lush-leav'd rill.
Now he is sitting by a shady spring,
And elbow-deep with feverous *******
Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree
Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see
A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now
He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!
It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;
And, in the middle, there is softly pight
A golden butterfly; upon whose wings
There must be surely character'd strange things,
For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft.

  Lightly this little herald flew aloft,
Follow'd by glad Endymion's clasped hands:
Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands
His limbs are loos'd, and eager, on he hies
Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies.
It seem'd he flew, the way so easy was;
And like a new-born spirit did he pass
Through the green evening quiet in the sun,
O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,
Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away. One track unseams
A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue
Of ocean fades upon him; then, anew,
He sinks adown a solitary glen,
Where there was never sound of mortal men,
Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences
Melting to silence, when upon the breeze
Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,
To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet
Went swift beneath the merry-winged guide,
Until it reached a splashing fountain's side
That, near a cavern's mouth, for ever pour'd
Unto the temperate air: then high it soar'd,
And, downward, suddenly began to dip,
As if, athirst with so much toil, 'twould sip
The crystal spout-head: so it did, with touch
Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch
Even with mealy gold the waters clear.
But, at that very touch, to disappear
So fairy-quick, was strange! Bewildered,
Endymion sought around, and shook each bed
Of covert flowers in vain; and then he flung
Himself along the grass. What gentle tongue,
What whisperer disturb'd his gloomy rest?
It was a nymph uprisen to the breast
In the fountain's pebbly margin, and she stood
'**** lilies, like the youngest of the brood.
To him her dripping hand she softly kist,
And anxiously began to plait and twist
Her ringlets round her fingers, saying: "Youth!
Too long, alas, hast thou starv'd on the ruth,
The bitterness of love: too long indeed,
Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I ****
Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer
All the bright riches of my crystal coffer
To Amphitrite; all my clear-eyed fish,
Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish,
Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze;
Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws
A ****** light to the deep; my grotto-sands
Tawny and gold, ooz'd slowly from far lands
By my diligent springs; my level lilies, shells,
My charming rod, my potent river spells;
Yes, every thing, even to the pearly cup
Meander gave me,--for I bubbled up
To fainting creatures in a desert wild.
But woe is me, I am but as a child
To gladden thee; and all I dare to say,
Is, that I pity thee; that on this day
I've been thy guide; that thou must wander far
In other regions, past the scanty bar
To mortal steps, before thou cans't be ta'en
From every wasting sigh, from every pain,
Into the gentle ***** of thy love.
Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above:
But, a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewel!
I have a ditty for my hollow cell."

  Hereat, she vanished from Endymion's gaze,
Who brooded o'er the water in amaze:
The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool
Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool,
Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still,
And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill
Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer,
Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr
Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down;
And, while beneath the evening's sleepy frown
Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps,
Thus breath'd he to himself: "Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight,
O what a wretch is he! and when 'tis his,
After long toil and travelling, to miss
The kernel of his hopes, how more than vile:
Yet, for him there's refreshment even in toil;
Another city doth he set about,
Free from the smallest pebble-bead of doubt
That he will seize on trickling honey-combs:
Alas, he finds them dry; and then he foams,
And onward to another city speeds.
But this is human life: the war, the deeds,
The disappointment, the anxiety,
Imagination's struggles, far and nigh,
All human; bearing in themselves this good,
That they are sill the air, the subtle food,
To make us feel existence, and to shew
How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me,
There is no depth to strike in: I can see
Nought earthly worth my compassing; so stand
Upon a misty, jutting head of land--
Alone? No, no; and by the Orphean lute,
When mad Eurydice is listening to 't;
I'd rather stand upon this misty peak,
With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek,
But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen love,
Than be--I care not what. O meekest dove
Of heaven! O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair!
From thy blue throne, now filling all the air,
Glance but one little beam of temper'd light
Into my *****, that the dreadful might
And tyranny of love be somewhat scar'd!
Yet do not so, sweet queen; one torment spar'd,
Would give a pang to jealous misery,
Worse than the torment's self: but rather tie
Large wings upon my shoulders, and point out
My love's far dwelling. Though the playful rout
Of Cupids shun thee, too divine art thou,
Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow
Not to have dipp'd in love's most gentle stream.
O be propitious, nor severely deem
My madness impious; for, by all the stars
That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars
That kept my spirit in are burst--that I
Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!
How beautiful thou art! The world how deep!
How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep
Around their axle! Then these gleaming reins,
How lithe! When this thy chariot attains
Is airy goal, haply some bower veils
Those twilight eyes? Those eyes!--my spirit fails--
Dear goddess, help! or the wide-gaping air
Will gulph me--help!"--At this with madden'd stare,
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood;
Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood,
Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.
And, but from the deep cavern there was borne
A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone;
Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion'd moan
Had more been heard. Thus swell'd it forth: "Descend,
Young mountaineer! descend where alleys bend
Into the sparry hollows of the world!
Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl'd
As from thy threshold, day by day hast been
A little lower than the chilly sheen
Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms
Into the deadening ether that still charms
Their marble being: now, as deep profound
As those are high, descend! He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead: so through the hollow,
The silent mysteries of earth, descend!"

  He heard but the last words, nor could contend
One moment in reflection: for he fled
Into the fearful deep, to hide his head
From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness.

  'Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness;
Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite
To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light,
The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly,
But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;
A dusky empire and its diadems;
One faint eternal eventide of gems.
Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,
Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,
With all its lines abrupt and angular:
Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star,
Through a vast antre; then the metal woof,
Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof
Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss,
It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss
Fancy into belief: anon it leads
Through winding passages, where sameness breeds
Vexing conceptions of some sudden change;
Whether to silver grots, or giant range
Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge
Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge
Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath
Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth
A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come
But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb
His ***** grew, when first he, far away,
Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray
Old darkness from his throne: 'twas like the sun
Uprisen o'er chaos: and with such a stun
Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it,
He saw not fiercer wonders--past the wit
Of any spirit to tell, but one of those
Who, when this planet's sphering time doth close,
Will be its high remembrancers: who they?
The mighty ones who have made eternal day
For Greece and England. While astonishment
With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went
Into a marble gallery, passing through
A mimic temple, so complete and true
In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear'd
To search it inwards, whence far off appear'd,
Through a long pillar'd vista, a fair shrine,
And, just beyond, on light tiptoe divine,
A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully,
The youth approach'd; oft turning his veil'd eye
Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old.
And when, more near against the marble cold
He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread
All courts and passages, where silence dead
Rous'd by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:
And long he travers'd to and fro, to acquaint
Himself with every mystery, and awe;
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw
Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim
To wild uncertainty and shadows grim.
There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before,
And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore
The journey homeward to habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,
Into the ***** of a hated thing.

  What misery most drowningly doth sing
In lone Endymion's ear, now he has caught
The goal of consciousness? Ah, 'tis the thought,
The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!
He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil'd,
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,
Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air;
But far from such companionship to wear
An unknown time, surcharg'd with grief, away,
Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,
Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?
"No!" exclaimed he, "why should I tarry here?"
No! loudly echoed times innumerable.
At which he straightway started, and 'gan tell
His paces back into the temple's chief;
Warming and glowing strong in the belief
Of help from Dian: so that when again
He caught her airy form, thus did he plain,
Moving more near the while. "O Haunter chaste
Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,
Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen
Art thou now forested? O woodland Queen,
What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?
Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos
Of thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark tree
Glimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe'er it be,
'Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost taste
Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste
Thy loveliness in dismal elements;
But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,
There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee
It feels Elysian, how rich to me,
An exil'd mortal, sounds its pleasant name!
Within my breast there lives a choking flame--
O let me cool it among the zephyr-boughs!
A homeward fever parches up my tongue--
O let me slake it at the running springs!
Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings--
O let me once more hear the linnet's note!
Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float--
O let me 'noint them with the heaven's light!
Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?
O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!
Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?
O think how this dry palate would rejoice!
If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,
Oh think how I should love a bed of flowers!--
Young goddess! let me see my native bowers!
Deliver me from this rapacious deep!"

  Thus ending loudly, as he would o'erleap
His destiny, alert he stood: but when
Obstinate silence came heavily again,
Feeling about for its old couch of space
And airy cradle, lowly bow'd his face
Desponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill.
But 'twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill
To its old channel, or a swollen tide
To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,
And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns
Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns
Itself, and strives its own delights to hide--
Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride
In a long whispering birth enchanted grew
Before his footsteps; as when heav'd anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,
Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all ****,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.

  Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,
Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;
So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes
One moment with his hand among the sweets:
Onward he goes--he stops--his ***** beats
As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm
Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,
This sleepy music, forc'd him walk tiptoe:
For it came more softly than the east could blow
Arion's magic to the Atlantic isles;
Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles
Of thron'd Apollo, could breathe back the lyre
To seas Ionian and Tyrian.

  O did he ever live, that lonely man,
Who lov'd--and music slew not? 'Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;
That things of delicate and tenderest worth
Are swallow'd all, and made a seared dearth,
By one consuming flame: it doth immerse
And suffocate true blessings in a curse.
Half-happy, by comparison of bliss,
Is miserable. 'Twas even so with this
Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian's ear;
First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear,
Vanish'd in elemental passion.

  And down some swart abysm he had gone,
Had not a heavenly guide benignant led
To where thick myrt

THE PROLOGUE.

When that the Knight had thus his tale told
In all the rout was neither young nor old,
That he not said it was a noble story,
And worthy to be drawen to memory;                          recorded
And namely the gentles every one.          especially the gentlefolk
Our Host then laugh'd and swore, "So may I gon,                prosper
This goes aright; unbuckled is the mail;        the budget is opened
Let see now who shall tell another tale:
For truely this game is well begun.
Now telleth ye, Sir Monk, if that ye conne,                       *know
Somewhat, to quiten with the Knighte's tale."                    match
The Miller that fordrunken was all pale,
So that unnethes upon his horse he sat,                with difficulty
He would avalen neither hood nor hat,                          uncover
Nor abide no man for his courtesy,                         give way to
But in Pilate's voice he gan to cry,
And swore by armes, and by blood, and bones,
"I can a noble tale for the nones                            occasion,
With which I will now quite the Knighte's tale."                 match
Our Host saw well how drunk he was of ale,
And said; "Robin, abide, my leve brother,                         dear
Some better man shall tell us first another:
Abide, and let us worke thriftily."
By Godde's soul," quoth he, "that will not I,
For I will speak, or elles go my way!"
Our Host answer'd; "Tell on a devil way;             *devil take you!
Thou art a fool; thy wit is overcome."
"Now hearken," quoth the Miller, "all and some:
But first I make a protestatioun.
That I am drunk, I know it by my soun':
And therefore if that I misspeak or say,
Wite it the ale of Southwark, I you pray:             blame it on
For I will tell a legend and a life
Both of a carpenter and of his wife,
How that a clerk hath set the wrighte's cap."   fooled the carpenter
The Reeve answer'd and saide, "Stint thy clap,      hold your tongue
Let be thy lewed drunken harlotry.
It is a sin, and eke a great folly
To apeiren* any man, or him defame,                              injure
And eke to bringe wives in evil name.
Thou may'st enough of other thinges sayn."
This drunken Miller spake full soon again,
And saide, "Leve brother Osewold,
Who hath no wife, he is no cuckold.
But I say not therefore that thou art one;
There be full goode wives many one.
Why art thou angry with my tale now?
I have a wife, pardie, as well as thou,
Yet *n'old I, for the oxen in my plough,                  I would not
Taken upon me more than enough,
To deemen* of myself that I am one;                               judge
I will believe well that I am none.
An husband should not be inquisitive
Of Godde's privity, nor of his wife.
So he may finde Godde's foison there,                         treasure
Of the remnant needeth not to enquere."

What should I more say, but that this Millere
He would his wordes for no man forbear,
But told his churlish tale in his mannere;               boorish, rude
Me thinketh, that I shall rehearse it here.
And therefore every gentle wight I pray,
For Godde's love to deem not that I say
Of evil intent, but that I must rehearse
Their tales all, be they better or worse,
Or elles falsen some of my mattere.                            falsify
And therefore whoso list it not to hear,
Turn o'er the leaf, and choose another tale;
For he shall find enough, both great and smale,
Of storial thing that toucheth gentiless,             historical, true
And eke morality and holiness.
Blame not me, if that ye choose amiss.
The Miller is a churl, ye know well this,
So was the Reeve, with many other mo',
And harlotry they tolde bothe two.                        ribald tales
Avise you* now, and put me out of blame;                    be warned
And eke men should not make earnest of game.                 *jest, fun

Notes to the Prologue to the Miller's Tale

1. Pilate, an unpopular personage in the mystery-plays of the
middle ages, was probably represented as having a gruff, harsh
voice.

2. Wite: blame; in Scotland, "to bear the wyte," is to bear the
blame.

THE TALE.

Whilom there was dwelling in Oxenford
A riche gnof, that guestes held to board,   miser *took in boarders
And of his craft he was a carpenter.
With him there was dwelling a poor scholer,
Had learned art, but all his fantasy
Was turned for to learn astrology.
He coude* a certain of conclusions                                 knew
To deeme by interrogations,                                  determine
If that men asked him in certain hours,
When that men should have drought or elles show'rs:
Or if men asked him what shoulde fall
Of everything, I may not reckon all.

This clerk was called Hendy Nicholas;                 gentle, handsome
Of derne love he knew and of solace;                   secret, earnest
And therewith he was sly and full privy,
And like a maiden meek for to see.
A chamber had he in that hostelry
Alone, withouten any company,
Full *fetisly y-dight with herbes swoot,            neatly decorated
And he himself was sweet as is the root                           *sweet
Of liquorice, or any setewall.                                valerian
His Almagest, and bookes great and small,
His astrolabe,  belonging to his art,
His augrim stones, layed fair apart
On shelves couched at his bedde's head,                      laid, set
His press y-cover'd with a falding red.                   coarse cloth
And all above there lay a gay psalt'ry
On which he made at nightes melody,
So sweetely, that all the chamber rang:
And Angelus ad virginem he sang.
And after that he sung the kinge's note;
Full often blessed was his merry throat.
And thus this sweete clerk his time spent
After *his friendes finding and his rent.    Attending to his friends,
                                                   and providing for the
                                                    cost of his lodging
This carpenter had wedded new a wife,
Which that he loved more than his life:
Of eighteen year, I guess, she was of age.
Jealous he was, and held her narr'w in cage,
For she was wild and young, and he was old,
And deemed himself belike* a cuckold.                           perhaps
He knew not Cato, for his wit was rude,
That bade a man wed his similitude.
Men shoulde wedden after their estate,
For youth and eld are often at debate.                             age
But since that he was fallen in the snare,
He must endure (as other folk) his care.
Fair was this younge wife, and therewithal
As any weasel her body gent and small.                      slim, neat
A seint she weared, barred all of silk,                         girdle
A barm-cloth eke as white as morning milk                     apron
Upon her lendes, full of many a gore.                  ***** *plait
White was her smock, and broider'd all before,            robe or gown
And eke behind, on her collar about
Of coal-black silk, within and eke without.
The tapes of her white volupere                      head-kerchief
Were of the same suit of her collere;
Her fillet broad of silk, and set full high:
And sickerly* she had a likerous eye.          certainly *lascivious
Full small y-pulled were her browes two,
And they were bent, and black as any sloe.                      arched
She was well more blissful on to see           pleasant to look upon
Than is the newe perjenete* tree;                       young pear-tree
And softer than the wool is of a wether.
And by her girdle hung a purse of leather,
Tassel'd with silk, and *pearled with latoun.   set with brass pearls
In all this world to seeken up and down
There is no man so wise, that coude thenche            fancy, think of
So gay a popelot, or such a *****.                          puppet
Full brighter was the shining of her hue,
Than in the Tower the noble* forged new.                a gold coin
But of her song, it was as loud and yern,                  lively
As any swallow chittering on a bern.                              barn
Thereto she coulde skip, and make a game                 also *romp
As any kid or calf following his dame.
Her mouth was sweet as braket, or as methe                    mead
Or hoard of apples, laid in hay or heath.
Wincing* she was as is a jolly colt,                           skittish
Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.
A brooch she bare upon her low collere,
As broad as is the boss of a bucklere.
Her shoon were laced on her legges high;
She was a primerole, a piggesnie ,                        primrose
For any lord t' have ligging in his bed,                         lying
Or yet for any good yeoman to wed.

Now, sir, and eft sir, so befell the case,                       again
That on a day this Hendy Nicholas
Fell with this younge wife to rage and play,       toy, play the rogue
While that her husband was at Oseney,
As clerkes be full subtle and full quaint.
And privily he caught her by the queint,                          ****
And said; "Y-wis, but if I have my will,                     assuredly
For *derne love of thee, leman, I spill."     for earnest love of thee
And helde her fast by the haunche bones,          my mistress, I perish
And saide "Leman, love me well at once,
Or I will dien, all so God me save."
And she sprang as a colt doth in the trave:
And with her head she writhed fast away,
And said; "I will not kiss thee, by my fay.                      faith
Why let be," quoth she,

Under the bluish yellow marble sky
I introduce my soul;
to the demon & the angels

By the lemons tree, I've unleashed my hair and unbutton my blouse
Then cried
as if my teacher called me the black girl

I will call to the 1st passing girl:
"Slow down, please wait for me;
Rise me up by my arms
like a little girl.

I wanted her to Plait 2 branches;
of hair for me
To walk over the world's cold grass
And lie down in front of the sea
Forget the stars - she said
Forget the sea - I said

We left the world coughing its smoke;
of poisoned kids' toys,
cast the residuals of cosmetics and tore bras
Into this sacred sea

So come with me my friend
Delete all of my contacts
smash my mobile phone by your shoe's heel
And let's vanish
from this world
Toward shiny white space
Toward inky smell books
Toward white skies and pink kisses
infinite daylight
For you and for me.


-  Sally S. Ali

there were those days
when my thoughts
washed upon your shores
freely  for you to pick and choose
and to cherish if you would

but now
the waves have fallen silent
the clams, they stay shut
why would they open?
unloved, unwanted, unheard
they decay

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
   20.12.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

I

A Genesis! The Exodus, the Exodus!
A departure from all terrestiality
Always immoral and depraved, bathed in filth, in self-loathing
Abattoir of our souls, it entrenches us

Also, we too must be of the same make
And bear with our corpses the same proceedings, the same caliber
Allowed to their subversive candor,
All that broke the Carthaginians upon their own passage
Across the peninsular pathways

S'il in our conquest we find, however, that the pachyderms have run aground,
Vous must aggregate our conscious thought
Plaitcate the ravenousness within the heart of victory.

II

Bring victory, the winged harbinger of the conquest,
Beg for tyrannical proclamations: the end of man, the end of men,
By now, the greater of the concepts is lost to its own devices, devices,
Belching out smoke, that bend the corpses upon their backs.
By wrenching from their life a sense of purpose,
Byproductively, they feed heroic romanticisms of combat.

Brought yet upon these fields, there lies no stranger enemy
But that of the tide
Being self-effacing, masochistic,
Belittling, She breaks herself upon the shore, ravaging the bodies of
Both, Playing as ******* and as subservient

III

Come! Wave upon Wave upon Frothing
Crest, to shores of golden enfrenzied ******
Calmed by the liquid of our ***** *****
Charging forth as we
Charge forth armies upon the field of slaughter
Callously, for you, our gilded monarch
Can you see? They cannot see, and we hope to elucidate your presence, they
Cannot comprehend or fathom what they
Cannot see.

IV

Ceaseless now the charges
Come further upon the front
Crashing 'gainst the openings of each
Clangor and madness
Coalesce to form death

Dripping anew with sanguine libations
Drawn fresh from naked lambs, freshly cut for their country
Dionysian warriors return,
Desire forming their mental undulations

Effortlessly they overtake their feminine fortunes
Effacing their identities, removing from them with their clothing, the
Entirety of their selves.

V

From carnal conquest they rejoice,
Flaunting the destruction they wrought
Flinging husks of women about the room,
Foisting these shells on other patriarchs

Given no choice, they return to fields of battle
Godspeed, gods' will, and god-granted
Gaian soil is retreaded by their sodden flesh.

VI

Hellish, infernal is their presence
Having lost no measure to revelry or rest, neither
Halting nor slowed, the march quickens in time with their lustful bellows
Hastened to madness by infinity
Harkened back to prisons of mental anguish by their creators
How proud they are, the Old Gods,
Hacking away the pounds of flesh to reveal the
Haphazard construction to their instruments of torture.

VII

Into the bloodshed, into the fiery cavernous opening of the crusade
Ignited by righteous scraps of cloth and metal
Ignobly formed into crudely significant, textured shapes
Iconoclasts to their own ideals
Idyllic in their self-mockery.

Jabbering like hellbeasts, the warriors drive into the flesh of the conflict
Jettisoning armaments in the process, their
Joie de vivre having been lessened by mechanical limits.
Jocular slaughter synthesized with demonic cries.

Kapellmeisters to the symphony of death,
Keeping in the rhythm of mutilation, counterpoints of steel clashing against breastplates, giving shape to a
Kleptocracy of life.

VIII

Languishing now in the refuse of the struggle,
Laden with corpses, the warriors remain restrained by fatigue
Lurching through the mud, calling out feebly with voices
Long since bellowed to pulpy masses of throat tissue.

Masses of flesh crawling across the fields of strife,
Macerated ground, weak and shifting, struggles to support the
Multitude of half-corpses now in eternal respite upon the bloodied pasture.

IX

Now broken with regret and shame they collapse
Nestled into the marrow of the fallow earth,
Needing only rest in the cooling tendrils of dirt and blood that trickle across them.
Né de nouveau, their trek leads them towards the grave
Necrosis having taken hold in their limbs,
Nascent corpses, they subside with grave finality into a dead collective.

X

Opaque irises await those who uncover the un-burial mound
Oafish sockets containing them like marbles
Open to the elements, decaying with their corporeal encasement, shaded by
Oaken leaves that remain unfallen, while
Obsequious maggots go about their task of cleansing the remains

Paralyzed in the final moments of their mortal coil, the bodies lay stagnant,
Pacified only by the removal of sentience.
Pagan rituals surround such corpses, and the intrepid discovers
Patiently await the arrival of some necromantic spirit.

Quasi-instinctively, the pioneers of the superterranean mausoleum
Quell their fears and remove the bodies from their conclusive locale,
Quantifying their deaths by the armaments and metal carapaces upon them.

XI

Reeling across the path, weighted by the bodies,
Returning, the archaeological presence brings a pall over society, which
Remained reticent despite the presence of such suffocating solemnity
Repressed by its own intent

Solitude is given no quarter, and the bodies
Strung up like scattered marionettes
Silently serenade the town with a deafening cacophony.

XII

To Hell their souls desperately charge, frothing about the shackles of undeath
Torn from corporeal existence, yet unable to
Transgress the mortal plane
Torturous paradox!
Torment the fallen of Carthage's vestigal might no more
Traducer of the human condition
Tragedy is loosed at thy whim
Try not the patience of demi-gods of wrath and bloodshed.

XIII

Undulating by the beckoning of the wind,
Un-beautiful, un-ironed, the shrouds of the coffins
Under grey sky hang softly like leaden sheets
Unaware of the gravity beneath the few inches of oak
Un-aesthetically masking the dead warriors' forms

Visceral is the movement of the procession,
Vermicular, they wind a course to the peak of the foothill
Vehemently the priest urges them onwards, although he is
Visibly ill on this occasion of the anti-hero.

Warlike, the battle up the ***** claims the lives of those already claimed
Wastrels left to rot in the carcass of a long-dead conflict,
Wanting nothing more than solace eternal.

XIV

Xenophobes of the Inferno fear the inevitable presence of these
Xoana, false representations of humanity.
Xanthic is their fear, for inside the malebolges themselves
Xanadu is sought for those of the fallen soldiery.

Yet funerary proceedings dictate descent for these souls, and the coffins
Yaw slightly in the wind, disturbed by the
Yanks of the ****** rabble who bear their weight.

XV

Zeus himself presides over the ferrying of these souls,
Zion awaits them, their final collective fate at hand,

Yet slowly it turns its back upon them,
Xenophanes mocks from his post,
Wailing, they fall
Velocity increasing infinitely,
Until they see no more the lustrous light
Trapped eternally in dark
Stabbed with betrayal and fear, their souls
Run amok, fleeing from the source of their anguish
Questioning existence.
Periodically in the abyss, the helpless aggregate conscious is
Overwhelmed with memory of Paradise
Now to them denied for eternity.
Mephisto remains, their only companion,
Leeching from them the final vestiges of hope now left within, once
Kept hidden to protect the warriors, now
Jabbed and pummeled to death.
In this state of perpetual umbra
Heaven so distant, now only faded, as if on parchment,
Gained by the souls is a sense of locality, once
Forgotten but now reattained, and
En masse, the group instantly
Derives that they have returned from beyond the mortal plane, the terra once again
Collates beneath their soles, and the collective decides they must return
Before the open sun, to bear themselves
Against the gods, against sanctity itself, and thus they cry:

My hero bares his nerves along my wrist
That rules from wrist to shoulder,
Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,
Leans on my mortal ruler,
The proud spine spurning turn and twist.

And these poor nerves so wired to the skull
Ache on the lovelorn paper
I hug to love with my unruly scrawl
That utters all love hunger
And tells the page the empty ill.

My hero bares my side and sees his heart
Tread; like a naked Venus,
The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait;
Stripping my **** of promise,
He promises a secret heat.

He holds the wire from this box of nerves
Praising the mortal error
Of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves,
And the hunger's emperor;
He pulls that chain, the cistern moves.

Amputated from man
Amputated by man
Implanted to the outside of a wall
A foreigner refused entry into the family
The patern is as such: evrey need I fill
Opens up another two in me
One morning I awoke an amputee

And so it continued the whole life through
"How sincerity made a mad man of you"
If I ever face the mirror that's what I would say to thee
But me and my reflection have gone our seperate ways you see
Half a coffin for the amputee

I know they blame me and say how it's all my fault
Just cos I don't have a hatred for others
Which clearly they have got
Selfish to the core...vanity pride and greed..
Trick a poor stranger for an extra penny
Charge an arm and a leg from an amputee

God has unlocked my heart
But not the padlock on his gate
Heaven may be within reach
But hell is on a plait
So shall I DIE now??..is that what it will take ?
To make happy those so called "near to me"
To beautifie the amputee.

It’s a warm evening on the sahara
camel washed sand dunes
rise up like sacred mountains in the
red distance
I unzip the flap of my
nomad tent
dry desert winds
plait golden grains of sand
through my nubian hair

Sai Krishna
my heart is a parched fig
monsoon tears flood the nile
and my mind plays ***** tricks on me
mirages robed in ochre
waver across the striped horizon

Peacock Lord
Your Radha has prepared a basin of
fragrant myrrh
to anoint your lotus feet
flowers gathered from the gardens of
Isis
are eager to adorn Your divine neck

Prema Swaroopa!
Answer the ardent prayer of Your devotee
before the moon rises a silver swan
in the heavens

There were three brothers,
once upon a time,
in a far away land
living with all memories
behind -
They had just one treasure
in the world -
little cute sister
as miracle of all girls,
She had long golden plait,
she was delightful and fine
in snow white dress,
they called her Lina,

One day with cold rain
and darkness from skies,
the evil witch spelled on
her magical cast,
transforming her body
and soul in the single
apple tree, she hoped
the magic forever to last...

The tree bears golden
apples with scent of love,
The witch didn't want to
take her cast away,
she looked her in the
crystal ball,

Her three brothers were
sick from deep sadness,
with her the sunlight was gone,
and their mind sank in madness.

The witch felt pity on them
and turned them into three
mysterious dragons, who flew
and fought in the night -
They were red, yellow and green,
They slept under the tree,
where her sister's soul was in,
started to cry with dragon tears
for her loss, even to die they
didn't fear, just to have her
again in their arms.

But most of all the Red dragon
missed her, from his warm
painful teardrops, a golden apple
turned into young beautiful girl,

There she was again!
with her golden long plait,
made of love and jasmine scent.
She appears and covered the sunlight
with her magical smile...
The witch was so old and helpless
in this time,
So it was the moment for the
Dragon fairy to come -
she sprinkled her dust
on Red Dragon, until
of charming brother prince
he had his form...

And then on Yellow and Green,
Never such fairy wonder was seen!

since all the time we knew
from the tells of fairies,
We could easily guess
in the end, they both
were happily .......
married.


.......nour......
       may-013

When the guests arrived we would hasten to sit in separate rooms.

Quick to cover and observe deep voices through walls,
Men with domed hats and flowing kameez would arrive and wait
for steaming chaaval,
brought in a mound topped with cloves.

Dishes placed and eyes down, they would acknowledge with
half nods,
hairy knuckles to pour the saalan over geometric bowls.

My aunts would hush in the kitchen,
pinning their scarves in a zig-zag fashion.
The colours burning from the tiles,
watching them made me dizzy and inside
I longed
that my plait would one day thread gold like theirs.

Timed silence was a key,
and a pyramid that was never fell,
unlike the tasks that could be
stitched to your hands,
structured stiff – like a testing lap.

Boiled milk in china cups,
there would be nods, gap-tooth smiles, low chatter
with ears pricked to
the humming of satisfaction within.
Sounds through division that showed that yes,
in the right hands
the colours could burn brightly,
and that yes,
in a brush of joint henna,
we would stand separate from your

Vision of us.

Wanderer.
From window to window.
Seeking
             something
in different glass scenes
from offices and trains and restaurants.
Like she'll see something or someone
or somebody.
And the world will no longer be
a tilted painting.

Clear spring cold
papers over
the scene of the city of her world.
She's freezing.

There is a cafe at the end of the
road
where sidewalk snow has mingled
with trod-on mud
from commuter's shoes.
It's called
'Les yeux qui voient tout'

She can smell coffee and cigarettes and paper and words
and smiles and wine all the way from Bordeaux.
She sits by the window.

Tendrils of hair cut
across her cheek
as she lowers.
The seat is cold.
Legs crossed,
                       arms clasped,
high-heeled shoes with straps
that cross,
head bent
over a crossword.

'Un cafe au lait, s'il vous plait.'

Last four-letter word pencilled in so
she crumples up the paper.
The eyes don't notice
origami birds dangling above her.
Somehow
they're all angled
towards the glass window
like sunflowers reaching for the sun.
Perhaps the casual
shuttered-open winds
are the birds' oxygen;
reminders that
                          something
like
sky,
air,
wind,
exist, beyond
coffee-smoked counters.
Reminders that
they could breathe, live, fly
in some other city of some other world.

Cup and saucer on a silver platter
hover over.
Idle fingers
and then a clatter.
She stares down into
the white porcelain pit,
teeming with hot brown
                                           alarms.
It isn't a portal
into
       something.
Just a cup of coffee.
Now that is an alarm.

Slow and
                shaking,
drip,
         drip,
                  drip.
The milk is poured.
Curling, italic, Persian carpet spread
from the cup's centre into warm-cream brown.
She imagines it is
blood in her heart.

She raises the little silver teaspoon
napping on the saucer and
stirs.

'Le sucre?'
Does she want it all
to be
sweeter?

Two packets, long like
Marlboros,
hastily, desperately dumped
into the mix.
Quick and
                  shaking,
she raises the little silver teaspoon and
stirs.
Little sugar grains ******
into a vortex,
dissolved and melted into
the city of the world of the cup.

With her little finger, she
dabs
stray sugar grains
on the table
and tries to bring sweetness
to her sleep-thick tongue.

Slow and
                shaking,
sip,
      sip,
            sip.

She's­ tricked herself
into feeling warmth.
Ticker-tape banner
pops up in her head:
'All of this will not
fix you.'

Porcelain clatter
as cup meets saucer.
Again.
She arms herself with
a cigarette case and a book.
Maybe now she will belong
amongst these people
with sad eyes and burning lips,
clinging on to cups and drinks.
So desperately-lit smoke
trails out of
her warm mouth,
steaming up her face
like a window on a cold winter day.
And meanwhile Camus perches
in her hand.

Her eyes swim
in the choppy seas
of French.
The cigarette dangles,
painting the air grey, grey,
tilting, tilting, tilting.
Slow and
                shaking,
she weeps.

Half-aglow in the white sunshine filter
from the glass window,
a woman is wondering.
She drinks her coffee,
wipes her smudged mouth
and leaves.

Nobody notices the wobble
in her high-heeled gait.
She's just a part of
another tilting painting,
another glass scene.

These simple acts,
           simple things,
define
the speaking soul.
In a scene of the city of the world.

what had happened
what we made
may be compared to a fishtail braid

the situation
the mess we made
may be likened to a fishtail braid

just as it takes the braid a few minutes
this "love" we had took a few years
woven slowly, outcome dainty
despite the flinches and the fears

just as beautiful the braid is
our "love" was magnificent
oh! the beauty! with sorrow i'll miss
never desired for it to end

and then it happened; then you stopped
the fragile masterpiece, the work of art
slowly, the plait became undone;
messy. ugly was the result

i, the fog that fades
you, last farewell bade
us, the ruined fishtail braid

Th’ast dar’d too far ; but, fury, now forbear
To give the least disturbance to her hair:
But less presume to play a plait upon
Her skin’s most smooth and clear expansion.
’Tis like a lawny firmament as yet,
Quite dispossess’d of either fray or fret.
Come thou not near that film so finely spread,
Where no one piece is yet unlevelled.
This if thou dost, woe to thee, fury, woe,
I’ll send such frost, such hail, such sleet, and snow,
Such fears, quakes, palsies, and such heats as shall
Dead thee to th’ most, if not destroy thee all.
And thou a thousand thousand times shalt be
More shak’d thyself than she is scorched by thee.

start with a bucket of dusted gravel
tip into a cold pan, a wriggling jungle of alphabet
gasps.

drown.
rock the pan of words in arms
agitating the line-breaks

the twisting plait of water
spurts the lightweight
sediment over the edge

to a scrap pool of dog-tailed idioms
the rest charges, a collage of schooled fish
the pulse in the rubble sinks

like a dictionary to the base.
ransack the salt-swamp of dazed stanzas
as a malnourished mole

catch a lump, grasp between digits
it twinkles under caked mud.
free it from parasite-adjectives

strain from the crocodile water
a chiseled torso of words in the rock
all along.

Ciao baby, preggo
that means let's smooch under romantic balconies
and make lovely thick-haired multi-cultural children
I want a big ole belly of wine drinking zygotes
feta crumble eye *****
real live sculptures in my palace
jaggedy rocks with blood streams
trickling into the ocean
salty and brine like sewer sludge
let's go for a swim
could be amazing, or beautiful
most likely exciting at least
light bulb moment: I want to hear yours first
you're so dang brilliant like cerulean skies
fake but still pretty
tell me your story
teach me your lingo language
sil-vous plait?
Non?
Well fine, you're verbally redundant anyway
thoughts made of unsettling murky waters
no light can penetrate
and sweetie neither can you
not now
I'm 20,000 leagues too deep for your puddle of a conscience.

Look at her
Greenfield said
he was referring
to Miss Money

a girl who sat
two desks in front
hair light brown
drawn into a woven plait

at the back
bet she’s  
got **** on her
he said

you glanced over
your finger turning
the page
of the history book

some text
on the Tudors
some boring ****
who had six wives

or so you’d read
the girl was engrossed
in writing
hand gripping a pen

head slightly down
I wouldn’t know
you said
bet she has

Greenfield uttered
the history teacher
had his back
to the class

fingers with chalk
scribbling
on the board
you noticed

the girl’s neck
between blouse collar
and light brown hair
my cousin’s got *******

he said
saw them
when she was dressing
one morning

while straying
at her house
getting ready
for a wedding

he drawled on
you followed the text
with your finger
the second wife

had her head
chopped off
poor *****
you thought

Miss Money turned
her profile captured
ear
eye maybe brown

then turned
back again
sunlight
from window’s glass

blessed her head
but Greenfield talked
of her figure
and waistline

instead
making motions
with his hands
in the air in front

history
was lost on him
Miss Money
moved him more

at least
some aspects did
not the finer things maybe
but he kind of

wrote and made
his own
dull history.

There were two bodies
Plaited into one
Like the horses tamed
Like the birds flying free

If you leave them
They'll reach up to heaven
Beyond the end
Of the world we could see

When separated they fly
When one
They don't leave their nest
Forgetting about the rest

Even time surrenders  
When they meet
not passing by
Lying down at their feet

There were two bodies
Plaited into one
Lost in their embrace
There were two bodies in love

In the monsoon,
I walked colonised streets
trying to befriend a city,
forged fields and bright street lights,
they often vanished inside my eyes
to see happy children on beaches;
glass ceilings shattering to find a sky,
that broke down abruptly
to weep on my shoulders.
I swam in the rain
only to meet those children at the beach.
They roofed me under white curtains,
for the Witch might try to grab me,
plait my hair
and take me back
to her hall of circus.

Every flower,
every breeze,
every wounded bird in a city
are part of a folklore
where minstrels live,
they all sing me
back to beaches.

Get your RSVP (Respondez s'il vous Plait)

Your presence is cordially invited
(If you please)
To the Troll Invitational Only Ball
Come one , come all !
Only the best heed this call
Featuring the Marque band ,
"Smashing Poets"
Playing their monster hits ,
"Clip You At The Knees" and "The Killer In Me Sets Me Free"

Join in the festivities
As we debase humankind
A great time is guaranteed
For all "Troll" beings
BIG or small
So come one , come all ye Trolls
To the Invitational Ball


Comments :

The Thaumaturge : When we're we supposed to get our invites ?

Thomas A Robinson : What ? You didn't get one ? Must be some kind of oversight !

The T. : I'm sending you hate mail as we speak so that you know my address this time .

TAR. : Will do , I'll be in wait . . . not !

The T. : I don't own a car and I was reading a book literally the other day .

Craig Moore : Is the ball going to be under a bridge ?

TAR. : Of course !

The T. : I feel like I'd be shunned at a trolls only ball since I'm more of an antitroll if anything .

TAR. : Well it takes one to break one .

The T. : Nice to know my efforts don't go unnoticed .

Craig Moore : But there is only one ?

TAR. : Proxy ! ! !

The T. : Oh alright . I've got like a billion of those .

TAR. : That's proxies , not proxy !

The T. : Yeah , I've got a billion proxy .

TAR. : Proxies ! ! !

The T. : No I have a lot of proxy .

TAR. : Ha ha , that sounds moxy !

The T. : Is it just a little bit foxy ?

TAR. : Now I'm shredding your invitation !

The T. : What ! Why ? I thought that would be a perfect example of trolling . Don't make me drop the B-bomb !

TAR. : Trolling - the act of dragging a lure or bait behind a boat in the hopes of attracting a fish to bite the bait or lure becoming hooked and caught . You're troll bait .

The T. : That was the whole proxy/proxies thing ! And as for you , you are a troll incarnate TAR and not even a clever one .
Yeah Thomas ! Leave yourself alone ! Anyway I was supposed to be invited but they tore it up after I arrived .

TAR. : And you call yourself a miracle worker ?

The T. : You want a miracle ! I'll show you a miracle !

TAR. : What ? Hack my account ? Been done already .

The T. : That's not a miracle . Tell me what would impress you ?

TAR. : Simple , eliminate all trolls from here permanately . Should be only a minor miracle .

Tap . Tap . Tap .

TAR. : I see he cannot eliminate even one troll .

The T. : What are you talking about ? They're all gone !

TAR. : Smoke and mirrors . Don't gaslight me ! I'm an optimist . One who sees through fog clearly .

The T. : My only weakness .

TAR. : So put up or shut up .

The T. : Honest is the best policy .

TAR. : Honesty ! ! !

The T. : Thomas A Robinson your obscene proclamations are easily dismissed by adults . What would you do to a child in a public restroom ?

TAR. : I would call you for advice . Whoops ! No I wouldn't ! I would take the knife out of your hand .

The T. : You remove the knife from my hand only to find out that I'm actually a large swarm of bees wearing a trench coat .

TAR. : I would be the bee and tan your hive !

The T. : Maybe make a moovee out of it ?

TAR. : Bagging the killer B's . Pyrethium dreams . Your honey's run dry . You sting me I **** you .

The T. : That'd just **** me twice .

TAR. : Well good night Miracle worker . Don't let the bee mites bite .

The T. : I hate those bee mites , sweet dreams are made of bees .

TAR. : Ha Ha Ha , dear Annie Lennox is fumigating now . You're a Pox on everyone .

Mya-Angel Madden : How dare I miss the Ball of Trolls ! Whatever happened to Lucifer ? **** .

TAR. : Ah , the days of Lucy, when the definition of a troll was perfected !
All others now are just doormats in comparison .

Pintu Mahakul : Join in the festivities and this is very amazing definitely .. .

TAR. : Thank you Pintu Mahakul .

we the daughters of sliced sunbeams
and those who chase gales in between
the pasture gates and barbed fences behind
the silo--

who think there's nothing softer than the way
honey sounds drizzled on toast or daisy petals at the supermarket
the women of ferocious silences, standing before
dozens with trimmed smiles and deafening inner beauty

squeezing our fingers down barley stalks and sewing
the roots into our dresses, we've tried six ways to sunday
the rules, the book on being wanted, before realizing that anything
born out of self-indulgence wilts away
all the work we did to grow and plait our hair with vanilla,
dipped in sweet almond oil we had no idea
that pretending
could only get us
so


far.

You have my permission
Off to Austria go,
Braid and plait your hair
Alpine style, sing if you must,
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hoo hoo
Even Do Re Mi

But be **** sure
You are back in
The USA, on NBC,
Come the weekend,
Singing the opening song of
Sunday Night Football

Your braids and long dresses,
Leave behind,
Blow out that hair,
Wear the shortest of skirts
That wardrobe will provide,
Cause if truth be told,
No football watcher on the workweek eve
Will sleep well,
no matter the outcome,
Unless your presence is the opening
Finale of the weekend to
Do Re me.

Éloge de Monsieur de Montaigne

(Dédié à Jean-Pierre)

Toi seigneur de Montaigne, au si beau nom d'Eyquem
que nul amateur de Bordeaux ne saurait négliger.
Tu fus l'ami de La Boétie et un sage joyeux,
Tu vécus en ton château, dont l'une des tours rondes,
contenait une bibliothèque fournie.
Toi, qui faisait cultiver ce vin de Bordeaux,
qui sied au palais et plait tant aux anglais.
Cher Montaigne ayant étudié à Bordeaux,
au collège de Guyenne,
Tu vécus en un temps empoisonné
par les guerres de religion et ses sombres fureurs.
Temps affreux ou l'homme égorgeait l'homme,
qui ne partageait pas sa même lecture de la  Bible.
Et dire que nous avions cru, ces temps-là, révolus !
C'est peut-être ce qui te poussa à choisir l'école stoïcienne,
Bien que par ton tempérament et ta vie.
Tu fus beaucoup plus proche des bonheurs de Lucrèce.
Tu fus, un long temps, magistrat au Parlement de Bordeaux,
bien que les chicaneries du Droit t'eussent vite lassées,
et plus encore, la cruauté de ses modes de preuve.
et cet acharnement infini des plaideurs,
à n'en jamais finir, à faire rebondir les procès
que tant d’énergie vaine te semblait pure perte.
Mais tu voulais être utile et l'égoïsme étroit de l' «otium»,
choquait ta conscience.
Tu eus un ami cher, Prince de Liberté et de distinction,
Etienne de la Boétie, qui réfléchit avec profondeur,
sur les racines de la tyrannie en nos propres faiblesses.
Et de cette amitié, en recherchant les causes,
Tu conclus et répondit ainsi :
«Parce que c’était lui, parce que c’était moi»
Révélant ainsi que la quintessence du bonheur de  vivre
luit au cœur  de cette amitié dont nous sommes,
à la fois, le réceptacle et l’offrande.
Cher Michel de Montaigne, je voulais,
te saluer ici et te faire savoir en quelle estime
Je te tiens avec  tes «Essais» d’une bienveillante sagesse
Qui font songer aux meilleurs vins mûris en barriques de chêne
Et à ces cognacs qui éveillent l’Esprit et les sens,
Même lorsque l’hiver nous pèse et nous engourdit
Je voulais aussi te dire que de ton surnom
J’ai nommé Jean-Pierre qui te ressemble si fort
Et apporte une douce ironie à mes passions tumultueuses.
Paul Arrighi

Sweet whispers against
thighs opening

baring taut affluent ***,
a pleasurable tremor
rises without touch

his mouth eagerly finds
femininities universe

libidinous tongue...

affinity begs, arched
in ecstasies moan

an amorous plait woven
in a pulsating knot

as we're completely undone

my universe succor

Prose Poems and Experimental Poems
by Michael R. Burch

These are prose poems (is that an oxymoron?)  and experimental poems that begin with the first non-rhyming poem I wrote as a teenager...



Something
―for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost―lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is gone―gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn, scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass and remembrance. Something unforgettable is past―blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less, which finality swept into a corner, where it lies... in dust and cobwebs and silence.

This was my first poem that didn't rhyme, written in my late teens. The poem came to me 'from blue nothing' (to borrow a phrase from my friend the Maltese poet Joe Ruggier) . Years later, I dedicated the poem to the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba.


briefling
by Michael R. Burch

manishatched, hopsintotheMix, cavorts, hassex (quick! , spawnanewBrood!) ; then, likeamayfly, he's suddenly gone: plantfood.



It's Hard Not To Be Optimistic: An Updated Sonnet to Science
by Michael R. Burch

"DNA has cured deadly diseases and allowed labs to create animals with fantastic new features." ― U.S. News & World Report

It's hard not to be optimistic when things are so wondrously futuristic: when DNA, our new Louie Pasteur, can effect an autonomous, miraculous cure, while labs churn out fluorescent monkeys who, with infinite typewriters, might soon outdo USN&WR's flunkeys. Yes, it's hard not to be optimistic when the world is so delightfully pluralistic: when Schrödinger's cat is both dead and alive, and Hawking says time can run backwards. We thrive, befuddled drones, on someone else's regurgitated nectar, while our cheers drown out poet-alarmists who might Hector the Achilles heel of pure science (common sense)  and reporters who tap out supersillyous nonsense. [Dear U.S. News & World Report Editors: I am a fan of both real science and science fiction, and I like to think I can tell the difference, at least between the two extremes. I feel confident that Schrödinger didn't think the cat in his famous experiment was both dead and alive. Rather, he was pointing out that we can't know until we open the box, scratchings and smell aside. While traveling backwards in time is great for science fiction, it seems extremely doubtful as a practical application. And as for DNA curing deadly diseases... well, it must have created them, so perhaps don't give it too much credit! While I'm usually a fan of your magazine, as a writer I must take to task the Frankensteinian logic of the excerpt I cited, and I challenge you to publish my "letter" as proof that poets do have a function in the third millennium, even if it is only to suggest that paid writers should not create such outlandish, freakish horrors of the English language.―Somewhat irked, but still a fan, Michael R. Burch]



bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch

u are charming & disarming, but mostly! ! ! ALARMING! ! ! since all my resolve dissolved! u are chic as a sheikh's harem girl in the sheets, but now my bed's not my own and my kingdom's been overthrown!



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.



Prose Poem: The Trouble with Poets
by Michael R. Burch

This morning the neighborhood girls were helping their mothers with chores, but one odd little girl was out picking roses by herself, looking very small and lonely.

Suddenly the odd one refused to pick roses anymore because she decided it might "hurt" them. Now she just sits beside the bushes, rocking gently back and forth, weeping and consoling them!

Now she's lost all interest in nature, which she finds "appalling." She dresses in black "like Rilke" and says she prefers the "roses of the imagination"! She mumbles constantly about being "pricked in conscience" and being "pricked to death." What on earth can she mean? Does she plan to have *** until she dies?

For chrissake, now she's locked herself in her room and refuses to come out until she has "conjured" the "perfect rose of the imagination"! We haven't seen her for days. Her only communications are texts punctuated liberally with dashes. They appear to be badly-rhymed poems. She signs them "starving artist" in lower-case. What on earth can she mean? Is she anorexic, or bulimic, or is this just a phase she'll outgrow?



escape!
by michael r. burch

to live among the daffodil folk... slip down the rainslickened drainpipe... suddenly pop out the GARGANTUAN SPOUT... minuscule as alice, shout yippee-yi-yee! in wee exultant glee to be leaving behind the LARGE THREE-DENALI GARAGE.

escape! !

u are too beautiful, too innocent, too inherently lovely to merely reflect the sun's splendor... too full of irresistible candor to remain silent, too delicately fawnlike for a world so violent... come, my beautiful bambi and i will protect you... but of course u have already been lured away by the dew-laden roses...



Children's Prose Poem: The Three Sisters and the Mysteries of the Magical Pond
by Michael R. Burch

Every child has a secret name, which only their guardian angel knows. Fortunately, I am able to talk to angels, so I know the secret names of the Three Sisters who are the heroines of the story I am about to tell...

The secret names of the Three Sisters are Etheria, Sunflower and Bright Eyes. Etheria, because the eldest sister's hair shines like an ethereal blonde halo. Sunflower, because the middle sister loves to plait bright flowers into her hair. Bright Eyes, because the youngest sister has flashing dark eyes that are sometimes full of mischief! This is the story of how the Three Sisters solved the Three Mysteries of the Magical Pond...

The first mystery of the Magical Pond was the mystery of the Great Heron. Why did the Great Heron seem so distant and aloof, never letting human beings or even other animals come close to it? This great mystery was solved by Etheria, who noticed that the Great Heron was so large it couldn't fly away from danger quickly. So the Heron was not being aloof at all... it was simply being cautious and protecting itself by keeping its distance from faster creatures. Things are not always as they appear!

The second mystery was the mystery of the River Monster. What was the dreaded River Monster, and did it pose a danger to the three sisters and their loved ones? This great mystery was solved by Sunflower, who found the River Monster's footprints in the mud after a spring rain. Sunflower bravely followed the footprints to a bank of the pond, looked down, and to her surprise found a giant snapping turtle gazing back at her! Thus the mystery was solved, and the River Monster was not dangerous to little girls or their family and friends, because it was far too slow to catch them. But it could be dangerous if anyone was foolish enough to try to pet it. Sometimes it is best to leave nature's larger creatures alone, and not tempt fate, even when things are not always as they appear!

The third mystery was the most perplexing of all. How was it possible that tiny little starlings kept chasing away much larger crows, hawks and eagles? What a conundrum! (A conundrum is a perplexing problem that is very difficult to solve, such as the riddle: "What walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs during the day, then on three legs at night? " Can you solve it? ... The answer is a human being, who crawls on four legs as a baby, then walks on two legs most of its life, but needs a walking cane in old age. This is the famous Riddle of the Sphinx.)  Yes, what a conundrum! But fortunately Bright Eyes was able to solve the Riddle of the Starlings, because she noticed that the tiny birds were much more agile in the air, while the much larger hawks and eagles couldn't change direction as easily. So, while it seemed the starlings were risking their lives to defend their nests, in reality they had the advantage! Once again, things are not always as they appear!

Now, these are just three adventures of the Three Sisters, and there are many others. In fact, they will have a whole lifetime of adventures, and perhaps we can share in them from time to time. But if their mother reads them this story at bedtime, by the end of the story their eyes may be getting very sleepy, and they may soon have dreams of Giant Herons, and Giant Turtles, and Tiny Starlings chasing away Crows, Hawks and Eagles! Sweet dreams, Etheria, Sunflower and Bright Eyes!



Fake News, Probably
by Michael R. Burch

The elusive Orange-Tufted Fitz-Gibbon is the rarest of creatures―rarer by far than Sasquatch and the Abominable Snowman (although they are very similar in temperament and destructive capabilities) . While the common gibbon is not all that uncommon, the orange-tufted genus has been found less frequently in the fossil record than hobbits and unicorns. The Fitz-Gibbon sub-genus is all the more remarkable because it apparently believes itself to be human, and royalty, no less! Now there are rumors―admittedly hard to believe―that an Orange-Tufted Fitz-Gibbon resides in the White House and has been spotted playing with the nuclear codes while chattering incessantly about attacking China, Mexico, Iran and North Korea. We find it very hard to credit such reports. Surely American voters would not elect an oddly-colored ape with self-destructive tendencies president!



Writing Verse for Free, Versus Programs for a Fee
by Michael R. Burch

How is writing a program like writing a poem? You start with an idea, something fresh. Almost a wish. Something effervescent, like foam flailing itself against the rocks of a lost tropical coast...

After the idea, of course, there are complications and trepidations, as with the poem or even the foam. Who will see it, appreciate it, understand it? What will it do? Is it worth the effort, all the mad dashing and crashing about, the vortex―all that? And to what effect?

Next comes the real labor, the travail, the scouring hail of things that simply don't fit or make sense. Of course, with programming you have the density of users to fix, which is never a problem with poetry, since the users have already had their fix (this we know because they are still reading and think everything makes sense) ; but this is the only difference.

Anyway, what's left is the debugging, or, if you're a poet, the hugging yourself and crying, hoping someone will hear you, so that you can shame them into reading your poem, which they will refuse, but which your mother will do if you phone, perhaps with only the tiniest little mother-of-the-poet, harried, self-righteous moan.

The biggest difference between writing a program and writing a poem is simply this: if your program works, or seems to work, or almost works, or doesn't work at all, you're set and hugely overpaid. Made-in-the-shade-have-a-pink-lemonade-and-ticker-tape-parade OVERPAID.

If your poem is about your lover and ***** up quite nicely, perhaps you'll get laid. Perhaps. Regardless, you'll probably see someone repossessing your furniture and TV to bring them posthaste to someone like me. The moral is this: write programs first, then whatever passes for poetry. DO YOUR SHARE; HELP END POVERTY TODAY!



Prose Poem: Litany
by Michael R. Burch

Will you take me with all my blemishes? I will take you with all your blemishes, and show you mine. We'll **** wine out of cardboard boxes till our teeth and lips shine red like greedily gorging foxes'. We'll swill our fill, then have *** for hours till our neglected guts at last rebel. At two in the morning, we'll eat cold Krystals out of greasy cardboard boxes, and we will be in love. And that's it? That's it! And can I go out with my friends and drink until dawn? You can go out with your friends and drink until dawn, come home lipstick-collared, pass out by the pool, or stay at the bar till the new moon sets, because we will be in love, and in love there is no room for remorse or regret. There is no right, no wrong, and no mistrust, only limb-numbing ***, hot-pistoning lust. And that's all? That's all. That's great! But wait... Wait? Why? What's wrong? I want to have your children. Children? Well, perhaps just one. And what will happen when we have children? The most incredible things will happen―you'll change, stop acting so strangely, start paying more attention to me, start paying your bills on time, grow up and get rid of your horrible friends, and never come home at a-quarter-to-three drunk from a night of swilling, smelling like a lovesick skunk, stop acting so lewdly, start working incessantly so that we can afford a new house which I will decorate lavishly and then grow tired of in a year or two or three, start growing a paunch so that no other woman would ever have you, stop acting so boorishly, start growing a beard because you're too tired to shave, or too afraid, thinking you might slit your worthless wrinkled throat...



Sweet Nothings
by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, will you whisper me a sweet enchantment? We'll take my motorcycle, blaze a trail of metallic exhaust and scorched-black sulphuric fumes to a ****** diner where I'll slip my fingers under your yellow sun dress, inside the elastic waist band of your thin white cotton *******, till your pinkling lips moisten obligingly and the corpulent pink hot dog with tangy brown mustard and sweet pickle relish comes. Tonight, can we talk about something other than ***, perhaps things we both love? What I love is to go to the beach, where the hot oil smells like baking coconuts, and lie in the sun's humidor thinking of you, while the sand worms its way inside your **** little pink bikini, your compressed ******* squishy with warm sweet milk like coconuts, the hair between your legs sleek as a wet mink's... Tonight, can we make love instead of just talking *****? Sorry, honey, I'm just not in the mood.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes―the pale dead. After they have fled the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise. Once they have become a cloud's mist, sometimes like the rain they descend; ... they appear, sometimes silver, like laughter, to gladden the hearts of men. Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift unencumbered, yet lumbrously, as if over the sea there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift. Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies only half-remembered. Though they lie dismembered in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies, yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust, blood-engorged, but never sated since Cain slew Abel. But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch

Desire glides in on calico wings, a breath of a moth seeking a companionable light... where it hovers, unsure, sullen, shy or demure, in the margins of night, a soft blur. With a frantic dry rattle of alien wings, it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato... and flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight. And yet it returns to the flame, its delight, as long as it burns.



Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

"Burn Ovid"―Austin Clarke

Sunday School, Faith Free Will Baptist,1973: I sat imaging watery folds of pale silk encircling her waist. Explicit *** was the day's "hot" topic (how breathlessly I imagined hers)  as she taught us the perils of lust fraught with inhibition. I found her unaccountably beautiful, as she rolled implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue: adultery, fornication, *******, ******. Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush of her unrouged cheeks, by her pale lips accented only by a slight quiver, a trepidation. What did those lustrous folds foretell of our uncommon desire? Why did she cross and uncross her legs lovely and long in their taupe sheaths? Why did her ******* rise pointedly, as if indicating a direction?

"Come unto me,
(unto me) , "
together, we sang,

cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,

my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:

all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.



*** 101
by Michael R. Burch

That day the late spring heat steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus crawling its way up the backwards slopes of Nowheresville, North Carolina... Where we sat exhausted from the day's skulldrudgery and the unexpected waves of muggy, summer-like humidity... Giggly first graders sat two abreast behind senior high students sprouting their first sparse beards, their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections... The most unlikely coupling―Lambert,18, the only college prospect on the varsity basketball team, the proverbial talldarkhandsome swashbuckling cocksman, grinning... Beside him, Wanda,13, bespectacled, in her primproper attire and pigtails, staring up at him, fawneyed, disbelieving... And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her, as she twitched impaled on his finger like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes, I knew... that love is a forlorn enterprise, that I would never understand it.



Veiled
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief without comprehension, and in her crutchwork shack she is much like us... Tamping the bread into edible forms, regarding her children at play with something akin to relief... Ignoring the towers ablaze in the distance because they are not revelations but things of glass, easily shattered... Aand if you were to ask her, she might say―sometimes God visits his wrath upon an impious nation for its leaders' sins... And we might agree: seeing her mutilations.



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then, and give them my meaning, so that their teeming streets become my city. Bring back a pretty flower―a chrysanthemum, perhaps, to bloom, if but an hour, within a certain room of mine where the sun does not rise or fall, and the moon, although it is content to shine, helps nothing at all. There, if I hear the wistful call of their voices regretting choices made, or perhaps not made in time, I can look back upon it and recall―in all its pale forms sublime, still, Death will never be holy again.



The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Love among the infinitesimal flotillas of amoebas is a dance of transient appendages, wild sails that gather in warm brine and then express one headstream as two small, divergent wakes. Minuscule voyage―love! Upon false feet, the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep toward self-immolation: two nee one. We cannot photosynthesize the sun, and so we love in darkness, till we come at last to understand: man's spineless heart is alien to any land. We part to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears, amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres... and still we sink. The night is full of stars we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours. Have we such cells within us, bent on love to ever-changingness, so that to part is not to be the same, or even one? Is love our evolution, or a scream against the thought of separateness―a cry of strangled recognition? Love, or die, or love and die a little. Hopeful death! Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.



Longing
by Michael R. Burch

We stare out at the cold gray sea, overcome with such sudden and intense longing... our eyes meet, inviolate... and we are not of this earth, this strange, inert mass. Before we crept out of the shoals of the inchoate sea... before we grew the quaint appendages and orifices of love... before our jellylike nuclei, struggling to be hearts, leapt at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun, then watched it plummet, the birth and death of our illumination... before we wept... before we knew... before our unformed hearts grew numb, again, in the depths of the sea's indecipherable darkness... when we were only a swirling profusion of recombinant things wafting loose silt from the sea's soft floor, writhing and ******* in convulsive beds of mucousy foliage,

flowering,
flowering,
flowering...

what jolted us to life?



Memento Mori
by Michael R. Burch

I found among the elms
something like the sound of your voice,
something like the aftermath of love itself
after the lightning strikes,
when the startled wind shrieks...

a gored-out wound in wood,
love's pale memento mori―
that white scar
in that first heart,
forever unhealed...

and a burled, thick knot incised
with six initials pledged
against all possible futures,
and penknife-notched below,
six edged, chipped words
that once cut deep and said...

WILL U B MINE
4 EVER?

... which now, so disconsolately answer...

----------------N
-- EVER.



Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

"We will walk taller! " said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

"Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster, "
cried glib Punjab.

"After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway, "
flamed Vijay.

"My family is relatively heavy,
too big even for a pig-barn Chevy;
we need more space, "
spat What's His Face.

"What does it matter,
dirge or mantra, "
sighed Serge.

"The world will wobble
in Hubble's lens
till the tempest ends, "
wailed Mercedes.

"The world is going to hell in a bucket.
So **** it and get outta my face!
We own this place!
Me and my friends got more guns than ISIS,
so what's the crisis? "
cried Bubba Billy Joe Bob Puckett.



They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch

"We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning..."―George W. Bush

We will not forget...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above "hush! "-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment) ,
still flashing grins they could not quite repent...
Nor should they―anguish triumphs just an instant;

this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope―the shriveled chrysalis

that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then ***** about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. "Survive"
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa's
awakening... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.



chrysalis
by Michael R. Burch

these are the days of doom
u seldom leave ur room
u live in perpetual gloom

yet also the days of hope
how to cope?
u pray and u *****

toward self illumination...
becoming an angel
(pure love)

and yet You must love Your Self

If you know someone who is very caring and loving, but struggles with self worth, this may be a poem to consider.

Keywords/Tags: prose poem, experimental, free verse, freedom, expression, silence, void, modern, modern psalm, Holocaust


To Have Loved
by Michael R. Burch

"The face that launched a thousand ships ..."

Helen, bright accompaniment,
accouterment of war as sure as all
the polished swords of princes groomed to lie
in mausoleums all eternity ...

The price of love is not so high
as never to have loved once in the dark
beyond foreseeing. Now, as dawn gleams pale
upon small wind-fanned waves, amid white sails, ...

now all that war entails becomes as small,
as though receding. Paris in your arms
was never yours, nor were you his at all.
And should gods call

in numberless strange voices, should you hear,
still what would be the difference? Men must die
to be remembered. Fame, the shrillest cry,
leaves all the world dismembered.

Hold him, lie,
tell many pleasant tales of lips and thighs;
enthrall him with your sweetness, till the pall
and ash lie cold upon him.

Is this all? You saw fear in his eyes, and now they dim
with fear’s remembrance. Love, the fiercest cry,
becomes gasped sighs in his once-gallant hymn
of dreamed “salvation.” Still, you do not care

because you have this moment, and no man
can touch you as he can ... and when he’s gone
there will be other men to look upon
your beauty, and have done.

Smile―woebegone, pale, haggard. Will the tales
paint this―your final portrait? Can the stars
find any strange alignments, Zodiacs,
to spell, or unspell, what held beauty lacks?

Published by The Raintown Review, Triplopia, The Electic Muse, The Chained Muse, The Pennsylvania Review, and in a YouTube recital by David B. Gosselin. This is, of course, a poem about the famous Helen of Troy, whose face "launched a thousand ships."
Keywords/Tags: Helen, Troy, Paris, love, war, gods, fate, destiny, portrait, fame, famous, stars, Zodiac, Zodiacs, star-crossed, spell, charm, potion, enchantment, Greece, Greek, mythology, legend, Homer, Odyssey, accompaniment, accouterment, eternal, eternity, immortal



EPIGRAM TRANSLATIONS BY MICHAEL R. BURCH



NOVELTIES
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.



Nod to the Master
by Michael R. Burch

for the Divine Oscar Wilde

If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!



A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This is love: to fly toward a mysterious sky,
to cause ten thousand veils to fall.
First, to stop clinging to life,
then to step out, without feet ...
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



To live without philosophizing is to close one's eyes and never attempt to open them. – Rene Descartes, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



Stage Fright
by Michael R. Burch

To be or not to be?
In the end Hamlet
opted for naught.



I test the tightrope
balancing a child
in each arm.
—Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Brief Fling
by Michael R. Burch

“Epigram”
means cram,
then scram!



*******
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.



Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch



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.



Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch

Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.



Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch

I’m not looking for someone to save.
A gal has to do what a gal has to do:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

How many highways to hell must I pave
with intentions imagined, not true?
I’m not looking for someone to save.

Fools praise compassion while weaklings rave,
but a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Some praise the Lord but the Devil’s my fave
because he has led me to you!
I’m not looking for someone to save.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave,
a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Every day without meds becomes a close shave
and the razor keeps tempting me too.
I’m not looking for someone to save:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.



She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

There’s a light about her
like the moon through a mist:
a bright incandescence
with which she is blessed

and my heart to her light
like the tide now is pulled . . .
she is fair, O, and bright
like the moon silver-veiled.

There’s a fire within her
like the sun’s leaping forth
to lap up the darkness
of night from earth's hearth

and my eyes to her flame
like twin moths now are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.




Teddy Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick; Donald Trump speaks loudly and carries a big shtick.—Michael R. Burch



Viral Donald (I)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

Donald Trump is coronaviral:
his brain's in a downward spiral.
His pale nimbus of hair
proves there's nothing up there
but an empty skull, fluff and denial.



Viral Donald (II)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

Why didn't Herr Trump, the POTUS,
protect us from the Coronavirus?
That weird orange corona of hair's an alarm:
Trump is the Virus in Human Form!

Notre ami, le Mouflon

Parfois ses cornes tire-bouchon e font ressembler le mâle à un faune farceur,
Peu haut sur pattes mais véloce, le Mouflon se révèle un remarquable Athlète bondissant de rochers en rochers,
Escaladant les rocs avec effronterie, il se   rend parfois en été ou lorsque la nourriture se fait rare, au cœur des clairières et dans le creux des vals
Pour goûter avec gourmandise ces mets de choix que sont pour lui les baies, glands, faînes, châtaignes et surtout les mannes du frêne à fleurs,
Le Mouflon est, avant tout animal des cimes et des à-pics ; il est aimant de tous les lieux inaccessibles sans le secours de jumelles ou de téléobjectifs.

Pour Mouflons et Mouflonnes, la saison de l’amour est l’automne ce qui révèle un goût de seigneur,
Car la vêture des clairières est alors rougeoyante de beauté, à l’instar de tapis persans,
Le Mouflon ne serait-il pas animal sauvage certes mais romantique car il se plait à admirer l’encolure des Mouflonnes, qui s’harmonise si bien avec les couleurs automnales ;  
Mais pour les Mouflons, le plaisir d’amour doit rester subtil et ne pas verser dans ces luttes meurtrières : l’ami Mouflon est un épicurien qui donne leçon de sagesse à tous les jaloux.

Le Mouflon fut longtemps, le maître des Montagnes et du maquis Corse qu'il ne partageait qu'avec l’aigle royal, les sangliers les plus hardis et quelques bandits ou patriotes traqués,
Mais trop chassé par certains Hommes, dépourvus de sagesse et à la gâchette trop faciles, il faillit disparaître de son île emblématique.
Aujourd'hui il revient de l'île sœur, la Sardaigne, mais reste encore plus caché dans quelques massifs impénétrables comme le «Monte Cinto» et les «aiguilles de Bavella».
C’est ainsi que la Corse retrouve l'un de ses plus beaux animaux dont le nom de ses enfants, "I Muvrini", a fait le tour des scènes du Monde pour magnifier son emblème et sa terre nourricière, la Corse.
Paul Arrighi

Blond locks of hair
Made fairer still
By the tongue
Which she speaks
Parle vous francious

The rounded jaw
The smile so sweet
Jesuit silvou plait

In voice I hear
Her laughter there
But her words
I do not comprehend

She says to me
Salivee
And spends a kiss
Upon my
Lonely cheeks

Out of the black ground they grow –
ghostly windy
fibers
and the birds – wavers
in baskets they plait them
like Venice
gondolas.

And in them we’ll get on.

In channels
of white pigeons
we’ll sail away
when golden bells
their chime
sow

And we will simply settle
The World…"

The way we do things religiously, the way we talk, the way we run our country's, and how we convict a person. May be all based on this thing called "religion" yet when asked what religion is there is no possible way to explain it easily. So why do we have religion? I think that religion is a need for human diplomacy, to see someone/something who is higher in all aspects to our leaders of whom we can not ask to help us. In this aspect is religion a way of making it is that we have a leader of a country who doesn't listen to his people, and as a denial to that power we create a thing that is greater than this leader? But what about the aspect of asking for assistance in something that doesn't at all relate political issues then is that a different form of religion?
Many religions create a being who is capable of anything. If not one being then there are multiple beings with individual "special abilities". Such as a Sun God. They thus pray to these beings in a plea to assist them in their plait, in some religions prayers are accompanied with a sacrifice of some sort, i.e. Goats, sheep, cattle and in history so were humans.
But why? What is the whole purpose of this "religion"?
Religion is a basis of human emotion, if we were not emotional we would not need religion, there are few people who are emotionally obsolete, they have no capable emotions. When asked what religion was they still were incapable of explaining due to the fact that every decision we make is all emotionally connected. When you have an emotionally inclined question asked to an emotionless person it is still an unviable solution to define it.

J'ai apprendre le français.

J'apprends les mots inutile.

Quand vais-je utiliser,

"Je regrette, mais restaurant est complet"

ou

"L'addition s'il vous plait."

Ils sont inutilisable!

Quand vais-je utiliser

etre, avoir, aller,....

Pourquoi sont-ils irrégulier?!?

Pourquoi peux-je mémoriser tout la grammaire,

présent, passé composé,  futur simple, impératif

et beaucoup d'autres.

But people tell me,

English is more complicated than French.

Sigh.

I don't like french.

I mean, "Je n'aime pas français"

wHat beckons is the silent Kingdom
a sanctum holy devoid. whose apt walls
are tawny bricks of quiet. the patrons
clamor somnambulant. and heaps of
proffered tongues litter the illucid
broken halls.

the forgetful powder piles neatly
limbs of gray on and about and
the pews drink the sun or the sky
     is a plait of onyx feathers.
an arrhythmia of breathes struggle
daft lungs. the stillness beats. bleating
nothing lambs flocked in stupid silver.

the mouths are all corded sinew bound.
epitaphs scrawled untidy letters drench
cheeks apathetic. a corpse of hollow resonance.
step and stone; cadaverous hues, sallow indolent
light on every stanchion.

                                                                in
the cathedral, cloistered, is a stiff artery.
a heart stagnant veins. a king whose crown is
ash, a face whose efforts are unfleshed. no skin
has purchase. nor sight. empty hood scythe loaded
dreams the morphea plated scalp. a soft vesical
limpid chromatic fingernails scrabble festering
nodes.

he is waiting
in the comfort of his filth
lithe carpals flexing summons
to his cloak

the candles are making naked lips
kissing darkness; lovers uncut
bound fornicating. i sitting sat saturated
the valley fluxes.

                and a tissue of blue decrepit
night dusting the sin of noise. a naked wind
     so                      says



         he