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Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
no... it's not one of those what came first
type of questions revolving around
a chicken and an egg...

but... since we became innate in translating
images into audibility,
of a more potent system of encoding...

i'm starting to question one "clue"...
did humanity discover the current
encoding system of meaning,
from what, let's just posit: hieroglyphs
as the starting block...

well... because whatever the Chinese
invested in originally... has remained intact...
but i'm wondering...

did we discover the Greek Δ (delta) first...
or... was it the case that...
encoding sounds, using images,
became so outdated...
that looking up at the stars...
               we figured a second tier of
the abstract of communication?

basically... did we discover the skeletal
phonetic first... or did we discover geometry first?
geometry: the basis for an abstract
spatial coordination, with regards to
whether time should be inclusive,
or exclusive in this new field of study?

to me it's a big question...
does the letter Δ (delta) predate the concept
of a triangle?

              new chicken, new egg dynamic...
i'm just curious...
   i'm trying to suggest that...
according to the Greeks...
         the triangle had to be
an a priori concept with the a posteriori
Δ...
               i could be wrong...
but... like an aeroplane conundrum...

i'm thinking: Δ... so... people talking about
climbing mountains?!
how else could you even begin abstracting
a letter, delta, conjuring up a triangle?!

I VM ᛏ Δ:
                   i walk up mountain...

primordial languages,
which primarily originated in verbs...
not the elaborate nouns and noun
distinctions of today...

so what came first? the triangle,
or Δ?
                 in Latin that's I VM T D...
WM? zigzag, or the anti-image
representation of side-winding,
walking: up-down-up-down-up-down...

so what came first?
the letter Δ... or the discussion concerning
triangles?

well... if you look further in time...
i'm pretty sure that I predates 1,
V predates 5,
                        IV predates 4...
X predates 10...
      a time when even 0 wasn't conjured
of looking into the void of Omicron...
so...

                  Δ predates the concept of
studying a triangle...
Δ is the a priori variant of the a posteriori
triangle...
given the Roman numerals...

and i'm pretty sure Δ was derived
from the contorts of a mountain...

i like that summary in the title:
I VM ᛏ Δ        : i travel up mountain...
Roman, Runic, Greek...

                  which just bewilders me,
how much of the ancient tongues had
to improvise with hand-gestures,
the same gesticulations that are still with
us when it concerns deaf people...

i did write a contradiction in this
piece didn't i?
   i might have written that the triangle
predated the Δ,
which is impossible...

                  given that...
Δ is an abstraction of a hieroglyph construct
of encoding...
   at having written the encoding Δ,
having spent some time looking
at a mountain... there was no triangle
in sight... no 2D pyramid in the world...

but then some scholastic book-worm
concentrated on the letter Δ...
and conjured up a triangle!

                         i guess i should make
this an ode, an ode to the god Tyr.

p.s.

there is a variant of how sign-language
provided the enzyme of evolution...
the gnostic A / Λ (lambda)
to denote the unit of 1, or the vector
encouragement posit of:
  one's actions -
                                   the gnostics
tend to focus, not on the iota, I...
the index finger... but the alpha...

                            i.e.

                      (  )     (  )
                            A

the blanks denoting the presence of eyes...
    by comparison Λ (la-mbda)
                                    how many African
languages use the mbaku - the mb-
prefix?
                                   Λ VM ᛏ Δ -
           i.e. i'm the first (on top)
to walk up the mountain...
                  the mountain is a mountain
because its foundation is the ground
i walk on...
               but among the people,
the people are not my foundation...
i am the foundation that pulls people
forward...
                                      otherwise...
conflict stemming from Λ in the form
of A...
                       hierarchic conflict at the cut
off point... whereby... a large majority
of people: fall into the abyss...
     as it definitely does happen
in real life.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
i.

for the past few weeks i've been doing an experiment,
thankfully philosophy allows such things,
of course, they're deviations from what i'm used to
in chemistry, they're less, what's the word?
spectacular - but they are nonetheless experiments,
and that's the beauty of being grounded in some sort
of science (trinity of biology, chemistry and physics
and that's the limit, beyond this there are only
pseudo-sciences)... medicine? that's the tsarina of
learning: like any tsarina: gets down and *****,
and yes: mathematics is the genteel queen.
philosophy on the other hand seems like a vagabond
in learning, never really pieced together,
never really sentenced to a single direction:
and for that matter, thought can become less narration
that stretches into the sort of philosophy that Sartre
embodied with his novel, and more into thought becoming
experimental...
you might be wondering what the experiment consisted
of... well, over the weeks i've been sadistic unto myself,
it's to do with trying to figure out the modern curse
that's the 3D's: debt, depression, dementia.
                i can't fall asleep without a bottle of whiskey
cigarettes, sleeping pills and music playing in the background:
which would make me a terrible partner, anyway.
   beyond that though, for weeks i repeated a pattern,
i fell asleep to the *hellraiser ii: hellbound
soundtrack
by christopher young...
       day-in-day out: as if to pressurise the idea that
the faculty of dreaming could be censored in the same way
that thinking is censored in liberal speech
eroding people's vocabulary, **** included.
     what i mean by that: every day i woke up with 15 minutes
of despair, then the zenith came after i lay in bed
for 4 hours and felt too many leeches ******* at me...
   those 15 minutes of despair were always there,
but then i usually got up and went about my daily business...
i admit that whiskey could be to blame,
anyone could argue the alcohol-is-bad argument,
but arguing as R. D. Laing might have that it's
also a sedative if you don't include social adhesion to loosen
the tension of going out and dancing:
then i don't see the point of saying it's all bad.
         sleeping pills (i found) are not 100% active without
what the prescription states that you should do:
i exceed limits, but then i write during the night -
            create a balance and i'm sure any insomnia
might be made minimal... anyway:
so i've been doing this roundabout experiment,
listening to the above album while falling asleep,
but then yesterday i decided to fall asleep listening to
godspeed you! black emperor's album F♯ A♯ ∞,
and guess what the experiment proved:
  i felt little or no anguish for 15 minutes,
obviously the usual groggy of a pseudo-hangover,
  but that doesn't mean staying in bed for 4 hours
because you feel **** about life 'n' all...
                   as already stated there's what we call
a cartesian dichotomy, that somehow altered mental
states cannot be translated into a physicality -
depression in this sort of language becomes lethargy -
people never seemed to connect the dots that
state the monism of everything having a pairing either
side of Humpty-Dumpty sitting on the ergo fence
asking about a flying omelette... ergo is a variation
of what precipitates... depression = lethargy...
the purest kind of what i know (i have enough psychiatric
literature to redeem myself from what would
be deemed quack-medicine with their quack doctors) -
some say that taking the vitamin B12 supplement
could help you: or that weak digestion is to blame, too.
i would be quack doctor if i was in a position of power,
and since i am not really earning anything from my
"poems", what sort of power can i abuse? trust -
but then again these are thought experiments,
           i first experiment on myself, then note down
the observations i have accounted for.
               so what will my unconscious eat today while
i switch off my consciousness? i was thinking of
the cure's disintegration album,
         perhaps that's why i did weeks of falling asleep
to a horror movie soundtrack, to later move into
neo-prog "rock" and then into 80s goth melancholia...
    i'd say that pop ****** melancholics off...
and such a nicer word for depression...
                   it's not even close to compression and has
nothing to do with aviation or the Netherlands...
     melan, melan: ah! melanism - a certain darkness,
    choly -         condition of darkness...
       and that star of Bethlehem appeared at night...
man of sorrows, well that's just blatant;
           but for all the romanticisation about darkness
and the mysterious moon and all the insomnia,
i still prefer the anti-cartesian explanation of actually
creating the proper answer to what has become
a dichotomy between the physical sciences and
the pseudo sciences, given that ergo is a precipitation
then for the two opposite to become inseparable
depression must be equal to lethargy: which is a variation
of the grander genus (family): metabolism.
               is this the point where i re-quote that famous:
doctor! heal yourself!
                                      well, if there's anything to go by
i have in my mind, given my life a prolonging in a way,
what was it... amitriptyline?
                                         the new ******* for
the respectably prone to citizenship's serenity of leaving
other people to their own demises -
  i mean, look at all the teetotalers: hyperactive bunnies
with too much energy that translated into things like
the infamous pyramids and the doubly infamous chimneys.

ii. the danish girl

i would have never thought that the transgender movement
had such a puritanism about it,
such platonism - nearing martyrdom;
who could have thought?! i only managed to see the film
today... i'm a sentimental ******* and i was choking
on not crying at the end of the film
here was a true representation of an artist,
         there's he (einar wegenar): a successful local
artist, within the confines of Copenhagen,
modestly famous: primarily because of having
perfected a technique and sourced it in a childhood
memory that keeps haunting him,
    thus he keeps repeating it, although with slight
alternation to refresh it, but no photograph to work
from, hence my previous statement:
  memory is the best cinema or arts' gallery (this
is not a universal statement, memory doesn't always
heal, or fascinate or have the ability to revitalises itself
or become the most potent "hallucinogenic" experience);
and then she's there (gerda wegener), also
painting, but more in line with paying the rent
rather than appeal, rich people needing portraits to
hang on the walls of the future of their lineage
        in years to come so someone might boast:
that was my ancestor, who founded the first bank
of Copenhagen sort of stories -
and all she wants to do is be an artist like Einar;
and she keeps coming back from galleries with her
works and they never give the critics any appeal
at being original - they have a suggestive generic
quality to them: precisely because they've been painted
for money. art is cruel in that way,
  when critics reduce producing art like they might reduce
being a cashier in a supermarket on the basis of:
job done... then comes the offense from the artist.
the beauty of this film is the platonism that soon explodes,
the near innocence... i really don't know how
the transgender movement borrowed from this:
all those Baphomet ******* with too many parts,
silicon chests and ***** and what not?
       this is one of the finest forms of defamation -
these days the transgender movement is so sexually
potent it doesn't really deserve what can only appear
as a self-imposed crucifixion...
              this story predates the unearthing of the nag
hammadi scripts, it's intuitively bound to what was
unearthed in 1945...
      einar sees the desperation of gerda, he knows
that he'll simply remain a local artist,
    bound to a square mile of earth, local, provincial
even... what he decides on is best expressed
by Marilyn Manson's lyrics: now i'm not an artist
i'm a ******* work of art
.
        how can not this resonate further into the film
if not by this motto:
it is a consecration of a memory, to invert it and
un-seize the moment long ago experienced and now
fuelling art, or the repetition of a safe technique established.
one man's frustration and a woman in a cage:
the potential seen - then a sudden bursting of madness,
the evident anti-cross -
                                  to say he had reached his limits
and she was kept frustrated and under-appreciated is
blatant enough, this self-sacrifice for a woman to
find her subject, was all too evident when she utters
the words that: the student overcomes the teacher,
and that's the whole story,
                       he has to walk into the canvas,
     in whatever way imaginable, and what a better way
than on a whim to escape the dreariness of parties
   by dressing up as a woman, after gerda's model
is late so she can continue a painting and einar
has to step in and wear a few female garments...
       to later realise the Dionysian consequence:
                                  only to the utmost excess, from here.
this could hardly be a propaganda movie for
the transgender movement... the "propaganda"
aspect ends when you hear children imitating this
artistic "prank" in today's society...
      it wasn't a prank in the slightest: but a profound
expression of love between two artists...
          outside of art the whole transgender movement
is still only ***** and silicon **** of Thailand's lady-boys:
that's not reality?        
although i actually did choke with nearing to cry
in the closing scene...
    unlike the Christ story... there was no resurrection.
so hans and gerda travel to the place where
einar depicted the landscape in his revisions,
       and both of them are standing there
        and it's ****** pulverising with so much depth
upon being so little when reduced to a canvas
but because you see the painting first, do you later
see the landscape with more emotion...
     and i thought to myself: gerda will recreate
the landscape in her own eyes, she'll what he saw
and what he gave up for her to paint him in his
transformative (transfigurative) state of becoming
lili elbe...
                     that's why i was about to cry -
     that she could put lili aside, and return to /
resurrect the memory of einar the locally famous
artist... that she would apply the same technique in
painting lili / einar but turn her attention to
landscapes... as if to imply that both of them became
reunited before all the madness of life came chasing them
into extremes.
          to my dissatisfaction? after the film ended
and before the credits started rolling... postscriptum facts
after these true events... she continued to paint
lili / einar as she did, which prompted her to fame
on the Parisian estrade; after seeing that, written down?
tears? what tears... i'm actually thankful that i choked
on them and didn't do an outburst necessarily...
thank **** i wasn't watching the film alone!
     i know that i might have invoked a sense of:
rough around the edges with this description, but i'm hoping
it's abstract enough to make the film more potent:
filling the blanks with images;
still, this was used for a transgender movement?
                                                did he make it plainly obvious
that this was a transcendental transgender iconoclasm?
         it's the platonic element in it that steers this whole
story, away from what 21st century movements regard
as prototype for their ******.
Dondaycee Sep 2017
I just wanted freedom,
I’m not talking about rights, that’s irrelevant.
We just wanted freedom,
As in the youth wanting better ways for development.
I’m speaking on the behalf of those unaware of their intelligence,
Those who discovered their element but kept the closet shut.
Afraid to offer the clothes on their back,
They’ll say it’s confidence we lack,
But here’s the ugliest fact,
We don’t open doors with skeletons.
Unless it’s Halloween, where dark and light are in resonance,
Yin and Yang, beauty is ugly and ugly is beauty, humorous medicine.
I have a testament, that if the morals in this holiday were a measurement of 365 days, it would be evident according to my estimate, that unity and love would be proper etiquette, excellent because even the dark would be perceived as heaven-sent.
The terms evil and hell would then be indefinite allowing a person to open a door with a skeleton as a cause without the effect being bedevilment.
That’s freedom.
Some have it in the day, most find it at night.
It could be with family or with friends.
A celebration of a season, or a reason to escape a thing we call life.
A venting conversation after empty bottles,
A sleep over when home is hostile,
They say happiness is in the moment,
I say that moment occurs when you’re no longer in a position to fight,
For a home, a place of comfort and acceptance,
A place where your company is appreciated,
We all need love, that warm feeling we get when standing in light,
Or the uplifting vibrations when the environment opens up, and you’re no longer forced to sit tight but now have the opportunity of standing up to take flight.
We deserve some freedom.
I used to feel alone,
With awareness that term became solitude,
I can’t crave attention after joining the mission,
I had to look in the mirror,
“Keep it together” said Kyi,
“Because this is a solid move”
But but, I’m losing my friends.
“You’re choosing your men.”
“A positive team,
Because that’s what knowledge do”
“Here’s a time reference using latitude.”
“Move forward, chase the rabbit food,
Clear vision with a positive attitude.”
“Moving West to east may feel like you’re leaving things behind,
But understand earth and understand time,
We circle back around, think of a birthday, there will always be a time when you're gonna look back at you.”
“That’s a rapid move.
These are states of Matter, going from solid to gas,
A caged bird ready to fly, that’s a cockatoo.”
“Atoms aren’t alone, eventually they meet others,
There’s a bigger picture, that’s a molecule.”
“Don’t feel alone, atoms go through solitude when there’s a column move, solid to gas-”
-a solid move-
“- but in our case, a change in longitude,
Because we’re shifting our consciousness from 3rd to 5th dimension.”
I understand the magnitude of the mission, that’s why we made this decision,
No need to crave attention when acting with promptitude,
Like minded people will act as a molecule and help constitute  a solid move in longitude, breaking the physical is an important attribute, analytical travel route, an atom moving towards freedom in its absolute-
“Knowledge acting as carrots, erasing ignorance, clearing the vision for an Omni move.”
The conscious battles to become the subconscious, the freedom to be all of me instead of part of me, that’s a body move.
Freedom is all I wanted,
Freedom is all we wanted,
Being labeled Millennials was the outcome,
It’s not life but these systems we’re trying to out run.
They look at suicide like, “What went wrong?”
“She looked so happy…”
Or “How did he feel alone.”
Freedom is when you have a home,
If I’m talking and you’re listening, that’s being heard,
But if you can’t understand it, there’s no meaning in the word,
That’s a failure in communication, standing without a herd I’d still be on my own.
If anything, the previous generations don’t understand emotions,
Feeling empty is indeed a deep feeling.
They say there’s not much in the bottom of the ocean,
I say dive,
“But Daycee we can’t the pressure will crush us.”
Now you see why suicide is chosen,
We dive, looking for something we know is there, unaware of the pressure, we get crushed by our own emotions.
These are powerful feelings and thoughts,
We see the insanity and what was lost in erosion.
Try to understand us, don’t try to change us, just like those whom predates emphasize, “Don’t blame us.” We must change a system that caused the previous generations to be broken, if anything our generation is bringing hope in, refusing to be above or below one, our words if anything are the greatest ever spoken,
We need people to understand us, not just listen, because these systems aren’t working,
Einstein said “A problem can’t be solved with the same consciousness that created it”, so don’t point fingers at us saying “Millennials” and that we were always given ****, when we’re the group that gave a **** about the world and the people that hated it and attempted change by not doing the same thing over and over again, innovative because we’re some creative kids,
I hope this is provoking because ****** we are special, specifically chosen,
To bring back balance and unity in consciousness that the ignorant and insane broken,
I am here to bring freedom,
Because freedom is something we all need,
The millennials are here to bring freedom,
Because it’s the one thing we all see,
The brothers and sisters we lost heard it call from the bottom of the sea,
Our ancestors want us to bring back freedom that was lost in waters but remained in gene,
Freedom is a kingdom we’re bringing where all is free.
RAJ NANDY Aug 2016
SECRETS OF THE STONEHENGE IN VERSE
Dear Readers, I present a simplified version of the true story of the Stonehenge, on the Salisbury plains of Southern England, with over a million visitors every year. Declared as a World Heritage Site since 1986.Left out many technical details to curb the Length!
Hope you find this interesting to read.  Thanks, - Raj

SECRETS OF THE STONEHENGE IN VERSE
                     BY RAJ NANDY
                
                     INTRODUCTION
Shrouded in ancient legend, rituals and mystery,
Forming a part of ancient History, in the County of
Wiltshire on the rolling Salisbury plains,
Thirty miles north of the English Channel, stands the
megalithic structure  - The Stonehenge.
Dating back to some 3000 BC during the Neolithic Age,
Long before the Egyptian pyramids got made!
Some of its secrets have finally been unraveled by
Archeologists of our time and age.
It was a period when early humans changed over
from being nomadic hunter- gatherers,
To cultivate land and domesticate animals, to
become settled farmers.
This ushered in a new social change in the history
of Human progression,
Which got reflected in huge stone structures to
mark this advancement and occasion.
For these megalithic structures were bigger than
the tribes of men or the community;
Marked burial mounds and places for performing
sacred rites and magical healing rituals, for the
entire community.
Stonehenge was aligned to the mid-Summer and
mid-Winter Solstice, with the rising and the setting
Sun.
Served as an astronomical calendar for the turning
of Seasons, when crop cycles also begun.
Some scholars opine that it was used as a Lunar
Calendar as well,
Since Moon worship predates Sun worship by
Pre-historic men!
It was long before the invention of the wheel,
written script, and even metal implements.
This monumental structure speak of Stone Age
Briton’s greatest achievement!
(
Period covered is from Late Stone Age to the brink of
Bronze Age.)

BRIEF LAYOUT OF THE STONEHENGE
Cutting across myths and legends archeologists
and geologists have tried to piece together the
Stonehenge Story,
Which stood like an enigmatic puzzle for the
last Five Thousand Centuries!
Scholars say construction commenced around
3000 BC, but progressed only in stages spread
over the next fifteen centuries.
Initially, a large earthwork or a ‘Henge’ with a
circular ditch and a bank was made,
With 56 timber posts around the inner perimeter
on the windy Salisbury plains.
Used by primitive man as a burial place, but for
rituals later got linked to other smaller sites.
With processional avenues leading to River Avon,
to honor dead ancestors with sacred rites!
Entrance to the ‘Henge’ was marked by a pair of
upright Slaughter Stones weighing 28 tones, and
6.6 meters tall.
But only one remains today lying flat on the ground
after its fall!
Some 256 feet from center of the ‘Henge’ on the NE
Avenue once stood the Heel Stones 7.6 meters high!
As a marker for the Summer Solstice showing the
position of the rising Sun in the Midsummer sky!

          BLUE STONES FROM WALES:
Some 1000 years later, 82 Blue Stones were brought
from the Prescelli Mountains of Southern Wales;
And the earlier timber posts with these Blue stones
was replaced.
Each stone weighing around 4 tones, was brought
over a distance of some 250 miles to the plains of
Salisbury,
Loaded on hollowed out log boats fashioned like a
mini barge, to sail during high tide into the Bristol
Estuary!
Pulled over land on greased wooden rollers, and
loaded again on mini barges down the River Avon.
Since Avon flowed closer to the ‘Henge’ site in those
ancient days, which is now known!
(Some Scholars feel that the Blue Stones were swept down
closer to the Salisbury plain, during the close of the last Ice
Age! These Stones were believed to have powers of magical
cure too!)

              THE SARSAN STONES
During its final phase of development came the larger
23 ft tall Sarsan Stones, weighing some 44 tones.
From 20 miles north of the ‘Henge’ area dragged on
sledges and rollers from Marlborough Downs.
These stones now formed the outer ring capped with
stone lintels, replacing the Blue Stones;
And the Blues Stones were moved inwards and
rearranged in the horseshoe and circle shape, as
presently seen and known!
(NOTE: Sheer muscle power used to drag the stones with ropes
made from plant fiber of the indigenous lime bark soaked in
water for weeks. Stone lintels were sculpted in the shape of an
arc to cap the SARSAN Stones to form the outer circle. Wooden
scaffolding & ramps were used to hoist and position the heavy
stone lintels horizontally on top of upright stones! Sarsan Stones
were hard sandstones tougher than granite! However many of the
stones of this Ancient Ruin are missing, leaving some unanswered
questions behind.)

        CONCLUDING THIS TRUE STORY
Archeologists and scholars using radiocarbon dating
have tried to recreate the Stonehenge Story.
This ancient ruin with many unanswered questions,
now remain protected as an Iconic Monument of
British History!
It stands as an astronomical time clock and is also of
spiritual significance;
It also symbolizes the ingenuity of Human Mind, its
power, and endurance.
I conclude with a an extract from a poem by TS Salmon
about the STONEHENGE here below:-
“Warpt in veils of time’s unbroken gloom,
Obscure as death and silent as the tomb.
Where cold oblivion holds her dusky reign,
Frowns the dark pile on Sarum’s lonely plain.

Yet think not here with classic eye to trace,
Corinthian beauty or Ionian grace.
No pillored lines with sculptured foliage crowned,
No fluted remnants deck the hallowed ground.
Firm, as implanted by some Titan’s might,
Each rugged stone up rears its giant height.
Whence the poised fragment tottering seems to throw,
A trembling shadow on the plain below.”
(*Sarum = old name for Salisbury.)
Thanks dear Readers for your kind attention span ,
I have simplified by cutting short many details the
best as I can!
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH RAJ NANDY OF NEW DELHI
E-mail: rajnandy21@yahoo.in
Marshal Gebbie Nov 2009
Ancient people, ancient ways
Protracting back through time,
The culture of the Chinese race
Far predates Roman line.
Before the Huns and Visigoths
Cascaded forth to burn,
Confucian bred conformity
Did budding scholars learn.
Astronomy, anatomy,
Philosophy and law,
The ancients sought the knowledge path
Wide open lay the door
To secrets, mystic and arcane,
They plied their trade craft well
...Then broke into another age
Of red chaos and hell.

Swarming by the millions
And dying by the score,
Brother slaughtered brother
Until Chiang said,"No more!"
To Taiwan's craggy shores he fled,
He fortified it then
And left the Marxist mainland
In the hands of Mao's men.
The red tide swept the nation.
To militarily expand
And the cruelty of a massive force
Descended on the land.

Oh your heart should weep for China
The sensitivity and grace,
Is lost forever in the ******
To revolutionize this place.
The educated strangled,
The policemen didn't care,
And the little children running
With that red book in the air.
Oh your heart should weep for China
With her golden history torn
And her future in the sewer
Where the filthy vermin spawn.

The Chairman died without a God
Praise Allah, let it be.
And Jiang Qing, his willful wife,
Was jailed for treachery.
Deng Xiaoping rose from the dead
An elderly, wise man
Who galvanized the nations will
With a workable great plan.
Gradually, the people breathed,
The terror disappeared,
And hard repression from the top
Was nervously unfeared.
The cogs began to mesh again,
Commerce began to flow
The Red Brigade was over
And NEW CHINA was on show.

In recent years the old men
Still retain the reigns of power.
The Communistic system
Commands to this very hour.
But the rigid hand of commerce
Has loosened up a lot
And the capitalistic system
Allows profits to be got.
And the flow of information
Issues freely from the west
Influencing aspirations,
Putting systems to the test.
And the leaders know with certainty
That just around the bend,
There will be younger challengers
Who plan a different end.

The Olympics are in Beijing
In the coming August moon,
A showcase for the nations best
A demonstration soon
Of advancements that will show the world
Just how well that we have done
And that the hand of friendly comradeship
Is well and truly won.

But there is trouble in Tibet!
The saffron runs with blood.
The monks and soldiers trading blows
Are dying in the mud.
Agitation to be free
Is Tibet's distant call
And the rage of hot embarrassment
Demands the brutal fall
Of the troublemakers...Old men say

The saffron legions die.....

The howling Prayer flags scream their rage
To a lonely, cold, blue sky.





Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
1st April 2008
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
.only last year i learned that my grandmother had an abortion... shocked? maybe, my great-grandmother was a very religious woman... unfortunately... my grandfather's dementia implies that he's paranoid about admitting that he was a communist party member, and that, like all the school-children... cried... when the olive-skinned Georgian, the grand-master of subverting the Russians, died; oops?

why did i go to an Irish Catholic School?
in Seven Kings?
we had this, "debate", about abortions
aged 15 / 16... taking out religious
studies GCSEs...
                 and the point of that, was?
sorry... no...
       maybe that's why i prefer to frequent
brothels...
   no concerns over STDs (since the prostitutes
confide in me that they get
regular medical checks, and, can you,
believe it! i believe them)
and no concerns for imposing marriage
proposals via stealth impregnation...
  what i should have said was:
can we extend this ****** thing with
you wearing a full-bodied latex suit?
  i'm feeling kinda *****...
  but NO! oh NO!
        ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
i'm feeling, kinda *****...
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
maybe i was, once upon a time,
the sort of suitcase material for women,
compliant, ordinate, whatever the ****
that means...
        certain a household busy body...
guess what?!
   what?
         NOT, ANY, MORE!
          half starved alcoholic and a heavy
smoker, orientated around filling
a pixel fail-safe space of a blank...
       about as much a father-figure in me,
as in a ******* donkey....
but the donkey is not being the carrot,
it knows the the stick...
             and a stick is a better analogy
to a double edged sword:
it goes, along, the lines, of:
a stick has two ends,
you can hold a stick,
  and hit someone with it,
or the stick can be yanked out of your hands,
and you can be hit with it...
ah... isn't that so much more...
clarifying?
       a debate about abortion...
with a child aged 15 / 16?
   only an Irish Catholic school...
sorry... NO!
                  that isn't a baby,
that is a *****...
           it's a baby outside of a woman...
so what? when i ******* into
a tissue and flush it down the toilet,
i'm supposedly committing, genocide?
i must be, self-evidently by
your counter argument...
         what idiot is supposed to expect
a child, out of uni, aged 21,
with a bride aged 19...
and the best thing, coming to him,
is to work with his father,
  doing industrial scaled roofing?
with a bride... too proud to move in with
her in-laws for a while?!
what, sort, of, schmuck, does that?!
oh no... i've done my mea culpa bull-****!
i'm done!
       just because it's inside a woman's
body, doesn't make it anything
more than what it is, in my body!
savvy?!
         i'll play my loser card
simultaneously with my joker card...
the Catholic Church can eat ****...
moralizing while it gravitates
  to a castrato soprano faggoting some
choir boy!
   *******!
              moralize my ***
telling me that taking a **** is a sin!
so where am i supposed to put it?!
corpus christi! eat that!
   thus?
let's begin...
  it is immoral for teenagers, aged 15 through to 16,
to be exposed to the ethical discussion
surrounding abortion... PERIOD...
have your religious education...
  after all... i was the only idiot
who did four A-levels, most people only did 3...
17 / 18...
      extra-curriculum activity...
ethics... oddly enough:
the schooling establishment a bit dry...
when it comes to the euthanasia
"debate"...
   can't exactly argue with someone who's
more than willing,
to exact the penal code...
    euthanasia is a non-win argument
for the Catholics...
        
but abortion? sway-prone...
   if you tell me,
that,
  just because my ***** is now
the ownership of a woman,
and i can't *******...
   if you tell me:
that, whatever "that" is... is "life"?

let's put a cherry on the top of this
mode of thinking,
seriously, ethical debate concerning
abortion, using teenagers?
the ones easily cloned?
(told you, religion predates
the concept of cloning,
prior to the scientific discovery
of d.n.a.) -
  
  let's put a cherry on top,
of this... "cheesecake"...
   what was it...
              hmm...
              you know... when rage
implodes, and you don't punch
anything...
an angry young man's anger...
well... that's different...
  but allocating a basin for
the collection of Berserk, rage?
you know when you,
write semi-blind, semi-conscious?
in a dream-like "reality"?
when a bull sees red?

hmm...
why did i attend an Irish Catholic school?
pedophiles about to dictate
the rules of, ethics on my ***?!

entertain me...
   i understand the ethics of:
when the pregnancy is too late,
when the ***** has morphed into
looking akin to what a baby looks
like outside of a woman:
i.e. a ******* man...

   but while it's inside a woman...
it's attache...
             and if n early abortion
is deemed, infanticide....
**** me...
   i commit genocide almost every
day, and flush it down, the,
******* toilet!
Robert Ronnow Jan 2020
"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed by
          Better ones unite people in melting pots.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my sons, and my dogs will be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to
          Await my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. But we will do what we can and
          Some things we shouldn't because that is human.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."
www.ronnowpoetry.com

--Rothman, David, "Verse, Prose, Speech, Counting, and the Problem of Graphic Order," Versification, Vol. 1, No. 1, March 21, 1997
--Harris, Roy, The Origin of Writing, Open Court Publishing Co., 1986.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Poems about Leaves and Leave Taking (i.e., leaving friends and family, loss, death, parting, separation, divorce, etc.)


Leave Taking
by Michael R. Burch

Brilliant leaves abandon
battered limbs
to waltz upon ecstatic winds
until they die.

But the barren and embittered trees
lament the frolic of the leaves
and curse the bleak
November sky.

Now, as I watch the leaves'
high flight
before the fading autumn light,
I think that, perhaps, at last I may

have learned what it means to say
"goodbye."

Published by The Lyric, Mindful of Poetry, There is Something in the Autumn (anthology). Keywords/Tags: autumn, leaves, fall, falling, wind, barren, trees, goodbye, leaving, farewell, separation, age, aging, mortality, death, mrbepi, mrbleave

This poem started out as a stanza in a much longer poem, "Jessamyn's Song," which dates to around age 14 or 15, or perhaps a bit later. But I worked on the poem several times over the years until it was largely finished in 1978. I am sure of the completion date because that year the poem was included in my first large poetry submission manuscript for a chapbook contest.



Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, this poem has since been translated into Russian, Macedonian, Turkish, Arabic and Romanian.



Something

for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba

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.

Published by There is Something in the Autumn, The Eclectic Muse, Setu, FreeXpression, Life and Legends, Poetry Super Highway, Poet's Corner, Promosaik, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse. Also translated into Romanian by Petru Dimofte, into Turkish by Nurgül Yayman, turned into a YouTube video by Lillian Y. Wong, and used by the Windsor Jewish Community Centre during a candle-lighting ceremony



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron―
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful―
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.

Originally published by Measure



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...

Originally published by Hibiscus (India)



Less Heroic Couplets: ****** Most Fowl!
by Michael R. Burch

"****** most foul! "
cried the mouse to the owl.

"Friend, I'm no sinner;
you're merely my dinner! "
the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.

Published by Lighten Upand in Potcake Chapbook #7



escape!

for anaïs vionet

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.

Published by Andwerve and Bewildering Stories



Love Has a Southern Flavor

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle's spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume...

Love's Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations' dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree's
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight...

Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

Published by The Lyric, Contemporary Sonnet, The Eclectic Muse, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Setu (India) , Victorian Violet Press and Trinacria



Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch

There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were cannon shots’ soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise . . .
and then . . . annihilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were nights our hearts conceived
dawns’ indiscriminate sighs.
To dream was our consolation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood’s salt libations . . .

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.



The People Loved What They Had Loved Before
by Michael R. Burch

We did not worship at the shrine of tears;
we knew not to believe, not to confess.
And so, ahemming victors, to false cheers,
we wrote off love, we gave a stern address
to things that we disapproved of, things of yore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We did not build stone monuments to stand
six hundred years and grow more strong and arch
like bridges from the people to the Land
beyond their reach. Instead, we played a march,
pale Neros, sparking flames from door to door.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We could not pipe of cheer, or even woe.
We played a minor air of Ire (in E).
The sheep chose to ignore us, even though,
long destitute, we plied our songs for free.
We wrote, rewrote and warbled one same score.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

At last outlandish wailing, we confess,
ensued, because no listeners were left.
We built a shrine to tears: our goddess less
divine than man, and, like us, long bereft.
We stooped to love too late, too Learned to *****.
And the people loved what they had loved before.



Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem―where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.

There's something like love
in the rhythms of night
―in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end―
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.

So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
"If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!"
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.



Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.

Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.

There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.

The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.

They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science ...
after all, what is life?

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.



Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch

Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.

Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and―spent of flame―
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.

You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies―
imprisonment your sense denies.

You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None―winsome, bright or rare―
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.

But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew―
each moonless night the nettles grew

and strangled hope, where love dies too.

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



Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that "love" has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest; published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Mandrake Poetry Review, Carnelian, Poem Kingdom, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Famous Poets and Poems, FreeXpression, PW Review, Poetic Voices, Poetry Renewal and Poetry Life & Times



Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch

When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,

when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath...

tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?

Originally published as “Baring Pale Flesh” by Poetic License/Monumental Moments



At Tintagel
by Michael R. Burch

That night,
at Tintagel,
there was darkness such as man had never seen...
darkness and treachery,
and the unholy thundering of the sea...

In his arms,
who is to say how much she knew?
And if he whispered her name...
"Ygraine"
could she tell above the howling wind and rain?

Could she tell, or did she care,
by the length of his hair
or the heat of his flesh,...
that her faceless companion
was Uther, the dragon,

and Gorlois lay dead?

Originally published by Songs of Innocence, then subsequently by Celtic Twilight, Fables, Fickle Muses and Poetry Life & Times



Isolde's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation—all but one:
we felt the night's deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring's urgency, midsummer's heat, fall's lash,
wild winter's ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life's great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold
and you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels' tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight, then by Celtic Lifestyles and Auldwicce



Morgause's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Before he was my brother,
he was my lover,
though certainly not the best.

I found no joy
in that addled boy,
nor he at my breast.

Why him? Why him?
The years grow dim.
Now it's harder and harder to say...

Perhaps girls and boys
are the god's toys
when the skies are gray.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight as "The First Time"



Pellinore's Fancy
by Michael R. Burch

What do you do when your wife is a nag
and has sworn you to hunt neither fish, fowl, nor stag?
When the land is at peace, but at home you have none,
Is that, perchance, when... the Questing Beasts run?



The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Lancelot, my truest friend,
how time has thinned your ragged mane
and pinched your features; still you seem
though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged.

Your sword hand is, as ever, ready,
although the time for swords has passed.
Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady
meeting mine... you must not ask.

The time is not, nor ever shall be.
Merlyn's words were only words;
and now his last enchantment wanes,
and we must put aside our swords...



Northern Flight: Lancelot's Last Love Letter to Guinevere
by Michael R. Burch

"Get thee to a nunnery..."

Now that the days have lengthened, I assume
the shadows also lengthen where you pause
to watch the sun and comprehend its laws,
or just to shiver in the deepening gloom.

But nothing in your antiquarian eyes
nor anything beyond your failing vision
repeals the night. Religion's circumcision
has left us worlds apart, but who's more wise?

I think I know you better now than then—
and love you all the more, because you are
... so distant. I can love you from afar,
forgiving your flight north, far from brute men,
because your fear's well-founded: God, forbid,
was bound to fail you here, as mortals did.

Originally published by Rotary Dial



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Truces
by Michael R. Burch

We must sometimes wonder if all the fighting related to King Arthur and his knights was really necessary. In particular, it seems that Lancelot fought and either captured or killed a fairly large percentage of the population of England. Could it be that Arthur preferred to fight than stay at home and do domestic chores? And, honestly now, if he and his knights were such incredible warriors, who would have been silly enough to do battle with them? Wygar was the name of Arthur's hauberk, or armored tunic, which was supposedly fashioned by one Witege or Widia, quite possibly the son of Wayland Smith. The legends suggest that Excalibur was forged upon the anvil of the smith-god Wayland, who was also known as Volund, which sounds suspiciously like Vulcan...

Artur took Cabal, his hound,
and Carwennan, his knife,
    and his sword forged by Wayland
    and Merlyn, his falcon,
and, saying goodbye to his sons and his wife,
he strode to the Table Rounde.

"Here is my spear, Rhongomyniad,
and here is Wygar that I wear,
    and ready for war,
    an oath I foreswore
to fight for all that is righteous and fair
from Wales to the towers of Gilead."

But none could be found to contest him,
for Lancelot had slewn them, forsooth,
so he hastened back home, for to rest him,
till his wife bade him, "Thatch up the roof! "

Originally published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, then by Celtic Twilight



Midsummer-Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term "banshee") and, eventually, to the druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgause and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil's
fen...

if nevermore again.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



The Kiss of Ceridwen
by Michael R. Burch

The kiss of Ceridwen
I have felt upon my brow,
and the past and the future
have appeared, as though a vapor,
mingling with the here and now.

And Morrigan, the Raven,
the messenger, has come,
to tell me that the gods, unsung,
will not last long
when the druids' harps grow dumb.



Merlyn, on His Birth
by Michael R. Burch

Legend has it that Zephyr was an ancestor of Merlin. In this poem, I suggest that Merlin was an albino, which might have led to claims that he had no father, due to radical physical differences between father and son. This would have also added to his appearance as a mystical figure. The reference to Ursa Major, the bear, ties the birth of Merlin to the future birth of Arthur, whose Welsh name ("Artos" or "Artur") means "bear." Morydd is another possible ancestor of Merlin's. In Welsh names "dd" is pronounced "th."

I was born in Gwynedd,
or not born, as some men claim,
and the Zephyr of Caer Myrrdin
gave me my name.

My father was Madog Morfeyn
but our eyes were never the same,
nor our skin, nor our hair;
for his were dark, dark
—as our people's are—
and mine were fairer than fair.

The night of my birth, the Zephyr
carved of white stone a rune;
and the ringed stars of Ursa Major
outshone the cool pale moon;
and my grandfather, Morydd, the seer
saw wheeling, a-gyre in the sky,
a falcon with terrible yellow-gold eyes
when falcons never fly.



Merlyn's First Prophecy
by Michael R. Burch

Vortigern commanded a tower to be built upon Snowden,
but the earth would churn and within an hour its walls would cave in.

Then his druid said only the virginal blood of a fatherless son,
recently shed, would ever hold the foundation.

"There is, in Caer Myrrdin, a faery lad, a son with no father;
his name is Merlyn, and with his blood you would have your tower."

So Vortigern had them bring the boy, the child of the demon,
and, taciturn and without joy, looked out over Snowden.

"To **** a child brings little praise, but many tears."
Then the mountain slopes rang with the brays of Merlyn's jeers.

"Pure poppycock! You fumble and bumble and heed a fool.
At the base of the rock the foundations crumble into a pool! "

When they drained the pool, two dragons arose, one white and one red,
and since the old druid was blowing his nose, young Merlyn said:

"Vortigern is the white, Ambrosius the red; now, watch, indeed."
Then the former died as the latter fed and Vortigern peed.

Published by Celtic Twilight



It Is Not the Sword!
by Michael R. Burch

This poem illustrates the strong correlation between the names that appear in Welsh and Irish mythology. Much of this lore predates the Arthurian legends, and was assimilated as Arthur's fame (and hyperbole)grew. Caladbolg is the name of a mythical Irish sword, while Caladvwlch is its Welsh equivalent. Caliburn and Excalibur are later variants.

"It is not the sword,
but the man, "
said Merlyn.
But the people demanded a sign—
the sword of Macsen Wledig,
Caladbolg, the "lightning-shard."

"It is not the sword,
but the words men follow."
Still, he set it in the stone
—Caladvwlch, the sword of kings—
and many a man did strive, and swore,
and many a man did moan.

But none could budge it from the stone.

"It is not the sword
or the strength, "
said Merlyn,
"that makes a man a king,
but the truth and the conviction
that ring in his iron word."

"It is NOT the sword! "
cried Merlyn,
crowd-jostled, marveling
as Arthur drew forth Caliburn
with never a gasp,
with never a word,

and so became their king.



Uther's Last Battle
by Michael R. Burch

When Uther, the High King,
unable to walk, borne upon a litter
went to fight Colgrim, the Saxon King,
his legs were weak, and his visage bitter.
"Where is Merlyn, the sage?
For today I truly feel my age."

All day long the battle raged
and the dragon banner was sorely pressed,
but the courage of Uther never waned
till the sun hung low upon the west.
"Oh, where is Merlyn to speak my doom,
for truly I feel the chill of the tomb."

Then, with the battle almost lost
and the king besieged on every side,
a prince appeared, clad all in white,
and threw himself against the tide.
"Oh, where is Merlyn, who stole my son?
For, truly, now my life is done."

Then Merlyn came unto the king
as the Saxons fled before a sword
that flashed like lightning in the hand
of a prince that day become a lord.
"Oh, Merlyn, speak not, for I see
my son has truly come to me.

And today I need no prophecy
to see how bright his days will be."
So Uther, then, the valiant king
met his son, and kissed him twice—
the one, the first, the one, the last—
and smiled, and then his time was past.



Small Tales
by Michael R. Burch

According to legend, Arthur and Kay grew up together in Ector's court, Kay being a few years older than Arthur. Borrowing from Mary Stewart, I am assuming that Bedwyr (later Anglicized to Bedivere)might have befriended Arthur at an early age. By some accounts, Bedwyr was the original Lancelot. In any case, imagine the adventures these young heroes might have pursued (or dreamed up, to excuse tardiness or "lost" homework assignments). Manawydan and Llyr were ancient Welsh gods. Cath Pulag was a monstrous, clawing cat. ("Sorry teach! My theme paper on Homer was torn up by a cat bigger than a dragon! And meaner, too! ")Pen Palach is more or less a mystery, or perhaps just another old drinking buddy with a few good beery-bleary tales of his own. This poem assumes that many of the more outlandish Arthurian legends began more or less as "small tales, " little white lies which simply got larger and larger with each retelling. It also assumes that most of these tales came about just as the lads reached that age when boys fancy themselves men, and spend most of their free time drinking and puking...

When Artur and Cai and Bedwyr
were but scrawny lads
they had many a ***** adventure
in the still glades
of Gwynedd.
When the sun beat down like an oven
upon the kiln-hot hills
and the scorched shores of Carmarthen,
they went searching
and found Manawydan, the son of Llyr.
They fought a day and a night
with Cath Pulag (or a screeching kitten),
rousted Pen Palach, then drank a beer
and told quite a talltale or two,
till thems wasn't so shore which'un's tails wus true.

And these have been passed down to me, and to you.



The Song of Amergin
by Michael R. Burch

Amergin is, in the words of Morgan Llywelyn, "the oldest known western European poet." Robert Graves said: "English poetic education should, really, begin not with The Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin." Amergin was one of the Milesians, or sons of Mil: Gaels who invaded Ireland and defeated the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, thereby establishing a Celtic beachhead, not only on the shores of the Emerald Isle, but also in the annals of Time and Poetry.

He was our first bard
and we feel in his dim-remembered words
the moment when Time blurs...

and he and the Sons of Mil
heave oars as the breakers mill
till at last Ierne—green, brooding—nears,

while Some implore seas cold, fell, dark
to climb and swamp their flimsy bark
... and Time here also spumes, careers...

while the Ban Shee shriek in awed dismay
to see him still the sea, this day,
then seek the dolmen and the gloam.



Stonehenge
by Michael R. Burch

Here where the wind imbues life within stone,
I once stood
and watched as the tempest made monuments groan
as though blood
boiled within them.

Here where the Druids stood charting the stars
I can tell
they longed for the heavens... perhaps because
hell
boiled beneath them?



The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse
by Michael R. Burch

"I actually visited the island and walked across those mass graves of 30, 000 Irish men, women and children, and I played a little tune on me whistle. I found it very peaceful, and there was relief there." - Paddy Maloney of The Chieftans

There was relief there,
and release,
on Île Grosse
in the spreading gorse
and the cry of the wild geese...

There was relief there,
without remorse
when the tin whistle lifted its voice
in a tune of artless grief,
piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth.
And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief,
but of their faith and belief—
like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf.

When ravenous famine set all her demons loose,
driving men to the seas like lemmings,
they sought here the clemency of a better life, or death,
and their belief in God gave them hope, a sense of peace.

These were proud men with only their lives to owe,
who sought the liberation of a strange new land.
Now they lie here, ragged row on ragged row,
with only the shadows of their loved ones close at hand.

And each cross, their ancient burden and their glory,
reflects the death of sunlight on their story.

And their tale is sad—but, O, their faith was grand!



At Cædmon's Grave
by Michael R. Burch

"Cædmon's Hymn, " composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon's verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker's ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.

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

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—

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

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



faith(less), a coronavirus poem
by Michael R. Burch

Those who believed
and Those who misled
lie together at last
in the same narrow bed

and if god loved Them more
for Their strange lack of doubt,
he kept it well hidden
till he snuffed Them out.



Habeas Corpus
by Michael R. Burch

from “Songs of the Antinatalist”

I have the results of your DNA analysis.
If you want to have children, this may induce paralysis.
I wish I had good news, but how can I lie?
Any offspring you have are guaranteed to die.
It wouldn’t be fair—I’m sure you’ll agree—
to sentence kids to death, so I’ll waive my fee.



Villanelle: Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-******.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-******,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-******,
we first proved we had lives of our own).



Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.



Haunted
by Michael R. Burch

Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.

Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.

Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.

Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.

Published by Romantics Quarterly



Have I been too long at the fair?
by Michael R. Burch

Have I been too long at the fair?
The summer has faded,
the leaves have turned brown;
the Ferris wheel teeters ...
not up, yet not down.
Have I been too long at the fair?

This is one of my earliest poems, written around age 14-15 when we were living with my grandfather in his house on Chilton Street, within walking distance of the Nashville fairgrounds. I remember walking to the fairgrounds, stopping at a Dairy Queen along the way, and swimming at a public pool. But I believe the Ferris wheel only operated during the state fair. So my “educated guess” is that this poem was written during the 1973 state fair, or shortly thereafter. I remember watching people hanging suspended in mid-air, waiting for carnies to deposit them safely on terra firma again.



Insurrection
by Michael R. Burch

She has become as the night—listening
for rumors of dawn—while the dew, glistening,
reminds me of her, and the wind, whistling,
lashes my cheeks with its soft chastening.

She has become as the lights—flickering
in the distance—till memories old and troubling
rise up again and demand remembering ...
like peasants rebelling against a mad king.

Originally published by The Chained Muse



Success
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

We need our children to keep us humble
between toast and marmalade;

there is no time for a ticker-tape parade
before bed, no award, no bright statuette

to be delivered for mending skinned knees,
no wild bursts of approval for shoveling snow.

A kiss is the only approval they show;
to leave us―the first great success they achieve.



Sappho's Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call,
while the pale calla lilies lie
listening,
glistening . . .
this is their night, the first night of fall.

Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone . . .
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.

Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I’m alone . . .
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.

NOTE: The calla lily symbolizes beauty, purity, innocence, faithfulness and true devotion. According to Greek mythology, when the Milky Way was formed by the goddess Hera’s breast milk, the drops that fell to earth became calla lilies.



Piercing the Shell
by Michael R. Burch

If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we’ll discover what the heart is for.



Premonition
by Michael R. Burch

Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their forced laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...

and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...

and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.

And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
to be wiped clean, like slate, by the Eraser, Fate,
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...

You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking sagely above ...

Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.

I vividly remember writing this poem after an office party the year I co-oped with AT&T (at that time the largest company in the world, with presumably a lot of office parties). This would have been after my sophomore year in college, making me around 20 years old. The poem is “true” except that I was not the host because the party was at the house of one of the upper-level managers. Nor was I dating anyone seriously at the time. Keywords/Tags: premonition, office, party, parting, eve, evening, stranger, strangers, wine, laughter, moon, shadows



Survivors
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9/11 and their families

In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:

a shiver of “empathy.”

We too are “survivors,”
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death

like a turtle retracting its neck.



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who
was born on September 11, 2001 and who
died at age nine, shot to death ...

Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm ― I hope you hear it.

Much love I bring ― I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.

Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the evil things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.

And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.

Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short ... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here ...

I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bring them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.



The Locker
by Michael R. Burch

All the dull hollow clamor has died
and what was contained,
removed,

reproved
adulation or sentiment,
left with the pungent darkness

as remembered as the sudden light.



Tremble
by Michael R. Burch

Her predatory eye,
the single feral iris,
scans.

Her raptor beak,
all jagged sharp-edged ******,
juts.

Her hard talon,
clenched in pinched expectation,
waits.

Her clipped wings,
preened against reality,
tremble.



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue―
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise―
adagio, the music she now hears;
and we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars’ bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.



Komm, Du ("Come, You")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Precipice
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

They will teach you to scoff at love
from the highest, windiest precipice of reason.

Do not believe them.

There is no place safe for you to fall
save into the arms of love.
save into the arms of love.



Love’s Extreme Unction
by Michael R. Burch

Lines composed during Jeremy’s first Nashville Christian football game (he played tuba), while I watched Beth watch him.

Within the intimate chapels of her eyes—
devotions, meditations, reverence.
I find in them Love’s very residence
and hearing the ardent rapture of her sighs
I prophesy beatitudes to come,
when Love like hers commands us, “All be One!”



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar

Published as the collection "Leave Taking"
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
i can't even appreciate my own, it's like it's supposed to
be a lost finger, because upon reading poetry by women
i slide into young-adult delusional
associations with my own; it's women's poetry that's potent,
i know the giants homer and virgil made the narrative epic,
but i mean the snappiness, the snappy poetry of intelligence
that's like a dropped handkerchief picked up by a dog-collared
crow of sabbath with foolery, to escape the trade of alms
and last rites, that horrid trade of the briefest farewell
and all that coffin in autobiography: coffins for coffers;
rarely a poem about the liver or the pancreas, it's all from
the heart, but as honesty goes - i said it once already -
if all my poetry came from the heart - i couldn't -
it either comes from the liver or from my ****.
i guess that's how we'll survive, with the cleopatras and
catherines of this world, singing them lullabies
of our misappropriated "endowment." but what's eerie
about today is that the house is empty, a funeral is taking place,
a plumber has died... a plumber...  talk of 40 a day, beer
and dead before 60.
wife, tick.
children, tick.
grandchildren, tick.
but i can't understand this depth of things: the jews move eloquently
from border to border, picking up language after
language without really accenting the acquired tongue, as i did too,
but i don't understand why i would have to be seduced by
the accusation that i don't belong here, that i'm being too
audacious, too prickly and not funny - or why,
before all the troubles started the muslim preachers on edgware road
thought that i was german trying to convert me -
i don't know anymore, maybe i am, after all father said that
his grandfather had a wehrmacht dagger hidden in the cellar,
so the ageing is a bit perfect to dot dot dot the pieces together.
but what i mean is: well, after living here since one can remember,
but having the burden of acquiring a mother tongue
i sometimes feel like i'm in no man's land, i can't drop the mother
tongue, i'm using the acquired tongue more than the mother tongue
cognitively, but i read philosophy in the mother tongue
because i can't read philosophy in this acquired tongue;
i guess that's due to the overstrain done by darwinism in the english
tongue, i mean, there's a lot of good philosophy to
be read, but in english it's too much of a darwinistic
revocation - it's not like you could read sartre
talking about voyeurism through the keyhole
without imagining yourself a monkey,
it's the whole imagining the origin,
it's the whole: image - monkey - phonetic content - ooh ooh ooh.
it predates accounts of history, this whole take
from darwinism; i face the fact that darwinism
eroded much of history, it's like groundhog day,
that's why the media are so pulverising, so concentrated,
so seemingly omnipresent, 24h... the whole of
human history stopped! it's because when
humanity started to record **** happening
using phonetic symbols rather than pictures of antelopes
in caves, it started to record history,
but darwinism kinda erased that... so what's the
news now? oh right, skeletons, lookalike skeletons.
this isn't an argument against darwinism using theology,
just look at history, it stopped, we're living
in a 24h pre-recording awaiting various paranoias.
Hal Loyd Denton Sep 2013
The setting was between Oconee and Ramsey my uncle Oroville Denton is an ordained minister
With the United Pentecostal Church he was putting on a brush arbor reenactment our church
Has what is called a testimony service where anyone can stand a tell of anything special that
God has done for you they have someone to lead the service and this was what I was doing but
The PA system was acting up while I was talking my voice was being bounced back where I
Could hear it that was where I was wonder struck I was talking normal but that wasn’t what I
Was Hearing there was spirit covering my words they make a lot of the Holy Grail as they
Should As a Relic of antiquity and it connection with Christ but it is still just a lifeless object but
Hear the Living God was speaking I felt this utter sensation of vibrant electrifying tenderness
Bathed in Unfathomable love a richness of texture that was profound the very distillation of the
Sublime mixed with human thought and expression it was warm endearing and it entered the
Soul as food ultimately different than what I experienced before except when I listened to the
Pastor in Monterey California he spoke and this sensation occurred within the spirit the same as
When you consume natural food this in the simple act of talking about the goodness of God the
World was set at a variance what was simple was astonishing the world of the unseen was
Becoming visible at least in speech anyway it was charged with supernatural renowned
Offerings that took you to levels not otherwise found inexplicable taste unbound knowing was
Fixed you were truly speaking God speak a well filled with knowing fulfillment thrilling
Spell bounding gifts sought and found by the ancients provided to common man illustrious
Clean and gleaming secrets the foretelling of dreams that begin in Heaven and then stream into
Human life truly before banners unfurled Holy and grand fortune awaits he who listens bends
His will to the flourishing uncommon vistas the predates earth and all that it is or ever will be
You are tied to immortal strands the quests of earths wisest who fail because they depend on
Only self as the one who holds the only possible answers when towers of attributable power
Stand without perplexity to the lowest searcher all is revealed it is all at the desecration of the
Giver not by might or power but by humility of need this world is bridged to the next we are
Endowed with all that is needed to secure Heaven for those that will obey truth and it just
Cause in the earth
SE Reimer Dec 2014
~

the stores here are crowded,
and everywhere i see
the signs of the season
selling Christmas to me;
the lights, sights and sounds,
flashing colors abound;
on every channel the music,
their ads and their movies.
on every corner selling trees,
their seasonal drinks
to quell the freeze.
we'd not know it’s Christmas
without them telling us so...
at least that's what it seems.
and even that word,
they've seemed to steal,
taking Christ out of Christmas
so their wares they can sell.
it's enough to lose my place
to choke on my song
the words stuck in my throat
it’s all gone so wrong.

so, their “X” i hoped to replace
and in my haste to remand
i made my demand,
“take the ’X’ off of Xmas,”
i shouted;
“put Christ back, in His place!”
but my kneee-**** reaction
mixed with failure to search then
made me blind to the facts
so instead i besmirched them.

then a truth i discovered,
just yesterday,
and now that i know,
i'm embracing the "X"
as should every good Christian.
for it was the "X"
those Greeks knew best;
it carried the "chi",
putting the ”X” there in Christ;
it went something like this- Χριστός.
and the marauding i’ve fought,
the hijacking i thought,
it was never taken;
it was never gone, at all,
it’s been there all along.
so i’ll admit i’ve been wrong.
for “X” marks the spot,
an intersection of sorts,
where the sacred meets the profane,
a collision of Able and Cain.
and just as Christ born to man
and new life He began,
with my faith now restored,
i can return to my song
and sing of Christmas,
the Christ child,
and Xmas
again!  

~


post script.
with inspiration from the following at Dictionary.com.:


Here’s a holiday surprise that only the dictionary can provide. Do you find the word “Xmas,” as an abbreviation for Christmas, offensive? Many people do.

You won’t find Xmas in church songbooks or even on many greeting cards. Xmas is popularly associated with a trend towards materialism, and sometimes the target of people who decry the emergence of general “holiday” observance instead of particular cultural and religious ritual.

But the history of the word “Xmas” is actually more respectable — and fascinating — than you might suspect. First of all, the abbreviation predates by centuries its use in gaudy advertisements. It was first used in the mid 1500s. X is the Greek letter “chi,” the initial letter in the word Χριστός. And here’s the kicker: Χριστός means “Christ.” X has been an acceptable representation of the word “Christ” for hundreds of years. This device is known as a Christogram. The mas in Xmas is the Old English word for “mass.”  (The thought-provoking etymology of “mass” can be found here.) In the same vein, the dignified terms Xpian and Xtian have been used in place of the word “Christian.”

*As lovers of the alphabet, we are transfixed by the flexibility of “X.” The same letter can represent the sacred and the profane (“rated X”).
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Isolde’s Song
by Michael R. Burch

Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation—all but one:
we felt the night’s deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring’s urgency, midsummer’s heat, fall’s lash,
wild winter’s ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life’s great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold
and you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.

According to legend, Isolde/Iseult/Yseult and Tristram/Tristan were lovers who died, were buried close to each other, then reunited in the form of plants growing out of their graves. A rose emerged from Isolde's grave, a vine or briar from Tristram's, then the two became one. Tristram was the Celtic Orpheus, a minstrel whose songs set women and even nature a-flutter.

Originally published by The Raintown Review and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Keywords/Tags: Tristram, Tristan, Isolde, Iseult, Yseult, Arthurian, legend, myth, romance, Ireland, Cornwall, King Mark, love potion, spell, charm, magic, adultery, harp, minstrel, troubadour, white sails, white hands, betrayal, death, grave, briar, bramble, branches, rose, hazel, honeysuckle, intertwined



These Arthurian poems by Michael R. Burch are based on mysterious ancient Celtic myths that predate by centuries the Christianized legends most readers are familiar with.



At Tintagel
by Michael R. Burch

That night,
at Tintagel,
there was darkness such as man had never seen...
darkness and treachery,
and the unholy thundering of the sea...

In his arms,
who is to say how much she knew?
And if he whispered her name...
"Ygraine"
could she tell above the howling wind and rain?

Could she tell, or did she care,
by the length of his hair
or the heat of his flesh,...
that her faceless companion
was Uther, the dragon,

and Gorlois lay dead?

Originally published by Songs of Innocence, then subsequently by Celtic Twilight, Fables, Fickle Muses and Poetry Life & Times



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels' tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight, then by Celtic Lifestyles and Auldwicce



Morgause's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Before he was my brother,
he was my lover,
though certainly not the best.

I found no joy
in that addled boy,
nor he at my breast.

Why him? Why him?
The years grow dim.
Now it's harder and harder to say...

Perhaps girls and boys
are the god's toys
when the skies are gray.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight as "The First Time"



Pellinore's Fancy
by Michael R. Burch

What do you do when your wife is a nag
and has sworn you to hunt neither fish, fowl, nor stag?
When the land is at peace, but at home you have none,
Is that, perchance, when... the Questing Beasts run?



The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Lancelot, my truest friend,
how time has thinned your ragged mane
and pinched your features; still you seem
though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged.

Your sword hand is, as ever, ready,
although the time for swords has passed.
Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady
meeting mine... you must not ask.

The time is not, nor ever shall be.
Merlyn's words were only words;
and now his last enchantment wanes,
and we must put aside our swords...



Northern Flight: Lancelot's Last Love Letter to Guinevere
by Michael R. Burch

"Get thee to a nunnery..."

Now that the days have lengthened, I assume
the shadows also lengthen where you pause
to watch the sun and comprehend its laws,
or just to shiver in the deepening gloom.

But nothing in your antiquarian eyes
nor anything beyond your failing vision
repeals the night. Religion's circumcision
has left us worlds apart, but who's more wise?

I think I know you better now than then—
and love you all the more, because you are
... so distant. I can love you from afar,
forgiving your flight north, far from brute men,
because your fear's well-founded: God, forbid,
was bound to fail you here, as mortals did.

Originally published by Rotary Dial



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Truces
by Michael R. Burch

We must sometimes wonder if all the fighting related to King Arthur and his knights was really necessary. In particular, it seems that Lancelot fought and either captured or killed a fairly large percentage of the population of England. Could it be that Arthur preferred to fight than stay at home and do domestic chores? And, honestly now, if he and his knights were such incredible warriors, who would have been silly enough to do battle with them? Wygar was the name of Arthur's hauberk, or armored tunic, which was supposedly fashioned by one Witege or Widia, quite possibly the son of Wayland Smith. The legends suggest that Excalibur was forged upon the anvil of the smith-god Wayland, who was also known as Volund, which sounds suspiciously like Vulcan...

Artur took Cabal, his hound,
and Carwennan, his knife,
     and his sword forged by Wayland
     and Merlyn, his falcon,
and, saying goodbye to his sons and his wife,
he strode to the Table Rounde.

"Here is my spear, Rhongomyniad,
and here is Wygar that I wear,
     and ready for war,
     an oath I foreswore
to fight for all that is righteous and fair
from Wales to the towers of Gilead."

But none could be found to contest him,
for Lancelot had slewn them, forsooth,
so he hastened back home, for to rest him,
till his wife bade him, "Thatch up the roof! "

Originally published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, then by Celtic Twilight



Midsummer-Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term "banshee") and, eventually, to the druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgause and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil's
fen...

if nevermore again.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



The Kiss of Ceridwen
by Michael R. Burch

The kiss of Ceridwen
I have felt upon my brow,
and the past and the future
have appeared, as though a vapor,
mingling with the here and now.

And Morrigan, the Raven,
the messenger, has come,
to tell me that the gods, unsung,
will not last long
when the druids' harps grow dumb.



Merlyn, on His Birth
by Michael R. Burch

Legend has it that Zephyr was an ancestor of Merlin. In this poem, I suggest that Merlin was an albino, which might have led to claims that he had no father, due to radical physical differences between father and son. This would have also added to his appearance as a mystical figure. The reference to Ursa Major, the bear, ties the birth of Merlin to the future birth of Arthur, whose Welsh name ("Artos" or "Artur") means "bear." Morydd is another possible ancestor of Merlin's. In Welsh names "dd" is pronounced "th."

I was born in Gwynedd,
or not born, as some men claim,
and the Zephyr of Caer Myrrdin
gave me my name.

My father was Madog Morfeyn
but our eyes were never the same,
nor our skin, nor our hair;
for his were dark, dark
—as our people's are—
and mine were fairer than fair.

The night of my birth, the Zephyr
carved of white stone a rune;
and the ringed stars of Ursa Major
outshone the cool pale moon;
and my grandfather, Morydd, the seer
saw wheeling, a-gyre in the sky,
a falcon with terrible yellow-gold eyes
when falcons never fly.



Merlyn's First Prophecy
by Michael R. Burch

Vortigern commanded a tower to be built upon Snowden,
but the earth would churn and within an hour its walls would cave in.

Then his druid said only the virginal blood of a fatherless son,
recently shed, would ever hold the foundation.

"There is, in Caer Myrrdin, a faery lad, a son with no father;
his name is Merlyn, and with his blood you would have your tower."

So Vortigern had them bring the boy, the child of the demon,
and, taciturn and without joy, looked out over Snowden.

"To **** a child brings little praise, but many tears."
Then the mountain slopes rang with the brays of Merlyn's jeers.

"Pure poppycock! You fumble and bumble and heed a fool.
At the base of the rock the foundations crumble into a pool! "

When they drained the pool, two dragons arose, one white and one red,
and since the old druid was blowing his nose, young Merlyn said:

"Vortigern is the white, Ambrosius the red; now, watch, indeed."
Then the former died as the latter fed and Vortigern peed.

Published by Celtic Twilight



It Is Not the Sword!
by Michael R. Burch

This poem illustrates the strong correlation between the names that appear in Welsh and Irish mythology. Much of this lore predates the Arthurian legends, and was assimilated as Arthur's fame (and hyperbole)grew. Caladbolg is the name of a mythical Irish sword, while Caladvwlch is its Welsh equivalent. Caliburn and Excalibur are later variants.

"It is not the sword,
but the man, "
said Merlyn.
But the people demanded a sign—
the sword of Macsen Wledig,
Caladbolg, the "lightning-shard."

"It is not the sword,
but the words men follow."
Still, he set it in the stone
—Caladvwlch, the sword of kings—
and many a man did strive, and swore,
and many a man did moan.

But none could budge it from the stone.

"It is not the sword
or the strength, "
said Merlyn,
"that makes a man a king,
but the truth and the conviction
that ring in his iron word."

"It is NOT the sword! "
cried Merlyn,
crowd-jostled, marveling
as Arthur drew forth Caliburn
with never a gasp,
with never a word,

and so became their king.



Uther's Last Battle
by Michael R. Burch

When Uther, the High King,
unable to walk, borne upon a litter
went to fight Colgrim, the Saxon King,
his legs were weak, and his visage bitter.
"Where is Merlyn, the sage?
For today I truly feel my age."

All day long the battle raged
and the dragon banner was sorely pressed,
but the courage of Uther never waned
till the sun hung low upon the west.
"Oh, where is Merlyn to speak my doom,
for truly I feel the chill of the tomb."

Then, with the battle almost lost
and the king besieged on every side,
a prince appeared, clad all in white,
and threw himself against the tide.
"Oh, where is Merlyn, who stole my son?
For, truly, now my life is done."

Then Merlyn came unto the king
as the Saxons fled before a sword
that flashed like lightning in the hand
of a prince that day become a lord.
"Oh, Merlyn, speak not, for I see
my son has truly come to me.

And today I need no prophecy
to see how bright his days will be."
So Uther, then, the valiant king
met his son, and kissed him twice—
the one, the first, the one, the last—
and smiled, and then his time was past.



Small Tales
by Michael R. Burch

According to legend, Arthur and Kay grew up together in Ector's court, Kay being a few years older than Arthur. Borrowing from Mary Stewart, I am assuming that Bedwyr (later Anglicized to Bedivere)might have befriended Arthur at an early age. By some accounts, Bedwyr was the original Lancelot. In any case, imagine the adventures these young heroes might have pursued (or dreamed up, to excuse tardiness or "lost" homework assignments). Manawydan and Llyr were ancient Welsh gods. Cath Pulag was a monstrous, clawing cat. ("Sorry teach! My theme paper on Homer was torn up by a cat bigger than a dragon! And meaner, too! ")Pen Palach is more or less a mystery, or perhaps just another old drinking buddy with a few good beery-bleary tales of his own. This poem assumes that many of the more outlandish Arthurian legends began more or less as "small tales, " little white lies which simply got larger and larger with each retelling. It also assumes that most of these tales came about just as the lads reached that age when boys fancy themselves men, and spend most of their free time drinking and puking...

When Artur and Cai and Bedwyr
were but scrawny lads
they had many a ***** adventure
in the still glades
of Gwynedd.
When the sun beat down like an oven
upon the kiln-hot hills
and the scorched shores of Carmarthen,
they went searching
and found Manawydan, the son of Llyr.
They fought a day and a night
with Cath Pulag (or a screeching kitten),
rousted Pen Palach, then drank a beer
and told quite a talltale or two,
till thems wasn't so shore which'un's tails wus true.

And these have been passed down to me, and to you.



The Song of Amergin
by Michael R. Burch

Amergin is, in the words of Morgan Llywelyn, "the oldest known western European poet." Robert Graves said: "English poetic education should, really, begin not with The Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin." Amergin was one of the Milesians, or sons of Mil: Gaels who invaded Ireland and defeated the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, thereby establishing a Celtic beachhead, not only on the shores of the Emerald Isle, but also in the annals of Time and Poetry.

He was our first bard
and we feel in his dim-remembered words
the moment when Time blurs...

and he and the Sons of Mil
heave oars as the breakers mill
till at last Ierne—green, brooding—nears,

while Some implore seas cold, fell, dark
to climb and swamp their flimsy bark
... and Time here also spumes, careers...

while the Ban Shee shriek in awed dismay
to see him still the sea, this day,
then seek the dolmen and the gloam.



Stonehenge
by Michael R. Burch

Here where the wind imbues life within stone,
I once stood
and watched as the tempest made monuments groan
as though blood
boiled within them.

Here where the Druids stood charting the stars
I can tell
they longed for the heavens... perhaps because
hell
boiled beneath them?



The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse
by Michael R. Burch

"I actually visited the island and walked across those mass graves of 30, 000 Irish men, women and children, and I played a little tune on me whistle. I found it very peaceful, and there was relief there." - Paddy Maloney of The Chieftans

There was relief there,
and release,
on Île Grosse
in the spreading gorse
and the cry of the wild geese...

There was relief there,
without remorse
when the tin whistle lifted its voice
in a tune of artless grief,
piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth.
And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief,
but of their faith and belief—
like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf.

When ravenous famine set all her demons loose,
driving men to the seas like lemmings,
they sought here the clemency of a better life, or death,
and their belief in God gave them hope, a sense of peace.

These were proud men with only their lives to owe,
who sought the liberation of a strange new land.
Now they lie here, ragged row on ragged row,
with only the shadows of their loved ones close at hand.

And each cross, their ancient burden and their glory,
reflects the death of sunlight on their story.

And their tale is sad—but, O, their faith was grand!



At Cædmon's Grave
by Michael R. Burch

"Cædmon's Hymn, " composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon's verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker's ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.

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

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—

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

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by The Lyric
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
a note before i end the pending poem.

i know i'm not writing anything "in the groove"
or whatever urban tonguing i should use to invent
the new form of glue: to stick with the trends.
                    when people read candyfloss
literature i read lead literature,
  that's how it goes, i find too many poets
angry shouting down other people's throats,
i find them in positions where they think
they empower people: but rarely do.
   i write for the sole purpose of a demographic,
a democracy of sorts, i never want to hear
my voice regurgitated back at me,
i find it prickly, apart from the half-digested content
i am actually opposing being fed it...
  i can't explain why i don't entertain,
write one poem every two years either, apart from
the fact that: well, writing a poem and then
performing it? performance doesn't really do much
for what's an ongoing voyage, performance to
the art is like a Moby **** moment:
   you get to tell the adventure of a shipwreck,
rather than the proof that the earth is not flat.
the additional benefit, you get to see how your
thinking interacts with symbols, and how these symbols
will never betray the tongue that doesn't speak them...
   you get to do x-ray upon x-ray and find that
stuff like this: is actually equivalent to a bone in your
tongue. as with the moment: when artists are quoted
as having said: words are meaningless...
     i guess there comes a time when, with that said:
punching someone dead means more.
   oh this pithy sentiments that only empower politicians
and the media... i might have said
    a baby's gluttonous gaga drool and you'd be like:
yay! happy days upon us!
                      when poetry isn't performed it continues
into the nether region of thoughts: it's not jeopardy
of suddenly fizzling out into a state of a stale champagne
bottle... the residual power is confiscates from speaking
it retains a close proximity of actually writing it,
on the basis that it becomes prolonged, and more concentrated,
it cannot be allowed to diffuse into the open,
into a crowd, for a democratic hurrah on we go.
  i wanted to simply see poetry as an optical exploration,
rather than a vocal necessity of the art,
      philosophy was clogged up in too many truths
and untruths, and basically too many paragraphs,
   i wanted to make frank the medium that abhors paragraphs,
and by the looks of it: punctuation marks.
well, it's all about pedantry to be honest,
               but then i never desired the urban lingua
of keeping with the zeitgeist... i see how keeping up
with the times is enshrined with materialism and how
fickle it all eventually becomes... you can never reach
a status of cool reaching for the obscure,
but that's what all attempts at fame end up being:
a quiz show, trivia, obscure knowledge, 0 points
means the best points available, and after that, the realisation
that all is empty, and that attempts at fame
become questions in a quiz show where the aim of
the game is to: name the most obscure answer possible...
oddly enough the same show invites celebrities to
take part in the quiz for charity... *pointless celebrities
,
first word, yep, that's the name of the show.
oh no, i don't shun television, i do admit that watching
a brick wall is more entertaining drunk than television,
but the sober me has to do something from time to time.
so poetry: a medium that's opposite of vocally necessary,
a medium to explore the bone inside the tongue
that writing invokes: ****** stalemate...
      would i care to say why every word has a meaning?
unless you can speak hundsprechen i'd say only this,
that sort of reasoning is dangerous...
            we wouldn't get anything done is units of language
was meaningless... (hold on, i'm going to create
a crescendo for this point)...
you can say language is meaningless when you're
singing... vocalising language from these depths of
what would otherwise be known as the graveyard of surds
on the pure basis of optics and all cognitive parameters...
      sure, from these depths into an angelic gospel choir
you can get a meaninglessness: because it's so ******
    pleasurable... you can't deny a good song, you
can't compare the use of language in singing to the use
of language in lecturing some obscure topic by simply
talking... for thus words are sounds, and not the dreaded
pluralism of conventional talking: i.e. meanings.
              unlike the Chinese who have a certain capacity
to remember about 3000 ideograms, we have a much
bigger capacity, but our words are shrapnel and what we
don't have that the Chinese do have is:
                 a capacity for the multiplicity of meaning.
i can't imagine any ambiguity with Chinese ideograms
in the range of 3000 symbols... but there is clearly ambiguity
in our system...
                      obviously we can say words are meaningless
at times when rules of using language are lax given
the lies of politicians and the media roulette:
the fact that media is not state owned is even worse,
shadow brokers and a tarantula venom disorientating people.
   singing is an escape route from the socio-political
conventions of using language, hence the ambiguity trail
of what's deservedly called: socially-acceptable mode
of conduct, something that doesn't receive the ****** frown
of what would probably look like a lemon smiling.
  yet, if language doesn't give you a chance to see a labyrinth
then you have the shallows of singing... mm, yeah, mm, boo...
         ye-ha! ******* cowboys the whole lot of them...
but it's what it's supposed to be, something to be sung
for someone else to hear... it's not something written
down for someone else to see... and subsequently maybe
think about... oh how dreaded that statement seems in
English, a bit like denken scheiße / shy-se!
          people only make statements about the meaningless
of language when they sing... but that's the point:
you're making sounds, akin to the rhythm of my heart,
hence i don't think and subsequently go into a moshpit
or nod my head with some pigeon-like "cool" approval...
language is a bit like Shrek talking about onions...
it has layers, "spooky" other dimensions, oooh oooh...
Casper asked for a weener so he could invert necrophilia
and ghost-**** that ***... it has layers...
         somewhere between the Antarctica and the Arctic,
perhaps in the tropic of Capricorn, but who knows?
but i'll tell you one thing... it's not a white guy thing...
i finally understand why i don't like rap...
a bit like saying: a crowd shouting at a football match
is not an onomatopoeia of whatever is **** sapiens worthy...
   i think that classification actually predates
the expression of it... it's out there, but on the fringes...
         it's like this standard of protestantism with the concept
of predestination: we might just get there by Sunday
in the year 2099, but who knows?
        now i do understand why i don't like rap...
never liked it... couldn't stomach it...
   then i come across a beauty... so all those things i said
before, it culminates into this...
    Akua Naru, ring a bell? probably not,
3mil is nothing in today's celebrity cut-throat backstabbing...
     http://tinyurl.com/lt8ayhg... now that's entertainment...
that's what i love, how every instrument is
actually heard... the bass kicks in to set the tone
with the tickly percussion accents...
                       she's baking a cake...
she's layering...
  it's unlike that ****-culture music of pounding pounding
overly rhythmic and for every band these days
   it's one guitar = 20 violins of an orchestra's worth...
                  this is the new-jazz, or what John Coltrane
insinuated with the words: a love supreme, a love supreme.
            i don't know if it's poetry...
                                   a weak message on a stage might
always require a backing band, like a weak voice
might require a backing band... but this little critique doesn't
necessarily mean i can appreciate it,
   and is the reason why i don't understand rap, and never will.
The Unfocused luminosity within my mind
is so bright that it often times blinds my eyes from the inside,
Desperate to concentrate and focus it into two beams
that shine on a fate that’s known but unseen,
at least outside of my dreams,
It backfires and converts into an inaudible scream that in turn internally deafens me.
Nevertheless in your company, it seems that you can feel this shriek’s muffled vibrations
and despite the two dulled senses you the give remaining four the most overwhelming awakening sensation.  
Your exquisite essence immediately arouses my olfactory causing my heart to beat rapidly, communicating with yours through its protective cage,
in a Morse code like language that predates drawings in caves,  
our bodies ripple in synchronous waves,
the taste of your lips and sweetness of your skin can sustain me for days.  
My third eye attempts to analyze your magnificence but it’s almost impossible to gauge,
I mumble “**** baby, thinking about how I want to get engaged and..
you whisper in my ear telling me I feel “amazing”
and I think to myself” **** right I do”,
forgetting that you’re describing how I feel to you,
Then It hits me, that now I can hear, as you whisper in my other ear so soft and clear
“baby look at me”
then I open my “real eyes”
and your beauty hits me like sunrise,  
The internal light that clouded my view,
from my eyes, reflects off of you and illuminates the room,
My mental muse,
You can clear my view when I focus on you
which is the cause and cure for my blues.
what a waste Oct 2015
Punching mirrors
to breach the barrier
between you and me

Show me that
black hole heart, friend
let it consume us

Chew through
the lines you've drawn
with my hand

This predates catastrophe
our faceless meditation
taste like apple seeds

I'm losing touch,
but I like the rush
we should ****
Lesego Thole Jun 2016
bland streets
give birth to austere
children playing with chalk
hopscotch horde
SAMO dropped the bomb

no place to sleep
cheese to eat
find the avant garde spirit
moving with fleas
friends are dogs
the genius notes
worlds explode from Manhattan to Midrand
the child casts spells with calloused hands

a nervous man
with his Bohemian fabric
emerges from the brothel of thought
no Warhol
just unpublished papers
in black banks

influence predates intelligence
when things fall apart
perish in art
juntas and intellectuals will critique
your gore will speak.
John B Sep 2012
black is my mind my body and soul

white the light but it still looks yellow

past the point were turning back is not an option

revenge is only folly if success is valid conquest

belittling immigrants

who settled for scraps off our battlements

preposterous pledges by parliament

only campaigning for the next election

correction only acting for praises by thespians

who digress me again its a mess, sin.

what I'm saying is puppeteers puppet them

and they speak in voice roll

440 A is what rock sold

  watch the room get cold

but even if I said it you still likely wouldn't know

its old

giving rhythm to a message, that predates me

but the soul

pours forth,  so as for digging my feet

I may as well be digging a hole

like a mold compulsion

perpetual veritable intervals  

in a vexing verbose

burying any chance for understanding

overwhelming cowardice

forces most to just live with it

a mask makes a brave man

so one day well rise again

hiding in sub-text

my plain sight re-utterance

if you do nothing you change nothing

now shut up and forget I said anything

*gooble gobble
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
.i'd hate to be rich, given the sentiment of the following statement: the rich can do whatever they want. to be able to do whatever the hell you want? must be boring, too many avenues to transverse... the allure of: what would it be like, to have not explored a certain avenue... i like restrictions, thinking in terms of boxes, thinking inside boxes rather than outside of them... what the hell would i do with the ultimate freedom, would feel like a *******, after which you'd be hungering for an ****, and then a harem... given my own restrictions: the most mundane can become the most entertaining, while the most "entertaining" can become the most mundane... which is a step-up from biology, it's become zoological... given my restrictions... almost nothing can be tinged with the malaise, the boredom, the nausea of: an uninhibited life; ah, the subtle defiance from said freedom, through excesses (like drinking), coupled with a rigor, a discipline.

only one venture into ontology
curbs my rage...
fear...
              if i didn't fear something,
anything, nothing... god...
i'd lash out...
        which makes me
                 a peculiar drunkard...
having a drunk conversation?
no... a big no no...
        but you know...
going to some martial arts class...
and getting kicked in
the ***** by the, "teacher",
for not vocalizing a martial arts
march of intimidating poses...
not ushering out a HA
with every step?
the disciplinary action taken?
the fact that i didn't make complaints,
but instead rolled into a fetal
position?
           abortion?
  oh i'm pro abortion,
   if you're anti-abortion you're
anti-*******.
and the woman is basically
a hermaphrodite...
since once your fertility juice
leaves your body,
it's her property...
   she own it, and you
included...
      **** having a premature
fathering complex with
the line: but it's my baby...
and the toilet paper is
my bomb, when i do
the one, two and three on
the throne of thrones...

cogito ergo sum needs to change...
to fit the existentialist model...
the old argument run along
the Kantian lines of: time...

   question:
   is viva / esse (life / being) a priori to essentia?
****** question about whether existence
predates the essence of life...
evidently esse a posteriori essentia:
life comes after the essence,
since... by only being alive we can
begin to grasp the essence of life...
hence the question:
what's the meaning of life?
well... you have to be alive to begin with.
so does that mean that i am
actually a vehicle of and for
an abortion?
          is a possibility, a potential of
life, actually moving my body around,
is my ego an abortion?

viva ergo essentia...
or... esse ergo essentia...
       given that:
thought is an ontological boogie man...
since not all thought translates /
permeates into the ontological structure
that's being, or moderately known
as the, "self"...

how can a fathering instinct even
begin to kick in when there's no
baby in your hands,
but some, weird... ***** abomination
in the woman's oven?

****... all the rights you need...
better that, than enforced labor,
and the subsequent alimony payments...

life, therefore its essence, from what
come with it and after what it
was, nihil: nothing.

this of course stems from a critique of
Sartre...
   given:            esse (being) is neither
a priori (from the prior)
  or a posteriori (from the after)...
it's both...
        so this miracle of existence,
the universe, etc.
is founded upon:
            contradictory statements...
paradoxes...
                 a duality, within a dichotomy;
like...
                ( +, - )... a battery.
Mollie Grant Aug 2016
Thursday night is game night but Hasbro
has never had this one right. Operation is not
a game for ages four and up–maybe four,
multiplied by four, add four, and up.
Surgical mask on, Cavity Sam prepped,
and tweezers waiting to the right of the operating table:

I like to start with the Adam's apple–
carve away any trace of my origins
and they will never figure out who I am
because, like my mother used to say to me,
who is Eve without a blameless man.

Then I move on to the butterflies in the stomach
flittering and fluttering for a home that feels far more familiar
but they cannot be caught, only drowned.

Naturally, the broken heart follows
but the problem with pulling that out is
the never-ending-silence,
white-noise-science, black-hole-giant,
You know, the absence that predates writer's block–

writer's cramp, sliding a pencil up your wrist like it's the
(best kept) secret IV of an author.
Is that the price of filling up your bread basket,
going  to bed full on recognition and reward
and maybe even a Pulitzer Prize?
Be careful not to trip up on your own ego
or you just might end up with a wrenched ankle
and water on the knee.

I still have to deal with the wishbone,
the split-in-two-gravestone,
the only-one-of-us-is-leaving-here-happy zone.

And finally, I have the spare ribs
but I just might leave those there
because we see what happened when God
bothered to remove those the last time.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
i was in a pub once, talking to a friend, among other things,
the european union came up, i said: i can understand an economic union,
so that economic migrants are no more, i rather like talking polish after all,
but a political union, with so many contrasts?!
that'll never work. then i hear the news,
and the heavy burden of saying things before they happen;
and unlike the insinuations between philosophy
and conversation, with that one mundane origin
of philosophy known as dialectics,
i find writing necessary in prophesying,
indispensable you might add -
when governing to say: the old roman said to the
new roman: the old member boarders want inclusion,
they want the slavs gone, the dream to unfold by their
terms from carthage! i want carthage gone, erased,
gone from the dream of unification, but there's
carthage dictating to the old frail rome known as the vatican!
no! carthago delenda est!
but no, they are replicating a deletion of the past -
russia predates them in propaganda as necessarily
nibbling and knitting so that, as i might add -
old bulgars and roma will testify in fright to the yugoslav -
why such northern expansions?! the whole revelatory book said
concisely enough to market a roman revival as was first insured by
pestering russia with that famous abnormal foetus collection
of peter the great, who was the sole saint in petersburg -
saint built a city! saint built a city! how can francis assisi ever compete
to sainthood by merely talking to sparrows and squirrels
when peter the great built a city?!
well, carthage moved to raqqa - that's how!
or spot me distancing myself from the bookworm moth
philosophies of the library with shush rather than: two for 'un yer bananas!
i am that i am said: it is what it is, a god speaking of the creation,
but then the interaction within it is what it is -
the predation of all ideas and associations, a single noun, moses.
so i am that i am said inside it is what it is to
a noun who had no cartesian relevant past  in terms of
refraining from swish buckle cat's in high-heels and tutu - ***** up! you
break a spine introducing me, forget the family and the child,
you me, we encounter the world changed -
what i said prior: it is what it is will become it is what it's not really.
hence enter the philosophical lexicon: reality... perception...
bulls buckling against *******... enter moses the grand oration
of this famous dusty lexicon bettered. bettered? no really,
just us the same monkey flashback drunk with barbers and better beards -
maldives under the armpits!
i tell you, there are two kinds of world spirit like that quote
about hegel on foot and napoleon on hoof -
one spirit of the world is shrouded with, is cloaked in philosophies,
in thoughts, in the oughts and the morals of DON'T DO!
the other spirit of the world - filled with musketeers and other
pawn shrapnel - expendable creatures to conform to the dictatorial ditto:
napoleon said: marshal ames said: general maccabee said:
lieutenant general nadim said: major general eban said:
major general saburo said: brigadier taavi said: colonel yakov said:
the rest were man of cadet worth with fancy pink ribbons to sport
the wide mouthed bartender of shell-shock and etc.
those are the two spirits, while in the second realm
we have the false prophets governing - with the residing "god" as devil,
but imagine fooling a false prophet from this realm, e.g. jesus to
descend, what would the devil think?! oh ****, 2d!
so a third realm reveals itself - the pseudo edenic ****** ciphered
in the koran disappear, and we salvage ourselves by not imagining
eternal sundays, eternal idleness in such with such a realm: ***** ***** frisk frisk, lubricant;
what, a ****, eternity, as dictated by the kingdom and the koranic gardens;
peasants' eternal fill, no lion, the witch and the wardrobe in sight -
no valhalla! boring! (insert family fortunes' buzzer of x).
i want to be as worthy as a tree to rejuvenate each day after slaughtering
hel's and loci's spawn!
Matthew Harlovic Oct 2016
iou
you cannot equate my fate
with the likes of yours,
you cannot narrate
what i might endure,
you cannot gestate
the weight, nor labor,
because it predates
the state of our nature
but moving forward is
predicated on behavior
so i'll be a good neighbor
and do you the favor.

© Matthew Harlovic
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
two sudokus down, one pending, and the drinking is insatiable, peering into the stack of books, there's a copy of seven years in tibet and in start to wonder: what sort of interesting life should ever produce a book? the majority of me is asking: really? 7 years in 7 sittings of reading this?! who imagines writing a book, having "completed" an interesting life, does not imagine the majority of the readership, discarding the actual book, and being tibet bound... jealousy is such a cheap emotion, to be honest jealousy is the cheapest of all emotions, cheaper to pay a ******* for an hour's service, than take a fine girl to dinner; what, was someone expecting an "oops" with that?

i sometimes can't imagine the quality of pop,
it's not a pedantic "observation" -
it's just: well, could have done better,
but then again: you clearly couldn't have.
    i like rereading shakespeare and thinking
than minor additions would make the works
stand in greater clarification,
notably in shrapnel -
- 1st witch: why, how now, hecate?
you look angerly.
- hecate: have i not reason, beldams as you are,
saucy, and overbold? how did you dare to trade
and traffic with macbeth, in riddles,
and affairs of death,
  and i, then mistress of your charms,
   the close contriver of all harms,
  was never called to bear my part,
   or show the glory of our art?
such minor revisions, pedantic, of course...
i.e. - how did you dare to *trade and
make trivia
with macbeth -
      better still: trade & trivialise -
         and
   - in riddles, and in the affairs of death;
suppose we don't live in times
of man's "omniscience" etc.?
                but we do, and categorising ourselves
as such, we can only seem to test
knowledge via answering trivia question -
the triviality of knowledge oozes out
of game shows: where enough to be
knowledgeable is enough to known the most
encyclopedic set of facts...
    having to encompass all of man's
endeavours seems rather mundane...
             heidegger's aphorism 91 ponderings VI...
and the arrogance of writings maxims /
aphorisms...
        you read them as if they are basically true,
but then again: they're written as
propositions, rather than as presuppositions...
there's not a single word in the works
of nietzsche or la rochefoucauld
that supposes an observation to be true:
        a bit like the legal system dichotomy of
the english vs. the european courts:
  a. innocent until proven guilty, vs.
b. guilty until proven innocent...
                it's the ****** bombast of writing
maxims as propositions,
   there's no room for "error":
said content is: necessarily true,
                         but unnecessarily observed;
most of the time maxim notation is
an erosion of common sense, and subsequently
the killer proteins of alzheimer eating
away at the fatty tissue of the brain...
          mental exercise?
      who the hell wants a schwarzenegger's worth
of brain, i.e. exercise what?
           i don't like nietzsche's style precisely
because i don't like aphorisms or maxims...
          they're bombastic in assuming they're
true,
   i.e. once observed: forever replicated
to the same summa summarum...
  i think it's unsavoury to presume that one's
observations are fit for purpose of replica
observations taking hold of the reader...
if, perhaps, these aphorisms were written with
an overtone of presupposition,
             and left in the la la land of: supposing so -
they would be guarded by an element
of surprise...
                      an encroachment moment,
with an element of surprise...
         if only the loss of propositional bombast,
and the mediation of supposing-so,
   with an undertone of prepositional discretion...
stating the obvious in that stating
the obvious is stating an: unchallenged truth,
an unchallenged observation shared between
to people, well, aren't we talking about
  simply observing the perpetuated plagiarism
of what is "observed", without ever
deviating back into the "unobservable"?
       i believe that aphorisms (as a medium)
are plagued by a certainty inversion -
             sure, they're true, but they are also
true without a guarantee of replica -
                 for the most part they are placebo
ridden...
                and the only aspect of philosophy
that is unscientific...
                for the most part the style of writing
that's aphoristic is placebo,
        and not res replica...
           unless offensively forced - stereotyped.
if only the writing of an aphorism was
plagued by presupposing rather than proposing
a conclusive play on a voyeuristic act -
             the presuppositional attention to detail
would be tactful - and part of the cartesian
continuum...
             but propositional observations,
akin to making stereotypes, have no element
of founding one's thought in the cartesian dynamism
of doubt... there either is, or there isn't -
existentialism akin to the genesis in nietzsche
was born with the cartesian roller-coaster
of fusing an emotional regard for feeling,
i.e. doubt... negation being the prime ingredient
in existentialism, is oh so boring...
         ego negare, ego quasi cogito - ergo..
      i deny, i sort of think -
                                             therefore;
pretty obvious, we had to change the song -
we know so much already, in the current times,
that doubting would be pointless -
    doubting used to have a thrill of purpose
never being finalised,
   existentialism replaced doubt with denial...
so few things can be doubted,
   and when so few things can be doubted,
  we purposively lie, deny, lie, deny, to somehow
muster an origination of awe in emotive
experiences, which only bring failure -
  awe does not coexist with denial -
           you can't be in awe via purposively lying
to yourself...
  you can only seek awe by being forced
  into an emotional system of doubt...
but since existentialism eradicated doubt and replaced
it with denial...
     as already mentioned:
we deny, therefore, we sort-of think -
      we deny, therefore, we "think";
as the zeitgeist suggests - robotics, and other
forms of automation are taking over.
the argument still stands:
  if only the medium of writing aphorisms,
or succinct "truths" could be universally tested,
or at least universally observed as being true...
     if only there was a lost propositional(!) bombast
behind these pieces of writing,
or rather: a presupposition(?),
     since both approaches still converge in the realm
of supposes;
   a position is taken and one is for it -
while a supposing is given and one predates
it with a spontaneous unearthing of unnecessarily
having an opinion about it -
to presuppose is to not suppose -
since presuppositions are more archaic in always
being unforced observations,
  whereas propositions are enforced results
of having forced oneself to think: about something
with the end result of: a maxim,
or the extended maxim, i.e. an aphorism.
          - so who would actually want to make
language, and easy, and accessible, to the majority
of man?
          did not the power reside among
the priesthood who spoke latin, while the general
populace didn't?
   so why would anyone not decide upon:
speaking an english, within english,
   that the common englishman could not understand?
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Lancelot, my truest friend,
how time has thinned your ragged mane
and pinched your features; still you seem
though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged.

Your sword hand is, as ever, ready,
although the time for swords has passed.
Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady
meeting mine ... you must not ask.

The time is not, nor ever shall be,
for Merlyn’s words were only words;
and now his last enchantment wanes,
and we must put aside our swords ...

Originally published by Trinacria. Keywords/Tags: Lancelot, King Arthur, Arthurian, Merlin, round table, knights, sword, swords, England, stone, Excalibur, chivalry, Camelot, loyalty, friendship, magic, prophecy, Once and Future King, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon



Northern Flight: Lancelot's Last Love Letter to Guinevere
by Michael R. Burch

"Get thee to a nunnery..."

Now that the days have lengthened, I assume
the shadows also lengthen where you pause
to watch the sun and comprehend its laws,
or just to shiver in the deepening gloom.

But nothing in your antiquarian eyes
nor anything beyond your failing vision
repeals the night. Religion's circumcision
has left us worlds apart, but who's more wise?

I think I know you better now than then—
and love you all the more, because you are
... so distant. I can love you from afar,
forgiving your flight north, far from brute men,
because your fear's well-founded: God, forbid,
was bound to fail you here, as mortals did.

Originally published by Rotary Dial



These Arthurian poems by Michael R. Burch are based on mysterious ancient Celtic myths that predate by centuries the Christianized legends most readers are familiar with.



At Tintagel
by Michael R. Burch

That night,
at Tintagel,
there was darkness such as man had never seen...
darkness and treachery,
and the unholy thundering of the sea...

In his arms,
who is to say how much she knew?
And if he whispered her name...
"Ygraine"
could she tell above the howling wind and rain?

Could she tell, or did she care,
by the length of his hair
or the heat of his flesh,...
that her faceless companion
was Uther, the dragon,

and Gorlois lay dead?

Originally published by Songs of Innocence, then subsequently by Celtic Twilight, Fables, Fickle Muses and Poetry Life & Times



Isolde's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation—all but one:
we felt the night's deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring's urgency, midsummer's heat, fall's lash,
wild winter's ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life's great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold
and you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.

Originally published by The Raintown Review, where it was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels' tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight, then by Celtic Lifestyles and Auldwicce



Morgause's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Before he was my brother,
he was my lover,
though certainly not the best.

I found no joy
in that addled boy,
nor he at my breast.

Why him? Why him?
The years grow dim.
Now it's harder and harder to say...

Perhaps girls and boys
are the god's toys
when the skies are gray.

Originally published by Celtic Twilight as "The First Time"



Pellinore's Fancy
by Michael R. Burch

What do you do when your wife is a nag
and has sworn you to hunt neither fish, fowl, nor stag?
When the land is at peace, but at home you have none,
Is that, perchance, when... the Questing Beasts run?



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Truces
by Michael R. Burch

We must sometimes wonder if all the fighting related to King Arthur and his knights was really necessary. In particular, it seems that Lancelot fought and either captured or killed a fairly large percentage of the population of England. Could it be that Arthur preferred to fight than stay at home and do domestic chores? And, honestly now, if he and his knights were such incredible warriors, who would have been silly enough to do battle with them? Wygar was the name of Arthur's hauberk, or armored tunic, which was supposedly fashioned by one Witege or Widia, quite possibly the son of Wayland Smith. The legends suggest that Excalibur was forged upon the anvil of the smith-god Wayland, who was also known as Volund, which sounds suspiciously like Vulcan...

Artur took Cabal, his hound,
and Carwennan, his knife,
     and his sword forged by Wayland
     and Merlyn, his falcon,
and, saying goodbye to his sons and his wife,
he strode to the Table Rounde.

"Here is my spear, Rhongomyniad,
and here is Wygar that I wear,
     and ready for war,
     an oath I foreswore
to fight for all that is righteous and fair
from Wales to the towers of Gilead."

But none could be found to contest him,
for Lancelot had slewn them, forsooth,
so he hastened back home, for to rest him,
till his wife bade him, "Thatch up the roof! "

Originally published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, then by Celtic Twilight



Midsummer-Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term "banshee") and, eventually, to the druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgause and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil's
fen...

if nevermore again.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



The Kiss of Ceridwen
by Michael R. Burch

The kiss of Ceridwen
I have felt upon my brow,
and the past and the future
have appeared, as though a vapor,
mingling with the here and now.

And Morrigan, the Raven,
the messenger, has come,
to tell me that the gods, unsung,
will not last long
when the druids' harps grow dumb.



Merlyn, on His Birth
by Michael R. Burch

Legend has it that Zephyr was an ancestor of Merlin. In this poem, I suggest that Merlin was an albino, which might have led to claims that he had no father, due to radical physical differences between father and son. This would have also added to his appearance as a mystical figure. The reference to Ursa Major, the bear, ties the birth of Merlin to the future birth of Arthur, whose Welsh name ("Artos" or "Artur") means "bear." Morydd is another possible ancestor of Merlin's. In Welsh names "dd" is pronounced "th."

I was born in Gwynedd,
or not born, as some men claim,
and the Zephyr of Caer Myrrdin
gave me my name.

My father was Madog Morfeyn
but our eyes were never the same,
nor our skin, nor our hair;
for his were dark, dark
—as our people's are—
and mine were fairer than fair.

The night of my birth, the Zephyr
carved of white stone a rune;
and the ringed stars of Ursa Major
outshone the cool pale moon;
and my grandfather, Morydd, the seer
saw wheeling, a-gyre in the sky,
a falcon with terrible yellow-gold eyes
when falcons never fly.



Merlyn's First Prophecy
by Michael R. Burch

Vortigern commanded a tower to be built upon Snowden,
but the earth would churn and within an hour its walls would cave in.

Then his druid said only the virginal blood of a fatherless son,
recently shed, would ever hold the foundation.

"There is, in Caer Myrrdin, a faery lad, a son with no father;
his name is Merlyn, and with his blood you would have your tower."

So Vortigern had them bring the boy, the child of the demon,
and, taciturn and without joy, looked out over Snowden.

"To **** a child brings little praise, but many tears."
Then the mountain slopes rang with the brays of Merlyn's jeers.

"Pure poppycock! You fumble and bumble and heed a fool.
At the base of the rock the foundations crumble into a pool! "

When they drained the pool, two dragons arose, one white and one red,
and since the old druid was blowing his nose, young Merlyn said:

"Vortigern is the white, Ambrosius the red; now, watch, indeed."
Then the former died as the latter fed and Vortigern peed.

Published by Celtic Twilight



It Is Not the Sword!
by Michael R. Burch

This poem illustrates the strong correlation between the names that appear in Welsh and Irish mythology. Much of this lore predates the Arthurian legends, and was assimilated as Arthur's fame (and hyperbole)grew. Caladbolg is the name of a mythical Irish sword, while Caladvwlch is its Welsh equivalent. Caliburn and Excalibur are later variants.

"It is not the sword,
but the man, "
said Merlyn.
But the people demanded a sign—
the sword of Macsen Wledig,
Caladbolg, the "lightning-shard."

"It is not the sword,
but the words men follow."
Still, he set it in the stone
—Caladvwlch, the sword of kings—
and many a man did strive, and swore,
and many a man did moan.

But none could budge it from the stone.

"It is not the sword
or the strength, "
said Merlyn,
"that makes a man a king,
but the truth and the conviction
that ring in his iron word."

"It is NOT the sword! "
cried Merlyn,
crowd-jostled, marveling
as Arthur drew forth Caliburn
with never a gasp,
with never a word,

and so became their king.



Uther's Last Battle
by Michael R. Burch

When Uther, the High King,
unable to walk, borne upon a litter
went to fight Colgrim, the Saxon King,
his legs were weak, and his visage bitter.
"Where is Merlyn, the sage?
For today I truly feel my age."

All day long the battle raged
and the dragon banner was sorely pressed,
but the courage of Uther never waned
till the sun hung low upon the west.
"Oh, where is Merlyn to speak my doom,
for truly I feel the chill of the tomb."

Then, with the battle almost lost
and the king besieged on every side,
a prince appeared, clad all in white,
and threw himself against the tide.
"Oh, where is Merlyn, who stole my son?
For, truly, now my life is done."

Then Merlyn came unto the king
as the Saxons fled before a sword
that flashed like lightning in the hand
of a prince that day become a lord.
"Oh, Merlyn, speak not, for I see
my son has truly come to me.

And today I need no prophecy
to see how bright his days will be."
So Uther, then, the valiant king
met his son, and kissed him twice—
the one, the first, the one, the last—
and smiled, and then his time was past.



Small Tales
by Michael R. Burch

According to legend, Arthur and Kay grew up together in Ector's court, Kay being a few years older than Arthur. Borrowing from Mary Stewart, I am assuming that Bedwyr (later Anglicized to Bedivere)might have befriended Arthur at an early age. By some accounts, Bedwyr was the original Lancelot. In any case, imagine the adventures these young heroes might have pursued (or dreamed up, to excuse tardiness or "lost" homework assignments). Manawydan and Llyr were ancient Welsh gods. Cath Pulag was a monstrous, clawing cat. ("Sorry teach! My theme paper on Homer was torn up by a cat bigger than a dragon! And meaner, too! ")Pen Palach is more or less a mystery, or perhaps just another old drinking buddy with a few good beery-bleary tales of his own. This poem assumes that many of the more outlandish Arthurian legends began more or less as "small tales, " little white lies which simply got larger and larger with each retelling. It also assumes that most of these tales came about just as the lads reached that age when boys fancy themselves men, and spend most of their free time drinking and puking...

When Artur and Cai and Bedwyr
were but scrawny lads
they had many a ***** adventure
in the still glades
of Gwynedd.
When the sun beat down like an oven
upon the kiln-hot hills
and the scorched shores of Carmarthen,
they went searching
and found Manawydan, the son of Llyr.
They fought a day and a night
with Cath Pulag (or a screeching kitten),
rousted Pen Palach, then drank a beer
and told quite a talltale or two,
till thems wasn't so shore which'un's tails wus true.

And these have been passed down to me, and to you.



The Song of Amergin
by Michael R. Burch

Amergin is, in the words of Morgan Llywelyn, "the oldest known western European poet." Robert Graves said: "English poetic education should, really, begin not with The Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin." Amergin was one of the Milesians, or sons of Mil: Gaels who invaded Ireland and defeated the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, thereby establishing a Celtic beachhead, not only on the shores of the Emerald Isle, but also in the annals of Time and Poetry.

He was our first bard
and we feel in his dim-remembered words
the moment when Time blurs...

and he and the Sons of Mil
heave oars as the breakers mill
till at last Ierne—green, brooding—nears,

while Some implore seas cold, fell, dark
to climb and swamp their flimsy bark
... and Time here also spumes, careers...

while the Ban Shee shriek in awed dismay
to see him still the sea, this day,
then seek the dolmen and the gloam.



Stonehenge
by Michael R. Burch

Here where the wind imbues life within stone,
I once stood
and watched as the tempest made monuments groan
as though blood
boiled within them.

Here where the Druids stood charting the stars
I can tell
they longed for the heavens... perhaps because
hell
boiled beneath them?



The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse
by Michael R. Burch

"I actually visited the island and walked across those mass graves of 30, 000 Irish men, women and children, and I played a little tune on me whistle. I found it very peaceful, and there was relief there." - Paddy Maloney of The Chieftans

There was relief there,
and release,
on Île Grosse
in the spreading gorse
and the cry of the wild geese...

There was relief there,
without remorse
when the tin whistle lifted its voice
in a tune of artless grief,
piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth.
And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief,
but of their faith and belief—
like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf.

When ravenous famine set all her demons loose,
driving men to the seas like lemmings,
they sought here the clemency of a better life, or death,
and their belief in God gave them hope, a sense of peace.

These were proud men with only their lives to owe,
who sought the liberation of a strange new land.
Now they lie here, ragged row on ragged row,
with only the shadows of their loved ones close at hand.

And each cross, their ancient burden and their glory,
reflects the death of sunlight on their story.

And their tale is sad—but, O, their faith was grand!



At Cædmon's Grave
by Michael R. Burch

"Cædmon's Hymn, " composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon's verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker's ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.

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

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—

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

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch

I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.

A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright.

Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling;
here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead.
Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling,
simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed,

his tongue flicking rhythms,
the sun—throbbing, spilling.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
i studied chemistry, i'm not going to write you poetry like someone who graduated university with a degree in creative writing or English literature, i told you, time and again... philosophers have a strain on them to become scientists, but scientists have a strain on them to become humanists... philosophy is the only medium that chemists, biologists or physicists can become remotely humanistic in expression... and even if they do! humanists don't like it! it's just the same repeat of: et tu, Brute?! no one wins... not if you want to escape this Tartarus and gain some respect for the universality of man in hell taking tea with Mussolini and pass from their realm... not otherwise you won't; and i'm way past Dada.

writing Brexit Smokescreen / Cromwell and the Parliamentarians
i just had a few equations in mind -
at bit like mathematics - only slyly different,
slyly i mean - not really sly -
self-evident from lack of encouraging it:
predating the instigators of existentialism we have Descartes,
and that predates Kant's influence,
in simple geometric rubric, invoking = meaning therefore,
but not necessarily continuing from - to sequence,
more as pinpointing a a chiral symbiosis overcome -
ending with Sartre - the concept of bad faith and
the prime negation, meaning the lost utility of thinking,
a lax, preserved organically with a demented expression -
so:

i think = i doubt                  thinking does not precipitate
                                                  into existence

since many who exist do not necessarily question / think
out their existence - they do not equate the mere act
of thought as the prior expression of existing -
and that's egotistical - many say necessary, i agree -

i doubt = i'll attempt denial* - which turns all cognitive aspects
of my being in unreasonable examples lessened,
less mind more heart -
which is a precursor of something greater in the diminished
sense of responsibility to come undervalued -
the constraint without a straitjacket -
and so after attempting denial away from doubting i
can't exactly think, since my heart is no longer wavering,
hence my mind can't be either - i am bound
by the omni pre: precursor, predestined,
given a script before acting etc. -

i deny = i'm not thinking - and so much is true,
instead of saying that denial = not thinking, it also means
i'm left with apologies, i'm therefore not a thinker
but an apologist - notably C.S. Lewis - meaning i
have a script readied - so that i fake not having a conscience -
me? i wants to sees a striptease dances of politicians
and silver-back ancient gorillas shaving -

then where's China when i start digging from
the point of i think? well, it remains in i think,
one cubic of atmosphere experiences a butterfly flap somewhere,
while one cubic of atmosphere experiences a hurricane,
or the quantum theory exclusively partaking electrons
solely - meaning i think doesn't exactly equate to
a proof of existence per se, well, it does, i think
is a proof of i am per se, given the two are acquainted
with solipsism and mundane question
of being serf-conscious: cartesian solipsism is i think = i am,
but at the same time i = thought ≠ being -
the unwritten bestseller, the uncontested 100 metre sprint
to be challenged, e.g. - but this is carstesian solipsism,
this like a deviation in religion is not an orthodoxy -
based on a presupposition that Descartes wouldn't have
minded the addition (of solipsism to explain) -
what's more pronounced is bound to the explanatory
pivot-reflection ipso facto rather than per se, minding
that we have i think to take care of - and that's one
of the two units of solipsism - the other being i am,
ipso facto or simply alter ergo - rephrasing in the
superimposable Chiral, unlike simple Nietzsche's sum ergo cogito:
but as in sum ipso infacto - cogitatio -

(i am, by the fact
in-itself - thought - meaning i exist by a fact in-itself
compared with all other facts that are bundled up within
replicas / phenomena - the being thought, a factual
reference above: i brushed my teeth in the morning
two days ago - a as in a medium of what's being emphasised
on distractive enterprises, twins of atheism α- -θέ - as one points
as something, the other always points at itself without
the thing pointed at by the other, affirmative orientation
including nothing, or the grey multitude of the urban throng
and a self-worth - with a de-affirmative orientation
and a passerby, including self-perpetuation in the cartesian
cinema) -  
                       I TRUST THE RUSSIANS TO LOVE
                       READING...
                       NEVER TRUST THE ENGLISH
                       TO READ... THEY CAN'T READ,
                       BECAUSE THEY DON'T ENJOY IT!

the one abstract trans-grammatical
association, requisite of moral explanations and deviations
from the placebo of solipsism as being an utter
non-interactive entity - crudely as with cogito ergo sum:
sum ipso facto... now thought isn't allowed to finish
that equation - hence the perplexity at criminals -
i am by the fact itself - whereby guilt passes from the reins
of the perpetrator to the instigator - the crude: think,
therefore be - so many failed deviations from over-simplifying
this; i never write about philosophy as if i know -
i say: thought the precursor of knowledge,
given the benefit of doubt, meaning a heart,
not thinking being the precursor of ignorance,
given the benefit of denial, meaning the genitalia -
so many mistake their thinking as what others
define thought to not be -
and v. v. so many mistake their being as what others
define being to be - most notably
the contemporaries of prior Socrates were said
to be idiots - given Plato and Aristotle - only
later they regarded the pre-Socratics are equally footed
to be called philosophers as the un-adventurous academics
of Athens.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
It Is Not the Sword!
by Michael R. Burch

This poem illustrates the strong correlation between the names that appear in Welsh and Irish mythology. Much of this lore predates the Arthurian legends, and was assimilated as Arthur’s fame (and hyperbole) grew. Caladbolg is the name of a mythical Irish sword, while Caladvwlch is its Welsh equivalent. Caliburn and Excalibur are later variants.

“It is not the sword,
but the man,”
said Merlyn.
But the people demanded a sign—
the sword of Macsen Wledig,
Caladbolg, the “lightning-shard.”

“It is not the sword,
but the words men follow.”
Still, he set it in the stone
—Caladvwlch, the sword of kings—
and many a man did strive, and swore,
and many a man did moan.

But none could budge it from the stone.

“It is not the sword
or the strength,”
said Merlyn,
“that makes a man a king,
but the truth and the conviction
that ring in his iron word.”

“It is NOT the sword!”
cried Merlyn,
crowd-jostled, marveling
as Arthur drew forth Caliburn
with never a gasp,
with never a word,

and so became their king.

Published by Songs of Innocence, Neovictorian/Cochlea, Romantics Quarterly and Celtic Twilight. Keywords/Tags: King Arthur, Arthurian, Merlin, round table, knights, stone, sword, Excalibur, chivalry, Camelot, Uther Pendragon, England
Connor Jul 2015
Starlight
                                           fluttering over
                               the great euphoric episode of
                                                Victoria!
Cosm­os being packaged in the mail,
on its way now from Britain,
Sitar dancer on the inner harbor
jingling end time tunes to the ears
of the grateful.
Today is WEIRD!
Everyone is shaking hands and waving from Summertime fields,
                                 laughs escape the rooftops,
                          Owls begin to wear brighter colors.
                                Near August, post three day
                                  Northwestern Monsoon
                                THUNDER    R a-T-T-linG
                                          Double Decker
                                          past romances
                              on highways approaching
                                        The BC capital!
Articles topic the Utopian evidence
of the current generation
nearing Post Capitalist society.
All peoples smile still!
(Wouldn't that be something?)
Telescopes discovered Kepler 452b!
Another world, very much like our
own (I wonder if I'll see it one day)
Round-frame black hole glasses
Enamel downtown in golden tint,
solidifying this happiness!
                            The day is a colorful child
                            bestowing chalk drawings
                                 upon the asphalt.
            His Years 'round the garbage corner now.
                     India crafts a crown of laurel
                           For the innocent youth!
Sin predates them by centuries and wars, ***** and outta-lucks, paycheck to paycheck psychological warfare with the Western planet!
             But they're predisposed to the silent decade of
                                   internal purity,
              that BIG BIBLE BOOK has granted em'
              A get outta hell free card for some
                                 ####   a-years.

(While Virginia Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel 2011 mind-flash nostalgia permeates in my adult brain.

While North Carolina Top Sail Atlantic
sea salt stings thru my nostrils,
body boarding few miles away from
boardwalks with a nighttime view of
Milky Way Forever! (Age 14)

While Seattle shimmers aluminum skyscraper lights, Emerald City Winter where outside my hotel window I focus on
the Space Needle distantly blinking
the spirit of
Edward E. Carlson and John Graham, Jr.
up up up to Dharmakaya!
That improv performance near Pike Place Market with Charisma, Julie N Severen! SPONTANEOUS WISECRACKS BEING PAID TO BE SPONTANEOUS WISECRACKS.

While Seminyak, Southeastern Orient, Is hailed with cloud-formt waterfalls, and I watch, containing the inexpressible joy of that particular moment. Mind relapsed to whispers of Dakini,
(Contentedness possible in adulthood after all!)

                                   Celestial energy rebounds
                 thru all entities on the sidewalk including myself.
                  delivering metaphysical felicity to all future loves
                   who find occasional joys in the cycle of living.
                         Who make more of themselves than
                                 tying their shoes to sleep.
doodle poodle Nov 2018
period is a certain time
period is a passage
period predates silence
period is a statement
period ends words
.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2022
i hope that modern realise that with their so-called liberation
of: once upon a time taking care of children
cooking: the best form of chemistry...
165°F for a perfectly cooked chicken breast...
that's the temperature the meat should be add...
as i was talking to Harini about her bad experiences
with dry: chalk-like chicken *******...
i had them too... Sunday lunch back in my grandparents'
house always resulted with people fighting for
the dark meat of the chicken...
the thighs, the wings, the legs...
my bad experiences with chicken ended when i started
cooking chicken...
every, single, time: juicy *******...
i managed to start cooking chicken to the sort of perfection
where people started fighting over the chicken-*******
and forgot about the dark meat...
but the internet is filled with these crazy videos...
angry women... angry men...
everyone's angry but no one's angry enough
to pick up a gun and start shooting into the air...
2nd or 3rd wave feminism...
angry men who don't know that they have been liberated...
these relationship crazed men...
bothered: 80% of women only date 20% of men...
"date"...
         i'm watching both sides.... like-for-like...
when i'm in the mood and decide to go to the brothel...
i have this failsafe ontology regarding my
"whittle 'ichard itch-'ard"...
well... i would be the natural reply to how women
have monetized their bodies on ONLYFANS
and the like...
            i was going to be the natural byproduct:
nature abhors vacuums...
and oddly enough has to work on a thesaurus basis:
the antonym of an ONLYFANS girl is... ?
me...
                  oh to hell with relationships...
i don't appreciate crazed-shy doe either...
                  i watched one on the bus opening a bottle
of 7up... it was warm... very warm...
lazily: the bottle burst... hmm... how that fizzy wet liquid
glued itself to her skin and she became
more radiant with the addition of sugar diamonds      
from the liquid...
       it is a very warm summer...
seems the girls need to expose more...
i too would love to...

on the liberation front... single mums still need
plumbers... blah blah...
i hate this ***-"war" offensive on either side:
of course men and women never got on:
but not getting on happened after the initial
honeymoon period...
at least back in the day the sexes got on enough
to shackle up and have children:
problems between the sexes happened
a posteriori...
                         now? problems between the sexes
are a priori...
they are being ingrained in us...

i was so close to breaking my build up for an hour's
worth of *** just 30 minutes ago...
about 5 times during the day...
get the blood pumping...
mind you: i did drink some semi-skimmed milk
and had to do the runner:
i don't know... full-fat milk, no problem...
semi-skimmed... ****-problems...
Jasmine Black... she's Romanian... and on the plump
side of the spectrum...
and no pictures of ***** either...
either her solo or with another woman...
i checked myself last time: when Michaela was
available: a Jasmine Black lookalike...
yeah: like i'm a Brad Pitt lookalike...
   but i kept having to get an ego-*******:
to cure myself from *******...
yes... you're having ***...
           yes... she's moaning and groaning during
oral ***... blah blah... you're replying:
there's the mirror...
hanging ******* on your torso...
then both torsos meet...

                 hell: you read enough Marquis de Sade
in your teens... you start to gear up to a better
picture... i found out that i like writing about ***...
not in a self-help sort of way...
a self-improvement sort of way...
16th... Wembley... **** it... i'm visiting the brothel
again... 18th... London Stadium... late finish...
i'm going again...

that's why i'm working: i'm working to give
the economy a boost... i'm not going to spend
the money i spend on prostitutes:
mind you... what exploitation?
all these women enjoy ***...
one asks you to pay her extra for *** without
a ******... some other doesn't even bother
and does it for the thrill:
she even says: live dangerously...

i can't complain... i'm also... somewhat liberated...
esp. if at one point you're the one stealing kisses
while at times you're the adult seagull
and she's the seagull chick and she impressively
jumps in to steal a kiss from you...
you relax: have a drink... smoke a cigarette...
and then the bodies collapse in a wriggling composition...

i like thinking about ***... i feel a different sort
of gravity in my groin... it's a whirlwind sort
of gravity... spinning spinning eternal spinning:
coupled with VADER covering MAYHEM's
song: freezing moon...
better than the original...

i like writing about ***... i like escaping into it...
i like the trial of jerking off four days prior
to ******* without *******...
which implies: on the day: i will be ultra virile...
and i'm still very happy that i haven't
bedded a woman from England: my acquired
nation... or a woman from Poland:
a nation i was born out of...
i think i'll stick to Romanian and Turkish girls...

well... if the women feel liberated? so do i!
but nothing via dating apps: no hook-up culture
for me... i bring the money and place it on the table...
just so... no one gets confused or has
double-standards or: whatever...
let's not play: prize-pretend...
i can do whatever the hell was once expected
from a woman... please... beside rearing children:
darling... there's no... need...
truly... relax... do you!
                   i'm still going to have my fun...
in an unabashed version of myself...
because? i stand watching movies...
i prefer to avoid restaurants...
i like eating on my own:
i like drinking on my own...

we all must be crazy by now...
oh: that recent Psychology Today article that the women
are raving about, how "lonely men"
require therapy?
i've been through that...
isn't therapy lovely?
they prescribe you some anti-psychotic pills...
you put on about 30kg...
then wait about 10 years to get your libido back...
start exercising again: waking up from this
pharmacological slumber... i must have been
some version of a competition:
to be treated like: at least the Islamic terrorists are
still treated decently: seriously: as a threat...

i am on a stretch of road where now i'm
thinking of the people afraid of the acronym FOMO:
fear of missing out with a glee...
who needs a girlfriend when i have my shadow
to wrestle with: a shadow that said:
you will not dream...
i can go to concerts and football matches:
let alone for free: but get paid for them!
i'm going to bask in this moonlight...
i've seen my own worth of **** to finally find myself!

but i still don't understand the dynamic
between the sexes...
   and i don't want to...
dating apps my ***... i will never use them...
i'm not lonely: i'm just alone...
loneliness is a trait of character:
being alone is an existential "qualm"...
     of qua per se... as being for itself...
which is a... ******* mighty juggling act to accomplish...

but if i have nothing on my mind...
it's usually that i have an irritable bowel from drinking
semi-skimmed milk or having an ego
for a phallus and a perpetuated *******
in mind: or that i'm gearing up for an hour in
the brothel... with some plump beauty...
i wouldn't dare to discriminate against
any woman's body:
like my grandfather used to say:

all women are beautiful...
it's just that some... some are just neglected...
they're not ugly: they're just neglected...
very true: those richer curves are best
exposed and intervened with when they're touching
another body... they sort of fill the "gaps"...
i love plump women... they sort of behave like
water... well... water + flour = dough...
skinny younglings remind me
of spiders... i like these plump beauties...
they sort of absorb your body in ways unimaginable...
they fuse with your body...

read enough Marquis de Sade and then have
your fun writing about ***...

for a while i started to realise that the women i'm
working with have started a ploy:
figuring out whether i'm thirsty:
sexually awkward... hmm hmm x1 x2, x3...
no lapse into desperation: why would i feel desperate?
i can get what i want...
i don't steal bread: i buy bread...
i don't steal *** via the hook-up dating-app culture...
i buy ***... of course: i bypassed the Darwinistic
puritanism of "you're expected to follow the natural
selection laws of women":

erm... no, you're not... prostitution predates Darwinism...
*** can be bought and sold...
there's no reason to be sober like at the zenith
of American puritanism with the laws of prohibition...
likewise so: now...
i don't need to pretend that women have a sway
on the availability of ***...
after all... i'm not a ****... women sway over women
whatever argument is left in their arsenal...
women will not agree...
what man would want to **** an intellectual
woman who's only prowess is banking on
feminism? men have their intellectual disparities:
but you can hardly ascribe feminism
to feministic-stoicism... or feministic-scholasticism...
or blah blah...
i like ******* women who like to be ******...
who don't complain about being ******
for the simple reason that they like to
be ****** and they'd rather listed to Liszt play
the ******* piano than play a piano themselves!

the world is so uncomplicated when you listen
to the wind and then recognise the fact that:
the wind can't play a trombone...
a wind can play the tree: rustling the leaves...
a wind can play the grass...
sure as ****: a saxophone can't play a tree...

i can imitate barking at a dog... i can imitate croaking
at a crow...
but a dog will hardly bypass its bark
and call me a YACK!
nor a crow croak that i'm a crackling crisp...

i mentioned plump prostitutes...
that's different: to what you see every-day:
those magnificently grotesque:
beached... whales...
it's different... a plump ******* is a plump
******* because: many men find her
attractive...
but... that "mommy" of a beached-whale type?
why don't men find her attractive?
because one man does... or rather:
one man has allowed her to become so unattractive
that she's no more than a fat-***-*****
pushing a baby-buggy...

prostitutes prolong their sexuality way longer
than atypical women...
a man will still find a fat 50+ ******* a decent
**** than a woman who has settled for
the glorified Christian tradition of marriage...
mind you: she's probably prone to cheat...
personally? i don't mind sharing partners:
what i abhor? the innocence of... lying...
is this the part where i say: some people think
they're being... "cute"... by lying?
cute, or cutlass?

i don't mind knowing: as long as i know...
there's nothing worse on a man's conscience than:
not knowing...
being lied to is infuriating...
it's intruding on the dignity of one's own claim
to believe: in anything...
whether that be a Hebrew deity that's deity eater
or whether it's the Arabic solipsistic deity...

i like writing about ***... the mirage of mirrors...
the antithesis of ******* in mirrors...
perhaps, once, upon, a, time...
i could have survived pair bonding with some
woman... these days...
it's enough that i have a mother,
a maternal grandmother and no knowledge
of my paternal grandmother...
perhaps it's better this way...
i think i'll take my *** into the garden
and find some shade until 10am...

i truly love women... but idealising the opposite ***
is hardly an answer to the perverted questions
at hand...
if women feel liberated because they don't
have to marry a class of men that are their
plumbers and their electricians:
women who raise boys whom their infantilize...
whom they turn into little-make-shift
Oedipus one after another...
me? stepping in?
i tried it once... she was all over the game
of me brining homemade wine and some banana
loaf: she couldn't handle a man...
she needed a boy... a thirsty boy...
she required her own offspring and a thirsty boy
of a "man"...

i don't need that... no wonder i prefer the company
of prostitutes... and cats... and dogs...
most of these women want both
the casual ***: and the casual *** with and without
commitment...
sorry... i can't do all three...
liberated women ought to know better...
ought to know best... QUEENS...
blah-ah-ha-ha!
i'm all for casual ***: but not a hook-up culture...
money first... fun... later...

              that's how the dynamic of money
and flesh works...
that's why i work the debit mechanisation more than
i work the credit mechanisation:
i spend what i earn i spend what i have
i don't spend what i can't earn
or spend what i don't have... i don't favour the credit
system: that's why i set up my second bank account
so quickly... what credit score?
when i don't use the credit system?!

i like prostitutes... they are a gateway toward
a monetary sanity...
no one wants to have *** after eating a meal...
ergo? dating is obsolete...
i have *** on an empty stomach...
emptied by a dry cider... 750ml walked
around... with some whiskey...
dating... ugh... i am: LIBERATED!
i don't have to fight for any country i'm supposedly
assigned to... i don't have to marry!
i can love the children of strangers like
they might be my own! i, am, freed!
from obligations of matrimony!

**** me... i'm freer than freedom could possibly
allow me to be!
women have paved a way to true freedom!
they think themselves freed...
but they didn't realise how freed up i've become!
i don't have to pay that infamous bachelors' tax
anymore! renowned in Poland...
i can **** prostitutes on a whim!
wow! this is freedom?! wow!
more, please! more!

           great bargaining tactic: woman!
i can do the Pontius Pilate on your *** and no one will
even begin blinking a counter-argument!
amazing... i'm glad both of us will
prosper from: your demands...
my lack of: demands...
                  now i can freely **** around without
having to listen to you having a monopoly of
me even thinking that i have a monopoly
to **** around! beau-ti-ful!
more! more! more!                     more!

thank you... it's as if i was dealt a hand in Poker
with a Poker... it's *******: glorifyingly:
poetically: majestic!
       i love it... more please...
                    
eh... 20 males to 1 woman...
doesn't bother me...
                they taste: sorry... female *****
taste better with more ****** partners...
nature: sort of weird...
oh sure: the more ****** partners a woman has?
the better her ****** juices taste...
her **** becomes equivalent to a leather chair...
like all leather: fresh... ****** leather?
smells disgusting... the more it's worn down?
the better the quality...
plus... the better her *** is...
*** with virgins is boring...
*** with virgins is intimidating for
normal men: there's always that... sense of...
authority from prior experience:
teaching... i don't understand why women
succumb to those pedohphile perverts to teach them
nothing at all...  

then again... what do i care?
it's like that article in the Saturday Times...
a woman in her 40s was left gloating:
but i have 3 loves in their 20s greedily..
hell: i can compete:
what's free? these days?"
i can compete... i earn money to spend on
prostitutes who will subsequently
invest money in this economy...

it's too hot... i think i need to sleep
in the garden under the blooming moon...
spiders and ants might crawl into my nostrils
into my mouth and into my ears...
no matter, i'll cool off...
             but i feel: i feel!

so liberated from modern woman!
i don't need her: i don't own her...
        thank you! modern woman!
       THANK YOU!
                         while your old school sisters
practice prostitution: i'm just: dandy: fine...
thank you!
      i believe in euthanasia
and the idea that i'm not going to be
your next petty grandpa...
                     the cruel realities of the REAL...
what?!
Emperor Icecream Apr 2013
---
As the hour predates on the minute
I know
I just know
That I just can’t turn back
The things that I have done
But I got no regrets
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
now i'm breathing cigarette smoke
into fog....
it's local and it's bypassing
the global narrative...
i'm sitting perched on
a windowsill
debating whether
d.n.a. predates the other curses:
i love music more
than women,
i'll say it again: i came to love
music more than the Tehran's worth
of women, the music over-powered them,
i wash shaking at the knees
of ac / dc, and i asked for d.n.a.
inclusion... because i was
bothered to read it as otherwise...
and i know there's a woman out there for
me.... and i known there's
  a lesser comic book hero to guide
the matter into a mortgage...
but i know where they gas the liberals,
i know know where Switzerland is...
   i'm bound to a boredom already
hijacked...
      ai'd gas a few liberals had i been given
a chance, like my gradfather likes to
recount: herr! bite bonbon!
         i don't mind writing about extinction
i'm quiete dodo about it,
       if the music plays, the women can shut up.
i heard my grandfather whisper into
me a chinese whisper about ensuring
your heart remained small...
             behalten herz, klein herz...
           herz uber alles.
i don't mind being an extinct specimen
akin to the dodo,
        that might sound insane around here,
but i am vague about the argument
to pro the alternative....
given the culture i find no worth to scatter
the proof...
      music overcame my want for women...
and i what comes next is a stamping,
i just want to fear the end of gravity
but instead i'll probably hear a harnass flinging
Amazonian bridge between compensator and
instigator... and i hope
   i'm wrong...
                              all this dyslexia
and anti-Rousseau sentiment... had i not read Voltaire...
but i have no one to cite...
              apart from them, so it really does seem
like all other clubs: slightly selective...
                       after a while not getting any
makes your forget that dating sites exist,
    you start to learn the proper narration of the world:
so close: yet so far away...
                           i can't state the last bet i made on
the roulette of passion, i decided to feel nothing
concerning it...
                    it got a bit worth a right of a bollocking...
all i needed was a club, and a barbwire wrapped
around a club for a signature, to turn
the debate with the right ink...
                i said n'ah, i prefer music more than
a woman's nagging... women married always
tend to make other males more useful than their own
partners...if there's a love: it will tear us apart...
otherwise we'll congregate with the accomplishment
of jealousy...
                 and if we feed the little heart:
there's no great love to be had...
                                    i can't expect this to sound
as a guiding principle, as Athos said:
  the best advice: is to give no advice at all...
                      i just love watching what
darwinism did away with the historical narrative,
we'll all be dead within the next year...
                            we're all counter to what could be
taken as worth keeping...
            i mean... we already said that fame was pointless
given there was no competition left to
usurp us... having congested the edges of the world,
becoming prime in Siberia... and lavished
in Arabia...
                      but i know that this is really
an anglophone reality, talk this talk in germany
or france and the reaction is different...
                   the more i realise that i do speak english,
the more i wish to not speak it it...
i get tired of it...
                   i sorta lose the plot, wishing that
there actually was a plot to care about...
                                          i can't see the plot,
i can't see the plot because there isn't one to begin with...
   it's architecture kept by invoking a care for
superglue... i can't see it as migrational,
   i can't see it as eastern european economic migration
or the african stampede, or the eternal-judeo
   dispersion...
            if the western people are bewildered by their culture,
then i'm doubly bewildered by the export of all
body-works to china, leaving earopean man with
menial, but rather mental works...
                  and i'm drinking, so that's a +,
but i just can't see the end as related to d.n.a.
being upkept... i can't see that narrative...
                          my concept of eternity can't really
transgress your lack of it...
                        it's get boring after a while talking
with atheists... i'd prefer talking with ahumanists...
        i'd love to pair an atheist with an
ahumanist... because i don't actually see a lot of
human in what's god's own...
                    a- (indefinite article), meaning without
god, or the kaleidoscope finger to the eye
suits the noun right... thetheism is also a very
ugly noun that could exist.... before god has no
parameters, i'd prefer to look at the words that can exist
but don't, given our care for lubricants...
     the- (definite article), meaning with god....
    well the alternatives are islam... christianity...
or the argument by populist secular commuters:
we actually do believe in the same god...
question is: what's there to question in your spare time?
        after that it becomes a hellish enterprise...
  or a dictatorial reality... or the democratic basis for:
i don't eat with you, i won't sleep with you,
and i'll certainly not turn the central heating for you.
   the least thing accessible for me, is to
watch television with you,
                 because that's how it works.
given we've moved into a.i. and robotics,
i'd like us to play god, beyond definition, by simply
not being there... just so we can perfect creating the robot...
so atheism must come with ahomo...
                          best prescribed via ****...
   or the *****...
                         well, if we are to forsake the existance
of god, and fully embrace creating the robot,
we shouldn't technically be here...
                                which makes Heidegger's
dasein really useful... given that popular culture
made fun of germans as not really human but
merely robotic, until the human peeped through
the veil of Auschwitz and everyone was like:
um... revision? just like they thought the Jews
were stupid clinging to the tetragrammaton...
  they did... in the past 2000 years of "judeo-christian"
interaction, you'de get more crucifixes than
talks about the tetragrammaton...
                well, if we're serious about building
the ******* robot, why not do away with god
but also humanity? i don't see the point of disposing one
and keeping the other...
           in our ambition to create a.i.
we didn't forsake god, we forsoke ourselves...
    i don't care whether god is dead...
                     given we have youtube
                  stars that act as clogs in the advert machinery
i find no care to find a deus mort, or a **** viv!
i find, no concern, in finding a dead god,
  or a man, alive... non deus mort, vel **** viv!
  counter:
    numne deus mort: **** est non viv,
             **** contra viv... contra deus...
                 strange to think,
a non-existent thing: to be so obstructive,
and later construct one's life around him
being so beneficial, as to make a life from
orating atheism... a tad bit funny...
        how can i perfect this vulgate?!
numne deus mort, **** emortus...
                evidently, given our preoccupation
with robotics and a.i., the death of god
came with the baggage of becoming gods
and asking to spark a secondary case of the Edenic
charring...
               again the Latin... it's a fetish, my apologies...
deus mort (god dead, est, yeah), or
                        **** viv (man, life bound) -
   it appears the two aren't as explicit as it would appear...
it seems there's a natural basis for a god,
whether satan's clause does actually involve
being paid in toy-structures and cleaning the conscience...
          and i do speak worse Latin than
most English people speak modern English...
luck of the draw... the long straw.... i win a tumble dryer...
you win a voltswagen beetle engine...
   we both end up hearing a midnight song of
mechanical burps and fake stomach maracas...
       i just thought i'd say:
either god is dead, and man has died with him,
or god is really dead, and man fakes living a
posthumous life, encouraged to create a robot...
which he has done, alternative to prayer,
  creating something a god might occupy himself
with then man has abandoned god...
                    i sometimes think:
of all the anglophone writers, i use the word
god as shamelessly as most anglophone writers
use pronouns... i use the word shamelessly...
  because most anglophone writers use pronouns
so freely... i know this doesn't give the fat
of the argument... but i use it freely...
       i'm starting to wonder wether
            god is dead gave us anything more than
people paying for a grave before they get
shovelled into it...
                  as it stands: quiet the opposite...
long before the epitaphs or the dates are
              enshrined, they have already bought
the parody of owning a home...
they are already waiting for the marble space
beneath the maple trees...
                 which is why i ask by restating
the end of metaphysics, if gott ist mort,
            what mann ist viv?
     last time i checked, i found more human warmth
of my own voice asking a refrigerator about
the weather, than my neighbour about
    last Sunday. i'd sooner punch my neighbour
dead than ask him about his feelings.
6ft1, 115kg... i guess i could put a sock in
the right case of gob.
Barton D Smock Jun 2014
the two play tic-tac-toe by prison correspondence.  the mutual doctor they once met through is now famous for being there when god was in labor.  I love my research when it brings me to my mother’s stone because my mother’s stone is without epitaph and because beside my mother’s stone is one engraved with a phone number which predates what everyone is doing.  I call the number and nothing.  the two unfold a couch into a bed and go their separate ways to check email.  their little devil details the car that didn’t get away.  I want this little devil so badly it murders the actor I look like.  the two stand in front of a movie poster and stand there just as they’ve planned.  a beauty shop closes its doors sending beauticians into a street crowded with beauticians for open carry.  I send Emily to search for Emily when Emily was pretty.
TG Hinchcliff Feb 2014
That love we had which predates June
Kept us in fits all afternoon.
Her sky-stained eyes sang ***** tunes.
Bluer being than bluest moons.
All around her fresh lagoon
I swam and sank and spoke too soon.
A brighter night from this was hewn
And on a page the tale was strewn.
A voice that rang inopportune
And ears to its hum immune.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
in the end there are only two genres
in literature -

type 1:

a navy seal retires,
has lived his life and what not,
retires,
and then writes a book
about his life -

the sort of book that would
encourage you to live
the life he's lived...

   which is not going to happen -
no matter your literary drive -
the life isn't there -
and it's not exactly high-brow
literary ambitions that
is missing -
   it's simply that the life is
there,
   the Blitzkrieg selling rates
of such books,
people, "oddly" enough like
an authentically lived
experience to prop up the
dry narrative of:
what probably constitutes
ghost writers...
  a Casanova type of books,
autobiographies...

but wait...
what happened to the autobiography
genre?
    last time i checked,
all these reality t.v. celebs have
about 5 "autobiographies"
to boot...
   and they're what... licking 40
a.m. (our mortal god's years
of the fidgety limbs?) -
what's up with that?

    so it's not an autobiography per se...
memory loss, premature dementia?
i was misdiagnosed with that...
schizophrenia...
     that's fun...
what is?
   a misdiagnosis...
whenever i watch t.v. i play a game
of spotting a familiar face...
i'm usually right...
                photographic memory...
i can recognize a face...

        kind of a requirement living
in the labyrinth of outer
English suburbia...
    ******* ferris wheel quasi confusion:
but always speeding up...

type 1 books?
   a summary of a well lived life:
joined the army,
  traveled the world,
  learned Brazilian martial arts,
****** a lot of women...
began the day by jogging
at 3am with the milkman...
   books you should read in your youth
and be fed the desire to live
a symbiosis of it, imitate it...

funny... cloning is not a scientific
concept, physically...
sure... that much is true...
  but cloning a mind...
converting someone to pray five
times a day on a Persian rug?
   religion...
    religion was the first instigator
of cloning, prior to science,
cloning is such an old concept,
it predates the scientific breakthroughs...
how else?
you have to clone and replicate
the mind, before the body is
investigated as being enclosed in
the equivalent capacity for,
said, "conversion"...

            i guess for the elites
clones are much effective than what's being
fed for the bourgeoisie...
  look... the rich care more about
the poor than the middle class...
   because they know that the poor
can only pass on genes...
   which muddles the bourgeoisie, a lot...
it feeds them passing on
memes -
              less genes - more memes -
the rich can father replicas by passing on
both: genes... & memes...
the poor can only pass on their genes...
the bourgeoisie?
    they can't do both...
       and since they can't pass both...
they have concentrated on passing memes
rather than genes...

  and you know where that leaves them?
evidently sexless -
  or at least with a 0.5% rate
of population replenishment....
     not a nice place...

but that's only type 1 of literature...

type 2:
  the sort of antithesis of an autobiography,
someone that is on-going...
    gravitating toward an expansion
of a personal vocabulary...
   the sort of book, you can't write,
and never will,
   because it depicts a life:
            YOU DON'T WANT TO LIVE.
**** me, it would be grand to
live the type 1 literature,
settling in some comfy armchair aged
70, and reminiscing...
             you have that last *******
watching memory cinema,
you can lie, juxtapose through the fabric
of oncoming dementia
memory loss...
   life is dandy...
          but type 2 literature?
ever notice the ongoing onslaught with
wordings and linguistic observations?
those supposedly inorganic aspects of
language -
words acting as inanimate objects?
oh but they breath -
sure, they fall in and out of fashion -
but a flesh eating body of flesh
still managed to utter them,
somehow, never mind the etymological
genesis -
            only when there is
the complete slaughter of encoded language
will there be talk of an "etymological"
exodus...
   but that's beside the point...
this type 2 of writing?
    no magical life formula...
no joining the army,
or ******* a lot of women...
the whole sha-sha-bang!
                  
    in the end i hold dear to the fact that i'm
not a fiction escape-artist...
i hate escapism -
    esp. of a fictive nature,
well, fictive "nature" per se...
give me a philosophy book or
some obscure poem and i'll
turn a cognitive labyrinth into
a Pamplona bull charge...
    
as i also wanted to travel to Munich for
the Oktoberfest...
but never did...

   guess it's true:
   you can never get what you want,
might as well do with
what you have and must like it...
i.e. if you don't have what you
like: like what you have.

very few people write type 2 literature...
most write type 1...
       let's face it...
there's type 2A and type 2B...
     type 2A is fiction...
   escape artistry...
                
****... that's three genres then...
             type 2B has one motto:
my life is so ******* boring, that...
i decided to write...
                     well... "bored"...
rather... predictable...
                  but i can't imagine the horror
of having lived such a challenging
and exciting life of type 1...
and then reducing it to farting into
an armchair...
   and getting a ghost-writer to
script my open mic monologue...

             ah...
                  i'm sure that few people will
write a type 2B...
            too few people have
lost their "necessity" to dream while sleeping...
i stopped dreaming per se,
even if i do conjure up a dream...
it's so much *******,
so Jackson ******* that
     even Freud couldn't get
a cucumber or an oyster metaphor
out of it.
Tete Rudo Feb 2019
The call
Is primal
The call
Is wild
The call is
Spontaneous

It dares us to
Let go
It dares us to
Leave our senses
It dares us to
Yield
To the Unknown
To leave the
Land of Familiar
And go
Beyond thought
Beyond feelings
Beyond words
Indeed,
Beyond
The universe.

The call
Exists
It predates
Time
It predates
Space
The call is
Utterly alluring.

It speaks a
Universal language
Understood by all
It calls to
The brave amongst us.

The Call of the Wild
Was
Is
And
Always shall be.

Can you hear it?
Emilee Ayers Sep 2017
The air is cool for a summer day.
Kittens play with fallen leaves
As the breeze does the same with my hair.
Everything around me familiar
Burned into my memory.

Small changes have happened over the years
But some things remain forever the same.
The big ant hill at the end of the road
It predates us.
Will probably out live us all.

The atmosphere feels different
As though autumn decided to debute
Before pumpkin spice is released in stores
For once.
I'm not complaining.

I take no pictures.
Instead I open my eyes wide
In effort to take in ever detail in front of me
As the moment that came is leaving
Even as I live and breathe.

Making shapes of clouds that tease the rain.
And to think, I really liked that day.
This was playing in my head before we had decided to evacuate from hurricane Harvey.
Everything seemed normal. You wouldn't know destruction was inevitable if you didn't know the risk churning in the gulf.
I didn't even know that when I came home, nothing would be the same. And I didn't look back as we did leave.
JP Goss Aug 2014
Some, ode-to-be,
Never let my get so close
That I should turn to graphite
That which set notes
To a discordant symphony,
Lyrics to that beautiful muteness.
Never—I promise—will you be my poem
You’ve mastered an art
Only dreams could capture
Half as well.
You make me seek and chase
A fantasy
And long to capture what, before
I never thought.
I am left in division:
Do I love what I can’t have?
If so, how?
Do I release what eschews chains,
Arrests me having done the better?
O, then this I hear a locket
Whole, in faith, on my breast
And lest I’m to sail
Towards an in an eastern destiny
The key will blow in warm
From the west
Strangely, a pattern unlike my own
On wings that flutter
Free
And I will, somehow, hold the key
That, somehow, predates
Her western destiny.
Two lockets broken
And chains entwined
Shall render useless an eager hand
But still the palsy that urges it
Amidst the ailing hate of it:
Love in its purest.
Hank Helman Nov 2023
It's you.
I think you said those words first,
And instantly I understood.

It's you.
Unexpectedly.

It's you.
It's us
This We, we feel,
Predates this life.
Survives this life.
It's you.
For eternity.
Forever.

It's you.
Thank you for  the reads and likes. It helps.

— The End —