Floating above the rifts of apperception I glaze over the gaudy faucets of imagined vector thrusts in hibernation by the lucubration of space-time materialized crystal in the somber beats of fetched farrago of choice slices in delicate hums of hemmed balance rantipole only in ethereal importance but otherwise supersolid above the sprauncy vagrancy of dilettantism. We shout a clarion virtuosity so that the conclamation of neovitalism conjures upon a spell of lapse and regress a motive for further crystallization of epidemiology into harmony with syndicated admonition sleek in design and parceled into renown by feats of completion rather than slugabed gregarious fountains of wasted ingenuity bleeding from the vacuum of an empty hearth in a hospitable dwelling otherwise cleared of imperfection. Right now, I levitate with transcendence with an approximated eidetic memory that is the surgical vibrancy of renewal rather than the chameleons of hidden talents buried by the walls of Jericho sounding tocsins of alarm that the anointed favor of choice destruction is only an encircled rapture of rhapsodies of confluence found in axiomatic truths ribbed with the futtocks of seaworthy but cauponate recidivism into the donnybrooks of apocryphal revelation preceding the whimsical fall of cascading permanence just as gravity so ordained it. We breathe the life of the ethereal numinous spirit of isangelous repute because we navigate the exquisite cobweb of reconciliation to surpass all understanding in peace what would be a miscegenated carcass of war otherwise apart from the incidental apartheid of the drones of causality ignoring the antecedent reality too much to register fathomed streaks of preventive endeavor because of the scars of a scrappy schlep of the rampicks of ecbolic servitude to moth-eaten star-crossed lovers of the mean menagerie of gutless succor renowned only in tepid rejections of harbingers bequeathed in succession but ignored because of the procession of “Billie Jean” politics.

   The citadel aflame with controversy buttresses carnality by witless contaminants of hidebound scaldabancos of ineffable destitution so craven in eisoptrophobia for their hypostasized indolent fatuousness of capitulation that they are but a minor punctuation in the largesse of centuries to favor audacity in candor over the prevarications of catastrophe to dented human pride against humane dictates of theodicy in fatalism that predestination experimented with its own vaulted verve to find permanent solutions engraved in the agrapha of time to solidify the redintegrated truth of God’s divine stewardship above the quisquilous deism of former regnant centuries of blench and blandishment. We revolt at the specter of rot only when the effluvia of disgust elevates the visceral reality above the utilitarianism of recycled prim nuisances of noisome lineage that yet balk because they are bereft of attention but not a vacant talent and therefore should the subsidies of man surpass the ignorance of appearances he will shrug of the demur of the scrimshank and sharpen his scrivello in the service of redemption found through cultivated prowess of gardens beneath where rivers flow above a cubic centurion of embattled visages of the heavens becoming the rampart for the vestigial clarity of Secret Masters to foresee the bypass that heals decadence and rebukes the formalism of puritan endeavor to sweat with exhaustive patience over the gossamer intertesselations of a ripe reality rather than a groveled fragmentary world shattered too much by exigent metanoia to mount the crenellated catchpole of vigilant enmity towards the stew of listlessness found in epigone and farce more than in organic fortunes. We flip the upheaval of society to squander our proportionate degrees of wealth on the necessity created by dire quandary which enamors by interrogations of pulchritude the verisimilitude of participle ivory dalliance of etched canvasses of simultagnosia for the librations of the liberated rings of betrothed liberation despite profound lurches of the mistetches of ignorance presiding dismally over the hulked disdain of glamborge rather than resselenque.

     The winter is a poor porcine glut of ciconine swelters because the prickly obtuse recoil of the delopes of caution find their permeable balance with a sort of photographic photosynthesis that braves the dearth of reprieve for the reprisal of nostalgic deeds found in the docimasy of riveted reflections because the preordination of God is the superlative champion of the witeless grandeval protectorate of infinite concepts guarded from the parvanimity even of the most strident minds squabbling over the braseros and battues of history as though those funereal stains of lachrymose regret outweigh the traditions of vaunted human progress because they are finicky about importunate pleas of subsidiary injustice rather than fulminations of the modern rebuttal to the disclaimers of an uneven history that shepherds the doubts of nihilism into ripe fruition at the expense of very expensive moral rot for the codlings of urbacity and mendaciloquence used to foment that tribalism of totemic justice. We see in Penuel the wrestling match of specters and heroic giants documented on the ageless pages and we notice the ironic twinges of struggle that kneaded the propriety of gentilian privilege that ultimately fostered an insurrection against chosen bravado among those that sear with zeal beyond the yordim afflictions of yobbery because the Jewish heart is stronger than any calamity even if it departs from the reverence of the colporteurs of the integrated syncretism of the attempted monolith that beseeches polyphiloprogenitive growth in mindset rather than in testy abeyance of forbearance because of known scrutinies into the tropology of wilted facts remanded by curious historicity that crumples without disdain when we memorialize the erasure of scepsis by modern standards of thaumaturgy.

    The minauderies of growth are a repositioned tacit allegiance to the untold fanfare and hearsay immunized against the broach of facetious levity to buoy discordant hearts above fumatoriums of relentless ignorance because coherent masterwork can be cobbled without such lapidary toil and toll on sincere affectations of wizened brevity. The seismic precautions for the forefathers of incidental convergences between expectancy and crystallized history are an ironic intortion of priorities because the heralds and tribunes matched the peerless foresight with the gerrymandered figments of apartheid between the imaginary and the real so that the delicate synchrony of events could unfurl a riveting carapace from the shells of protection even in amiable squalor for its impenitent attrition on the volleys of sensible rumor becoming fashioned in covert bedazzled errors in judgment leading to the triumph of the eventual civilization over the futtocks of the burial of the former trekleador of zenkidu belonging to provincial cadasters found so tucked in the hedges that discernment of frikmag would be an indelible scourge on the biognosy of the diagnosed endeavors that elapsed into remediated circumstances that brave the depths of deontological violation for the breadth of apportioned loaves and two swanky fish earning a place among the miracles of transcendent liberation from articles of decree imperious by sardonic disdain becoming nullified by the histrionics of a delicately staged orchestra that cements human achievement.

       We relish the frescades of a ruffled autumnal reminder of flourish above pothers of the screed of admonition swamped by nostalgic backtracks in the séance with ultimatum of design and the impregnated and carnal lusts of a world pitched in darkness with guarded lambent lights fomenting a perjury against tact for the deliverance of freedom in tacit agreement with owleries that every bonanza be tithed in their favor regardless of hibernation of spoilsports or their subsidiary remarks on indelible quills of invented manufactured realities we crave with desperation rather than cower from in requited nescience urging us to depart from affairs and stagnate the loyalty of fealty above the limber of utility mobilized above levities for solemn remarks and rejoinders. Promulgated above the robotic rubble of staffage haywire in wiredrawn contemplative resonance of tremulous subterfuge vestigial but immediate to the yardsticks of reprehensible malarkey, is the barnstorm for erratic dimples sauntered by the saunas of shelter above the chaos of ruined ginnels for the gimcracks of auxiliary duty to service, is the glorification of the sultry intimations of legions of remonstrance in guarded decorum about sunken atrocities lapsed in memorial to the incumbent brunt of sockdolagers of justice returning revenants from the bridewell of historical internment. The symphily of orchestras to cineaste symposiasts of surquedry in impudence beyond the brays of betrayal is the aborning mythos of regimented perceptions of a world that when magnified by minutiae appears starkly contrast to the gapped gubbertushed reality of the average patron of the arts to such an extreme gulf of receptive understanding that the qualia are dovetailed only in the swink of careful kisswonks to certify certitude itself when all the fragments coalesce into subjoined harmony to the substructures of inherent conscientiousness. The miracles at work that are vesicles and vessels for the swage of imprint above the loyalty of the imprinted tribunes of the fluminous is how hidden protrusions can emerge so victorious over popularized glazes on the pastures of a farmed culture itching for timmynoggies of innovation but only finding the etched remarks of pristine imagos of heroism dwindling in motivation to surpass the imaginative leaps accustomed to a newfangled laziness that bedazzles the guzzle of crowds but not the discrimination of the crowded morass of incompletion found in mosaics missing enigmatic philters of intoxicated love for the profound. So to be intermediary as a custodian for artistry we must cozen the wheedled imaginations not of the relic but the archaeologist that discovered the embedded prisms of attentive scrutiny for glinting sunshine inherent in troves of surpassed excellence beyond parochial sympatric blandishment of donnism rather than a resselenque that floats above demeanor to usher the cosseted age of treasure above the glib brocards and florews of past success.

      Immanent to the provisions of God as decreed from a syncretic reconnaissance of the pitiable gulfs that separate boundless divine love from the clavigerous potential for scrappy sympatric affiliation to **** through the barnstorms of internal comestions of conflated priorities we are ourselves prismatic in the indulgence of a tasty life sprinkled with zest rather than tempered with the vengeance of retorted animosity that we knead the pottery of ironclad resistance to a metallic conduit of pruned fulminations of unguided intuition so that the natural accord supersedes the goad of materialism for the sustenance of antiquity beyond its heyday for vital gains against the tauricide of panic and frenzy. The linchpin of all realistic attempts at the sympatric symphily of civilization is a guided remorse through the torment of affliction that sizzles without anteric barbs as it measures through engrenage how to pilot the vehicles of prosperity through the minefields of contingency that invisibly bequeath new hurdles and inestimable obstacles that collude surreptitiously to fulminate measured controversy against the backbites of restrained equipoise created by polities of the macadamized fabric of a welded smithy of a universe that with ubiquity proclaims above the senseless the harvest of conjugal repartee in sensible pride against militant bastions of incidental prejudice for a careen against the flyndresques of danger and the flyndrigs of glaikery alike for a humane spurt of enlightenment to tower peerlessly in supervision of entelechy created by esemplastic unity in apolaustic purpose. We cannot be puritans engaged in a pilgrimage to a palimpsest of priggishness because the daring elements of adventurism are necessary ingredients to catalyze the supply-chain of the innate gluttony of ego-seeking endless balance with a natural sustained biognosy that prizes biocentric harmony above bibliognost scepsis so that the enthused can flock with liberty divorced from libertinism. The ultimatum is a war between hedonism wed with donnism against eumoirety and self-restraint and this battle will be waged on the indolence of a future of cordslave tethers to interrogation of privy conceptualism hamshackled by the gradgrinds into the neat nexility of precise conformity that blacklists the samizdat because the genizah profoundly twists the already jumbled jengadangle and provides a junediggle of procession and ceremony rather than pomp without substantial grit embedded in the showmanship of a reality in need of a fourth-wall.

        It is ironic how we bewrayed our stewardship of the planet as a plenipotentiary sentience waged against the vesicles of instinct but more fundamental to this tattered but pregnant psalm is that the stronghold of our future is the tenacity of filial duty to enthrone the household with husbandry and restraint as an emolument to divine justice that sparkles opalescent in its own redacted notions of gravity imperfect in the taradiddles of science but refined by the eclat of the combustible syncopation of a reiterative trope of realism combined with surrealist caprice to henpeck affectionate violation above inviolable screeds of blood sport rather than conjugal affections afforded to the brood and the feast of the flocks that rein supreme over all things but exert inclement justice over the cattle and chattel of civilization itself. The minkumpf against the sacrilege of a prioritized kosher is to abhor the suffering rather than embrace the penitence of perceived but specious sacrifice which is an ornery thorn on the stained conscience of the yobbery of both the apikoros and the obedient because to attenuate all suffering even of instinctual beings we anneal our hearts to a glorified compassion that supersedes the relegated relics of pushful genuflection by succedaneum of sacrifice waged against the docile whangams of otiose theodicy. The filibusters against the regnant complexity of regalia that is a sprauncy poivrade with terpsichorean flairs to transmute the intimations of hibernated perfidy into finicky transmissions for the riometers that accord orbific merit in a lackluster time enchant the rollicking audience of this auditorium of the prevenance of the conquered universe bracing for the camorra of the insipid entreaty of defalcated casuistry—the prominent exchequer in hoodwinked political agitprop that forges ironclad allegiances to flimsy facades of the verisimilitude of dignity with recalcitrant but incondite bruits of venom militant against secular apostasy—that the fitful arrivistes that swim in dire dearth will be welcomed into the reconciliation of all time with a tempered lurid glint of revelation bounded by sunken albatross of hype unbounded with a peace insurmountable in prestige rewarded only with the highest reservations.


    On 3-1-2020 when I penned my philosophy—even at a slowpoke margin of crafty precision above rapid empirical faucets of folly—I was entirely selfsame with the autotelic engravings of the smoldering aboriginal talents within that many can swing through by tenacity for enormous plaudit but a flagrant majority will apprehend with flippant scollardical tenets of rebuke and remain honest in their appraisal only in meek resignation of parvanimity.
Consider the postulates of rarefaction whittled into a vehement zeal against the prostitution of our species to the anteric cycles of residual molds of dingy spectacle mired by the tyrannical towers of supercilious squirms of revamped novelty rather than enhanced by the freebooters of dirigisme that borrow from time the behest of philandered flairs divorced from the cadges of secular instinct and enthroned by the qualms of engineered virtuosity that is stark, barren but peerless in its outstretched clamor for luxuriant sprees against the silentium of grandeval asylum incurred by the flippant filigrees of recalcitrant modernism endangered by the irredentism of the future upon the whimsy of the present-minded momentary glare of rapture.  This impending architecture of nimble but subservient endeavor is a pinprick rejoinder against the wernaggles of prepossessed fountains of configured animosity against the stapled heed of a modality of trayned invictive invectives against the plodding course of fustilugianation that swerves in apathy of autopilot junediggle to emanate the surrender of epigone to the raktendure of the synaesthesis of the attuned perception of all superimposed minutiae delegated by calculated design into a synclastic focus on veiled caprice that is vaulted above the choppy and sketchy verdure of remiss perception to stellar continuities rather than mundane knickpoints of stodged blurs that magnify syncretic qualia into baseline congruity rather than staid torpefied resignation of the visage of thunder without the pangs of the widely vituperated lightning that bequeaths all certain notions but flouts the tortious saboteurs of the prim trucage of brittle fundamentalism.

     As the flawed paragon of a picaresque youth punctuated by vibrant plumage of self-wrought tropophilous usucaption of remote groomed frontiers of desolate luxury but buoyant morale into the ballasts of a nimble usufruct that hikkles yet still against still-framed thilloire--fatuous in endearment only to the polity of the waterdrip of craven but gravid disingenuous flickers of lambent cloaks of perfidy—that earned its birthright by meditative fruition rather than prodigal tallespin of indolent frapplanks of a vicarious personage rather than an autotelic haecceity showcases the folly of heterodyne inclinations meeting an impasse of accidental dislodgement. The interregnum between the spurts and sprees of luxuriance is a staid pause between continuities of afforded parlance becoming stapled demographic solidarity affixed to a strident gallop of effortful pushes against the tenacity of the slumberous wicked hibernation of vetust magpiety without hieratical internment because youthful industry beats hackneyed bludgeons of wiseacres of a stilted manufacture of steamy nostalgia for lickerish moments that dignify but undermine moral virtues but splash anointed and sometimes disjointed favor upon the congeners to a rabid escapade of a heedless love frowning on the girdles of the prim balderdash of heralded jolts dim on levity and puffed with elusive contextualized control of libidinous serrated defilement because the crotaline **** outmantles the sweedled limber of exploitable folly. The cosseted reality of wheedled gourmands of continuous perception rather than the Gaussian blur of the protean invention of stitches in time that obscure rather than magnify the supernal levity inherent to most artistry is a linchpin of lenient gravitas that levies the lavaderos of ripe perception into annealment.
Excuse the bravado of the gait of winnowed forks in a bronteum for heralds of megaloscopy fastened to the macroscian reality of indelible filigrees of countermanded controversy becoming its best behest in the sempiternal flowering of burgeoned demonstration rather than illustrious overhang of drab slabs of manufacture rather than organism that should be interposed between the constellated concepts of both apperception and the aggrieved counselors to obtuse obsessions that are an improper tutelary for a designated reprisal of the once profane now immediately gratified by ramshackle tenets of a guarded sublimation of the tenets of post-modernism into a sustained force of the internalized tabernacle of haecceity shepherded into exuberance by the manumission of spirit from the ******* of purblind scalds of defamation that incurs the penalty of flippant privation. The refuge the Lord provides is not contingent upon the vagaries of deliberation nor the calculus of oversight but the remontant amaranthine glower of a listed deed becoming an eternal reminder that a dismantled and disjointed world fathoming only remorse rather than the trudge of gentility against the headwinds of brunt asperity will always flout the successor rather than atone for the failure of the imponent condition that constellates around rudimentary drivel grubbing the momentary out of avarice for allotted merchandise rather than glommed magnets to amoeba sentiments for the kisswonk of ulterior motive beyond dungeons of desperation that lurk ghoulishly with spectral frights at the disfigurement of morale created by errors askew rather than a contagion of righteous valor.

   Ask the heedful servant if the captaincy of reneged commitment owes homage to dutiful instruction or whether it is a balking corpse of necrosis accorded to the omphalism of brutish carnal repose in times of sedentary silt siphoned in spelunked rijuice for preordination is a predominant specter for a world scared scurrilous and skittish in a diatribe against the very notion of tribal screeds embedded in the sedimentary heft of traditionalism above the pother of vacillation commended to the apikoros but counterfeit fiat system of a ruddy governance without a supreme magistrate. Now lets venture into the territory of visagists as we envision the swanky subversion of impoverished and nebbich visions of oligochrome that fixates on belabored but dead notions of rigid propriety and levitate above those concerns with a querulous transcendence that never wernaggles about the profaned irrelevance of burlesque tropes of sidereal friction but instead memorializes the thermolysis of permeable endeavor above staid countenances of imposture that lurk in the shadowy penumbra of the connivance of persona above the archetype of the tutelary guardian spirit that through windlass and sometimes deliberation affixes nobility to even the pedestrian in order to assize its proper proportions to granular ironies expounded into megalography transformative by the very rivets of its supersensible existence and cohabitation with histrinkage among human taboos.

   The handiwork of a permeable race prone to exacerbated proclamations of prerogatives bulldozed by the rapid percolation of insoluble quandaries to the gripes of the feast of foofaraw sometimes shelters our otherwise regnant concern about the plenipotentiary God that observes all latent affairs without the paramours that conflate vivid carnality with appeased luxury and superimposes a crafty system of seismic shifts in rantipole dances with numinous flux rather than dissipated militant suppression of the fracklings of dissolute pollution which swirk in their dastardly desperado endeavors to corral the entire monoliths that guard each province into a winnowed rumble of rubble by tarnish of Tyre rather than by the upstart rejoinders of Canaan. Every creature which has the capacity to perceive language is afforded benedictions by the overhailing force of the hypaethral heights of superlative ingenuity founded in the bolted speculation of the endearment of all to tropological seesaws embattled against the hearsay of nyejays that contaminates the telmatology of the ecosystem of revivalism rather than buries the leaden debts of the disjointed revenants of past prominence into recycled irrelevance for posterity rather than for anything but a machination of a clockwork apple rigged for a rotten worm to swindle the sweet delicate tempests of unforeseen disaster to perjuries against financial solidarity.

The spinsters of sardonic drollery underscore the imminence of an incondite cutthroat collapse blackguarded by the hucksters of incontinence grubbing every fetched noisome notion and congealing a bonnyclabber of desiccated mildew that proves vestigial when the victors of time earn their joyous serenade to the pinnacle of the totem of jaundice slits in wavy endeavors for the participles of sejungible syntax of the ephorized furor to outlast the draksteng of droned dereliction manned by half-baked spies of ulterior recitals for imprinted vicissitude in supremacy in synquest for frizzlounges rather than the pedestrian circulatory system of careworn polity. We vaporize the petty hatred of sympatric regelation that neuters the virulence of motivated impediments to the draconian surge of asperity that sinks temporal haplessness as a regaled blasphemy that crowns only the ringed betrothal to spumid serrated halts in slick superstition that is a buggery to the idea of insectivores devouring the erratic chantage of germane germs that pauperize rather than even blind the deafened to be a crutch to vehicular homicide. Melismatic sennet is a dirigible of immense herculean sinew without the traces of vestibulary retches of kisswonked grisly tepid intimidations of eccedentesiasts by the radioglare of wizened corrugations in thanatism that exhort the avatars of narquiddity over the natural departure of revenant souls back to their temporary hostility to crass lifeless decarnate immediacy that slinks with foibles magnified by vertiginous heights of scollardical reputes rigged by the rijuice of the plackiques of meaningless spoils for swashbuckler bonanza borrowed from serrated vengeance exacted in prominence to provide false avenues of extenuation to malefaction that is confidant to the panopticon of exemplary dimples meager in the largesse of the composite realism of a sizable imprint on megalography that outlasts impertinent excuses for dangerous trout swimming against the mobilized selachostomous frizz of sharks gathering to avenge disclosure with insolence and gravid atrocity of incisive surgical evisceration of attempted depositions that falter by innumerable facets of countenance that belie ultimate realism and the perdurable construction of a sturdy hive of bibliognost revelry.

     Even with the blaring sennet of majesty inundating my piecemeal perception with the marstions of flarium that is an efficacy in a flaccid world of otiose pretenses limpid only in folly but contraplex in ironic skewbald skerries of grubbed destination that is the terminus of karezza despite the maledictions of vehement guarded betrayals that conjure up lurid noisome virility against the gamines and gallywows that populate interstellar fictions of virtu rather than mundane pragmatica that astound with the resselenque of contaminated skeumorphs of latent fracture belonging to a skeletonized ossified reification of farce above historicity in seemly seamless countenance with overwrought princely stature deserving integrity to ripples through sparkling opalescence. The vapid insularity of the self-contained mythos of appeased groundlings is based on the rhizic and rhizogenic fracklings destitute in predicative flares to swelter above stratospheres of the illimitable into the dwelling of the highest serenity inherent to the pacification of truth to neglect its egregious errors of mistetches of a ripened pachyderm of bravery in times of austerity and now a reclaimed notion of sempiternal charades swimming above the punitive draksteng of dranger that is enlarged by acclimated attempts at foiled raltention hikkling against its own superior forces of galvanized preterition to elide over screwball insanity of derangement in this virtual paradise of inhabited souls belonging to former times congregating on the pasture of the evanescence of now for all eternity having the optative condition of incarnation above the ferules of the stagnant brevity of oversight in heavenly realms by postulate but not confirmed by regal logic.

     The troponder of the flickered lambent niceties of polity is a countenance that piggybacks on simpered jostles of negligent engrenage to appease sworn enmities among beatific havens for certitude swarmed by the fisticuffs of darbied bridewells of desiccated drainage traversing the distant disdain for the gravel of cemented slits of stilted pragmatica that is a gavel of atrocious estoppel mediated by heroic heresiarchs against pitiable betrayal for forceful remedies in acclimated servitude to the groans and groaks of a life of remorse and dearth rather than the glut of luxuriance in forbearance to its own intorted mirrored ironies that etch infinity with every scrawled rejoinder to austere ploys of checkered rumbles of threat and exigency posed by the clairvoyant hypocrites who benefit greatly by the design of the omphalism above the frays and brays of corporate dogmatism slowly outmoded by vibrant plumages of heteronormative originality beyond petty chantage. A hesitation overcomes the bluster of bravado as the restive earnest concerns of tribulation beset the minauderies of divine affection to reaffirm the teachings of the Gospel so that future generations genuflect beneath the altar of the ultimate stroke of sociogenesis and the blood ransom of suffering that promoted the human latitude and liberty against incarcerated throngs of virtue over caesaraproprism accorded to genuflection beneath denarii rather than absolution by tether to the eternal vine of sensation of the supersensible entelechy of all valiant insurrections against defective polities and renewed policies.

     We thus seek a transdimensional bridge between the morphean virtu of rudimentary alchemy of propitiation divulged by leverage and the teeming rambunctiousness of fiduciary tribes to the ultimate duty of man to consummate the future of eternity even in slowpoke mannerisms that sidle through rigors of entelechy and assize the masterwork of tutelage above the circumforaneous entrenchment of glut above the mastery of the subtle subaudition that beleaguers an adept conflagration of harnessed human ignorance staid in the incarceration of exotic virtues of freewheeling sapience never vulnerary to hospitable concerns that entrenches the verisimilitude of a refracted justice to reign over the stultification of a primitivism inherent to man and not man alone.

You know the type.
She's probably called something like
Isabella. Rosalie. Ginevra.
and you find her in the sort of novel where
she's outdone by someone called something like
Jane. Agnes. Lucy.
She's remembered in criticism as
Trivial. Silly. Foolish.
She's defined as Shallow. Vain. False gold.
She's analysed as the mirror, the contrast or the foil
and you're supposed to vaguely dislike her.
She'll reaffirm to the reader that the heroine,
whether she be plain or beautiful, is always, in the end,
Rational. Independent. Brave.
She reaffirms the heroine as someone who
learns and grows
while the silly girl is left looking at herself in the mirror.

The thing is sometimes I feel more like the silly girl,
the girl who needs a hand, the girl who reads books
and wants to believe the stories.
Sometimes, I'm looking in the mirror,
chest deep in my own trivial, silly little worries,
looking at the puddles not the lake, and I know.
I know I'd be one of the silly girls,
not the heroine, out there, just surviving.
I'd be one of those silly girls and I hate it - and yet
- what's so wrong with the silly girls?

What's so wrong with the girls who love themselves,
or love the wrong people or love their clothes?
What's wrong with the girls who are
brave but not rational,
independent but trivial,
selfish but practical?

What's wrong with those girls,
because I always find myself preferring
the Ginevras and the Isabellas anyway.

tell me what keeps you awake at 2 am
whether it’s the girl who took the knife of her absence and stabbed it into your sternum
or the loneliness that swallows your skin

play the one song which releases the floodgates in your eyes
and let me listen to it over and over again
until i find which line makes your heart drop to your stomach

describe the story of your body to me
tell me of the invisible scars too
and with each detail you describe
i will make a map
so i know which road bumps to avoid
or which holy sites to fall to my knees and kiss the ground of

remember that
i wear a mask brimming with self confidence and an armor of words that are both easy to tear for they were thin like tissue to begin with
i am sensitive
taking to hurt the way a sponge absorbs water

do not hide me behind closed doors or keep me entrapped in bed sheets
when you walk past me, do not pull your hood over your head and avert your gaze
i need you to look at my eyes as if they illuminated the entire world
and kiss my lips as if they are what allow you to breathe

open the door.
bring me flowers.
because the only boy who did either was my 5th grade boyfriend

be willing to meet my family and friends
for they were the ones who created the marble statue whom you marvel at today

take note of how my heart is a reflection of myself
how she is too kind and will kiss the same man who tore her in two
so please do not say words which will make her wings flutter
if you are not ready to be the nest she flies to

let me know that me, as myself, i am enough
that i do not need to be a chameleon
dipping myself in new colors each day to please you

remember the little things about me
like how my first phrase i uttered was shut up to a man in an elevator or the delight i take in handwritten letters and mix CDs, or the significance of my first tattoo
because everything about you is being etched into the walls of mind
so that i can never forget

trace your fingers with a loving tenderness over my scars from the times i transformed my body into a crucifix
pinning my hands and feet onto a cross out of habit
thinking love was a word synoymous with self sacrifice

you must learn my language
know what zips my lips into silence
know the difference between when i want to give up versus when i will actually do so
and be there to hold me when the seams start to unravel

if you want me to love you
know that many have tried and failed
that people like me are not meant to be soft
if you want me to love you
know that to me
love is not a word you spit out of your mouth and juggle in your hands
you need to promise that our love won’t be like an hourglass
for my body has been disfgured enough from the times my chest turned inside out from the pang of abadonment
if you want me to love you
reaffirm my body is a kindgom, my heart is the treasure, and that i am your queen
paint pictures for me in what you do and say
telling me i am worthy to be loved, worthy to be kept, and worthy to stay

but if you really want me to fall in love with you
tell me what you see right before you close your eyes at night to fall asleep
and if you tell me it’s me
i will fall unfathomably further for you than i already have

To the boy I met two days ago,
With words designed to suit the solitude I've wanted me heart to cave in.
And the smile that made security no longer appear as a faraway myth but was now as close to me as your inhale and exhale across my neck.
I could feel your heartbeat,
And the way it raced marathons to convince me that it wasn't just oxygen you were taking in, but with each inhale was a piece of me I'll never be able to recover.
And when you held me, I reluctantly allowed the walls of my mind to romp into temporary forevers
But soon I was yet to discover an abstract truth
From what you whispered in my left ear.
You'd given me detailed descriptions of your childhood games that were enough for me to conclude that you liked to play -
With stones
And sticks
And Lego bricks
But never,
Never did I think you were capable of playing a round of hide-and-go-seek with my feelings.
I feel kisses on my cheek,
As I continue reminiscing about the first words you spoke to me,
that night.
If only I'd known your "Hello" was filled with deceit that concealed it's rise to defeat me.
I was under the impression that a fall into an empty ditch of your promises wouldn't leave me scarred.
To the boy I met two days ago,
You asked me why I struggle with trust issues,
Knowing **** well that two days later you'd reaffirm my bitterness for your entire species.
Don't call me stupid.
Don't even mouth the word, "Crazy"
I remember.. that night.
Being oblivious to everything you uttered,
I took all of it to heart.
And everyone knows I usually doubt a guy's intentions at the start
But this time
This time I was just as naive as those girls I tease for believing in guys like you.
Hypocrisy -
That's what I became a product of.
Even now, I'm still trying so desperately to have a little faith in the things you're telling me.
This - This isn't a merry-go-round, right?
You won't take me to Cloud Nine and then tell me to jump off, right?
Tell your girlfriend I said hey.
Go hide the fact that you asked me out that night,
Then made me feel guilty for saying no.
The next time you see her, look deep into her eyes and tell her that she's the only girl you're currently seeing
Be tormented by the clips of dejavu when you realize you that you;ve said those words to me before.
I want you to know that it took a lot for me to actually believe you,
And to have you take that for granted is obscene.
So I've made up my mind:
No more tossing and turning trying to get sleep at night,
No more getting to close to a guy that they can almost smell the vulnerability in me.
No more sweet talks.
No more intimacy that I feel the temptation rising to give in.
No more being another soul ready for your hands to take advantage of.
No words that seem to good to be true that they aren't.
No more smiles and no more laughter will ever have to be seen.
To the boy I met two days ago,
I left out one thing that night:
I'm an artist.
And I've drawn an all-new perception of you now
The old one, wasn't honest enough
And now, neither is your love for me.

I’m definitely Matrixed in,
feel like every girlfriend is a program,
feel like every experience is a dream,
feel like I don’t feel anything at all now,

maybe I’m a machine,
maybe I’m not a human being,
maybe I’m more cyborg than Sapien,
maybe I’m more electron than neuron,

and maybe none of this matters,

maybe we’re cogs in the vehicle,
maybe we’re abnormal cyborgs,
more flamboyant than incog,
more insignificant and important,

and maybe I’m special,
and maybe I do stand out more than most,
but at the end of the day I don’t think it matters,
because when it’s all said and done everything is just dust,

no justice,
it’s justice,
feeling a bit awkward and bazaar,
suspecting that they spiked the fruit punch,

and I don’t know for sure that none of this is real,
but I do have a pretty strong hunch,

want fresh squeezed not pre-made,
want a spontaneous feeling not an automated response,
want to stay here with you for as long as I can,
but I think that might be impossible because I’m probably already gone,

so please say something real or say nothing at all,
constantly trying to find ways to reaffirm our existence,
that’s why I still go out socialize and initiate relationships,
even though every time I do it all feels sterile cliche and pre-rehearsed,  

but maybe that’s because we’re living in a Matrix,

I’m definitely Matrixed in,
feel like every girlfriend is a program,
feel like every experience is a dream,
feel like I don’t feel anything at all now…

∆ LaLux ∆

When my father stepped off the plane twenty years ago and found his way to
The Bronx where his brothers were waiting for him,
It was to live every day plagued by stories of his
Roommates being followed home by wickedly-grinning, knife-brandishing men
That took pleasure in wounding the skin of my uncle who worked
For seven dollars a day, and then sent it all home to his mother.
And I know this isn’t what he wanted for me.
I even know, sometimes, that it’s not what he wanted for himself.
Didn’t want to open a bank account, become a citizen of the internet,
Watch as his labor was digitized and filed away on a supercomputer
And used to calculate the distance from here to the moon.

Last month my taxes contributed to Nike’s two billion dollars in
Government subsidies, my money,
Taken from my pocket and used to make sneakers more expensive than my
Last paycheck.

Sometimes I think I’m America’s mistake,
A child of the New Generation,
Born to emphasize the difference between affect and effect,
But never affect the way change is effected,
And I want, so desperately to be a warrior of my time
But I’ve only been taught to reaffirm the rules of grammar and
Sip coffee in silence as the world turns around me.

Sometimes all I want to do is cry.

It’s easy to blame America for your mistakes,
And it’s easy to say you shouldn’t blame America for your mistakes,
And I think once I find the dividing line, the fence, the border between the two,
I’ll understand what it means to be American.
I’ll know what it means to salute the flag and sing the
Pledge of Allegiance with my head held high and my hand placed
Proudly over my heart.

I hope I never find that line.

In school we’re taught A is for Apple and B is for Blue and C is for
Candy, sickly sweet and only sold out of the backs of white vans in the dead of night.
D is for death, which I still don’t understand,
And E is for easy, something that I, as a woman, must know the meaning of.
In school we’re taught to build city halls and towering skyscrapers
Out of wooden blocks, but I’m seventeen and still don’t know where my last name comes from.
In school, I’m ten, and my teacher is making fun of the spanish music I grew up listening to,
The kind with the classical guitar intro that my father can imitate perfectly,
The kind that made me smile until I was ten and became background noise when I was eleven.

In school, I built bridges out of cardboard boxes.

My father didn’t come here to be an environmental engineer.
My father didn’t come here to beg me to major in astronomy because he wishes he’d done
That instead.
I don’t know why my father came here.
When I ask, he tells me it was for the job opportunities - there’s nothing back home -
But I see it in his eyes when he goes home to the house in Ecuador he’s spent
19 years having built.
I see it in his eyes when we finally have a conversation for the first time all week,
Usually on a Saturday,
Because we’re both too busy during the week to take a moment to breathe and say,
In simple english, “Hi. How are you. Hope you’re doing well.”

Sometimes, it’s too easy to blame America for my mistakes,
But sometimes, America deserves it.
I’ll never know why people are the way they are, and I’ll spend a lifetime wondering,
But I know why I am the way I am,
And sometimes all I can do is hold onto that before it’s taken from me
Like the taxes from my paycheck
That are still paying Nike to feed the world the sick, twisted lie that it’s as easy as breathing to
Just do it.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t care,
Because it’d be easy as rain to comply with complacency and
Maybe then, I’d be able to sit back and watch them destroy themselves
And I wouldn’t have to be a part of it.

I’m told we revolt at dawn, but I’m too busy fielding calls from people who want to know
If I’m going, who won’t go if I’m not, who won’t go unless there’s a crowd they can
Disappear into.
Sometimes I wish I didn’t care, because if I didn’t I could stop being afraid of a world
Where caring is dangerous and sugar pills are the only thing on the
Dining hall menu.
I’m told we revolt at dawn, and when I show up, the sun is barely rising and I lift my head
To the sky and breathe in the scent of rebellion, finally, because it’s about time.

We are all immigrants.
We are all immigrants.
We are all immigrants.

Except, apparently, some of us.

I’m five years old and get to sleep in on the second Monday in October and I’m told
It’s a celebration of when God sailed across the ocean and created the forests
Only five hundred years ago.
And I buy it, of course I do, because I’m five years old and though God already doesn’t exist,
I don’t have any other explanation for why the forests are what they are, or
How I got here, of all places. America.
And I don’t know why I can’t run across the country and back again because I don’t have
A single clue about the concept of space, or time, and then,
When I think about it, how dare they tell me America was found when I’m too young to
Challenge them on it.

We can plan to revolt at dawn, but the police will already be there at midnight,
Waiting for us, and if we can’t walk into the path of resistance and keep going,
We might as well not even try.

My T.V. once told me there’s a magic trick for everything, and apparently,
Breaking out of handcuffs was one of them.
At this point, that might be our best option.

But you can’t major in magic, and breaking out of handcuffs won’t pay the bills.
I don’t have all the answers, and I know that kneeling during the national anthem will
Cause so much White Male Outrage there’ll be headlines for days,
But it’s something.
I care about a lot of things, but staying silent isn’t one of them.

If I’m America’s mistake, then so is my father, and so is the revolution at dawn,
And so is Columbus day.
All I know is I’m seventeen and I still don’t know what comes after
“And to the republic, for which it stands,”
And I hope one day I won’t be criticized for failing to memorize patriotic rhetoric.

We are all immigrants.
We are all immigrants.
Remember, we revolt at dawn.

I hyperventilate when I walk into a store or restaurant alone because I feel like I look like that fat lonely girl who got stood up.

I get lonely at midnight and panic that no one truly likes me and that I have never actually had a best friend.

I feel like a burden to anyone who is my friend and spend all my money on gifts for them to reaffirm that I am not a waste of space in their lives.

I always feel like I am being watched and that people are judging me every moment of the day.

I never tell someone how I really feel because I am afraid that when I am not happy, no one will like me, therefore no one has seen the real me and its entirety.

I feel weak when I cry and hide myself away from people so that no one will know I have an unhappy emotion.

I give 110% into making people in my life happier than I am because I am afraid they will leave me and it drains me so much that I feel numb when I am alone.

I never tell people of my past because I don't want pity from them or for them to worry and I find it exausting to reaffirm that I am not sad, even though I am.

I never tell my friends that I have depression and severe anxiety because in the past people have disregarded it and not taken me seriously.

I put up this wall for myself that makes me on red alert 24/7 and its like I am always running and never allowed to walk.

I feel like I am always sleeping with my eyes wide open and I wish that I could wake up.

You can run away from bullies,
Go home after school and rest assured you're safe
From whatever torment they may bring,
Whatver distress they inflict upon you.

You can turn on the lights when it's dark,
Illuminate rooms so you can reaffirm
That your closet doesn't have a murderer in it,
Or that dust is the only thing residing under your bed.

You can run inside when it begins to rain,
Cuddle up in bed with tea and listen to the thunder
As a storm rolls through your neighborhood.
You're safe and sound under your comforter.

You can close your eyes in scary movies,
Plug your ears, hide behind a friend.
You can say "It's all fiction, it's not real."
Because that's true. Movies aren't, no matter how convincing.

You can avoid circuses
If clowns do not delight you.
You can abstain from seeing their big red shoes and noses
As long as you do not attend a circus.  

You can defeat most frightening things within your life; Don't acknowledge them, abstain from encountering them, conquer them, reduce them to nothing.

The most frightening thing in my life is myself, and I cannot simply go home, turn on a light, or avoid a circus.

It is always me, myself and I cannot simply pretend I am comfortable with always being in the presence of my biggest fear.

He was an elderly man, clothed in desolation,
a gray man fading into the stoop on which he reclined
as if he were already turning to dust, disintegrating.
He coughed, and coughed again the rasp of an ailing
man, a rattle vibrating from the fathoms within,
and he fumbled for his pack of cigarettes
as if to reaffirm his intention of dying should his
bottle of cheap wine not propel him into oblivion. He
was muttering, muttering secrets to himself, or of himself,
or perhaps proverbs to show someone, anyone,
how enlightened he could be there on the gray stoop
as dust and the remainder of his life swirled about him.

--

Let's write a New Chapter

Let's not forget what we wrote yesterday and what we know about the past
Let's start a new chapter
Let's write new songs and new poems that tell of our love for each other
Let's write what is new today and reaffirm what we knew yesterday
Let's write a new chapter in our lives that makes us not forget  about yesterday
Let's write new love songs and write new sonnets that we would use to paint the love we have for each other on this canvas of life


Let's write a new chapter about our love
Let's write a new chapter about our souls
Let's write a new chapter about our hearts desires
Let's write a new chapter about our lives

Let's write a new chapter about .........

Dearly Beloved
by Michael R. Burch

for Suzan Blacksmith

She was

Dearly Beloved by her children, who gather
to pay their respects; they remember her
as they clung together through frightful weather,
always learning that Love can persevere ...

She was

Dearly Beloved by family and friends
who saw her great worth, even as she grew frail;
for they saw with Love’s eyes how Love’s vision transcends,
how her heart never faltered, through cyclones and hail ...

She is

Dearly Beloved, well-loved, sadly missed ...
and, while we mourn the lost days of a life too-soon ended,
we also rejoice that her suffering is past ...
she now lives in the Light, by kind Angels befriended.

And if

others were greater in fortune and fame,
and if some had iron wills when life’s pathways grew dark ...
still, since Love’s the great goal, we now reaffirm her claim
to the highest of honors: a mother’s Heart.

Keywords/Tags: Suzan Blacksmith, elegy, eulogy, epitaph, memorial, tribute, remembrance, farewell, goodbye, last respects

Your name.
Your sweet name.
Even when I hear it from someone else
it has a particular sonority
that affects my soul, weakens it,
and surrenders to you.

And it haunts me. And it follows me.
Wherever I go someone calls your name.

Oh, your name.
Each letter hurts me, digging in my heart
like seven tiny daggers,
bleeding out.

It hurts to know.
Reaffirm day after day the fact that you are not mine,
and that you never will.

Far away.
I want you far away, but not distant.
The pain of your absence is greater than the pain of your presence.
Violent convulsion that my heart suffers every time I lay my eyes upon you.

You.
Visual representation of a name.
A name that kills me and gives me life.
A name that moves me and paralizes me.
A name.
Your name.

"Uuh, dude, your Hubris is showing.
Watch your ******' tongue, man.
It's cool to express yourself,
but now you're just being a ****.

Hold thy beloved charientisms,
thy ****** knives in velvet sleeves:

You don't exactly seem to understand
the true power of those Words
you propagate so 'knowingly,'
as if a monkey with his own ****,
but, if you do realize what you say:
you're a ******* *******.

Well, which are you:

a tactless, spiteful,
foolish hypocrite,

or

an affectatious egoist
of a hypocrite?

I'd wager
an unhealthy balance
that it's both.

I've seen it for years.

You assume a lot
for how little you know.

You step on other people's sentences
with a mastered matter-of-fact tone
regardless of how true
those facts you spew
even ******* are.

There you go again,
borrowing other people's ****
without expressed consent
nor explicit intention to return;
we have a word for that, I think.

Either your behavior and morality
totally adapt to your surroundings,
and/or you're a ******* Hypocrite Fool.
Either way,
you cannot be trusted
once a back is turned.

Honestly,
if I had to guess,
I'd be hard-pressed to give you
the benefit of the doubt
by assuming the level
of consideration required
for maliciousness.

You just want all of your stuff for you,
and all of everyone else's for you, too,
and the crux is
you'll feign being pleasant
just until you get it,
then you come out of your ******* cocoon
and get all high and mighty, entitled, and condescending.

Last one on the bandwagon,
first one to throw a stone;
you're a real ******' winner!

All you tend to do
every time I chill with you
is berate others- oh, I meant "advise" others,
who may well be better off than you,
for having many problems
which you either could not understand,
or with which you find yourself,
you ******* Fool.

Every time I wonder
if I've become too indignant
as a direct result of your antics,
you remove my self-doubt
and reaffirm my reservations
by eating all my ******* cheese
or talking **** on my friends
behind the back of whoever it is
who has their back turned at the moment.

When will you learn?
When will you mature?

I guess nothing changes
if we tolerate **** in our faces.

Tread lightly, Elephant,
for you tread 'pon thin-*** ice."

Once again we welcome here
With arms held open wide,
A very special time of year;
Choose presents, wrap and hide

A Christmas gift is waiting,
We're hoping it's 'the one'
There'll be no more hesitating,
Unwrapping's so much fun

Truth be told it's more than that
Yes, presents pass the time;
At dinner we each wear a hat
Eat turkey, drink the wine

But Christmas is a chance to show
Our loved ones that we care,
A time to reaffirm, although
We hope they know we're there;

If ever they should need you
Your arms are open wide,
At any time, the whole year through
You'll be right by their side...

This Christmas, when you sit there
With gifts and cards aside,
Remember there are those who care;
You're treasured in my life


© Karen L Hamilton, 2015

hough aiming forward we are losing ground

hearts may be filled with hope but our hard fate

is to be weighed and valued pound by pound

as the remainders of a great estate

the counters' duty it is to collate

what goes to storage and what to the worm

what will be buried to build up the berm

and what parts of the fortune they might keep

those who are watching are the very firm

our place is taken and we have to sleep



so much of what is said is to confound

the ones whose task it is to count and rate

the complete measure within proper bound

they aren't allowed to lie nor to inflate

the tiny parcels into something great

but must agree the winner is the germ

that strikes the mighty hard as they might squirm

and into every corner seems to creep

it's certain victory we can't affirm

our place is taken and we have to sleep



we wanted to astonish and astound

win the reward of gold and silver plate

have banknotes piled up in a giant mound

cart off bright jewels in a well-made crate

these are not the conditions we instate

we find ourselves most rotten and infirm

unable now to generate a therm

nor over lowest bar ever to leap

our weakness any fool now could confirm

our place is taken and we have to sleep



prince you may rule us for a certain term

since none of us has power to reaffirm

just what we were nor what we had to keep

within our power nor underneath each derm

our place is taken and we have to sleep

Family Poems: Poems about Mothers, Fathers, Children, Sons, Daughters, Grandparents, Grandmothers and Grandfathers



Mother's Smile
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much."

So more than "much, " much more than "all."
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother's there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.

There never was a stronger back
than father's back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,
then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother's tender smile
will leap and follow after you!

Originally published by TALESetc



Passionate One
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love of my life,
light of my morning―
arise, brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.

Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven―
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.



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.



The Desk
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

There is a child I used to know
who sat, perhaps, at this same desk
where you sit now, and made a mess
of things sometimes.I wonder how
he learned at all...

He saw T-Rexes down the hall
and dreamed of trains and cars and wrecks.
He dribbled phantom basketballs,
shot spitwads at his schoolmates' necks.

He played with pasty Elmer's glue
(and sometimes got the glue on you!).
He earned the nickname "teacher's PEST."

His mother had to come to school
because he broke the golden rule.
He dreaded each and every test.

But something happened in the fall—
he grew up big and straight and tall,
and now his desk is far too small;
so you can have it.

One thing, though—

one swirling autumn, one bright snow,
one gooey tube of Elmer's glue...
and you'll outgrow this old desk, too.

Originally published by TALESetc



A True Story
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Jeremy hit the ball today,
over the fence and far away.
So very, very far away
a neighbor had to toss it back.
(She thought it was an air attack!)

Jeremy hit the ball so hard
it flew across our neighbor's yard.
So very hard across her yard
the bat that boomed a mighty "THWACK! "
now shows an eensy-teensy crack.

Originally published by TALESetc



Picturebook Princess
by Michael R. Burch

for Keira

We had a special visitor.
Our world became suddenly brighter.
She was such a charmer!
Such a delighter!

With her sparkly diamond slippers
and the way her whole being glows,
Keira's a picturebook princess
from the points of her crown to the tips of her toes!



The Aery Faery Princess
by Michael R. Burch

for Keira

There once was a princess lighter than fluff
made of such gossamer stuff—
the down of a thistle, butterflies' wings,
the faintest high note the hummingbird sings,
moonbeams on garlands, strands of bright hair...
I think she's just you when you're floating on air!



Tallen the Mighty Thrower
by Michael R. Burch

Tallen the Mighty Thrower
is a hero to turtles, geese, ducks...
they splash and they cheer
when he tosses bread near
because, you know, eating grass *****!



Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Cherubic laugh; sly, impish grin;
Angelic face; wild chimp within.

It does not matter; sleep awhile
As soft mirth tickles forth a smile.

Gray moths will hum a lullaby
Of feathery wings, then you and I

Will wake together, by and by.

Life's not long; those days are best
Spent snuggled to a loving breast.

The earth will wait; a sun-filled sky
Will bronze lean muscle, by and by.

Soon you will sing, and I will sigh,
But sleep here, now, for you and I

Know nothing but this lullaby.



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.



Springtime Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

They’ll have to grow like crazy,
the springtime baby geese,
if they’re to fly to balmier climes
when autumn dismembers the leaves ...

And so I toss them loaves of bread,
then whisper an urgent prayer:
“Watch over these, my Angels,
if there’s anyone kind, up there.”

Keywords/Tags: Nature, spring, birth, baby animals, angels



Limericks

There once was a leopardess, Dot,
who indignantly answered: "I'll not!
The gents are impressed
with the way that I'm dressed.
I wouldn't change even one spot."
—Michael R. Burch

There once was a dromedary
who befriended a crafty canary.
Budgie said, "You can't sing,
but now, here's the thing—
just think of the tunes you can carry! "
—Michael R. Burch



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

Originally published by Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc, The Word (UK)



Keep Up
by Michael R. Burch

Keep Up!
Daddy, I'm walking as fast as I can;
I'll move much faster when I'm a man...

Time unwinds
as the heart reels,
as cares and loss and grief plummet,
as faith unfailing ascends the summit
and heartache wheels
like a leaf in the wind.

Like a rickety cart wheel
time revolves through the yellow dust,
its creakiness revoking trust,
its years emblazoned in cold hard steel.

Keep Up!
Son, I'm walking as fast as I can;
take it easy on an old man.



Poems for Older Children

Reflex
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Some intuition of her despair
for her lost brood,
as though a lost fragment of song
torn from her flat breast,
touched me there...

I felt, unable to hear
through the bright glass,
the being within her melt
as her unseemly tirade
left a feather or two
adrift on the wind-ruffled air.

Where she will go,
how we all err,
why we all fear
for the lives of our children,
I cannot pretend to know.

But, O!,
how the unappeased glare
of omnivorous sun
over crimson-flecked snow
makes me wish you were here.



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.



Limericks

There once was a mockingbird, Clyde,
who bragged of his prowess, but lied.
To his new wife he sighed,
"When again, gentle bride? "
"Nevermore! " bright-eyed Raven replied.
—Michael R. Burch



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.



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



War is Obsolete
by Michael R. Burch

Trump’s war is on children and their mothers.
"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." ― Gandhi

War is obsolete;
even the strange machinery of dread
weeps for the child in the street
who cannot lift her head
to reprimand the Man
who failed to countermand
her soft defeat.

But war is obsolete;
even the cold robotic drone
that flies far overhead
has sense enough to moan
and shudder at her plight
(only men bereft of Light
with hearts indurate stone
embrace war’s Siberian night.)

For war is obsolete;
man’s tribal “gods,” long dead,
have fled his awakening sight
while the true Sun, overhead,
has pity on her plight.
O sweet, precipitate Light!―
embrace her, reject the night
that leaves gentle fledglings dead.

For each brute ancestor lies
with his totems and his “gods”
in the slavehold of premature night
that awaited him in his tomb;
while Love, the ancestral womb,
still longs to give birth to the Light.
So which child shall we ****** tonight,
or which Ares condemn to the gloom?

Originally published by The Flea. While campaigning for president in 2016, Donald Trump said that, as commander-in-chief of the American military, he would order American soldiers to track down and ****** women and children as "retribution" for acts of terrorism. When aghast journalists asked Trump if he could possibly have meant what he said, he verified more than once that he did.



Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat...
though first, usually, he'd stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone,
talking about poke salat—
how easy it was to find if you knew where to look for it...
standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green,
straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches,
crowding out the less-hardy nettles.

"Nobody knows that it's there, lad, or that it's fit tuh eat
with some bacon drippin's or lard."

"Don't eat the berries. You see—the berry's no good.
And you'd hav'ta wash the leaves a good long time."

"I'd boil it twice, less'n I wus in a hurry.
Lawd, it's tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst."

He seldom was hurried; I can see him still...
silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight,
stooped, but with a tall man's angular gray grace.

Sometimes he'd pause to watch me running across the yard,
trampling his beans,
dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants.

He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression.

Years later I found the proper name—"pokeweed"—while perusing a dictionary.
Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a ****.
I still can hear his laconic reply...

"Well, chile, s'm'times them times wus hard."



Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

for Anais Vionet

Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather's house—
actually his third new wife's,
in her daughter's bedroom
—one interminable summer
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas...

Lacking the words to describe
ah!, those pearl-luminous estuaries—
strange omens, incoherent nights.

Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendors.

Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser's fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and "civilization."

Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander's corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey.

Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant.
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.



Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is your concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence of tears
without action?
What help, the eloquence of prayers,
or a pleasant benediction?

Before this day is gone,
how many more will die
with bellies swollen, wasted limbs,
and eyes too parched to cry?

I fear for our souls
as I hear the faint lament
of their souls departing...
mournful, and distant.

How pitiful our "effort, "
yet how fatal its effect.
If they died, then surely we killed them,
if only with neglect.



In My House
by Michael R. Burch

When you were in my house
you were not free―
in chains bound.

Manifest Destiny?

I was wrong;
my plantation burned to the ground.
I was wrong.
This is my song,
this is my plea:
I was wrong.

When you are in my house,
now, I am not free.
I feel the song
hurling itself back at me.
We were wrong.
This is my history.

I feel my tongue
stilting accordingly.

We were wrong;
brother, forgive me.

Published by Black Medina



Passages on Fatherhood
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

He is my treasure,
and by his happiness I measure
my own worth.

Four years old,
with diamonds and gold
bejeweled in his soul.

His cherubic beauty
is felicity
to simplicity and passion—

for a baseball thrown
or an ice-cream cone
or eggshell-blue skies.

It's hard to be "wise"
when the years
career through our lives

and bees in their hives
test faith
and belief

while Time, the great thief,
with each falling leaf
foreshadows grief.

The wisdom of the ages
and prophets and mages
and doddering sages

is useless
unless
it encompasses this:

his kiss.



Boundless
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Every day we whittle away at the essential solidity of him,
and every day a new sharp feature emerges:
a feature we'll spend creative years: planing, smoothing, refining,

trying to find some new Archaic Torso of Apollo, or Thinker...

And if each new day a little of the boisterous air of youth is deflated
in him, if the hours of small pleasures spent chasing daffodils
in the outfield as the singles become doubles, become triples,
become unconscionable errors, become victories lost,

become lives wasted beyond all possible hope of repair...

if what he was becomes increasingly vague—like a white balloon careening
into clouds; like a child striding away aggressively toward manhood,
hitching an impressive rucksack over sagging, sloping shoulders,
shifting its vaudevillian burden back and forth,

then pausing to look back at us with an almost comical longing...

if what he wants is only to be held a little longer against a forgiving *****;
to chase after daffodils in the outfield regardless of scores;
to sail away like a balloon
on a firm string, always sure to return when the line tautens,

till he looks down upon us from some removed height we cannot quite see,

bursting into tears over us:
what, then, of our aspirations for him, if he cannot breathe,
cannot rise enough to contemplate the earth with his own vision,
unencumbered, but never untethered, forsaken...

cannot grow brightly, steadily, into himself—flying beyond us?



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves...

... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles...

... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss...

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens' hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs...

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees...

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers...

... of voices of the wolves' tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams' soft, windy vowels...

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



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



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker's knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Just Smile
by Michael R. Burch

We'd like to think some angel smiling down
will watch him as his arm bleeds in the yard,
ripped off by dogs, will guide his tipsy steps,
his doddering progress through the scarlet house
to tell his mommy "boo-boo!, " only two.

We'd like to think his reconstructed face
will be as good as new, will often smile,
that baseball's just as fun with just one arm,
that God is always Just, that girls will smile,
not frown down at his thousand livid scars,
that Life is always Just, that Love is Just.

We do not want to hear that he will shave
at six, to raze the leg hairs from his cheeks,
that lips aren't easily fashioned, that his smile's
lopsided, oafish, snaggle-toothed, that each
new operation costs a billion tears,
when tears are out of fashion. O, beseech
some poet with more skill with words than tears
to find some happy ending, to believe
that God is Just, that Love is Just, that these
are Parables we live, Life's Mysteries...

Or look inside his courage, as he ties
his shoelaces one-handed, as he throws
no-hitters on the first-place team, and goes
on dates, looks in the mirror undeceived
and smiling says, "It's me I see. Just me."

He smiles, if life is Just, or lacking cures.
Your pity is the worst cut he endures.

Originally published by Lucid Rhythms



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born
on September 11, 2001 and died at the age of 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 vicious 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 bear them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.

Originally published by The Flea



For a Sandy Hook Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow...
Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

―for the mothers and children of the Holocaust and Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon's table
with anguished eyes
like your mother's eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother's hand
for a last bewildered kiss...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother's lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears...



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.



This is, I believe, the second poem I wrote. Or at least it's the second one that I can remember. I believe I was around 13 or 14 when I wrote it.

Playmates
by Michael R. Burch

WHEN you were my playmate and I was yours,
we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and the sorrows and cares of our indentured days
were uncomprehended... far, far away...
for the temptations and trials we had yet to face
were lost in the shadows of an unventured maze.

Then simple pleasures were easy to find
and if they cost us a little, we didn't mind;
for even a penny in a pocket back then
was one penny too many, a penny to spend.

Then feelings were feelings and love was just love,
not a strange, complex mystery to be understood;
while "sin" and "damnation" meant little to us,
since forbidden batter was our only lust!

Then we never worried about what we had,
and we were both sure-what was good, what was bad.
And we sometimes quarreled, but we didn't hate;
we seldom gave thought to injustice, or fate.

Then we never thought about the next day,
for tomorrow seemed hidden—adventures away.
Though sometimes we dreamed of adventures past,
and wondered, at times, why things didn't last.

Still, we never worried about getting by,
and we didn't know that we were to die...
when we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and I was your playmate, and we were boys.



Children
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall,
impendent, pregnant with possibility...

when we might have made...
anything,
anything we dreamed,
almost anything at all,
coalescing dreams into reality.

Oh, the love we might have fashioned
out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos
and the rhythms of evening!

But we were young,
and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss
and what is left is not worth saving.

But, oh, you were lovely,
child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars,
and for a day,

what little we partook
of all that lay before us seemed so much,
and passion but a force
with which to play.



Kindergarten
by Michael R. Burch

Will we be children as puzzled tomorrow—
our lessons still not learned?
Will we surrender over to sorrow?
How many times must our fingers be burned?

Will we be children sat in the corner
over and over again?
How long will we linger, playing Jack Horner?
Or will we learn, and when?

Will we be children wearing the dunce cap,
giggling and playing the fool,
re-learning our lessons forever and ever,
never learning the golden rule?



Life Sentence or Fall Well
by Michael R. Burch

... I swim, my Daddy's princess, newly crowned,
toward a gurgly Maelstrom... if I drown
will Mommy stick the Toilet Plunger down

to **** me up?... She sits upon Her Throne,
Imperious (denying we were one),
and gazes down and whispers "precious son"...

... the Plunger worked; i'm two, and, if not blessed,
still Mommy got the Worst Stuff off Her Chest;
a Vacuum Pump, They say, will do the rest...

... i'm three; yay! whee! oh good! it's time to play!
(oh no, I think there's Others on the way;
i'd better pray)...

... i'm four; at night I hear the Banging Door;
She screams; sometimes there's Puddles on the Floor;
She wants to **** us, or, She wants some More...

... it's great to be alive if you are five (unless you're me) :
my Mommy says: "you're WRONG! don't disagree!
don't make this HURT ME! "...

... i'm six; They say i'm tall, yet Time grows Short;
we have a thriving Family; Abort! ;
a tadpole's ripping Mommy's Room apart...

... i'm seven; i'm in heaven; it feels strange;
I saw my life go gurgling down the Drain;
another Noah built a Mighty Ark;
God smiled, appeased, a Rainbow split the Dark;

... I saw Bright Colors also, when She slammed
my head against the Tub, and then I swam
toward the magic tunnel... last, I heard...

is that She feels Weird.



Resurrecting Passion
by Michael R. Burch

Last night, while dawn was far away
and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies,
as thunder boomed and lightning railed,
I conjured words, where passion failed ...

But, oh, that you were mine tonight,
sprawled in this bed, held in these arms,
your ******* pale baubles in my hands,
our bodies bent to old demands ...

Such passions we might resurrect,
if only time and distance waned
and brought us back together; now
I pray that this might be, somehow.

But time has left us twisted, torn,
and we are more apart than miles.
How have you come to be so far—
as distant as an unseen star?

So that, while dawn is far away,
my thoughts might not return to you,
I feed your portrait to the flames,
but as they feast, I burn for you.

Published in Songs of Innocence and The Chained Muse.



Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the motion creation stirs within?

Originally published by The Lyric



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 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.



hey pete
by Michael R. Burch

for Pete Rose

hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy's dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then you'll be a Superstar.

When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar."



First Dance
by Michael R. Burch

for Sykes and Mary Harris

Beautiful ballerina—
so pert, pretty, poised and petite,
how lightly you dance for your waiting Beau
on those beautiful, elegant feet!
How palely he now awaits you, although
he’ll glow from the sparks when you meet!



Keep the Body Well
by Michael R. Burch

for William Sykes Harris III

Is the soul connected to the brain
by a slender silver thread,
so that when the thread is severed
we call the body “dead”
while the soul ― released from fear and pain ―
is finally able to rise
beyond earth’s binding gravity
to heaven’s welcoming skies?

If so ― no need to quail at death,
but keep the body well,
for when the body suffers
the soul experiences hell.



Dearly Beloved
by Michael R. Burch

for Suzan Blacksmith

She was

Dearly Beloved by her children, who gather
to pay their respects; they remember her
as they clung together through frightful weather,
always learning that Love can persevere ...

She was

Dearly Beloved by family and friends
who saw her great worth, even as she grew frail;
for they saw with Love’s eyes how Love’s vision transcends,
how her heart never faltered, through cyclones and hail ...

She is

Dearly Beloved, well-loved, sadly missed ...
and, while we mourn the lost days of a life too-soon ended,
we also rejoice that her suffering is past ...
she now lives in the Light, by kind Angels befriended.

And if

others were greater in fortune and fame,
and if some had iron wills when life’s pathways grew dark ...
still, since Love’s the great goal, we now reaffirm her claim
to the highest of honors: a mother’s Heart.



Beyond the Tempest
by Michael R. Burch

for Martha Pilkington Johnson

Martha Johnson was a formidable woman,
like her namesake, Martha Washington—
a woman like the Rock of Gibraltar,
a sure and steadfast refuge for her children and grandchildren
against the surging storms of life.

But later in her life
I beheld her transformation:
her hair became like a corona of light,
as if she were intent on becoming an angel
and something in her visage
brightened and softened,
as if she were preparing to enter heaven
where love and compassion rule
and the troubles of earth are like a tempest in teapot.



Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!



Published as the collection "Family Poems"

Keywords/Tags: Family, Mothers, Fathers, Children, Sons, Daughters, Grandparents, Grandmothers, Grandfathers, mrbch

It’s too easy to trust God,
when Life is good, pleasant
and free of everyday strife.

When we’re comfortable, joy
is often experienced; lost is
sight of Him, Who gives Life.

Unfortunately, tragedy’s pain
is released upon us, whereby we
succumb to despair, unbelief

and the darkness that envelops
a World with sin’s rebellion.
We’re now unfocused; no relief

is available to our sad souls;
we’re swallowed by an evil that
stabs us… with merciless grief.

Calling Christ now, that is Faith-
when we choose to move forward,
rise up and reaffirm our beliefs

in the One, Who truly saves us.
.
.
.
Author notes

Inspired by:
Rom 8:28, 38 and

To trust God in the light is nothing,
but trust Him in the dark — that is
faith. -C. H. Spurgeon

Dedicated to the memory of D.J. Breunig
1 March 2016

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2016, All rights reserved.

O Lord, how much of this reality
has no earthly bindings on me?
Help to shape my perception,
regarding the things, that I see.

As an intelligent person,
it’s obvious to avoid indifference
and fear, especially when there is…
a clear choice with a sure preference.

Although the future is unknown,
there's a proven solution to help one cope.
The guidance of the Scriptures reaffirm
that in Jesus, we should have our hope.

Finding genuine comfort within The Word
secures the foundation of Life’s course.
Through patience and regular prayers, one…
ultimately realizes the one, True Source.

We’re promised to have our needs met;
so avoid being overcome by despair.
Peace of mind is attainable, when remembering…
The Children of God remain in His care.    



Author Notes:

Loosely based on:
Rom 15:4

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://www.squidoo.com/book-isbn-1419650513

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2012, All rights reserved.

what remains is magnificent
liberation is simplicity
infinitely refracted
and luminous
survival is imminent
dominion of the elements
mastering our domain
and knowing our own identity
as often as the rain falls to earth
we must frequently reaffirm our self-worth
celebrate our existence
in silence and in kisses
symbols abound
that ground our existence
allow us to move upon the ethereal waters
feel me here
in love’s embrace
satiated as space
is holding us together

I used to pine for you.
Your acid flesh saturating my hair
Your naked crystal caressing my skin
And when I was scared
I would remember how it felt when
Your tide would gently and forcefully pull me out
How the twisted tree trunks of your love wrapped their branches around me
And I would think of you in rhymes that did not make sense
Prayers that made it seem like I believed in something
Maybe you were my God
Because part of me almost wanted to be impregnated with your love child
At one point or another
So maybe it would make you care.
That part of me disintegrated pretty quickly
As your words became synonymous with the crackling of fire
The snapping that bones make when they break and turn to dust
Your voice could decompose me in an instant
And you never seemed to mind.
So now, that I might have your offspring
Living inside of me
I don't know how to feel.
Taking a test would just reaffirm the fact that my future could be in shambles
Wires wrapped around themselves
A construction zone ready to ignite and explode
So I wait for my monthly offering
That Mother Nature so graciously delivers to my body
Reminding me that I am the only inhabitant in it thus far.
I fear for any child that even has a chance of existing
Because while it would be beautiful
It would be ****** into the middle
Of this beautiful toxicity.

Know that your brokenness can be healed
and that your wholeness can be restored.
Reaffirm your divine covenant today,
by completely trusting upon the Lord!

Seek a vital relationship with God now;
be thankful for His daily grace and mercy.
Realize and understand His intentions for you;
Open your eyes and observe what He sees…

regarding His plans, already laid out;
through prayer, request spiritual guidance.
Recognize your heavenly position this day;
know that you can overcome any circumstance.

Develop with Christ a genuine fellowship.
Remember! You’re still… called to worship!
.
.
.
Author Notes:

Loosely based on:
Deu 7:9; Heb 7:11-22; Jer 29:11-14; Prov 3:5-6;
Rom 8:37; 1 John 1:7; Lev 17:11; 1 Cor 12:27

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://www.squidoo.com/book-isbn-1419650513/

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2013, All rights reserved.

I never knew what a house on fire felt like
until i felt the bees in my bones rumble in full force.
Thinking of losing myself puts me in distress and sets
flames on a course unstoppable.

I feel like it leaves burn marks on my skin
or a rip in the seam of what holds my soul together.
Mirrors are out of the question,
even if they reaffirm existence.

They shout,
“You are here. You exist!”

They polarize
and objectify the things I cannot face.

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He didn't know that he invested in being left and getting cheated on, bereft of commitment, suddenly it all went wrong; I took a turn back to what I had before, just to reaffirm I don't have that anymore. Vows: we never said them and I don't know that we will, but I'm honest as can be when I say I love him still.

Adrift in the epitome of paradise
Me and my
Man who has lived and experienced
So much life
And given so much
Energy and time
Into the years that keep swirling by.

Curtains cling to the panes of the window
I worry my face ages everyday
Trying to reaffirm, coach through
My moment to moment
We wanted to greet the sun early this morning
My eyes woke me up
Like the sun of the gun
I cut all my hair off
And yet at moments I still feel
Like I'll never be enough.

Pushing positivity and growth
Through the roof of the celeb traitors
That plot to clean their taxes
Ooze their money drip drop
Only at high capacity
That fills their blood
With iron
And a very high end ***.

Red ***
Red ***
I imagine the grittiest scenarios
The thump of a buttercup
Everything covered in me
My blood.

But I wake up breathing
Everyday
Fighting to be happy
To bring in copious amounts of light
And most days I do
If only for fleeting singular moments
Or like the wave of a storm
That I proudly and with gusto
Never drift from.

In the eye of the needle
The eye of the blast
Of air that circles and floods in deep
We make up, eat healthy food
Drank down bowls of kava
But it didn't sit quite right with me
A bitter and lingering taste
Loving me, protecting me
Into what I hope
Lasts as a forever together
Night.

As he pulls me closer
Squeezing me as if to reaffirm my presence
I couldn't be further away
Further from him and closer to you.
His arms are big and strong
Warm and soft; arms anyone could get used to.
But they will never be yours
The ones I wished would never let me go
How I wish his would loosen their firm grip.

He kisses my cheek
Warm soft kisses
The kind that every girl wishes
A man would tenderly plant on the rounded softness of her cheek
But those kisses are quaint at best
And I never wish for more than that small tenderness
Instead I wish for the passion
That crackled the air around you and I

Miles away
I'm sure you are
Sharing a similar moment simultaneously
But instead of my touch boring in your memory
As the absence of yours runs my skin cold
You're thinking of just how happy you are
To have new, never thinking of the old

midnight, one, two, three am things always turn downhill and you don't know what to listen to anymore because your brain says move on but your heart says she's in there somewhere waiting to take me back to old memories and broken dreams. you take a sip of your wine thinking about the intricate details of the universe and how every single constellation in the sky cannot begin to describe all of the beauties of the mysteries outside of your town, and meanwhile you talk to her hoping that maybe you'll see that light shine as bright as it once did for you. you told her once that no one is okay and everyone has their own problems, but you try to hide yours in times when you cannot afford to, and you don't know she's behind the screen crying because she knows when you talk to her it isn't you speaking to her, it's hormones speaking to her, it's you speaking to a body, it's you speaking to a mind that is not the same as the one before her. when you tell her your problems you rarely mention more than a sentence because distancing yourself is something you've learned how to do through repeated mistakes but what you think you know is that she's being honest when really there are walls and pain behind her heart. oh she can tell you lullabies and make it seem like she's another snow white fresh out of the woods, but life has taught her that there will be no prince in the end, and with every other time you reaffirm that statement her mask breaks once more - she's one step closer to cracking.

she walks out to her normal spot every morning waiting for the four wheeled vehicle that is supposed to take her to seven hours of hell and she looks at the stars and thinks how beautiful it is that humans are nothing. she does not think about the mysteries like you do, she thinks about how everyone is insignificant, how her life actions will not be remembered, how she as a human being will leave the world virtually un-impacted. to her, that is beauty. but to you, that is terrible. that is why you two will never truly work out.

Why must the casual conversation lull
The words that have so often
To often
Been used to describe you fail me
You are sitting right next to me
For once it's just you and me
But the amazing wordsmith I am
I can't utter but a thing
A wholly significant nothing
Sole purpose to reaffirm that I'm there
Everything between us
The stars and the universe
Would be nothing if you'd just turn to me
And answer the questions on our mind