Last week, among friends black and white,
among some discussion of protests in Ferguson
and the related looting of stores, I invoked
the word.  It was an admission, in a round
of confessions, of something about myself
that I didn't like:  that I had perceived Michael Brown
in that way based on his possible participation
in a strong-armed robbery.  

When Travon Martin was in the news,
I was inflamed like many others who wanted
George Zimmerman in jail for ******.
The outcome of that trial was an injustice,
I was utterly certain.  Why does this case
in Missouri feel different?  More importantly,
Who is inside me that still wants to rise
in defiance of 48 years of learning how
to be a better person, a person without prejudices,
stereotyping, labeling of others, hurtful language?

Where is the hippie girl now?  How does she live
with this other person?  Am I Sterling, Gibson,
a hater and spewer of viciousness, a lover
of separation and separateness, that I should
invite damage to my own relationships
with those I love and cherish and respect?

What is a **** but a bully, and what is a bully
but someone who pushes words around like
weapons, spits them out indiscriminately,
so that they land on the already bruised heart
and set it on fire.

Whose heart, besides mine, now sits in smoke
and ash, with that word like a brand
still sore and permanent, having been spoken
aloud?

musings of a kook surfer
(kook: 1. Dork. 2. A new or inexperienced surfer. 3. Someone who says they surf but they can't.(waxboy)

Logic and Perspective  (a poem)

Quantum Imagination Rules.
What-Ifs equal What-Is
in this, a shared creation.

If         we are surrounded by what we can see,
            what we see is what we are;
Then   matter is perception of resistance,
            time is the persistence of opposites,
And    space is an Electric Universe;
            not lonely nuclear fires,
            but Twin Ribbons of infinite energy
            traveling through plasma that unites all.

The Earth
        a wonder of positive and negative,
        not solid,
        is the infinite slowed into harmony.
The Sun
        a focus of resistance,
        not burning out,
        Burns In.

No small coincidence that
equals means is
You Are and
You See so
I am and
                  
You are, you see, the I Am
...


No Chance for Chance  (a poem)

What is Serendipity?
Seen miraculous,
Some thing done there,
Something done.

What isn't Serendipity?
The unseen miraculous.
What miracles undone,
in time
in time,
as it never happened.

Everything?
Nothing?

It cannot be a good thing-
Fortunate for you is
lost fortune for who...
Self-fulfilling for Jungian prophecy
or prophecy fulfilled for Schrodinger's Cat.

It cannot be a bad thing-
In agreement
with yes...
Self-fulfilling for Jungian prophecy
or prophecy fulfilled for Schrodinger's Cat.

I think,
so I think I am caught between
a wave and a particle.

….

Between Worlds

Never turn your back on the ocean – the mantra of the surfer in my thoughts as I continuously scan the horizon.  There is just enough time to position for a wave; decide to paddle left or right or quickly further out to avoid the random pummel of a looming larger wave.  Between sets, the water gently bobs me floating half submerged.  Staring introspectively at the water, I am learning to interpret ribbons of upward-turning sparkles in the distance.

Dawn is an hour away; visibility is dim but gradually lifting.  Morning’s light is so flat and the water’s glassy surface so smooth that anticipating incoming waves becomes almost a matter of intuition.  The illusion of separateness from creation is breaking down.  The water is almost chilly, but still comforting. I forgo a rash-guard; the subsequent chest irritation from surfboard wax is a small exchange to feel immersed in the ocean.  The bay feels intimate yet expansive with only two other meditative surfers in the distance. Turtles swirl the water, heads straining up for a peek and a breath.  Sometimes they turn their shells so their fins feel the air; they keep three of us wanna-be-ocean-dwellers company.

Yesterday a southern Kona wind brings volcanic-smog from Kīlauea.   Vog is high in CO2 and fumes, giving sensitive people muddle-headedness, lethargy, and sore throat-  a reminder this is Pele's paradise.  This muting velvet feels almost smothering to the horizon.  Is it fog?  Yet a glance behind verifies the ***** of Mt. Haleakala is visible, from the shore to the cloud blanketing the world above the 10,000' peak.   Hale means "house" and the rest can mean either "of the sun", or "of a special raspberry-like flower". Either way the mountain was pulled from the ocean by Maui while he was roping the sun from the sky.  Usually, from this place in the sea, sunrise begins with a torch-like beacon of illuminated mist right over the peak, flaming brighter in the turquoise sky just as the sun coronas into a brilliant gold spotlight over the bay.  Yet this morning waiting for dawn, islands, water, and sky are all various shades of hushed mainland gray.

Half submerged and floating quietly, my back is to the mountain and I face the close but unusually shrouded island Kaho'olawe. It was callously blasted to a streaked surface of wind-blown dust by a military just for "training".  Recently reclaimed for pono, it represents the hope of nurturing a senselessly abused, irrevocably lost paradise. To my right is far-off Lana'i; to my left is Molokini, the sharp half rim of an ancient crater barely rising above the water's surface.

The world suddenly wakes, shedding gray. The sky's far reaching dome overhead intensifies, glowing in layers of rose, red, fuschia. The atmosphere I’m breathing becomes thickly permeated with color, as if one could breath lavendar-orange.

What planet am I on?

It feels so foreign, time stops.  The two other surfers are still as well, dwarfed by distance, and I am alone. Tiny in this red expanse, I become quietly centered.   I turn to see Haleakala where the sun is yet to rise, awed to distraction, forgetting incoming swells.  A bright sun smoked crimson is hidden behind the peak, shining horizontally through what I imagine to be some opening at the horizon.  Illuminated ridged undersides of the high clouds are streaked neon red to half the sky.  The atmosphere is hushed over the still water, the tangible copper light presses down, infuses everything.  It feels disarming yet comforting and surreal, floating surrendered to this other-world light; sky to water, horizon to vast horizon, the calm apocalypse the turtles and Kaho'olawe have been praying for.

these games 2010 vancouver olympics are about performance under tremendous pressure more than they are about sport our expectations destroy us how do athletes possibly in training their entire lives cope with cameras nationalism corporate media mania? these distinguished people fallible humans with frail emotions doubts superstitions insecurities just like everyone else sustain skill phenomenal precision how do they sleep at night? carry on relationships with spouses family friends? endure eminent separateness loneliness? do gold medal winners become bloated rock stars conceited movie stars overpaid professional athletes? do losers become life’s could have been a contender drunk in obscurity casualties? what price in human terms these games? hey when joannie rochette hit ice prayer to mom i cried love watching sports this gorgeous display of human talent yet wonder about underlying meaning consequence sports or spectacle?

"As the same fire assumes different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present."
(Katha Upanishad II.2.9)

"As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that Shvetaketu, you are that."
(Chandogya Upanishad IV.10.1-3)

I don't understand,
Why, in this land,
Where these sacred
scriptures were written,
Were so many religions born--

I don't understand,
How, in this land,
Were differences encouraged,
When the backbone of all life
Always was recognized as liberation--

The acknowledgement
Of all different religions, castes, creeds,
Really broke the deal you know...

Imagine, if all the cultures were mixed
Instead of being *separated, unconnected, segregated;
And churned into a liberal philosophy
The Philosophy of Liberation (read: Moksha)
We'd have prevented so many wars,
All fought under the cloak of differences and disparities;
We could have averted
So much bloodshed,
So many innocent screams--

And these shudders down your spine right now?
They would be the product of fiction;
Not the echoes of cruel reality...

In the window of the pet shop
four small faces, lost.
Their owners, sick with worry,
want them found at any cost.

A quad of treasured family pets
roaming wild and free,
unmindful of the panic
they’re causing back in Leigh.

A sausage dog called Mini,
sleek and burnished dark.
She’s likely got a little voice
that is more squeak than bark.

Tinks: a sturdy Staffie,
with a plea on Facebook
praying for his safe return
his people beg you “have a look”

“in your sheds and garages,
or in the kids' playhouse.
You never know who could be there
‘cos he’s quiet as a mouse”.

A grumpy Border Terrier,
Underbitten, rough of coat
“Bill: a much loved dog, we miss him”
in shaky letters wrote.

And, last of all, would you believe
Someone’s lost their tortoise!
He’s been in the family since ‘77
(let’s hope he isn’t corpus).

For pets are no mere mortals,
nor fallible as we.
They’re up there on a pedestal,
in anthropomorphic fantasy.

Then one day they disappear,
our soppy hearts turn wretched.
No stick to throw, and if we did
none to go and fetch it.

On centre stage of family life
entangled in our tribe.
No separateness of species,
always by our side.

So if you’re there, or round about
And you should chance to see
Mini, Tinks or Billy
or a tortoise in his mid-thirties.

Tell the little pet shop -
it’s better late than never -
to mend an aching, wretched heart
who thought their best friend gone forever.

There's a girl I think about, sometimes
On wet afternoons, and when I'm on my own
Well, she's an older woman now but still a first affection
With a family, grown to middle age
And a dead husband in her past, somewhere.

We knew each other forty years ago, perhaps
In an army town; or was it slightly later?
We were never intimately joined
In those prophylactic, pre-pill times
And the frowning fathers, narrow-eyed on the fringes

She could drive, and had her mothers car that day
We slunk out to a field, to dispose of her virginity
But, the military fuzz they quickly found us
And took us in to the local station
Heart thumping, testosterone levels tumbling

That was the last time that we met, I think.
We corresponded fitfully, and for a short time after
But somehow shame and not a little guilt
At what I'd done and left undone, sputtered the phrases and
Quite soon the letters stopped arriving.

Unconsummated but never quite forgotten, last week
A Facebook message in my in-box, unbidden
From a name unfamiliar to me, and suspicious
"Dear Sir" it read, and proceeded to announce itself
Auspicious, as my former lovers son.

Can this be you? the lovers son enquired politely
My mothers friend that we talked about at Christmas?
Triumphant, there mother! I have found him
Far across the years and using now's technology
Across a lifetime of separateness

I sensed in her a broad reluctance, despite the introduction
From her child, who's person never was a factor
To connect with me again, this different person
Risking the diminution of that dimmed image, the remnant
Of who we had been that time

And why not? Why confuse the layers and the generations?
The forewarned spectacle of our sad reunion
Uncomfortably eye-ing each other with little left in common
Awkward unsaid phrases hanging out to dry
In the flag-fluttering breezes of our allusions.

But, in fact, there had been another reason I admit
For shame that final hour that final day
When I had been revealed in all my nakedness as wanting
Tongue tied and mumbling my excuses to the sky
Youth I was, weak, poor and unconvincing

The police were brusque and thoroughly impersonal
Growled deep-throated at my love and I.
And I; I discarded my affection for security and left her there
Disconsolate and disbelieving in the police station
More worried about the facing of my father

And so we left it then last week with little left unsaid
Knowing both it was too late and too unknown
For reintroductions as the people we had been
Unconvincing in our bright and sharpened protestations
Preferring poor relations in a foreign country

There's a girl I think about, sometimes
On wet afternoons, and when I'm on my own
Well, she's an older woman now but still a first affection
With a family, grown to middle age
And a dead husband in her past, somewhere.

We knew each other forty years ago, perhaps
In an army town; or was it slightly later?
We were never intimately joined
In those prophylactic, pre-pill times
And the frowning fathers, narrow-eyed on the fringes

She could drive, and had her mothers car that day
We slunk out to a field, to dispose of her virginity
But, the military fuzz they quickly found us
And took us in to the local station
Heart thumping, testosterone levels tumbling

That was the last time that we met, I think.
We corresponded fitfully, and for a short time after
But somehow shame and not a little guilt
At what I'd done and left undone, sputtered the phrases and
Quite soon the letters stopped arriving.

Unconsummated but never quite forgotten, last week
A Facebook message in my in-box, unbidden
From a name unfamiliar to me, and suspicious
"Dear Sir" it read, and proceeded to announce itself
Auspicious, as my former lovers son.

Can this be you? the lovers son enquired politely
My mothers friend that we talked about at Christmas?
Triumphant, there mother! I have found him
Far across the years and using now's technology
Across a lifetime of separateness

I sensed in her a broad reluctance, despite the introduction
From her child, who's person never was a factor
To connect with me again, this different person
Risking the diminution of that dimmed image, the remnant
Of who we had been that time

And why not? Why confuse the layers and the generations?
The forewarned spectacle of our sad reunion
Uncomfortably eye-ing each other with little left in common
Awkward unsaid phrases hanging out to dry
In the flag-fluttering breezes of our allusions.

But, in fact, there had been another reason I admit
For shame that final hour that final day
When I had been revealed in all my nakedness as wanting
Tongue tied and mumbling my excuses to the sky
Youth I was, weak, poor and unconvincing

The police were brusque and thoroughly impersonal
Growled deep-throated at my love and I.
And I; I discarded my affection for security and left her there
Disconsolate and disbelieving in the police station
More worried about the facing of my father

And so we left it then last week with little left unsaid
Knowing both it was too late and too unknown
For reintroductions as the people we had been
Unconvincing in our bright and sharpened protestations
Preferring poor relations in a foreign country

Think about it,
She off-handedly remarks:
Formality is separateness

Lost in one of the nebulous folds
Of my cerebellum
I acknowledge her comment with a thousand yard stare

Eagle eyed, I surf a warm updraft
To rise above it all
But I can't slip the prison of pre-conception

Amuse me, she says.
Whisper me your pretty little lyrics,
Sing me your song

You have one of the most interesting faces I’ve ever met
I brazenly tell her, and
My minds eye is full of anticipation

I know it’s pedantic
I am not so romantic
Maybe we should not peel back the veneer, but

A peak

It’s inexplicable

Naive and unassuming, with
Bashful sincerity, and
An enduring patience

Awaken: open your eyes
The serpent goddess counsels

And you will find your way

think  I  shall  be springtime; such   clumsy
scent  of  the world   collapsing  not  with  nets
but   hands  not upon  trellis  but    bodies –
    sleep    shall   carry   us  to  inches
of  terrible  speech    such somnolent world senses
    quietness   in  the  rivers   of   our blood;
how  murmurously  veritable    moment
     leaps   forth  ripe  in the   air   of such  splendidness
when  it   was not   mountains
    but    your   *******   deep within   the    Earth of  me
and I  rain    cleaving  the   scent   of   the world
    into   two   separateness   until   the
enormously     ****   moon   plunges    within;
   I    shall   be   a   tree
and you, a rose    or   springtide, or   everything
   that
            blooms,    withers,
dances – new  beginnings;

Those words that were coined as a cliche mean more than we shall ever guess.
We need not understand them until the adrenaline wears off like the lipstick of a pale moon's night.
Change becomes so inert, it feels as though we are watching Neptune orbit the sun.
We tie a knot and leap.
Days and nights pass in a tangle
Such as a tumbleweed hitting our tire on a warm desert car ride.
The peaks and valleys we ride create a rhythm that plays to the metronome of the heart.
They can make us sick some times,
While other times we can't help but stare in amazement at such imperfectly beautiful things.
I wish I could take it all with me:
The land, the sky, the scent
I never want to face myself again because of where I ventured to before it all.
I find myself high up on a mountain, hearing the memories of the earth as well as the memories my own spherical entities have held and let go, all at the same time.
As I make my way down from the peak to another valley, I realise I do not have enough room to hold such masterpieces..within my frontal lobe or my backseat window.
For I am not alone. I began this journey as a we.
However what I took from it all was specifically mine.
We are united in our separateness.
With each scene passing us by, we notify ourselves change has set in. Maybe not all together outwardly but intermittently internally.
The first cut is the deepest and although we are attuned to what's going on in our outside world, our inner world has already began rebuilding itself without us even acknowledging it.
It may take reading a list of cliches on a mountain for us to  the recognize the small change, but it is there, like an unforeseen star in the night
sky.

Prose Poems and Experimental Poems
by Michael R. Burch

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



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

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

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


briefling
by Michael R. Burch

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



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

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

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



bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch

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



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

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh went to the ovens. Please don't bother to cry. You could have saved her, but you were all *******: complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp. Scratch that. You were born after World War II. You had something more important to do: while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a religious tract against homosexual marriage and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)  Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I'm quite sure that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure. After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians? Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians. Scratch that. You're one of the Devil's minions.



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

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

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

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

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



escape!
by michael r. burch

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

escape! !

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Fake News, Probably
by Michael R. Burch

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Prose Poem: Litany
by Michael R. Burch

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



Sweet Nothings
by Michael R. Burch

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



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

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



Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch

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



Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

"Burn Ovid"―Austin Clarke

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

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

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

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

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



*** 101
by Michael R. Burch

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



Veiled
by Michael R. Burch

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



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

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



The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

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



Longing
by Michael R. Burch

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

flowering,
flowering,
flowering...

what jolted us to life?



Memento Mori
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

WILL U B MINE
4 EVER?

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

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



Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



chrysalis
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

and yet You must love Your Self

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

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


To Have Loved
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



EPIGRAM TRANSLATIONS BY MICHAEL R. BURCH



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

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



Nod to the Master
by Michael R. Burch

for the Divine Oscar Wilde

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



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



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



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



Stage Fright
by Michael R. Burch

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



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



Brief Fling
by Michael R. Burch

“Epigram”
means cram,
then scram!



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

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



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



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

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



Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch

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



Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

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

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

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




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



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

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



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

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

wine stains on the shelf
a flash of irritation ended
coverless on the couch

separateness lingers into morning
politeness papers over open wounds
where repairs could have been made
memory wire refuses to uncoil

we'd overwound the pound-shop threads
of our connection
scraped each filament to fronds
that could part at any moment
but didn't

we argue our differences, forget
to celebrate our samenesses
sensing barriers
where none are

Those blessed with children
already know something
of the fellowship
kinship brings when
gathered indiscriminately;
how the rightness of place and time
wraps itself around,
makes a gift to hang
on the Christmas tree of memory.
 
In this house
lives a tangible presence
of past coming-togethers:
long long days of comfortable conversations,
warm greetings passed on the stairs.
See here - that dear head bent over a crossword,
and through a window, look!, a child in the garden;
Always, always - the kitchen laughter.
 
And spreading between all this
a glue of music
binding with its miracle formula
the separateness of strings and fingers.
In the joy of Opus 20.No.2
(played between friends)
an intensity of action and reaction
sings; born out of listening
with calm intent and
with selfless attention given -
one to another.

You have a Wednesday stuck to your oversized, hand-me-down, turtle-neck sweater.
The one with a hole in the elbow of your right sleeve.
It was hand stitched by a real machine, but not in Ireland.
You have a Wednesday snagged. Perhaps a loose thread became entangled, midweek ?
And now you have Wednesday, everywhere you go....
I only mention, because I noticed...
And it totally goes with that Monday
In your eyes.

Is that your Existential Crisis; parked right outside ?
I hope you fed the meter.
I can see where you spent your spiritual currency.
From every angle, simplicity of design !
Just a chasm and no plot. Elegant lines -
That wind up vanishing from the ' Unspeakable Frame '
Beyond the Border of What You Dare Think...

I have one just like that !
But mine has a concrete hunch about the whole thing.
A suspicion engine
So nothingness can't seem to live without me. But -
I see you have that thing you just hope isn't the truth
And I used to have that -
But now I just have a Headache.

I'm crushing on your Ayn Rand funeral parties
And that outrageous, bobble-head Doubting Thomas on your dashed hope.
Let's sit at that table by the window
And stare at each other as long as the window has nothing in it.
That should give us aeons to get to know each other.
There's no Law that says " I'm sorry for being such a stupid Law "
So without pause, we should defy our Separateness.
I'll ask for a clean fork in the road
And we'll see what that get's me....
Ah-ha !
I finally got a laugh
That didn't come from inside my skull.
A laugh that had good taste in men, and no idea where it came from -
But remembers how the couch made the carpet work.
The Abyss goes with everything, but you left it in the closet...
You know -Why unpack ?
That laugh was naked.
It gave me those Goosebumps
That can beat up Other Goosebumps.

Would you like to have some chai ?

We are dilluted
Polluted by our sense of separateness
Deluded into thinking
That kinship is a shrinking circle
A stinking cesspool
Generations of veneration of
Lines and boundaries

But bones buried under history
Connect you and me
Her and him
Us and them
No matter what country
Or century we live in

Black tulips on the marbled floor
have no place here.
They remind others of how we existed
suitable only for that dark journey,
by those deemed more worthy,
under whose azure skies,
only their abodes could shimmer
for we can have no part .

Leaves mottled in their separateness
turn our seasons  
into days of lanquidity,
out stretched briars
tear at the stolen codex.
surmising exoteric warnings,
that magpies again steal,  
under whose inciting  night
can we wade this walkway.

We are now left to hard media only
I can play you raw on my strings
and hear what you say
I can draw you on a paper and feel your touch
I can color your space and embrace your aura
Your pain is mine if you give me some
not to worry it won't hurt
The pain you have is a reflection of what I've already filtered out of you
before delivering it back to you
It's only fairness
this much is not much
as much as you can have
I know you so well
You know that thousand years is too long to carry a child
even for the one with thousand bellies my child
It was not only for my cleansing our meeting
I was not the only cursed one
You are not born of me and No not for me
I be your sin if you make me your masterpiece
The face of the scary the manipulated energy
has imprisoned the fairy so the prince can save her?
The prisoner stays in prison until she realizes she is in prison
until she falls in love with the prince
then the impurity of the entanglement disappears turns to a breeze
an unpetrified ****** in the openness of a field stands
The bewildered is freed and is free now
The curse melts to particles of bliss
The prince dies she becomes flesh and blood
for the first time after the time gone for one and the last lifetime
Alone she will walk this road until the end until they reunite in the spirit world
Joy she has knowing the fact
Joy she should take and give and learn
in this short lifetime of separateness and the corporal to bear and cherish
cause he may feel
for him she will be happy so he can feel
for him she learns joy so she can carry it to eternity
for him she sees a butterfly rubbing against the anther
and for him she smiles now

ILLUSIONS OF SEPARATENESS

Different does not mean separate.
So why do we have racism, hate,
****** of those who are different,
but not separate, from us, as well
as a seemingly inexorable proclivity
to destroy Earth and all living creations
on it.? Is this an aberration in the extreme?
If so, it is a grotesque and deadly illusion
that has been with us for countless
millennia. Why? A gross ignorance
that has begotten insecurity and brought
us to the edge of extinction? But we
know better now, or at least we
should. John Donne was prescient:  
“Every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.” We are one, both
ecologically and spiritually. Ecolog-
Ically, we know that if we pollute the
Mississippi River, we ineluctably will
pollute the Indian Ocean. Spiritually,
we all pray to the same creator of the
Universe, but call the creator by dif-
ferent names. Can’t you see these
truths? If you cannot, you are myopic
ecologically and spiritually. Get your
ecological and spiritual eye sight
checked immediately.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

For G.S.L.

Lover:*
Write, we must of the moons we spent
Weaving our alien languages together
Deriving meaning from each other
by what it meant for us
to be home in our shell.

Words we've bound each other with
With histories of our forefathers,
How we delved in the intricacies of the mind
Carefully, and as surely as the waves
Caressing the shores from distant seas.
Coupled with the cresting of the wave,
An ocean's promise lies in wait.

To you I am like the soil that does not empty
Its thirst for answers from the rain.

Yet you cannot give me access to your inner paths
So instead, I have knelt down in silence
and cupped your hermit house to my ear.

You have found speech for words you cannot say.
And I am like the shallow portion of the sea
Where you can clearly observe the rocks and stones
That cut, as well as the coral that thrives
Like fiery corals attracting fish.

We are of different tongues,
Yet despite the separateness
Our strangeness connected us to each other.

You have raised old foundations
And pulled the sea to come to me.
There i knelt on uneven sands
Confident that your own voice
Will lead us to the birthing dawn.

Now it is not just the sea that divides us
but the very same wildness, that impetuosity
that gleamed at dawn, Which led me to you.

Where now is the cradle
for the pearl of the night?
How you have drifted away
I cannot know.

Birthed from sand, Foundations crumble.
Your words are carried away with the rising
Of the tides. Numbing the island in me
Leaving a mark visible only in old maps,
Which sunk the moment you left.

On the very same shore
I found you searching
For what you have lost.

- 13 November 2015

The leaf
Waves to me
From outside -

Silver drops
Of water sit on its
Cool green surface
In voiceless eloquence

The nascent scent is fresh
Wild
And real
Redolent with memories and truths of early days
That evade language
And pulse on a transcendent level

My unsettled heart knows
And easily resonates with this diurnal rhythm
That existed before the word
Near the beginning
Of what could have been
Before the way was lost -

And then the drops turn to
Rain and dark
Tears

That stain the window
I sit before
In this self imposed prison
Of a shabby life

Ruled by social torture and
The sly manipulation of machines and
Things beyond dead -
We exist
Together in separateness

Pleasantly shackled
In this irrelevant circus of celebrity, destruction and death
As senses dull
Bodies die
And
Potential decays

Outside
Wind caresses the trees
And multitudes of leaves quiver -

The body
Knows wrong and
The body
Sings strong

With senses keen and
Mind resolute on escape
Anger blooms full in my heart
That I raise and swing -
Chains break - walls burst -

And glass melts
Into the earth as
Rain wakes exhausted flesh
To the rising thunder
Of what will be
For the body knows

In the poetry
Of a leaf
Waits revolution

--it is,  how very
tremendously cute you are,
and how your little stinkerlings
climb all over me;  their
trusting little Spirits drinking in all things, Daddy

And within you, dwells  all of the
fullness of their childlike hope, ******
And within them dwells hope's fire--
aflame within each little set of eye's
sparkle

Yet, beautiful Mommy--

There is a brutality, embedded deeply into
God's Love
that all but compels me to call you out
on almost seemingly-random things:
things that push up (almost fiercely)
against all things within you, stubborn
but they benefit..

                       they benefit.

And you fight against me-- even to your own detriment,
and I am reminded  then of the same fight shown--  emanating
from a young,  forming child's spirit:


           "No"   is the first word that should
                                          form freely
            within the mouth of a young spirit,
                                    aching deeply...

           within the depths  of the loved self
           for the true meaning of the word,  

                                           Autonomy.

An­d there is no loss  of love
in their little movements  towards separateness

And there is no price to pay for speaking the truth in love
nor, is there a payment owed, for speaking it  in defiance
and separateness, even to the point of  eventual separation
need never have to come at the cost of love--

the truly-loved, freely formed, self
is a beautiful, magical thing to behold, indeed.


And your participation in to it all, little-one's sweet Mommy

is a celebration in itself.

You have a Wednesday stuck to your over-sized, hand-me-down, turtle-neck sweater.
The one with a hole in the elbow of your right sleeve.
It was hand stitched by a real machine, but not in Ireland.
You have a Wednesday snagged. Perhaps a loose thread became entangled, midweek ?
And now you have Wednesday, everywhere you go....
I only mention, because I noticed...
And it totally goes with that Monday
In your eyes.

Is that your Existential Crisis; parked right outside ?
I hope you fed the meter.
I can see where you spent your spiritual currency.
From every angle, simplicity of design !
Just a chasm and no plot. Elegant lines -
That wind up vanishing from the ' Unspeakable Frame '
Beyond the Border of What You Dare Think...

I have one just like that !
But mine has a concrete hunch about the whole thing.
A suspicion engine
So nothingness can't seem to live without me. But -
I see you have that thing you just hope isn't the truth
And I used to have that -
But now I just have a Headache.

I'm crushing on your Ayn Rand funeral parties
And that outrageous, bobble-head Doubting Thomas on your dashed hope.
Let's sit at that table by the window
And stare at each other as long as the window has nothing in it.
That should give us aeons to get to know each other.
There's no Law that says " I'm sorry for being such a stupid Law "
So without pause, we should defy our Separateness.
I'll ask for a clean fork in the road
And we'll see what that get's me....
Ah-ha !
I finally got a laugh
That didn't come from inside my skull.
A laugh that had good taste in men, and no idea where it came from -
But remembers how the couch made the carpet work.
The Abyss goes with everything, but you left it in the closet...
You know -Why unpack ?
That laugh was naked.
It gave me those Goosebumps
That can beat up Other Goosebumps.

Would you like to have some chai ?

The valley holds on, to ******
of moon, behind the trees.
It is dark and clouds are meditating.

You think of a perfect horror
and a poisoned arrow flies straight
into heart of a blissful sun.

It is red, splattered on the wounded sky,
scrorched by shrill cries of crows.
It is dawn.

You feel intense ******* of separateness,
from the beauty of a drop,
reflecting the wholeness of an ocean.

The stress starts breaking you.
Can you take me to my home, into abeyance?
My wakefulness, reaching by silence?

You cut a dashing figure
between em and en and
oh, by the way

Your abbreviated smile
has me wondering what
it stands for

as I place my finger on
your ellipsis … you lead me on,
there is no doubt
I feel left out

But as we track and kern
our forms, ascending,
make ligatures to avoid
an overlap of strokes

a diphthong doth emerge
o’er our line o’ type
and what was once

paragraphed into separateness,
our thoughts juxtaposed

begins to merge
(bind in parentheses)
you’n’me make syncope

and, once the story forms,
the digraphs make shapes
with our mouths.

People want to be free. We all long for that freedom of our souls,minds, and bodies. As we strive in this world. Even though we might think we are free we are captive in a strange land and that we are struggling desperately to get out of. In this struggle to be free we can sometimes hurt ourselves and other people around us but we are all searching and longing for freedom. Freedom from pain. Freedom from fear and hate and freedom from the isolation and separateness that can suffocate us with it's grip. Ultimately no matter what we might do to free ourselves there is only one answer and one solution. It is  God. When you have God he takes away your pain and fear and separation and replaces it with hope and healing and love that can truly help you to find what your heart has been longing for all along.

The leaf
Waves to me
From outside -

Silver drops
Of water sit on its
Cool green surface
In voiceless eloquence

The scent is fresh
Wild
Real

Redolent with memories and truths of early days
That evade language
And pulse on a lower level -

My unsettled heart
Resonates with this rhythm
That existed before the word
Near the beginning
Of what could have been
Before the way was lost -

Then the drops turn to
Rain and dark tears
That stain the window
I sit before
In this self-imposed prison
Of a shabby life

Ruled by social torture and
The sly manipulation of machines and
Things beyond dead -

We exist
Together in separateness
Pleasantly shackled
In this circus of celebrity, destruction and death
As senses dull
Bodies die
And
Potential decays -

Outside
Wind caresses the trees
And multitudes of leaves quiver -

The body
Knows wrong
The body
Sings strong

With senses keen and
Mind resolute on escape
Anger blooms full in my heart
That I raise and swing -
Chains break - walls burst -

And glass melts
Into the earth as
Rain wakes exhausted flesh
To the rising thunder
Of what will be
For the body knows

In the poetry
Of a leaf
Waits revolution

Memory –
Its so vast
Deep oceans of voices
Tapering off to separate compartments
Of silence –

Together in separateness we cross
The darkness at dislocated speeds

(a cough from here & there among the
silent passengers – coughs of blood & sickness)

The engine accelerates in thunder
And flesh makes love to steel...

Some of us –
Lost in vacant pools of thunder
While others –
The past expels me, repels me...

We walked and smoked
an old, worn out joint
in between a school and church.
Inappropriately, how we did
most things.

We talked about life
and where we should be,
and why aren’t we there?
And why is there a chain
between us?

The wall is gone, but the chain?
It's strong, it weighed me down all day.
Running my hand along the metal
loops, my fingers dancing on our
disconnection.

Gliding over our separateness.

Back and forth we walked
chains and walls and years
separate us. We met in the
wrong lifetime.

We walked and smoked
the moment burnt and gone and the high, gone too.
And to him, I was one joint.
To me, he was a forest fire.

Ice melted and the lemon soaked up the
deep plush juices of cranberries.
The smell of you was newly showered,
damp and warm
still looking slightly *****.

Water bottles, made of plastic
were slowly shifted in an Eastern ocean.
The separateness of their position from land
reminded me of us.

Dark brown ceramic ash trays smoked.
Lounging, we read the backs of LPS and
talked thoughtlessly about genius.
Jean shorts sagged and lost their body,
but still we felt pretty.

A really loving melody, Joni Mitchell,
played from downstairs.
Upstairs, a pillow between my legs and
background semi-trucks on the turnpike.
And picking up the smell of you, faraway and happy.

With sant, build me up

Wishing, could get you out of me
Like fog goes out of my mouth when I breathe

Beating heart, bleeding fast
Healing your heart while seeking your cure

Condition of my madness, over your craziness
Oh your arms, I still remember their warmness

Wasn't aware of this separateness
Yet im left between your darkness

No light, no height but your shine still hides in my eyes
I still feel it, oh I know its out of my touch so is it still out of my reach?

Reckless yet so restless my soul been
Rip me off or recolour my dark soul

Call me an insane or call me sucker but whatever I'm now its just for love, oh my lover
that's the insanity of my love.

Separateness is a lie. We never die. You can lie in the sky. The pizza is a pie. The horse is the guy. Rangers are spies. Children are flies. Telephones tell lies. There is no surprise. There's truth in demise. A house cannot fly. Our home is alive.

In the split of the separateness
enjoyed by the desperate in
their loneliness,
where her highness looks down on them
are the men called the building blocks.
.
These are the men that roll with the knocks
the men who say, ******* to you.
The navvies,the chavs,the spivs,
they're the lads that raised up this nation,
the ones we owe a due to.

Whitehall wizards.

The chinless and spineless in black suits are mindless
and we gave them carte blanche,
brought down an avalanche on our heads,
these are the saintly who praise me,
lie to and patronise me,
politicians are slimy
they remind me
of worms,
they take like the snakes that they are
and no doubt they'll go far.

We only see them as He Men,because
we've been hypnotised by
the old school ties, which tell even
older lies
I despise them all.

***** Whitehall and the mandate
become the revolution before it's
too late.

Here in the split
I don't give a ****
they can all **** orf
and leave me alone.

~ what you see depends upon how you look ~


Do you give
thus to receive
do you believe
thus to perceive

Who creates this reality
is yours a filter of mine
with that, are you fine
or this, do you reject
building need, to project

Nature of I, me, ye and we
the unresolved questions
looking at this now skewed
for something fresh to see

Contemplating on
separateness or connected
as one within All
mere duality and polarity
leading circularly to a fall
or a seemingly, solid, wall

What remains
if upon each experience
we remove the
where, when, why, who and how
allowing consciousness to find
some void and infinite emptiness
the unmanifested source
pure spring of creation
humor and elation
simple wow

Peering over the edge
risk loss of all definition
abandoned past pledge
to individuality
ego and self

From this death
might be found
song without sound
light without sight

Acceptance

Harmony

Peace

Love

Joy

Life

Now

Being

S­urrender

Reverence

without
further need
with amazement
and, child's wonder

unfolding
*beholding

There is a number that knows itself
Logic has predicted its numberness at most
but logic does not know to what it matches

Within its coordinateless space
beyond the mind
the number has formed itself
at the expense of fixing
a masterpiece about a lover
made of the shape of one’s desire
becoming that one pure desire
of and to and for  All

or simply invisible
known to none
matterless
formless
filling
temporary silhouettes
until
silhouettes collapse
unknowingly
about their
barbapapaic nature
to the unknowing

so
what you call

‘grand’  
‘poetry’

the combination of chosen words
made of letters
presenting duality
between me and me
made of the sound of the form of one’s
ever changing body in one’s mind
Vibrates

in such frequency that
when one reads
one connects one to one
( like in maths –
and a bit more complex than that
considering sensual feedbacks etc :))
and transforms
almost vectorial  to

some resulting frequency
of an irreversible altered state
and a doses of future changes
but such occurrence cannot take place
when once known

OOPS!

such occurrence takes place
if it is irrevocable of the finite shells
of time

a true joker
has a pure skin as such
through a veil of pores
nothingness floats
towards its knowing
keeps oneself as is
unknown to all the separateness there is
Thus the program forgets
(:D = thankfully)
or runs infinitely  at a place :
‘this could be heaven and this could be hell’
as in Hotel California

so
you should know for yourself
if you wanna make it love  
because

If you not
It’s then someone else
because
It is always someone
as reasoning goes

it is a manifestation of the self
a contextualization of a narrative
as story requires
as story unfolds

I always remind myself to
keep up to one reason just
which eventually are no words
but sound or silence of
a reflection on an expanding
surface of a bubble in pure
unfixable color

Oh
words of preconditioned unoriginals
manifestations of self adorations
what is there to be said or heard or grasped?

when All stories are the same?

Shaped extensions of one source
sticking out repeatedly to tell one thing just
expanding the bubble
within the bubble and the bubble

just
to be heard
once
as big as a
Hum

en route exit as scriptures call it
but am I gonna be able to hear it?
(or you or us … )

What about me do I want you to know?
I could say
I'm a lonely person
Who looks upon the world with a hunger
She doesn't understand.
Sometimes
I pass through the streets like a shadow
Gazing at the warm, rosy souls around me
And when people touch each other
Even in conversation, without noticing,
I ache with separateness
But not
With envy.

I could say
I'm a bit different
A bit dark,
I could say I've seen enough pain
To make me cruel
And that the only thing I'm truly proud of
Is that I am kind anyway.

I could tell you
That I've fallen in love with half a dozen strangers
Just for their eyes
And stayed there for years.
That although I rarely reach for anything,
I yearn in silence
Quietly smoldering, burning for a world full of rawness and contact,
But kept from it by a strangely thick skin
And brittle chinadoll bones.

I could tell you that when I choose to look into your eyes
And let you see the chaos in me
It is a gift which very few receive from me
And even fewer
Appreciate.

I could tell you that if you are gentle with me
I will mend every part of you that ever felt shattered
And meekly walk away when I am finished

I confess
I find it so much easier to be tender
To people who will forget me in the morning.
So much safer to run my fingers along the cheek of someone
Lost
To their need- whatever it may be-
Who won't
Or can't
Notice the hearth of my heart catching my ribs and sending cinders through my veins.
It is not love that makes me tender,
Although love blooms easily from my tenderness.
It is a fascination with other people's vulnerability
Their fragility
Their raw, honest desires and fears.
It draws me in and I spend all my days
Just tirelessly holding back arms that ache to comfort
And eyes that burn to see every dark corner of these intricate creatures I live near day after day
To see and understand and become,

Because I suppose the thing I'd most like to tell you
About me
Is that good and evil
Right and wrong
Mean very little to me, in the end:

I want to be.
I want to be
All.

I want to be every human thing there is
Touch it
Feel it
Taste it
Worship it.
I want to feel every wretched and exquisite thing I am capable of holding without shattering,
And I want to press them all with my palms
Into someone else's skin and watch them rise like ink.
It doesn't matter to me what you are, what you do,
Because whether it harms or mends I will look at you like a stained glass window
Like a statue of marble
Like a painting, all lit and framed and bursting with color.
I want
Every detail of this world
To touch every part of me
And that
Is what I should tell you now
Because that
Is what you will fear later.