Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Lora Lee Mar 2017
last night
as I soaked my feet
       in hot water and fragrant oils
           put on some
              Bollywood tunes
           and let my hips
         start to sway
my head began
to swoon
and the binding
threads holding me so tight
inside myself
      began to fray
          my chest opening in
             rips and starts
                 to reveal its valves
             in engorged release
       of dark magenta shadows
of teasing, gnashing inner beasts
while this was going on
the moon lit up
around me
      in its eight different phases
its halves and crescents
        shimmering    
in incense-scented cadence
my fingers reached out
to stroke each one,
          unique in its own heated glow              
                          as I realized that
               they will never cease,
these sequined
streams of joy
in embroidered flow
as long as we are connected
            to the root point of self
the love pumps quiet fire
                         in our veins
           even when trapped    
in slamming undertow
     pressed tornado slab
                              of pain
and I have had my face
pressed under watery surfaces
for such a long time
that suffocation
almost feels like
        breathing
so it's time to
move these hips and thighs
                and get this soulspark
                                                 reeling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zPi6w1TWBg
so much fun
judy smith Oct 2015
She is known to stand out from the crowd.

And Jessica Hart made sure all eyes were on her in a shimmering golden gown as she attended the God’s Love We Deliver, Golden Heart Awards at Spring Studio in New York on Thursday night.

The 29-year-old Australian beauty turned heads in the dazzling sequined mini dress as she oozed Hollywood glamour for the star studded event.

The former Victoria's Secret model showcased her trim and tanned pins in the shift dress which boasted long sleeves which Jessica rolled up to her elbows.

The dress featured a number of metallic hues including silver and bronze which perfectly matched her strappy silver high heels.

Proving why she is a catwalk favourite, the 1.77 metre tall statuesque stunner flashed her trademark gap-toothed grin for the cameras on the red carpet of the glittering A-list gala.

In-keeping with the graceful theme of her look, Jessica wore her luscious blonde locks in an elegant up do to showcase her striking ****** features.

She sported copper-coloured eye shadow which added to her glittering ensemble, while her flawless complexion was accentuated with a light powdering of foundation.

Jessica let her spotlight stealing dress speak for itself as she opted for minimal accessories, wearing just a single ring on her left hand and a pair of diamond encrusted stud earrings, whilst carrying a perspex clutch which contained her wallet and phone.

The supermodel attended the event solo as her boyfriend of three years, billionaire Stavros Niarchos III - was not at her side.

However instead, Jessica mingled with a handful of her model pals including Toni Garnn and Cameron Russell.

With long legs and a small waist, genetically blessed Jessica knows how to rock her enviable figure.

She recently opened up about her body in the October issue of Cosmopolitan Australia, revealing how she manages to stay in shape.

'I have a private trainer, he’s a Pilates teacher, a yoga teacher and a personal trainer all in one,' she admitted.

'And when I can’t work out I just try to eat a little less pasta!'

Meanwhile, Jessica lives with her beau Stavros in New York's trendy East Village, with rumours surfacing earlier this year that the pair were engaged.

But with no official word yet from the couple as to whether nuptials are impending, they seem happy living a relatively quiet life with their competing busy schedules.

Stavros famously dated Olsen twin Mary-Kate for several years, as well as controversial socialite Paris Hilton.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-melbourne
Ceida Uilyc Jul 2015
I could tell you,
But you’d laugh at me.
Because it is bare, raw and pure.
You gloat on the preservatives.
You discard the genuine.
Listen to me, my friend, there is a part of the world, where even a bulb is never, ever, witnessed in real, but reel of the sanskrit Cartoon slots. The peppy  and ‘lone B-grade Cartoons .
Filled with Flesh.
The stories of tantric mantras, with a sliver of diminishing hearth,
on the
Dimensions and depth of the Yoni in the resin of shellac
on the Immaculate ceremony,
In a woodpecker hole just underneath the sealed power of the Yakshini who truly screws it up if you have taste of her once.
the one who harbingers drunk loners of Kavadiyattom alley after 3:20 am.
She takes them to the crown chakra of palm trees.
Shows them the world.
she pushes them off the crown and the falcon falls in endless spirals of a inhuman push that pushes the concrete innards to a danlgling mass of amoebic copulation.
Breath comes back.
It is a big nauseating gag of Kumbhakarnan's long sadya that lasted for half a decade.
Of the soma saras that made the entire India go, ga-ga and believe they've seen the god.
But not one nor any saw the same face, colour, shape or even vibe of the god they had seen alone.
They agreed in unison that all their hallucinations of beautiful humans in Flower UFO s and high-tech cloning, were a vital hair in the nostril of the cosmos.
They made, each a god out of their genuine mix of memories.
Or in the, priest's ways,
Hence, the 2.3 Billion populous of the country had the same, well, odd Spiritual benefactors.

Keeping it all aside, lemme be honest, I'd follow many a fairy god-mother but give my milkey teeny tooth to the special one.
Hinduism tells you God is omnipresent.
Hinduism tells you God is within you.
It also says, there is no God.
The clipper to snap off the confusion of this, lies in the same cheap stained-yellow cliche of love. It entails everything. You, me, animals, plants, cosmos, vibes, thoughts, dreams and the universe.
It tells you to live with your body mind and soul.
From Kamasutras that teaches sense.
The excitement, control and breakthrough of it.
Like tao did under his exposed roof without the sacred dung of from Hindu Land.
This is the secret of a rumoured Mohini,
Of her 1000 per hour ******* during the her/ his/ its 352 incarnations.
which was the reason for Big bang.  
Amidst the sultry scant of the voluptuous *******,
Their skin,
a vernacular reflection of a dusk on the Japanese gold beaches, And the mounts,
firm and glowing with the rusty shade of pharaoh’s Gold anklet.
The gooey glaze of yesterday’s glamour in the wink of a gay galore.
Paulo Ceolho’s Holy Communion with God,
Or like the Japanese Tengaman says,
Or rather screams,
That all it it takes is a little *******.
So, yes.
That precise art of attaining a consciousness, from where your mind was
Afloat
Wild
Free
Satiated
By yourself
You’ve just consumed the essence of you
Your Ojhas
And the tiny matter that teaches the universe
Of a Shunya.
That, momentary sense of lapse of your body mass,
Or the breakthrough into your eye of the crown.
Only to join the mundane bustle of the 10,00 speakers on all four
JBLs, Boses and Pioneers live looping the zillions of sanskrit mantras under one roof.
In your Ear drum.
A synechdoche of the Gods and their jacuzzi of amphetamine bubbles.
Splashed from a white Elephant's bejewelled Snout, which has the
crowned ring in your pineals.
Secret lies under
the rotten bone chip of Hussain Sagar
deep under the ***** green lake,  
drowning the rainbow Buddha in the city of slimy immortal maggots on ham.
Open your eyes.
For the Gods will
Else
Cut your eyelids off
to show you that
the city's shardminds await you.
roaring
Playing close to the fire demons of Redland
A nail close to your wide open lid-less
White flowing eye.
Hear the city scream.
The deafening chaos,
In unison,
Intoxicating their venomous fruits
of the delirious worlds
Or simply put, divine prayer and offering
for
the Omnipotent,
Omniscient
And the
Om.
Shunya.
Or the cyclic abyss of meaninglessness.
But,
Like, the wilted azures
that seduced those flies,
From a far far away,
To come the praise the combs of their bellies,
Filled with the red from the omnipotent, dead, weak and evil
In one little fly belly.
They came from the
land called Lullaby.
To go there
from here,
But, first,
bear the Weasleys' infamous extendable ears and heed me now, for I say twice and See him Come.
The snake, the tangy smell of goated black rub and blueness.
Siva shouldn't come?
Not yet. A little DMT more in the brain and perhaps the spark will happen.
Better than the potions of those gigantic forest priests.
No, Heed me, now.

3 Dodos Walk-afar,
And, take the lone left-laden log
the one that is,
limitless Long
loyal and  let alone
By those
languors which
Killed
Lord Leopard Loot'.
While,
Lord's Lass
Lays lolled lambs,
Lolled ‘long le ******,
Leech on the laiden log,
leading to Lord Lava,
Yes.
The bridge of Casilii Po.

Of the Lord.
Guarded
By these bubbling bellies with a drop of the world's make.
Assassins.
the Fly, flies.

retain the scarification of theolden curse,
Older than the rocks underneath this gurgling lava,
On which reincarnation steams.

As destiny should have it,
the astrologers had seen,
3 centuries back
That at a Sphinx’s Wedding,
a war of Vision,
will break.
It will
Bring the Stars
Out of those melting blue nightsky of Neruda's wails;
And the diabolic estrangement inflicting Eagle,
From Meena’s vibes,
that rubbed of a distinct scent of Malabar embedding a little of everybody in the village,
on its Kasavu lines posing
at the focus
of Sahib's Ferguson or Baker.

The gold turned white.
A liquid white, like that of the sap,
For that,
***** on a parrot green rubber plant
And work your fun with the white gluey milk,
fragrant than the sap
Like the  Ylang Ylang buds freshly kissed by the drooly dew,
sealed away
elegantly in a crystal Indigo bottle by the pen stand.

One that glitters if you look at its surface, but smells of naphthalene ***** in the sink
in
that
creepy trailer in
mid salem night of the tut.
Colourful.
This is colorblind.

White is motile.
White is wriggling.
White is life.
With a **** of Eve’s fabric-less
Skin.
White is divinity
feeding you excess of everything,
With an tenfold over dosage injected intravenous, by a silver-haired-glow-in-the-dark-dodo-cupid;

She is divine.
**** Her.
**** her on a Pyre.
**** her innards on a fire.
inflame the bubble
of her her oily effluent you found on the toilet seat
Instil in her, the seed of your sodomic occult,
Not by compassion, but through a hiss and sting
of the
flawless venom of the diabolic.  
Then. Disinfect your fruit that you flicked off the paradise.
And bellow to the blowing gurgling below.  
A reign of ****  nihilism,
moaning the mood-swings-of-a-98-year-old-menopausing-Bhairavi of the Indian Aghora Tales;
And Shelly, fueled in his undiminished hearth with the help of his impetous West Wind,
dreaming lucid,
on a flight in the sky for one week,
with Lucy’s sewing  sequined buttocks,
Stinging their luminescent, lactating, lustrous skin,
Like a tatto machine, lifting rays into the epidermis
So that it roasts, burns a soot and neonifies the only colour
A shade of
The rave, rainbow-red karmas of human existence,
Its little greedy quantas waltzing around the matter
And of its unleashed illuminations
That fuel the same vessel in the universe,
infamously known as,
the
black hole.
Uggh!!
All characters and plots are fictitious.
Your nightmares are yours, not Caesar's.
This is truly the fruit of my insomnia. I have been awake 52 hours now. Had to rant the wakefulness out.
It is unedited. All those offended, I didn't mean it, you did.
Larry Potter Jul 2013
A cumulonimbus caused the gloom that day. It went shedding drops of rain that looked like bead of pearls glittering in the grey autumn sky, vanishing as they plunge on leafless laurel trees and solitary cypresses. He watched them dance to pitter-patter on every umbrella that opened towards the heavens, their colors of rich black calling out to such empathy. Finally, the drops kiss the graze of withered grasses and thirsty dandelions, reviving their foliage and greenness. Slowly, the rainfall collect to become one with soil and mud crawled down to the six feet depression where a coffin was laid. It was white like ivory and carved with elaborate insignias as a token of love and undying memories. Soon, it was all covered with crimson roses that carry the last parting words of the bereaved. The priest waved out his hands above with mournful eyes, lisping his beseeching of earnest favors while spades of loam filled up the burrow. He saw faces of despair around the pit, gasping for reprieve and sympathy. If only the rain could also bring back her life, he implored.

This, in his senses, was belongingness. This, in his heart, was death.

It had been two long weeks since Roxanne’s death and Vincent couldn’t get his feet back on the ground. He still couldn’t believe he had lost her and that their seemingly endless love has flown away from him for all eternity. He’d make believe that this was all just a dream and at some point of this nightmare he would finally be unchained and awakened. Days became niches of shackled memories that kept haunting his love-fletched soul and nights were nothing more than a requiem of lovelorn longings that still linger in his mind. He remembers it all, the feel of her name on his lips, the smell of her hair, and the sound of her laugh. Everything is still as fresh as the dewdrops of June and as vivid as the most cinematic imagery a mortal could immortalize. The ultimate fight of this melodramatic transition was to remain whole when all the strength Vincent has built up begins to crumble by a mere reminiscence of the tragedy that gets freeze-framed from beginning to end over and over again.

It was a rainy Friday evening on the 22nd of May and everyone’s feeling the smell of the weekend rush. Vincent was already at a friend's house party and called Roxanne that he’ll be waiting. Roxanne was driving the Lexus behind a small truck that seemed to plod toward the upcoming red light. She was a few minutes late on her way and watching these two people ahead of her jabber away in that truck was getting her out of her ecstatic  mood. The light turned green, but the truck too slowly moved forward. Roxanne became frustrated as the driver fixated to the right. He visibly gasped at what was just about to come into her view. A brand new grey-blue Chevy Silverado blazed through the opposing stop light to broadside his little truck. Roxanne tried to stop, but her car slid into the Chevy's rear side and went tossing down the highway to an explosion.

All these is what Vincent needs to drown himself to agony. It’s as if Atlas gave up the bearing of the world for him to endure. Wretched and perplexed was he, blaming the world for such a prejudiced conspiracy. How could an angel like Roxanne be bound to such an end? How could an invincible love become vulnerable on the visage of death? But then again, his heart starts to concoct a spell of phantasm, bringing back the most prized memories of him and her together, infiltrating his whole system and gaining power over the bitterness and pain. In this test of sensations, he himself wasn’t sure if this two-edged delusion is a boon or bane. But one thing was becoming clear to him-he cannot be like this for the rest of his life. If this nightmare must be proven real, he must find a way out. Whatever may lie ahead, he must keep going, recreate his own world and be able to break free from the fetters of this mishap that surely promises him nothing but living scars, frustrations and sorrow.

Two years have passed and the town of New Hope has undergone a lot of changes. New coffee shops and cafes run down a block away from the University premise as well as convenient stores and parlors. New establishments stood welcoming and billboards mushroomed the skyway. The streets are crowded with more and more busy people, indicative of a metropolitan evolution of lifestyle. Summer has ended and without a trace, the arid autumn and the frigid winter fluttered to oblivion.

The same is true for New Hope University which, in its current enrollment period, has its student population increased by two thousand. The institute’s remarkable performance rating in board examinations and national competitions attracted other towns to invest their education to the latter. It was nearly the start of class and everyone is busy catching up the enrollment pace. But not Vincent, who, in the first day of inception has already completed the enrollment process. He was ecstatic, more of curious how his life as a senior student could turn into this academic year. He met faces of different kinds-some familiar and some entirely strangers. Those he doesn’t recognize would just pause and pay a smile while others he knew jsut pass by and make him feel invisible. On a ledge in front of his course department’s office he sat. He in himself was New Hope town in human transfiguration- braver, brighter and better. He looked from afar, with eyes playing on the nimble of heads and shoulders of people passing through the corridor. He drenched himself to an illusion of how each head turns toward him with a infectious smile, that once in a while, happiness is sought even in the gallows of solitude. Solitude-it wasn’t a strange name to him anymore. It never was. He was entangled with it on that day the sickles of death took his love away. Somehow, through the passage of time, the wound that was scourged deep in his heart has mended and the thought of being alone became amusing that he has managed to laugh about it over the seasons. He is more human now, away from the devious portal of his mundane imagining.

The daydream was shattered when out of the blue a silhouette of a familiar figure took the stage. She was elegantly tall, with hair of pure ebony lolling on her shoulders. Each step enraptures, and each gentle sway of a hand is a compelling rhythm. She draws closer to where he was and he's left slack jawed. She entered the office and he was back to his senses. Maybe not. What he beheld was something farfetched, something that he cannot comprehend. Vincent saw it all coming back to him. A remnant of his long buried love has come to life. It was Roxanne and it is more certain than breathing. He couldn’t explain what he felt. It was a maelstrom of joy and surprise, of hope and fear. It was the face he yearned to see, so long that the yearning turned to hate and despair. But now that it came to pass, his humanity fell apart. Although he is a mere victim of his own circumstances, the serendipity took a shot straight to his heart and there is nothing he could do about it.

Perhaps there is, and he is now pretty preoccupied. He wanted to know her. He must unknot this puzzle that has challenged his whole conviction. He must find every answer and throw all of its questions behind. Whatever there is that the road has in store for him is not essential anymore. He couldn’t care less to fathom this enigma and once more, find something worth living. But now that he is hanging in midair, he planned to fall back. He jumped out of the ledge and headed out the campus, afraid that she might be at sight and all the strength in him shall subside. He was up all night, thinking of how he could get a chance to meet and talk to her. He had thoughts of crafting schemes, devising methods and inventing tricks.

And nothing of it worked.

The first day of class commenced. New Hope University is buzzing with ecstatic students. Vincent giggled with utmost excitement, carelessly bumping shoulders and brushing elbows with other students in the corridors.  He molested his tattered COR and skimmed for his first class. It is in room 101 scheduled 9:00. He reviewed through the digital clock and he hurried as it ticked to 8:58. Luckily, he is safe from prime tardiness, though he seemed to be the last comer. He seated at the back, knowing that after thirty minutes, he’d helplessly succumb to napping since it is his favorite subject-English 8, Technical Writing.

And so she happened.

It was her, Roxanne’s doppelganger who broke the charts. She was 15 minutes late and unforgivably beautiful with her sequined tee and skinny jeans. She realized what she has gotten into and apologized with the kindest gesture. The professor gave her a hand and led her to the seat beside Vincent. She felt awkward. He was worse. They both sat like lifeless puppets with the puppeteer gone until she broke the silence.

“I’m Katherine,” she muttered. “Katherine Evans, glad to be your block mate”. She took it off with a smile that sent Vincent to hyperventilation. He couldn’t shake her hands. They’re already shaking with butterflies. The poor guy mounted his strength. He could not afford to lose the chance. “Vincent, Vincent Smith”. That was all and a nod. It was rare for Vincent to survive the thirty-minute nap attack but he did this time, although the victory seemed unnoticed. They enjoyed the remaining hour sharing thoughts and ideas with Vincent succeeding in all his attempts to stint his best jokes. He has come to know who she is at the basics-a transferee from Dakota University, a cheerleader and an adventurist. He also looks forward to know more about her in the days to come- hoping that she likes cheese, watching live wrestling fights and attending Sunday mass.

Perhaps she doesn't.

Two weeks was enough a time for the two of them to get closer to each other. They were both open to let the affinity they share to grow and blossom. It was very apparent that the two knew where their relationship is going and they both seemed ready for it.

Months have passed and the two were no more than couples. But Vincent was too overwhelmed of what he had let enter his life. Katherine is no Roxanne. She doesn’t like cheese, wrestling or Sunday masses. She was more self-driven, conceited and unwelcoming. Sooner he realized that he isn’t in love with Katherine, nor will he ever be. He just created his Utopia by painting Roxanne’s memories on Katherine’s facade. He believed to have loved again and he believed in vain.

It was a candlelight dinner at Katherine's and it was all set. She suggested it herself. She would always do this, steering their affair on a one man tag and turning the tides whichever she likes it to be. She seemed obsessed about Vincent, about their friendship, about their bond. This was her biggest mistake: to let Vincent get drowned in her self-consumed devotion.

Vincent is on his way. To break her heart.

When he came, Katherine pranced in glee. She presented the menu. And the drinks too. She was on the midst of telling Vincent her summer getaway plans when he told her to stop and listen. He undid it to her gently by taking all the blames, that it was his butter fingered actions which led them both bruised and bleeding. It was a self-defeating battle preordained by the gods. A tear fell down from Katherine’s eyes, and she didn’t want to show him more. She fled her way out the dining room with a tormented soul, like Aphrodite torn by Adonis, and hurried to her room with the banging of the door. Vincent was left with only the deafening silence, keeping his severed heart together.

As he sat out there slowly losing substance, he began to notice a set of picture frames that showed two happy faces, one of them Vincent was able to recognize in just a matter of seconds. But what puzzled him most is the picture's relevance to Katherine. He thought of a reason to make his way out the riddle. He looked closer to the girl beside Roxanne and found a spot of mole that was identical to Katherine's.

Vincent stumbled to a discovery he wished he had never known.

On the night Roxanne met death, she was not alone. She was with company. The girl that happened to live is Vicky Duran, Roxanne’s best friend. She was secretly in love with Vincent. And she was prepared to change her entire life for a streak of a chance that she’ll have what she was living for.

And she almost succeeded.

Vincent, still staggered on how things turned out insane, went to Roxanne’s grave. He shattered from an implosion of mixed emotions and he cried out like a child who lost his treasured toy. He curled on the ground with so much pain and bearing contained inside him. He called out Roxanne’s name with pure longing, bringing back his old self and his memories of that grey autumn, of that unwanted Friday that took her life away.

Footsteps cracked from the ground and Vincent ceased his outburst of melancholy.

“Let me end your misery,” a trembling voice came from behind him. It was Vicky, whose face is neither Roxanne’s nor Katherine’s. It was a face of a hopeless woman, wretched and determined for something. She was wearing rugged clothes and she held a gun on her hand. To Vicky, living is no different from death. She has now understood why the very person she loves has turned away from her when she gave all that she never was. But the realization priced too much of her reality that she cannot anymore take back. She decided to **** him and then take her own life.

She pointed the gun towards Vincent. He jumped at her to take the gun away. They grappled on the ground, the weapon still on Vicky’s hands. Vincent managed to overpower her but she kicked him, tumbling back to the gravestone. A shot was heard from afar with a man’s cry.

It rained that day. Brown withered leaves of tall laurels hovered with the wind while branches of solitary Cypresses dance to every whirl. The breeze whispered to the clouds of grey, a mark of autumn’s return. Vincent crawled to Roxanne's grave. It was a weeping of a true love that echoed away. Raindrops keep descending from the heavens, washing away the blood that kept flowing to the ground of mud.  Perhaps, on the last moments of his life he found happiness, even from a love that was never his to keep.

 

- by Larry Potter
first line lips are false as a beach next mcarthur’s in chicago next the big blond takes the elevator down next pearl on the lip next shalimar stirs the canine **** all right I like that let’s start a new one do it what what do you have don’t **** up wheres the apostrophe ******* you’re cruel now back now whack it again whack it again I want it to go back whack it press it whack it okay new line

i want elevator i want uh i want don’t ask the bellboy for the time just take the elevator to what? to notions? to the lingerie shop? ah ******* grandma new line

all right one more time okay **** the gin-socked tongue that’s “soaked” period once again the elevator down paint the pretty tie (cough cough) thai next big buick big *** like fish put a ? after fish take it back take it back you ***** okay that’s not bad you do all right ah **** song of india in the desert at night put “” marks around song of india & desert song in capital letters hit shalimar then cadillac red lips then **** like a seashell with a gin-soaked tongue start new line

all right does mcarthur stick his socks in the bathtune at night that’s bathtub the dog howls at the moon buries it in the backyard snakes lose their skin cocoa butter slick water on the brain of the big dark blond song of india **** **** **** big fish *** big v8 you ***** keep up with me painted rocks like a pretty tie fast car long legs and a broken heel now dead no not dead yet um estee lauder goes down on price-waterhouse in a swedish bath bellboy watching this is his reflection in the mirror no silver one-sided next line

big blond trampled by elephants with wrinkled knees starch is not chic all gone shalimar stirs the k-9 **** sequined *** in the moonlight cadillac red lips hungry dog eats tail becomes himself bad dog play dead okay what do you suggest bad doggie bad comma bad comma hungry dog go for the tongue you dumb ***** keep going new line

what do cactuses(i) have??? fronds fur what are their things called new line

dog hates gin go for the breast stupid ***** good dog dry dog poor dog pour blond water of life **** yellow a thai like painted rocks period next

i want head down legs up i want sequined *** only ****** level damp dampened dampest ***** panorama **** **** **** blue blue down there feminine azure with clouds too got it odalisque in blue period have mercy on me no no new ******* line what are you filling that thing up with okay stop it for now
crowbarius Jul 2012
Flora and Fauna, the sisters of Season
Of Spring and of Summer
Allow now our drummer
To drum out the beat
For the feet of the sisters
To glide and to creep
Like the encroaching sleep
Which may perch on your shoulder if we cannot keep you awake
And on the edge of your seat, sir.

Now the former, sweet Flora, will finger the flute
While the other continues to glide and to slide
Like a sequined Venetian harlequin bride;
And now Fauna will mimic the movements of bird and of beast
As she graces the work of our landscape artiste
And all is completely unfeasible
Completely lacks reason
We guarantee.

Presently
In the eye of the beholder
Sweet Flora seemingly draws from the aether a lyre
And with flourishing fingers she plucks from the heavens
A song of the seasons, a pagan ode to Pan!


Behold! No aid of hoops, no strings
The vestal-******-harlot sisters sing
Of beautiful Persephone
And with unseen damselfly wings
Ascend from mediocrity
All melody forgotten
All the drums create cacophony
And you will find serenity in chaotic monotony
Now let this climaxing crescendo banish all your sorrowing!

No more that light; no more that sacred realm
Life’s door was dappled gloam; now all is black.
A man of wax with saintly, hollow eyes
Devoid of sin, devoid of love and light
That golden room is lost – you can’t turn back.
Now love has lost its lustre - lust lost joy
And coy eyes turn to watch the empty man
Struck by eternal beauty, and condemned
To haunt the broken world of mortal men;
And shrilling wind caresses empty hand.
zebra Aug 2017
a black bat
hangs upside down
digesting a fly
his face almost human
a flying Frankenstein

he excretes
puddles of guano
like miniature buttered popcorn
a dark and wavy goulash
gods gift
to beetles and worms

dizzied overheated men look on
to an uproarious variety hour
of song and a high heeled kicks
inspiring
a tempest of throbbing
whisky drenched
folded ***** and cash

trouser trout fish,    
undulant
sexed up
tape worms for love
pulse the night
egging on bunny **** pom poms
devout finger puppets of Eros
for
shimmering ****** lipstick twilled vibratos

sequined tassel spinning areolas
and lavish come **** me dance girls
bring down the house in flames
making hearts apostate
clamoring
and melt men like steaming everglades

the bat
hangs from the chandelier
licks his black lips
and looks on to panorama of hieroglyphics
hearing music
a thunderous nonsense  

witnessing visions
of
flies, tasty white winged moths
and the thrill of screams
while biting the head off of another bat
in a claret stained red velvet cabaret
zebra Dec 2016
pretty pearl anklet
adorning your foot
tiara crown
princess ***** cow
all dressed up in a dark red
cherry sequined
come **** me dress
black lacquered nails
body beautiful prepped
for ordeal by *******
and pretty girl strangle
torture blood ****
wiggle wiggle
**** pink aglow
glistening hive
your mouth piece
bilingual
fucky and baby talk
all manicured and bejeweled
glitter and tears
***** food
inch worm lover
little bludgeon

your excited
for a bed of nails
what a luxury
legs spread wide
***** drool melt
your scent
a silk **** cocktail
in thick puce
stained pink milk pom poms
****** beyond tabulation
come sweet cow
its time for slaughter
down on your haunches
you look up
thrilled
dark dreams do come true
i love you
like the bog loves bones
embalmed in spice
Let me say for the record i don't think women are ******... that they adore suffering but that my poems remain explorations of the subconscious ******
If i where a film maker or a novelist  you  would see me telling a story not judge me  although i admit to my paraphilias  
These poems  are lunar anamorphic streams of consciousness from the deep chaotic subterranean .glitz of transgressive  impulses we all share
Read them if you dare...you might find that part of yourself that you don't want you to know about
saige Mar 2018
Lyrics in her face
blaze, from screen to mouth
bony thumb, scrolling
mumbling into an ancient microphone
hanging from the rope swing
in her garage.

Voice shakes here, shivers there
but ****
she is soulful.

Authentic, exquisite
in holey socks and wet hair
and goosebumped arms
getting swallowed by a hoodie.

*******, she has it all
and gives it nothing.

Some of us are simply stunning
no spray tans or updos
no sequined skirts or stiletto shoes
no autotune or makeup kits
no words-

only nothing
could improve her.

Nothing could improve her.
some soul i used to know
Chris Behrens Feb 2013
Standing just a foot away
In leather boots and sequined jeans
Five foot nine, lean and mean
at the Taqueria, El Si Hay

Pink cellphone and cheap sunglasses
Waiting in the order line
A pug-nosed man in chinos passes
and paces round to pass the time.

When it's cold I miss the birds
It's always nice to find
the easy flow of Spanish words
and English mixed in kind
A short one in media res from this morning.
tangshunzi Aug 2014
Ci sono matrimoni ti adoro e poi ci sono i matrimoni ti adoro .drop-dead cose bellissime che sono così assolutamente bella .siete quasi a corto di parole.Questo è uno di quei matrimoni.Una serata italiana mozzafiato con una splendida attrice sposarla focoso produttore musicale sposo .il tutto circondato da familiari .amici e momento dopo momento di "Miss Havisham incontra Florence and the Machine " pretty ( SI ) .E 'il tipo di giornata che sarà quasi certamente passerà alla storia SMP e si può vedere tutto catturato beauitfully da Matthew Moore nel pieno galleria .

Condividi questa splendida galleria ColorsSettingsHistoric VenueStylesRomanticVintage

Da Sposa.Come attrice e sceneggiatrice dal commercio in Hollywood era destinato fin dall'inizio che il nostro matrimonio sarebbe stato una produzione.Invece del matrimonio norma mio marito ed io stavamo cercando di creare il set di un film che sarebbe davvero trasportare i nostri ospiti in un altro mondo .

Oltre al fatto che siamo entrambi persone molto artistici in generale .Zach ed io sono piuttosto contrario.ehm.voglio dire gratuito .Zach è più di un ragazzo jeans e t -shirt .E sono più di una Jimmy Choo e vintage sequined vestito da cocktail tipo di ragazza .Così.quando è arrivato il momento di sposarsi .volevamo trovare un modo per fondere i nostri due gusti : lui .casual e me.fantasia .Lui .rilassata e me .drammatico .

Entrambi abbiamo subito concordato un matrimonio di destinazione perché sapevamo che volevamo che il matrimonio sia intimo.E abbiamo voluto l'evento per essere più di una vacanza collettiva di una sorta di omaggio al nostro coupledom .E non posso dirti quello che una decisione perfetta che fu.Abbiamo optato per l'Italia .un piccolo paese vicino a Lucca chiamato Borgo a Mozzano dove avevo trascorso del tempo in un college di canto lirico .( . Te l'avevo detto che ero toity hoity ) Borgo a Mozzano è in Garfagna - i monti selvaggi e selvagge della Toscana .

Sono ossessionato con la grandiosità sbiadita si possono trovare in Italia - e la villa che abbiamo scelto per il matrimonio (Villa Catureglio ) incarna proprio questo - edera a crescere senza di pietra antichi .ulivi dappertutto .quella luce splendida che sembraesistere solo in Italia .Per noi .non c'è niente di più bello di patina e abbiamo voluto fare che l'attenzione estetica del matrimonio .

A tal fine .i colori del matrimonio sono



tirati direttamente dalla decolorazione della pietra dal salmone al grigio al blu al verde .C'è un intero caleidoscopio di colori solo nella pietra .Volevamo la decorazione di nozze per avere un tatto organico ad essa come se fosse parte della villa .
Il tema per il matrimonio è stata Miss Havisham incontra Florence and the Machine .La descrizione mi piace dare è il matrimonio dovrebbe apparire come se fosse istituito un centinaio di anni fa e poi solo dimenticato .Nel corso del secolo gli elementi ha assunto l'edera e muschio ha cominciato a crescere nel l'arredamento .l'età sbiadito la tovaglia .E ora il matrimonio è quasi una sensazione spettrale ad esso .Per me non c'è niente di più romantico della storia Havisham di un matrimonio congelato nel tempo .E mi piace l'accostamento di bellezza e decadenza .

Abbiamo ovviamente avuto un po ' di una sfida tirare fuori questa visione dall'altra parte del mondo .Inoltre .abbiamo voluto utilizzare uno stile più eclettico decorazione di solito si può affittare da fornitori di nozze ( in particolare in Italia .dove l'estetica matrimonio sembra essere per lo piu vestiti da sposa ' permette di trasformare la villa in un club di Miami ! ' ) .Così abbiamo dovuto ottenere creativo che è dove abbiamo avuto così tanto divertimento .Io e mia mamma .insieme con i nostri wedding planner .pettinate attraverso diverse Thrifts negozi a Firenze di raccolta ( ad un prezzo abbastanza ragionevole) antiquariato favolosi che abbiamo usato per decorare il tutto .Abbiamo trovato splendidi vecchi specchi che abbiamo appeso nella limonaia .Siamo andati in un vecchio magazzino di tessuto a Prato e aveva le tende fatte per la cappella e altrove.Abbiamo anche trovato il tessuto lì per fare la nostra bella pizzo tovaglia di tela !La sua incredibile come se siete disposti a caccia .si possono trovare cose incredibili ad una certa sconto .Pettinatura attraverso depositi di risparmio italiane potrebbe non essere il paradiso per tutti .ma per me e mia mamma è stata veramente !

Zach .ovviamente .a condizione che la musica .che era un misto di corrente di musica indie con musica dal 1920 per la cena per riflettere il nostro desiderio che il matrimonio si sentono sia d'epoca e indie .Abbiamo finito per avere 55 dei nostri amici più cari e familiari .e non avrebbe potuto essere più perfetto .Abbiamo tutti trascorso alcuni giorni insieme prima del matrimonio .

Il matrimonio è iniziato nella cappella privata in loco : una splendida .piccola cappella di pietra abbiamo trasformato in una scatola gioiello etereo .Abbiamo comprato un po ' di velluto stupendo e tessuto di seta floreale da un magazzino a Prato .che abbiamo trasformato in tende romantiche per vestire le finestre .La cappella era piena di Kartell Louis Ghost in armonia con l'atmosfera un po ' spettrale del matrimonio .

Le damigelle d'onore camminato lungo la navata nella splendida marina .1930 ispirato abiti da David Meister come il nostro indie amico musicista rock ( mio cugino ) ci serenata con le versioni acustiche delle nostre canzoni preferite ( "C'è l'Amore " di Firenzee la macchina ." primo giorno della nostra vita " di Bright Eyes .ecc ) e 'stato così incredibilmente speciale per avere mio cugino cantare per noi .

** indossato un abito di Reem Acra ( Olivia ) che scorre in avorio con maniche argento cappuccio bordato .Mia mamma e mia sorella e ** preso a Kleinfeld in un trunk show .Il look era molto presto Grey Gardens glamour del 1930 .Pensate Poco Edie quando era giovane e bella e piena di promesse .O signorina Havisham in gioventù .

Una volta sposati.ci siamo spostati nel cortile della villa per cocktail e antipasti .Qui abbiamo avuto una splendida sorpresa in programma per i nostri ospiti .In lontananza .hanno iniziato a sentire una band che suona celebrativo della musica tradizionale italiana .La musica gradualmente si avvicinava sempre di più fino a quando attraverso l'ingresso alberato oliva villa apparve una marching band di 30 elementi ( concerto bandistico ) !Tradizionalmente .in matrimoni italiani .la banda del paese suona dopo la cerimonia e quindi abbiamo avuto la band Lucca locale non solo per noi !Sono un gruppo favoloso composto da tutti.da 8 anni a 80 anni di età che suonano musica tradizionale popolare italiana con una perfetta imperfezione .

Il look del momento dell'aperitivo era stupendo !Le bevande erano servite nella Limonaia (dove sono memorizzati i limoni durante l'inverno ) .La limonaia è onestamente da morire - è così Giardini di Miss Havisham / grigio con bellissime porte francesi che si aprono in questo spazio magico coperto di edera e altri vitigni appesi .Inoltre abbiamo decorato le pareti con un miscuglio di bellissime .specchi antichi d'oro che abbiamo comprato a diversi negozi di spedizione intorno a Firenze tutte in diverse dimensioni e forme .tra cui un gigantesco specchio antico ( 6 ​​metri di altezza ).che poggiava sul pavimento .Abbiamo chiesto il fiorista per portare ancora più edera da aggiungere alle pareti e tessere intorno gli specchi per farli sentire come se fossero lì da secoli .Sono sicuro che io sono l' unica sposa che ha chiesto il fiorista per rendere il luogo un aspetto più decrepito .ma onestamente .hanno fatto il più magnifico lavoro .Fiori Toscana ( il migliore !) Hanno fatto i fiori .

decorare l'interno della limonaia sono stati sedie antiche e divano acquistati al mercato dell'antiquariato di Lucca .Abbiamo finito per trasformare la limonaia in una grande e formale salotto che era stata troppo presa dagli elementi .La vestiti da sposa giustapposizione di mobili antichi con la limonaia rustico e il suo pavimento sporco di terra è esattamente il tipo di contraddizione abbiamo giocato con tutto il matrimonio tutto .

Dopo le bevande è venuto a cena.I nostri ospiti hanno camminato attraverso la villa - su un altro bel cortile alberato con alberi di ulivo decorati con centinaia di candele appese .Tra gli alberi .c'era un lungo tavolo coperto da una tela di pizzo splendida avevamo fatto in una tovaglia di tessuto che abbiamo comprato da un magazzino all'ingrosso a Prato .Il tavolo era decorato con candelabri e vasi antichi .pieni di arrangiamenti romantici e selvaggi fiori traboccanti sul tavolo .come l'edera salì i candelabri .Kartell sedie fantasma linea la tabella interrotto solo dalla sedia antico occasionale alle due estremità - e un divanetto d'epoca al centro del tavolo per la sposa e lo sposo .Veramente il tavolo era un capolavoro .E come gli ospiti mangiavano .abbiamo avuto 1920 riproduzione di musica che ha appena aggiunto all'atmosfera .

Invece di una società di catering .siamo stati fortunati a trovare ( grazie ai nostri wedding planner ).un famoso chef per cucinare il pasto per noi .E ' fondamentalmente la Paula Deen d'Italia e che ha fatto un lavoro impeccabile .L'abbiamo presentato con un po 'una sfida .perché volevamo un pasto completamente vegetariano .Ma lei tirò fuori splendidamente !

Dopo cena la torta è stata istituita nel grande salone della villa circondata da splendidi muschio e posto su una base antico con una splendida patina - abbiamo acquistato da un vicino cantiere di salvataggio .La torta è stato ispirato da Wedgewood con intricati avorio dettagli su ogni livello completo di cammei fatti a mano dal nostro artista torta maestro .Melanie .e sormontato da una corona di ispirazione vintage .E ' stata veramente mozzafiato.(E assaggiato incredibile come bene ! )

Dopo aver mangiato .abbiamo camminato lungo una passerella a lume di candela .giù la proprietà alla loggia ( una veranda coperta di sorta ) - in pietra antica .Abbiamo trasformato questa sala in sala sigari / grappa .Abbiamo voluto contrastare la pietra semplice e maschile con la decorazione femminile e morbido .Abbiamo drappeggiato le finestre aperte con ricco tessuto in velluto .E abbiamo acquistato un assortimento di mobili antichi da negozi di spedizione per vestire lo spazio come lampadari splendidi pendevano dal soffitto .

Poi sulla danza .Abbiamo convertito abiti da sposa on line il vecchio fienile in pietra in una pista da ballo / club - completo di photobooth !Qui abbiamo avuto la più divertente giustapponendo il moderno con l'antico .Una barra incandescente con avvolgono una delle colonne centrali della stalla .come il barista ci ha servito bevande.Lampadari di cristallo appesi alle pareti .Abbiamo decorato la stalla con decorazioni semplici e moderne - divani moderni bianche pulite - tutto arredamento bianco contro la pietra - come abbiamo ballato nella notte .Uno dei lighting designer premiere in Toscana illuminato lo spazio in blu e viola per aiutare a completare la trasformazione.

nostro matrimonio è stato davvero la notte più magica che mai.I nostri fotografi .Matteo e Katie hanno fatto un lavoro impeccabile come catturare la bellezza e l'atmosfera della manifestazione .Fotografia

: Matthew Moore Fotografia | Fiorista : Toscana Flowers | Abito da sposa: Reem Acra | Cake: Melanie Seccaini | Coordinamento evento: matrimoni Internazionale | Hair + Trucco : Katie Moore di Matthew Moore Fotografia | Luogo : Villa CatureglioMatthew Moore Fotografia .L'Arte Della Torta di Melanie Secciani .Toscana Fiori e matrimoni internazionali sono membri del nostro Little Black Book .Scopri come i membri sono scelti visitando la nostra pagina delle FAQ .Matthew Moore Fotografia VIEW PORTFOLIO L'Arte Della Torta di Melanie ... vedi portfolio Toscana Fiori vedi portfolio Matrimoni internazionale VIEW
http://www.belloabito.com/goods.php?id=211
http://188.138.88.219/imagesld/td//t35/productthumb/1/498535353535_393159.jpeg
http://www.belloabito.com/abiti-da-sposa-c-1
Romantico italiana sposa di destinazione da Matthew Moore Fotografia_abiti da sposa corti
belaboring hurt-bells
of twilight

outside there is a furious wind
sweeping the sour-faced pavement.
the helm of the morning
fits through the pinecones.
through the dandelion,
the diadem of some mystic flower,
the flurry of children
and the fury of the populace.

i know whence the wind stirs
cold flame from the many a dead
stones, sequined floor and the
dreary stillicide of night.
our bodies rise to the sun
that is a full woman
or a ripe apple
or a half-bitten moon in glare
and when her lips purse
there is pang in the wind that blows austere beneath the foot
of hills in ruin.

let the night come later than
a bird's secret sojourn,
or the cicada's enigma.
let the cathedral of my heart
quiver later than the unsheathing
of the night's bone
but in the twilight,
when the skies are bruised with
silence and somnolent without voice
my hands shall leap into the wind
and make do, the belaboring
hurt-bells of twilight.
no more than a crepuscular twining
of a sad vine on a melancholy hymn
that makes fuller with its tender
maneuvers, the trundling in
love's wearisome vessel.
B Brown Mar 2015
Blue Hill Avenue

It begins with Spanglish-speaking merchants
conducting business inside of bulletproof stalls,
where the faint scent of dried cod follows you
to the flat fix next door, into the auto body,
a hair shop, and to the steps of a church
for first generation Cape Verdean-Americans,
their offspring and that old lady --
someone’s  grandmother --
who wears a black dress on Fridays
and walks home from the Market Basket
the same time that you get off the bus
who wears a shopping bag full of tropical foods
and memories on her head.

And if you stand at its first **** south,
you will notice how the families disappear
in the African American section.
There are fewer stores here, lots of energy boxes
with epitaphs: “Tiffany Moore Died Here”;
a seatless swing set, a playground gone fallow.
You won’t see any church steeples in this section
that feeds on a neon CITGO sign too small
to illuminate the skyline like the mega one in Copley does.

A few blocks away, a ghost of the Jewish past sits
with pointy stars of David nestled inside its
bulbous steeples that simmer on summer Sundays
where Haitian congregants stew inside,
praying and giving to the building fund
in damp envelopes that will go to the omnipotent one
who will someday replace the stars with crosses.

And as you keep walking, past the temple,
you enter Grove Hall’s Mecca, a strip mall
with a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts,

a Stop & Shop, CVS, Bank of America,
and a Rainbows that sells your teenaged aunt
the sequined one-off shirt she needs for a date
and the fishnets she wears to the carnival
that parades through a sliver of the avenue,
the very next section of our beloved Blue Hill.

Across the street, Check Cashers speak English
as good as the number of dollars and cents
they count when they hand you back your cashed check
or the double win you scratched out of a Gold Rush ticket.

Adjacent to them, a Greek-owned sandwich shop
that feeds you steak bombs as long as your forearm or
Festive Fridays: 20 wing dings, a pound of fries,
a Greek salad, and a gracious gulp of fountain cola --
essentially, a heart-attack meal.  

Next, another ghost of the Jewish past,
a church in the former Franklin Park Theater,
where Yiddish entertainers performed vaudeville acts
which nobody living can remember.

Then a building that resembles an African footstool,
one that will allow you to see over the **** of the hill
and down below at a gospel choir trapped in everlasting song
against the wall of the one-hour cleaners and that store
where a turkey-shaped lady with flour dusted hands
stands behind a window, noticing you,
while guarding her beef patties and cocoa bread
with a bulletproof smile.
T R Wingfield Jan 2017
Ours was like fireworks
in the mid-summer sky
Radiant,
       Iridescent,
                   Incredulous,
                              Alive
but the finale came suddenly, unexpectedly soon,
& the band played on,
as if nothing had changed,
as if a fountain of sparkling embers and flame
had not just erupted mere inches away.
And now,
where explosions once seared summer's sky with crackling thunderous incandescent delight
Only whispers and wisps of smoke remain,
Scattered by the breeze,
Whithered, then, by rain.
And of the evening's reveries precious little can be found:
some soured beer in crumpled cans, discarded haphazardly
surrounding a threadbare picnic bedspread
rumpled beneath the branches of an ancient live oak tree.
Dew now wet where lovers once had lain,
staring up into the night
in wonder, ignorant of such banal things
like: masquerading lust in love's robes, declaring,
"I've never loved a love as deep as the love I have for you,"
and truly being unaware of the uncanny substitute;
Or the unbridled disenchantment unleashed by abandonment
and the inevitable transience of an insufferable pain.

We ****** on bar balcony balustrades, over looking city streets.
We ditched tampons into trees rather than wait to satisfy our needs.
We left your ******* in a planter
on a patio under an eve
On purpose, So that some poor, unassuming shop-keep
Would find them
(along with cigarette butts and an empty bag of ****)
and have no choice but think to themselves,
"Did someone **** here?"
and then immediately understand the answer is
"Yes. Exuberantly!"

We defiled. every. place. we went;
giggling with glee at all of our indiscretions.

Oh how many indiscretions could there possibly be?
We shall know;
All of them!

And so we did,

And we were free.



On new years eve I carried you piggyback in your peacock blue sequined gown through the streets of our ****-soaked-gutter-of-a-town.
You were barefoot, drunk, and refusing to be told what to do,
that you had to wear your shoes,
that the streets were far to ***** and dangerous for your tender little feet- you said "Just let me be, It's fine. It wont **** me..."
then, looking at the gutter, continued,
"probably.
And these shoes already are, so..." sticking out your tongue
But I couldn't put you down.
Not in that place, not at that time.
Nor did I even want to. I could have carried you all night
(which was fortunate, because for most of itI did.)
We were declared the city's cutest couple by a stranger on the sidewalk whom we passed while galloping down the street, you, giggling, alight upon my back, running at full speed. This declaration was reaffirmed by everyone met.

A pixie, you know, will always trip you up
(they're natural pranksters you see).
Their magic is undeniable, but oh what trouble they can be.

- My toothsome little faerie - You meant trouble for me;
but what a beautiful, beguiling mess you turned out to be,

You snuck pixie dust into everywhere we went, and
Dispensed it with abandon-
Spread it like caution to the wind.
Sanctifying everything and everyone we met.
That poor city was baptized in our joy.
It's sins washed into glittering gutters,
where we lay sparkling, genuine and loved.


We broke the records that night,
all of them, known and not.

We loved harder than diamond,
than a trailer-hitch to the shin,
Deeper than the fathoms of the trenches at the bottom of the sea.

We made soulmates seem like strangers.
We spoke nonsense fluently.
We shared mind and body, food and drink,
and careless wanton play.

It was

The most
     *******
          Fun
   I've ever had
       in my life...

Probably the most that I ever will.


Every moment I was with you had
the sizzle and the tease
of a bottle-rocket, lit
and held between my teeth.

I knew that I'd get burned
If I held it to the end,
But I did it just to prove I could;
To prove to me
That I was brave enough
To be unashamed
  To be unafraid
   To be.
First draft catharsis.
Second draft refined.
Third draft- shape and tone, structure and rhyme.

I've been holding on to some very dense emotional pain relating to a relationship which, for lack of a better word, collapsed. When it did, I was buried by my depression, and sank into drug and alcohol addiction. The depression and drugs had taken there toll on the relationship, but I couldn't not understand why someone who had loved and been loved so deeply could just walk away. It took a long time to understand that it was self-preservation. And that is a hard realisation to make. Still the love we shared was enigmatic. Like nothing I've ever seen in a movie or a song or a poem. This is hardly a testament, or even a rough approximation of the experience at its finest moments, but it is a reflection. A memory. She took a piece of me when she left. One I want back desperately, but also one I know cannot be found. So I'll have to search until I find something of a similar size and shape, maybe a little larger, and cut the whole to fit.
Tallulah Nov 2012
My edges have no border
I seep & blotch the air
My thoughts a chaotic disorder
Laughing in silent despair

Who am I?

I’m the colorful mix
Of the pills I take at night
Grappling at the latest “fix”
But I never get the dosage right
So broken I shall stay
To listen but not to obey

I’m the perfect daughter
I know I ought to be
Smiling sequined next to my father
A beautiful sight to see
Painted fingertips, quiet lips
But I’m slipping from sexist grips

I’m the crash of atoms & molecules
The patterned DNA that labels our culture
Theorems, functions, evolutionary tools
Poe knew: Science is a “vulture
Whose wings are dull realities”
Fact blinds what my mind sees

Forgive me I’m singing
Of what I am & cannot be
& My ears are still ringing
With who society has asked me to be
Edgar Allan Poe quote from Sonnet-To Science
cheryl love Apr 2014
He always wanted to go on a trip
To entertain passengers on a cruise
After searching found the perfect ship
He set sail, he had nothing to lose.
Packing his sequined shirts for the ride
Which he'd got from the charity shop
He had also a few secrets hidden inside
including a avery pretty ladies frock!
He'd spent ages looking at it and he had sewn
little sparkly bits along the sleeves and neck line.
He wore it the first night and got covered in foam
and someone had splashed him with red wine.
He thought he'd disembark at the next available quay
But as time went on it was not as bad as he had thought
First night blues over he now sings every night at sea
In his new role as Drag Queen of the Palace Resort.
Passengers line up to get tickets for his show in the queue
He entertains all of the evening and most of the day
He is at his best and he is one of the crew
It is his home and is where he will stay.
sparkling gems adorn the night sky
studding the vast backdrop of black
glittering glints which do magnify
sparkling gems adorn the night sky
a dazzling splendor to ever beautify
sequined glories that verily eye smack
sparkling gems adorn the night sky
studding the vast backdrop of black
LDuler Mar 2013
Been dazed and confused for so long it's not true
There were kids
Sitting in the soft night's semicircle
Encased in a haze of smoke
The darkness enfolding them in a cloak
Of all mysterious things nocturnal
Making it all eternal
A superficial feeling of found truth
A white aura of blazing youth
Conquering the darkness with the fiery tips of lit joints
Puffing chimeras and golden illusions
Things left unsaid yet lead not to confusion
The substance and the glowing friends
Seems to fix everything and make ineffable amends
Lends them some heightened receptivity
With some dazzling sensitivity
To the dizzy promises of life
        *
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you
There was blue bottles and red cups
Sloshing full of 21st century ambrosia
Every moment of the night
Is doused in glowing star-light
Different rooms, dark places
Different shadows, similar faces
        
Lots of people talk and few of them know
There was music softly ebbing and weaving its way to us
      
Soul of a woman was created below
Gleaming sequined pillows
Curtains ebbing in delicate billows
That no amount of reality could ever harden
In the black garden
Amidst the tangy, acrid scent
Boys and girls came and went
Among the soughs and the ***** and the gleaming stars
We are young; ***** replaces wine, blunts replace cigars
      
You hurt and abuse tellin' all of your lies
An adagio of whispers travels with a florid vibration
Waves of words, swirls of conversation
High kids trying to touch
What has never been tangible
     
Run around sweet baby, Lord how they hypnotize
These kids linger on towering stools and lush couches
Leaning back with careless slouches
Or wander back and forth
Breathing dreams like air
     
Sweet little baby, I don't know where you've been
An elusive rhythm throbs in the humid atmosphere
Fragments of lost words hover on drunken lips
A stirring warmth flows
From bodies spilled together
Snuggled under a blanket of stars
      
Gonna love you baby, here I come again
Hands take hold of hands
And fingers tightly interlace
Throbbing softly with fluctuating warmth
The room is electric, filled with tiny flowing currents
      
Try to love you baby, but you push me away
In this wake of boozed up elations
All sorrows are aborted, all conscience is obliterated
Blitzed kisses are exchanged, transitory enchanted moments
Bemused nudges and tender embraces
Arms around shoulders, heads resting drowsily
All of this immediate and forever
        
Don't know where you're goin', only know just where you've been
And the tipsy, blissfully mindless joy of youth
Gives them bleary yet satisfactory hints of the unreality of reality
        
Sweet little baby, I want you again
The teens are flickering in and out of consciousness like befuddled fireflies
The sober ones roam the rooms, drifting haphazardly about
Simultaneously enchanted, bewildered, and repelled
By the seemingly inexhaustible variety of drunken fun,
The ****, adventurous mood of the night
       
Been dazed and confused for so long, it's not true**
We are all so young
So young and dipped in the dust of folly
And our laughs contain a hint of melancholy
The magic of nights like these,
When the spell of mortality is broken,
Eludes us all,
Yet we cling to them
Like moths to a flame.
Nights like these dig deep in the stuff of the soul
But there is still much to be learned
lol how to make a drunken high school party sound enchanted and mystic
Mary McCray Apr 2013
A Donna Summer Triolet**

The disco dancer needs a singer,
a heart spasm simmering with the pulsing zeitgeist.
The sequined torch song craves a *******;
so the disco dancer needs a singer.
Giorgio-beats-per-minute, the remix has been spliced
as the belladonna exits onto the dance floor of Christ.
The disco dancer needs a singer,
a 12-inch ****** blessing the joyous zeitgeist.
Getting toward the end of my Ode Less Traveled exercises. I love triolets. Have a stack of old People Mags and today came across last year's obit for Donna Summer.
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Geode, a Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior—
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...

a diode of amethyst—wild, electric;
its sequined cavity—parted, revealing.

Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.

Each spire inward—a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails—fractured light,

the heart ice breaking.

Published by Poet Lore, Poetry Magazine and the Net Poetry and Art Competition. Keywords/Tags: Geode, amethyst, quartz, rock, stone, sequin, sequined, jagged, shard, brilliant, fire, passion, light, fission, ice
Six
Turn the kitchen sink on. Wait 36 seconds. Turn the sink off. Count the sides of the kitchen doorway. One, two, three. Put socks on, walk to the bathroom. Take socks off. Turn the bathroom sink on. Wait 36 seconds. Turn the sink off. Count the sides of the bathroom doorway. One, two, three. Put socks on. The whole procedure had been finely polished into a smooth six minutes. Exactly. Justin’s day can now begin. He finishes his normal routine and leaves the house. He checks the gutter. He’s not checking for anything specific, but it’s sixth in his morning ritual and must be done.

Today he found something. There’s a girl, passed out. She is wearing an excessively short turquoise sequined dress, with matching stilettos. Justin was at a loss. The gutter was not empty. Should he call the police? He took her shoe. He ran. Six blocks later, he stopped. He was In front of his favourite coffee shop. It was an intimidating place, with a tattoo and piercing service offered, while you wait for your coffee. He liked it because the address was 666. He was worried the police he hadn't phoned would be searching for the stiletto he had stolen. Who would have known he would turn to a life of crime? Just earlier, while the bathroom sink was on, he had been thinking of complementing the local parking officer (the one with the limp) on his ability to write tickets. Now here he was, holding the glittering fruit of his crime. Maybe he could return it to the young lady. She seemed nice enough, from what little he knew of her. But what if she questioned him? Best have an excuse prepared. He could say he saw a spider climbing into it. His chivalry had saved her from a nasty bug bite. No, he couldn't pull that off. He would pretend to be a poet, that’s what he’d do. Poets are known for being strange. So he set about writing her a poem.

Turquoise like the rain,
off you go, down the drain.

With a dress, short like our fleeting existence,
that could really do with some more distance.

I took your heel to 666,
left you a poem in the mix.


Justin was in fact quite proud of his apparent literary side. He rejected -yet again- a discount on tattoos, and left the coffee shop. He walked back to his gutter, Finding once again the girl, passed out. Slipping the stiletto back into place on her foot, he looked around guiltily, double checking the police hadn't followed him. He went inside. He went to bed. The next morning, he forgot to turn the kitchen sink on. He didn’t wait 36 seconds. Didn’t turn the sink off. Didn’t count the sides of the kitchen doorway. One, two, three. Didn’t put socks on. Didn’t walk to the bathroom. Didn’t take socks off. Didn’t turn the bathroom sink on. Didn’t wait 36 seconds. Didn’t turn the sink off. Didn’t count the sides of the bathroom doorway. One, two, three. Didn’t put socks on.
JJ Hutton Apr 2013
we, mistakes made in groping dark,
ironed and cheekkissed happy accidents,
told we arrived by love, and our purpose forward: to love.

we were chocolate milk runners.
we were completion grades.
coloring sheets of MLK and jagged cutouts of billy goats.
we were girls in sequined jeans with scraped knees.
on the basketball court we pushed pigtails to concrete.
rumors of us kissing in the lobby waiting for our rides
did circulate.

we, skinny white girls of Moore, Okla.,
skipped supper and laid at the feet of TV-watchers
like bleached branches of fallen oaks garnishing their standing brothers.

we were doorbells.
we were passenger seats.
peeking in the teacher's edition and handshaking answers in fluorescent bathrooms.
we were the first ones on the bus and the last ones off.
knees to chin, untied laces on heater's ****, winterlong sweat factory.
rumors of us agreeing to go to prom over fourth-period lunch
did circulate.

we, writers suffered writers' morality,
disregarded right, wrong, norm; lounged, waiting to be under the bus,
suffering for the story. tense matchstick lovers --  dim light for a moment and then.

we were someone else's *******.
we were someone else's hairpins.
as whatever ran so hot in us cooled, dried on thrift store comforters,
so did we. ceiling fans and ***. fingernails and boxed wine.
rumors sustaining.

and so it came, after announcements, after invitations,
after subbing in one bridesmaid for another, we were getting married.
we were grooms with empty pockets and full of sound advice.
our fathers took us behind the church,
chaplipped our foreheads,  and said,
"I know, we promised you were made from love and to love.
But I gotta be real honest here. You were made from whiskey.
And there's always the distillery."


we were jobless in wrinkled suits.
we were brown shoes; black belts.
and this will look good on your resumé. and this will look good on your resumé.
translation: how about ******* this ****? or how about this one?
a resumé was one page. we couldn't fit all the ***** on one page.

we, beardheavy and deodorant-streaked,
lived in dream houses in Ulysses, Kan., drove dream Tahoes,
watched dream Netflix, next to  portly wives who looked like
QUEEN MOTHER OF ALL THE BROTHELS OF THE LOWER MIDWEST.

we were childless.
we were wanting.
after consulting a physician and a bottle of whiskey,
we lifted and pinned the sagging belly of our wives with
a wooden board. one good **** in. one borrowed pregnancy test.

and so it came, the weddings of our sons. behind the church,
we took them aside and said,
*"I know, we promised you were made from love and to love.
But I gotta be real honest here."
Uniform- Bloc Party
"There was a sinking disappointment as we left the mall-- all the young people looked the same"

Bought for a Song

All we could ever buy was bought by someone from something
An apparatus of production so maniacal; how could we know
what made our fingers bleed?
It was the sewing and the apprehension our hands holding string
we sat down in the factory but shortly stood up to sing
something forced us, past the window, it was still early
our minds returned to our benches our selves were in the seams
and we laughed, when we died, but it was all in jest
we knew someday we'd give our lives so your dog could own a sequined vest.

The Dog

Your dog's a personality, it's so lovely I'm impressed
It looks so jaunty prancing there, alive its sparkling vest.
Now tell me Baps, who made it? However did you find a sequined silver vest to fit on your canine?

It's really rather simple--it's not even that smart
I bought my dog this lovely vest at the giant mart.

The giant mart? How daring! How intriguing, I declare!
It contrasts very vibrantly with his top hat and black hair.
I tell you Baps, he's precious, look at him standing there!
I can imagine him singing show tunes like the late great
Fred Astaire!

"Yeah, you're right" Baps said, the conversation lingered there.

And I'd like to say what else was said, but frankly I don't care.
I hate these *******' feelings, I don't resemble Fred Astaire.
I wish they take these things off of me.
Dogs don't wear underwear.
MMXII

At the park/in the park
Shawn Jul 2013
-arriving at eglington west station-

there's the fragrance drifting off
of her shoulders
as she checks her reflection
on smartphone mirror app,
floral pattern matching the
bright of her nails,
the sun shining onto sequined flats
that show no wear.

-glencairn, glencairn station-

there's her youth indicated by
backpack, baseball cap,
and conversation subject matter
discussing video game system merit,
there's the hand me down excitement
of muddy knees and torn jeans,

-arriving at lawrence west station-

each millimetre contributing to grimace,
beard whisker, wrinkle stationed
to the sides of each of his eyes,
weary traveller, seemingly ignoring
everyone with grocery bag
occupying chair like child,

-Yorkdale, Yorkdale station-

we used to weave through these crowds
and people watch together,
and the people would watch us,
young love, so simple,
oblivious to stage,

fingers interlocked, blocking
crowds from passing by,
there was the taste of strawberry
banana smoothie, freshly squeezed,
on your lips, we'd race up
escalators, only to circle
back down, we'd find the nook
of book store, to steal a moment,
you'd ignite, ignoring the clatter
of barrista, starbucks adjacent,

and there would walk by or sit
dolled up princess,
adolescent tomboy,
aging cantankerous senior,

these faces haven't changed
as much as ours have.

-please stand clear of the doors-
SøułSurvivør Aug 2018
She rolls along the high wires
Tightrope walkin' moon
She graces life's big circus
She is gone too soon

Huge! A glowing fairie
So luminous! So bright!
She's suspended on the ropes
The performer of the night!

I watch her intently
As she's held aloft
Then she slips toward the hills...
... she is fallin' off!

But she bows down and curtseys!
A smile on her face
She's lost not her dancer's poise,
She maintains her grace.

Finally she exits
The horizon sets the stage
She is only a faint glow
The night has turned the page.

I'll remember her with fondness
As she danced to Claire de Lune...
In her sequined tutu

Tightrope walkin' moon.


SøułSurvivør
8/26/2018
I'm up in the wee hours... I saw the full moon suspended on a telephone wire, and couldn't help but think that she was rolling along a tightrope! She is an absolutely beautiful apparition! Thanks for reading my whimsical poem. I'm glad to be back writing here again. I will be readings again soon...
r Jun 2016
From time to time
I sit outside
and watch the night sky
deep in its shadow
and dreaming
of a dusky woman
with black hair
and a sequined dress
riding high on her thighs
until my eyelids
grow dark
from the starlight.
JJ Hutton Sep 2012
I stepped into the house and removed
my rain-soaked shoes on the grizzled entrance mat.

No one in the kitchen.
Though the aroma lingered, the coffee *** had turned itself off.
I touched the glass -- cool.
No one in the living room.
Half a pair of sequined flats were in the dog's mouth,
half a lady's pantsuit -- the black legs -- lied on the floor.
A soap opera on the screen, the volume low, the gold-tipped ceiling fan oscillating,
and Serge Gainsbourg's Histore de Melody Nelson played down the hall.

I followed the breathy vocals and wandering baseline to my room,
and there she sat.

The blinds open, veiny rain running along the pane,
on the beige carpeted floor, next to my unmade bed,
criss-crossed Jessica.

"Hey, sweetheart," I said.

Jessica smiled.
When she smiles, her cheeks go flush,
she lowers her head slowly, embarrassed,
but yet when she laughs,
she laughs loudly, boldly.
I've never understood that.

Jessica was wearing a white, spaghetti-strap undershirt
and blue cotton *******.
Her brunette curls -- down, reaching past her shoulders.
Her toenails -- painted purple and chipped.
Newspapers lied strewn about her,
with puddles of acrylic paint atop them.
In her lap,
a white canvas stapled to a wooden backing frame.
She sang,
"Princesse des ténèbres, archange maudit,
Amazone modern' style que le sculpteur,
En anglais, surnomma Spirit of Ecstasy."


as she painted two lovers growing together
like curious oak trees.

I sat behind her on my bed. Pushed aside the tangled sheets.
She craned her neck to kiss my cheek sweetly.

"How was your day?" I asked.

"Oh, who cares," she responded.
Her eyebrows lifted, her fingertips traced my thigh,
"Tell me something beautiful."

"What?"

She dipped her paintbrush in red, in white and applied them
to the lovers' lips.

"Tell me something beautiful."

"I can't think of anything," I said.

"Try."
Michael R Burch Feb 2021
SELF REFLECTIONS

These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections and self-reflection. How do we see ourselves differently than other people see us? Why do our impressions of ourselves sometimes end up like so much shattered glass?



Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch

for anyone struggling with self-image

She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she's grossly unthin
when seen from within;
soon a griefstricken campus will mourn.

Yet she'd never once criticize
a friend for the size of her thighs.
Do unto others—
sisters and brothers?
Yes, but also ourselves, likewise.



Reflections
by Michael R. Burch

I am her mirror.
I say she is kind,
lovely, breathtaking.
She screams that I’m blind.

I show her her beauty,
her brilliance and compassion.
She refuses to believe me,
for that’s the latest fashion.

She storms and she rages;
she dissolves into tears
while envious Angels
are, by God, her only Peers.



Is the mirror unkind
by Michael R. Burch

To your lovely brown eyes is the mirror unkind,
revealing far more than reflections defined
in superficial glass, so lacking in depth?
Is the mirror unkind, at times, darling Beth?

What you see my dear, I see different by far,
as our sun from Centauri is just a “small” star,
but here it brings life and warms each day’s start.
Oh, and a mirror can never reveal a true heart.



On Looking into Curious George’s Mirrors
by Michael R. Burch

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon aka Seamus Cassidy

Maya was made in the image of God;
may the reflections she sees in those curious mirrors
always echo back Love.

Amen



The Mistake
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All your life, O Ghalib,
You kept repeating the same mistake:
Your face was *****
But you were obsessed with cleaning the mirror!



Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.



Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.

Belatedly he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.



Downdraft
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

We feel rather than understand what he meant
as he reveals a shattered firmament
which before him never existed.

Here, there are no images gnarled and twisted
out of too many words,
but only flocks of white birds

wheeling and flying.

Here, as the sun spins, reeling and dying,
the voice of a last gull
or perhaps a lost soul,

echoes its lonely madrigal
and we feel its strange pull
on the astonished soul.

O My Prodigal!

The vents of the sky, ripped asunder,
echo this wild, primal thunder—
now dying into undulations of vanishing wings . . .

and this voice which in haggard bleak rapture still somehow downward sings.




Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior—
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...
a diode of amethyst—wild, electric;
its sequined cavity—parted, revealing.
Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.
Each spire inward—a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails—fractured light,
the heart ice breaking.



Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch

We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each face—
a carnival-like mirror. In the space
between the silver backing and the glass,
we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass
who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed
to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed
for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee
to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key.
We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung.
In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.



Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My era's obscuring mirror
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.
Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.
You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.



Mending Glass
by Michael R. Burch

In the cobwebbed house—
lost in shadows
by the jagged mirror,
in the intricate silver face
cracked ten thousand times,
silently he watches,
and in the twisted light
sometimes he catches there
a familiar glimpse of revealing lace,
white stockings and garters,
a pale face pressed indiscreetly near
with a predatory leer,
the sheer flash of nylon,
an embrace, or a sharp slap,
. . . a sudden lurch of terror.

He finds bright slivers
—the hard sharp brittle shards,
the silver jags of memory
starkly impressed there—
and mends his error.



The Poet
by Michael R. Burch

He walks to the sink,
takes out his teeth,
rubs his gums.
He tries not to think.

In the mirror, on the mantle,
Time—the silver measure—
does not stare or blink,
but in a wrinkle flutters,
in a hand upon the brink
of a second, hovers.

Through a mousehole,
something scuttles
on restless incessant feet.

There is no link
between life and death
or from a fading past
to a more tenuous present
that a word uncovers
in the great wink.

The white foam lathers
at his thin pink
stretched neck
like a tightening noose.
He tries not to think.



POEMS ABOUT POOL SHARKS

These are poems about pool sharks, gamblers, con artists and other sharks. I used to hustle pool on bar tables around Nashville, where I ran into many colorful characters, and a few unsavory ones, before I hung up my cue for good.

Shark
by Michael R. Burch

They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light . . .

I am not of them,
as I glide among them—
eliding the amorphous camaraderie
they are as unlikely to spell as to feel,
camouflaged in my own pale dichotomy . . .

That there are women who love them defies belief—
with their missing teeth,
their hair in thin shocks
where here and there a gap of scalp gleams like bizarre chrome,
their smell rank as wet sawdust or mildewed laundry . . .

And yet—
and yet there is someone who loves me:
She sits by the telephone
in the lengthening shadows
and pregnant grief . . .

They appreciate skill at pool, not words.
They frown at massés,
at the cue ball’s contortions across green felt.
They hand me their hard-earned money with reluctant smiles.
A heart might melt at the thought of their children lying in squalor . . .
At night I dream of them in bed, toothless, kissing.
With me, it’s harder to say what is missing . . .



Fair Game
by Michael R. Burch

At the Tennessee State Fair,
the largest stuffed animals hang tilt-a-whirl over the pool tables
with mocking button eyes,
knowing the playing field is unlevel,
that the rails slant, ever so slightly, north or south,
so that gravity is always on their side,
conspiring to save their plush, extravagant hides
year after year.

“Come hither, come hither . . .”
they whisper; they leer
in collusion with the carnival barkers,
like a bevy of improbably-clad hookers
setting a “fair” price.
“Only five dollars a game, and it’s so much Fun!
And it’s not really gambling. Skill is involved!
You can make us come: really, you can.
Here are your *****. Just smack them around.”

But there’s a trick, and it usually works.
If you break softly so that no ball reaches a rail,
you can pick them off: One. Two. Three. Four.
Causing a small commotion,
a stir of whispering, like fear,
among the hippos and ostriches.



Con Artistry
by Michael R. Burch

The trick of life is like the sleight of hand
of gamblers holding deuces by the glow
of veiled back rooms, or aces; soon we’ll know
who folds, who stands . . .

The trick of life is like the pool shark’s shot—
the wild massé across green velvet felt
that leaves the winner loser. No, it’s not
the rack, the hand that’s dealt . . .

The trick of life is knowing that the odds
are never in one’s favor, that to win
is only to delay the acts of gods
who’d ante death for sin . . .

and death for goodness, death for in-between.
The rules have never changed; the artist knows
the oldest con is life; the chips he blows
can’t be redeemed.



Pool's Prince Charming
by Michael R. Burch

this is my tribute poem, written on the behalf of his fellow pool sharks, for the legendary Saint Louie Louie Roberts

Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool,
making all the ladies drool ...
Take the “nuts”? I'd be a fool!
Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool.

Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis,
owner of (ahem) a similar pelvis ...
Compared to you, the books will shelve us.
Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis.

Louie, Louie, fearless gambler,
ladies' man and constant rambler,
but such a sweet, loquacious ambler!
Louie, Louie, fearless gambler.

Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic,
pool's charming hero, but tragic, Byronic,
winning the Open drinking gin and tonic?
Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic.

I used poetic license about what Louie Roberts was or wasn't drinking at the 1981 U. S. Open Nine-Ball Championship. Was Louie drinking hard liquor as he came charging back through the losers' bracket to win the whole shebang? Or was he pretending to drink for gamesmanship or some other reason? I honestly don't know. As for the word “chthonic,” it’s pronounced “thonic” and means “subterranean” or “of the underworld.” And the pool world can be very dark indeed, as Louie’s tragic demise suggests. But everyone who knew Louie seemed to like him, if not love him dearly, and many sharks have spoken of Louie in glowing terms, as a bringer of light to that underworld.



My wife and I were having a drink at a neighborhood bar which has a pool table. A “money” game was about to start; a spectator got up to whisper something to a friend of ours who was about to play someone we hadn’t seen before. We couldn’t hear what was said. Then the newcomer broke—with such force that his stick flew straight up in the air and shattered the light dangling overhead. There was a moment of stunned silence, then our friend turned around and remarked: “He really does shoot the lights out, doesn’t he?” — Michael R. Burch



Rounds
by Michael R. Burch

Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.

Now agony still hounds me
though elsewhere mirth abounds;
hidebound I stand and try to think,
not sink still further down,
spellbound.

Their ecstasy astounds me,
though drunkenness compounds
resounding laughter into joy;
alloy such glee with beer and see
bliss found.

Originally published by Borderless Journal

Keywords/Tags: mirror, image, images, imagery, self, self-image, self discovery, fear of self, self control, self harm, reflection, reflections, reflecting, glass, mrbref
Kara Sera Nov 2013
It's Sunday
The Mexicans are all doing their laundry
Little girls with shiny bows, sweatpants and sequined tops
Happy smiling faces
Lead the brigade
Mothers follow
Shopping carts on the brink of exploding
The wheels about to blow
Tuxedo shirts, soccer uniforms with the words ***** PAN monogrammed on the front, mismatched socks, and pajamas with feet
Colors
A mess
Cheap laundry detergent stuck on top
I rush down to the laundry
They always take the best machines
I find my place  
Throw my little load in
One person does not have that much
I never realized how alone I was
Until that moment
with what sense does
this sea of read
pirouette on?

the soot leaving black
blotches on the ****** sheets,
lampposts do not complain
of sudden twitches
as cacophonously, a line
of machines with their ravenous
machinisms create a seam of
crimson to a slender
rose's architecture.

i leave my engine on
so as to hand this road
my readiness,
Ely Buendia on the tattered radio
leaks outside the ajar windows,
chasing the dream of rearing
movements
as my flesh remains dreamless,
stationary.

there is a sequined gathering here.
erratic simulations of
naked eyes pierce the musk
of the austere air's gravity
of existence.

all of us
occupying space
and our attendance is our
sigh of dismay as our homes
decompose in waiting,
as our beds remind us
of our body's aging clamor,
as our ineluctable senescence
opens the dungeons of our frailties
with its trembling, wrinkled hands.

we are our waiting's consummation
as we are left here,
wary of our precise proprioception,
left in
the tongue-tied dark.
Traffic in Manila, Philippines in absolute worst.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
iou
iou
by michael r. burch

i might have said it
but i didn’t

u might have noticed
but u wouldn’t

we might have been us
but we couldn’t

u might respond
but probably shouldn’t

Keywords/Tags: iou, chit, debenture, bill, debt, relationship, lovers, impasse, silence, golden, I, owe, you, borrower, lender, Polonius, collectible, mrbiou



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.



Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem―where it led

(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.

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

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



Burn
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

Sunbathe,
ozone baby,
till your parched skin cracks
in the white-hot flash
of radiation.

Incantation
from your pale parched lips
shall not avail;
you made this hell.
Now burn.



Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke

Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imagining 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,
rolling 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.

This poem is set at Faith Christian Academy, which I attended for a year during the ninth grade. Another poem, "*** 101," was also written about my experiences at FCA that year.



*** 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.



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

Black waters, deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way, or will.

I wrote the poem above as a teenager in high school. The lines started out as part of a longer poem, but I thought these were the two best lines and decided to let them stand alone on the principle that "discretion is the better part of valor."



Medusa
by Michael R. Burch

Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair:
long, ravenblack & melancholy.

Many suitors drowned there:
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.

Originally published by Grand Little Things



At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published by The Lyric



Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord,
established earth's fearful foundations.
Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof
for the sons of men: Holy Creator,
mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty!



Cædmon’s Face
by Michael R. Burch

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

while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound

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

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



He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike—as father unto son.

But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father’s face becomes his own.



He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker’s might, man’s lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth

suspended under heaven’s roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:

his face was Poetry’s, from youth.



Song from Ælla: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

O! sing unto my roundelay,
O! drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more at holy-day,
Like a running river be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Black his crown as the winter night,
White his skin as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O! he lies by the willow tree!
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Hark! the raven ***** his wing
In the briar'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loudly sings
To the nightmares, as they go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.

See! the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true love's shroud:
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Here upon my true love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coolness of a maid:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

With my hands I'll frame the briars
Round his holy corpse to grow:
Elf and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body, stilled, shall go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.

Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heart’s red blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.

Water witches, crowned with plaits,
Bear me to your lethal tide.
I die; I come; my true love waits.
Thus the damsel spoke, and died.

The song above is, in my opinion, competitive with Shakespeare's songs in his plays, and may be the best of Thomas Chatterton's so-called "Rowley" poems. The fact that Chatterton wrote it in his teens is astounding.



An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”)
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

As wroten bie the goode Prieste
Thomas Rowley 1464

In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen,
Then hot upon the meadows cast his ray;
The apple ruddied from its pallid green
And the fat pear did extend its leafy spray;
The pied goldfinches sang the livelong day;
'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And the ground was mantled in fine green cashmere.

The sun was gleaming in the bright mid-day,
Dead-still the air, and likewise the heavens blue,
When from the sea arose, in drear array,
A heap of clouds of sullen sable hue,
Which full and fast unto the woodlands drew,
Hiding at once the sun's fair festive face,
As the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace.

Beneath a holly tree, by a pathway's side,
Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent lead,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide.
Poor in his sight, ungentle in his ****,
Long brimful of the miseries of need,
Where from the hailstones could the beggar fly?
He had no shelter there, nor any convent nigh.

Look in his gloomy face; his sprite there scan;
How woebegone, how withered, dried-up, dead!
Haste to thy parsonage, accursèd man!
Haste to thy crypt, thy only restful bed.
Cold, as the clay which will grow on thy head,
Is Charity and Love among high elves;
Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.

The gathered storm is ripe; the huge drops fall;
The sunburnt meadows smoke and drink the rain;
The coming aghastness makes the cattle pale;
And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain;
Dashed from the clouds, the waters float again;
The heavens gape; the yellow lightning flies;
And the hot fiery steam in the wide flamepot dies.

Hark! now the thunder's rattling, clamoring sound
Heaves slowly on, and then enswollen clangs,
Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drown'd,
Still on the coward ear of terror hangs;
The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swings;
Again the lightning―then the thunder pours,
And the full clouds are burst at once in stormy showers.

Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain,
The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came;
His chapournette was drenchèd with the rain,
And his pinched girdle met with enormous shame;
He cursing backwards gave his hymns the same;
The storm increasing, and he drew aside
With the poor alms-craver, near the holly tree to bide.

His cape was all of Lincoln-cloth so fine,
With a gold button fasten'd near his chin;
His ermine robe was edged with golden twine,
And his high-heeled shoes a Baron's might have been;
Full well it proved he considered cost no sin;
The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight
For the horse-milliner loved rosy ribbons bright.

"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"Oh, let me wait within your convent door,
Till the sun shineth high above our head,
And the loud tempest of the air is o'er;
Helpless and old am I, alas!, and poor;
No house, no friend, no money in my purse;
All that I call my own is this―my silver cross.

"Varlet," replied the Abbott, "cease your din;
This is no season alms and prayers to give;
My porter never lets a beggar in;
None touch my ring who in dishonor live."
And now the sun with the blackened clouds did strive,
And shed upon the ground his glaring ray;
The Abbot spurred his steed, and swiftly rode away.

Once more the sky grew black; the thunder rolled;
Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen;
Not full of pride, not buttoned up in gold;
His cape and jape were gray, and also clean;
A Limitour he was, his order serene;
And from the pathway side he turned to see
Where the poor almer lay beneath the holly tree.

"An alms, Sir Priest!" the drooping pilgrim said,
"For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake."
The Limitour then loosen'd his purse's thread,
And from it did a groat of silver take;
The needy pilgrim did for happiness shake.
"Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care;
"We are God's stewards all, naught of our own we bear."

"But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me,
Scarce any give a rentroll to their Lord.
Here, take my cloak, as thou are bare, I see;
'Tis thine; the Saints will give me my reward."
He left the pilgrim, went his way abroad.
****** and happy Saints, in glory showered,
Let the mighty bend, or the good man be empowered!

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES: It is possible that some words used by Chatterton were his own coinages; some of them apparently cannot be found in medieval literature. In a few places I have used similar-sounding words that seem to not overly disturb the meaning of the poem. ― Michael R. Burch



***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



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.



Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



Dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, Laura, and all good mothers

Bring your peculiar strength
to the strange nightmarish fray:
wrap up your cherished ones
in the golden light of day.

Amen

Originally published by The Lyric



Twice
by Michael R. Burch

Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days

when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.

But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:

rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.

Originally published by The Lyric



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot

born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,

dreaming of blood,
her fangs―white―baring,
revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring ...



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them ...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross―such common things.
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.

We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, the more he prays to find us ...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.

Published by Monumental Moments (Eye Scry Publications), Weirdbook, Gothic Fairy, Dracula and His Kin, NawaZone and Raiders’ Digest



The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch

O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!

This poem was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.



For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Ode to the Sun
by Michael R. Burch

Day is done...
on, swift sun.
Follow still your silent course.
Follow your unyielding course.
On, swift sun.

Leave no trace of where you've been;
give no hint of what you've seen.
But, ever as you onward flee,
touch me, O sun,
touch me.

Now day is done...
on, swift sun.
Go touch my love about her face
and warm her now for my embrace,
for though she sleeps so far away,
where she is not, I shall not stay.
Go tell her now I, too, shall come.
Go on, swift sun,
go on.

Published by The Tucumcari Literary Review. I believe I wrote this poem toward the end of my senior year in high school, around age 18, during my early Romantic Period. Keywords/Tags: Ode, Romantic, Love, Lover, Sun, Time, Night, Sleep, Dreams, mrbiou



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.



Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior—
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...

a diode of amethyst—wild, electric;
its sequined cavity—parted, revealing.

Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.

Each spire inward—a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails—fractured light,

the heart ice breaking.

Originally published by Poet Lore as “Geode”



Geode
by Michael R. Burch

Love—less than eternal, not quite true—
is still the best emotion man can muster.
Through folds of peeling rind—rough, scarred, crude-skinned—
she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale.

Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted,
in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows
that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle;
dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell.

And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster,
as she hints and shimmers, touching those who see,
she is not without her uses or her meanings;
in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows

the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer,
till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair.



What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?
How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?
Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?
Now I am truly lost!



PLATO TRANSLATIONS

These epitaphs and other epigrams have been ascribed to Plato...

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
But go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

We left the thunderous Aegean
to sleep peacefully here on the plains of Ecbatan.
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, Euboea's neighbor!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

We who navigated the Aegean's thunderous storm-surge
now sleep peacefully here on the mid-plains of Ecbatan:
Farewell, renowned Eretria, our homeland!
Farewell, Athens, nigh to Euboea!
Farewell, dear Sea!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

This poet was pleasing to foreigners
and even more delightful to his countrymen:
Pindar, beloved of the melodious Muses.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Some say the Muses are nine.
Foolish critics, count again!
Sappho of ****** makes ten.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Even as you once shone, the Star of Morning, above our heads,
even so you now shine, the Star of Evening, among the dead.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Why do you gaze up at the stars?
Oh, my Star, that I were Heaven,
to gaze at you with many eyes!
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Every heart sings an incomplete song,
until another heart sings along.
Those who would love long to join in the chorus.
At a lover's touch, everyone becomes a poet.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

NOTE: I take this Plato epigram to be an epithalamium, with the two voices joining in a complete song being the bride and groom, and the rest of the chorus being the remainder of the wedding ceremony.

The Apple
ascribed to Plato
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here's an apple; if you're able to love me,
catch it and chuck me your cherry in exchange.
But if you hesitate, as I hope you won't,
take the apple, examine it carefully,
and consider how briefly its beauty will last.



Bubble
by Michael R. Burch

...…..….........Love
..…......fragile elusive
.......if held ... too closely
....cannot............withstand
..the inter..................ruption
of its............................…bright
..unmalleable.............­tension
....and breaks disintegrates
..…...at the............touch of
....…....an undiscerning
.....................hand.



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: "Frail things must break!"
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.



Dream House
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to the house of my fondest dreams,
but the shutters are boarded; the front door is locked;
the mail box leans over; and where we once walked,
the path is grown over with crabgrass and clover.

I kick the trash can; it screams, topples over.
The yard, weeded over, blooms white fluff, and green.
The elm we once swung from leans over the stream.
In the twilight I cling with both hands to the swing.

Inside, perhaps, I hear the telephone ring
or watch once again as the bleary-eyed mover
takes down your picture. Dejected, I hover,
asking over and over, “Why didn’t you love her?”



“Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”)
by Günter Grass
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why have I remained silent, so long,
failing to mention something openly practiced
in war games which now threaten to leave us
merely meaningless footnotes?

Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first
might annihilate a beleaguered nation
whose people march to a martinet’s tune,
compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience.
Why? Merely because of the suspicion
that a bomb might be built by Iranians.

But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself
to name that other nation, where, for years
―shrouded in secrecy―
a formidable nuclear capability has existed
beyond all control, simply because
no inspections were ever allowed?

The universal concealment of this fact
abetted by my own incriminating silence
now feels like a heavy, enforced lie,
an oppressive inhibition, a vice,
a strong constraint, which, if dismissed,
immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.”

But now my own country,
guilty of its unprecedented crimes
which continually demand remembrance,
once again seeking financial gain
(although with glib lips we call it “reparations”)
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel―
this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads
capable of exterminating all life
where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence.
So now I will say what must be said.

Why did I remain silent so long?
Because I thought my origins,
tarred by an ineradicable stain,
forbade me to declare the truth to Israel,
a country to which I am and will always remain attached.

Why is it only now that I say,
in my advancing age,
and with my last drop of ink
on the final page
that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger
an already fragile world peace?

Because tomorrow might be too late,
and so the truth must be heard today.
And because we Germans,
already burdened with many weighty crimes,
could become enablers of yet another,
one easily foreseen,
and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity.

Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence
because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy
and because I hope many others too
will free themselves from the shackles of silence,
and speak out to renounce violence
by insisting on permanent supervision
of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s
by an international agency
accepted by both governments.

Only thus can we find the path to peace
for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else
living in a region currently consumed by madness
―and ultimately, for ourselves.

Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012). Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."



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.



Love Unfolded Like a Flower
by Michael R. Burch

Love unfolded
like a flower;
Pale petals pinked and blushed to see the sky.
I came to know you
and to trust you
in moments lost to springtime slipping by.

Then love burst outward,
leaping skyward,
and untamed blossoms danced against the wind.
All I wanted
was to hold you;
though passion tempted once, we never sinned.

Now love's gay petals
fade and wither,
and winter beckons, whispering a lie.
We were friends,
but friendships end . . .
yes, friendships end and even roses die.



Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch

for and after William Blake

I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.

I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked

nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.

II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,

the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.

III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,

I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,

were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild

I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.



The Quickening
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I never meant to love you
when I held you in my arms
promising you sagely
wise, noncommittal charms.

And I never meant to need you
when I touched your tender lips
with kisses that intrigued my own—
such kisses I had never known,
nor a heartbeat in my fingertips!



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch

after William Blake

O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!



Published as the collection "IOU"
Kayla Lynn Dec 2010
Every now and then,
When I'm sitting alone in my
Pajamas, with a cup of hot
Chai tea and a dash of honey
In the morning
I sit against the wall
I breathe in and out
Once, twice, a few more times

And then I let down the
Gate in my mind
And my thoughts
Prance in the field of
Morbid dreams

I imagine my death
And I wonder just who
Would bother to show
And I wonder if
That boy, yeah, that one,
The one I loved for
Five years,
Would anyone even
Tell him?
Or would he be too busy
Shooting up, getting drunk,
Too busy trying to attempt
Inadvertent suicide?

I picture my mother
In her pressed black pants
And her modestly sequined
Funeral blouse that I've only
Seen three times or so
She'd rip the glasses off of her
Head and scream at my father
Why was she such a *****?
Didn't she know I loved her?


Yeah, Ma, I knew
I knew you loved me when
You grounded me for an A-
I knew you loved me when
You glared at the food on my
Plate,
After I hadn't eaten in a week
And huffed,
You're going to eat that?
Do you want to be an elephant
Or something?


I knew when you read my
Diary in seventh grade
And yelled about all of the
Deep secrets I wrote to paper
I knew when you told me
How disappointed you were
When you swore you'd never
Ever
Be proud of me

Then my mind wanders over
To my father
The big teddy bear
Graying scalp, icy eyes
His suit from 1977
That always made me laugh
And I let myself wonder
If he would even
Bother to cry

I skim across my friends
Druggies
Thieves
Liars
Cheaters
They'd miss me, wouldn't they?

Last, I ponder over
Who would show up
That I wouldn't even want
To be there
The people I've crossed
And thrown away
The ones I loved
And wrote off

I'm sure there would
Be plenty of those
Spewing lies about
How I used to be

And it all swirls together
Down Tornado Alley
My ex's lack of interest
My mother's bleeding heart
My father's vacant stare
My friends' misplaced grief
My enemies' back stabbing falsehoods

And I wonder if any
Of these people
Would honestly be able to say
That they knew me at all...



Meanwhile, the Christmas music
My mother loves to blast
Flows down the hallway and
Under my door

*Fa la la la la
La la la la...
© December 2010 Sarah Lynn
Coop Lee Jun 2014
drunk woodland children, we
ask so many questions, we
firefly skin. the picnic table beneath
our lamps, our ouija board, our girlfriends
next to us warm and laughing.
stories:
we tell stories to scare eachother
before descending into our tents
on the outer darks.
sweet night nothings.
& everythings.

i’m consumed by dreams of you;
somehow running;
somehow ******* my way out of my own inevitable
death.

a lady bug wing half-yanked and humming.
wind scorpion.
mosquito
in the early morning buzz, and i roll over
to see your puffy little sleeping face ::: sunlight there.
limp beyond the tent and zipper.

we eat mayo sharp cheddar salami wheat sammies
& take acid.
everyone one else goes on a group nature-hike,
but i stay behind
hallucinating of my dead mother in those sequined clothes she used to wear.
::: we play scrabble and talk,
until she leaves.
like love.
like guitar strummed chords and many hydrations later –
my tribe returns,
with fish.

the girl i love.
you/she roll joints in your lap,
in my lap,
in a chair and i mirage
the faces of everyone through glass &
slosh; through campfire
& lemonade.
Marshal Gebbie Oct 2009
To sit upon this wooden chair
Before this plain white wall,
May seem, to you, to be quite odd
To me it does enthrall.
I take in all the vacant space
And let my eyes caress
The symmetry and peacefulness
…And I really must confess,
The nothingness before me
Draws me in, in such a way
As I wrap myself in plain, white wall
… my mind begins to play

From that tiny smudge of blue emerge
Kaleidescopes of clay
Which carouse across the vacant space
In a most artistic way,
In small concentric circles
In a patterned, frenzied style
They fill the background with mosaic
Of a gold and reddish tile,
With rooster tails of livid green
And dancing through the scene,
A spangled hand of aqua blue
Paints off a sequined theme.,
Some dancing naked maidens
Cavort pinkly in the pool
And a flight of silver satyrs
Scamper in and act the fool.
The roaring sound of raindrops,
The rush of welling tears,
There’s the thrill of my involvement
…and then “Ping” It disappears!

My plain white wall’s in front of me,
I’m sitting on that stool.
I sneak a peak, to check and see,
If someone’s being cruel.
My sister caught me out one day,
She roared with earthy glee
And pointed her fat finger
That girl made fun of me.
It’s really a small price to pay
To be a strange oddball.
I’d rather suffer this than leave
To watch ANOTHER wall.

I sit upon this wooden chair
Before this plain white wall,
May seem, to you, to be quite odd
To me it does enthrall…..

Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
24 January 2008
Tallulah Mar 2013
I am a walking glass
Transparent
An overflowing rim
I hope it’s not too apparent

Don’t tip me
I might just spill
Was it one drink or three?
I’ve drunk my fill

I’m your whiskey girl
Bubbling over
A sequined, beaded twirl
another lover
Free Bird Dec 2015
Remember last New Years Eve?

We had plans to go to my aunts house,
then last minute you decided that you didn't want to go. You decided that you wanted to throw a party, not at our apartment, but at your fathers house. I thought this was strange, but I agreed to ditch out on my family, for you. You left early to prepare for this party; told me to meet you there later, but when I showed up at your door, you turned me away. I was dumb founded. You told me that it just wasn't the kind of party that I'd be into. What does that even mean? I should specify though, you didn't actually answer the door && tell me to leave. You were never man enough for such a thing. You texted me. I was standing outside of your door, && you texted me && told me to leave. So I did. What was I supposed to do at that point, beg to be let into a place where I was clearly unwelcome? I walked back to my car, in my sequined party dress. I drove back to our apartment. We had one of those text fights we always had; the kind where I asked you why you had done something unkind to me, && you flipped it so that by the end of the conversation I was apologizing to you && begging for forgiveness. I sat there in the dark, in the apartment, for the remainder of the night. I cried myself to sleep.

Fast forward to this year. You have the audacity to contact me, asking if I miss you. What I miss is the person I was before I knew the likes of you.

Here's to a new year, untainted by your touch.
All the roads are closed. Silence metastasizes through the stretch of EDSA. Cold seeps in bone. Sun still flagellates.
        Oscillate through sound space and whitewashed walls. Seismic grunt of jeepney awakens the signs: no avatars, yet. The night was as deep as any lover, a fine blistering moon glares through lit rivers.
   Nothing exists except heads of tacks and maimed populace ambulating across roads sequined with ermine light. The disquiet approximates   the lightness of
buildings in repair. Scaffolds, ubiquitous lovers,
    clouds explode into white, and everything else like pain, pales in comparison with the slow twitch of everything.
     Today there will be no siren nor
   simultaneous joust of cyclists in perpetual motion— just you contending
   against hues of all graffiti:
Cataract of anguish. News of killing.
    Incarnadine trees netted with aureoles burning bright in solstices. Penumbral undulation of
           forethought and afterthought.
   Dislimned – all; you, left
       in polaroid taken in solitary shutter,
    in pursuit of light.
Aztec Warrior Oct 2015
POEM 74
A Voice And Colors


did you know
there are colors
in her voice?
not just your normal hues,
but sequined shades
that hypnotize within your heart
as she speaks,
and you are pulled under a magical spell.
there are subtle shades
of reds, greens, yellows,
even blues
that as of yet
have no names
but shine like imagination.
they twinkle,
then shift
drawing you closer to listen
as she sings you
a siren’s enchanting poem.

and my heart starts beating.

Aztec Warrior 10.18.15
some explanation...  some, write about love with wonderful "imagination", an imaginary love, even if not directed to anyone in particular... this poem is a dedication to that wonderful imagination and imaginary love and to her voice that sings about it... hope you enjoy.
Helen Raymond Apr 2014
Shutter of Polaroid glamour
Smile for the world, curse the camera
Hide the bruises with sequined satin
The limelight flatters skin of cold, hard stone, you the latter
Liz you marble statuette
Maril you glitt'ring diamond
Regal laugh & darling, another glass of 'champagne'
Douse your bones in Chanel
Put on your lipstick
Pull the curtain
...Start the show
We're their golden circus- "watch the beasts, tame the women, hear the showmen."
Whips, rings of fire!
Top hats & show lights...
Which's your favorite ring: the songstress, the cad, the dream?
Pour yourself a drink, repaint the mask, shining glitz & gleam.
Children of the Golden Age, driver start the Cadi
Hollywood front-page, plaster royalty.
-free verse-
Me and my friend Candace were talking about our favorite Golden age actresses this morning and this was born.
(My favorite is Debbie Reynolds and hers is Audry Hepburn)

— The End —