I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

For 21 days I saw changes wrought
by the freedom of 22 years  
Secrets of razor wire straight and taut
Speak of those who continue to fear

I saw nature’s beauty in land and face
As black heel continues to rise
Via school, ambition they prep for the race
Even as secretly despised

What’s changed in Soweto? I did not live
But photos and newsreels survive
Pictures of shanties bulldozed to give
Whites room to extend their hives

Now malls; monuments to white retail
Built on Mandiba’s words
Polished chrome and marble hail
“Happy” workers in a black-faced world

Monuments ringed with vendors tribal
Carved goods for sale and cheap
The rands they make do not rival
What multi-nationals’ continue to reap

Happiness is shallow until sundown
When the curtain of decorum lifts
Showing reality’s new shanty-town
Where space and plumbing are gifts

I wonder if He would be okay
Seeing his people so used
As pawns for labor with little say
As black is seldom excused
  
The young know the time is now
As old hatred’s in shallow graves
To be unearthed by book and plow
Keeping dreams from stunting and fade

I can’t help but wonder if we have crossed paths
Over and over again, tangling each hello
Catching a hint of mischief when we first bumped into each other
And how easy it was for us to slip into
Conversations, plotting to take on the world
But first things first, we have to catch the moon
And hold the stars ransom in our back pockets
I swear we were pirates singing sea shanties
And conquering cities, but now we settle
For late night dance parties, and one shot, two shot, three
And sure, we are invincible, and I can’t help but wonder
If we have crossed paths over and over again
Our stories layering, life long friends
Or maybe arch nemeses, and each time
Tagging out a new adventure
Where we are chasing after each other
I swear we were renegades, young rebels
Questioning authority and pushing boundaries
Now, we collaborate artistically
Broadcasting in a world of social media, one shout, two shout, three
And sure, we are strong, and I can’t help but wonder
If we have crossed paths over and over again
Our history repeating, kindred spirits
Or maybe pieces of the same soul, and each time
We meet, we find a part of ourselves
We had forgotten

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Admiral Albert "*****" Potter who displayed amazing bravery by wearing full drag through several major sea battles.  He was cashiered for insisting the Admiralty rename his ship HMS Butch instead of HMS Fearless. In fact the vessel was eventually renamed HMS Damp **** because it was full of ******.

A life on the ocean wave, **!
In the olden days of sail
When England's ships were proud and brave
And their crews were very male.

The Captain stood upon his bridge
Looking smart and flash;
But below the decks, the orders were
*** and *** and the lash.

The bosun went to the main gunroom,
**** Deadeye at the ready;
Initiation time had come
For little midshipman Freddy.

"Strap him o'er that cannon, lads!"
Roared the hirsute fellow,
"Gag his mouth securely, lads,
In case he tries to bellow!"

The sailors did as he had bid -
Refused and they'd be punished -
And they knew their turn would come
After the bosun had finished.

The bosun went up the poor young lad
And soon was going strong;
Midshipman Fred looked rather pained -
The Bosun was THICK and LONG.

Then came the turn of the other men
And they set to with a will;
Little Fred could not say no
Until they'd had their fill.

What a life our sailors had then,
Always singing shanties;
When men were men and big and butch
And cabin boys wore silk *******.

A life on the ocean wave, **!
With the rolling sea and the spray.
Sinking the Frogs and murdering Wogs
Kept England's sailors so gay.

OLÉ!  OLÉ!  OLÉ!  OLÉ!  OLÉ!  *OLÉ!

BY day ... tireless smokestacks ... hungry smoky shanties hanging to the slopes ... crooning: We get by, that's all.
By night ... all lit up ... fire-gold bars, fire-gold flues ... and the shanties shaking in clumsy shadows ... almost the hills shaking ... all crooning: By God, we're going to find out or know why.

A nerd bitten by the charity bug,
Spoke of slum children’s education
And shining darkness in their eyes.
In the shanties ,the water flows
Like a shadow in cloudy daylight
And smells bad to the kind rich.
My check glistens in the dark
Like a meteorite on a dark night
In the next moment it vanishes
In the depths of hunger and belly.
Other men have fat bank accounts
But are spiritual for soul-hunger.
Poetry sounds crassly out of place-
One would wish the black sewer
Is not talked about in prose as well.

Adrift on her very first voyage
With the sea coursing in through her bow
Lay the cruise ship, the S.S. Lumbago
There was scarcely a chance for her now
But Ahoy! On the western horizon
In a flurry of yellow and green
That ender of blight and a damsel’s delight
And he’s always on cue for his scene

It’s Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar!
It’s got seating for seventy people
And the service is well above par
There’s an adequate medical unit
And a modest but elegant bar
What more could a man ever dream of
In a Luxury Budgerigar?
Well…

The forests of England were burning
So the foxes escaped to the city
The badgers had taken to looting
And the squirrels had formed a committee
But who should arise from a manhole
With a confident gleam in his eye?
That destroyer of woes with a spring in his toes
And he’s quick with a witty reply…

Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar!
With adjustable hose pipe attachment
It’s got wheels like a feathery car
The forests were dowsed and the fauna re-housed
With a three day retreat at a spa
It’s a thing to admire and surely acquire
The Luxury Budgerigar!
But…

Susan was stricken with sorrow
Twas her darkest, most fearful hour
A spider had wrestled her out of her bath
And set up his home in the shower
But who should jump out of the wardrobe
With an innocent look on his face?
That singer of shanties, remover of *******
And first in an obstacle race

Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar
With a sucker for spiders and beetles
That deposits them into a jar
There’s a tiny wee restaurant to feed them
It was given a Michelin star
A remarkable thing with retractable wings
Is a Luxury Budgerigar

So if you should be in a pet shop
And you see just the critter for you
Please heed this advice: make a note of the price
Then proceed to the back of the queue
When you ask for your preference of creature
Should it whistle, slither or waddle
Do as Sir Patrick Stewart did
And opt for the Luxury model

Copious amounts of lava
seeping over the table
steaming mugs of java
cutting off the cable.

Rara Avis is a Latin term
no sneakers for me today
eaten by the Conqueror Worm
during the month of May.

******* drugs
and Sugar Twin
white punk thugs
chasing Rin-Tin-Tin.

Rainbows of black
babies howling out loud
guerilla attacks
a huge raver crowd.

Windshield wipers
with ribbons attached
little sticky diapers
and gates made of thatch.

Alphagetti monsters
smoking a jay
card-carrying punsters
greasy burgers on a tray.

Cute cotton *******
on lithe little nymphs
disappearing shanties
owned by drugged-up pimps.

Rhymes gone bad
a little cash in my pocket
hanging at the pad
and watching Davy Crockett.

People eating doughnuts
***** up on the beaches
hips that do the low strut
and blood ******* leeches.

It all comes down
to a single final thought:
was the Queen's big crown
really traded for a ***?

RED barns and red heifers spot the green
grass circles around Omaha-the farmers
haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese.
  
Shale hogbacks across the river at Council
Bluffs-and shanties hang by an eyelash to
the hill slants back around Omaha.
  
A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River.
Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears from a ***** face.
Omaha works to get the world a breakfast.

You come along... tearing your shirt... yelling about Jesus.
     Where do you get that stuff?
     What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
     bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
     everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
     he never made any fake passes and everything
     he said went and he helped the sick and gave the
     people hope.

You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist
     and calling us all **** fools so fierce the froth slobbers
     over your lips... always blabbing we're all
     going to hell straight off and you know all about it.

I've read Jesus' words. I know what he said. You don't
     throw any scare into me. I've got your number. I
     know how much you know about Jesus.
He never came near clean people or ***** people but
     they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your
     crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers
     hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out
     of the running.

I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into
     the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined
     up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men
     now lined up with you paying your way.

This Jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened
     good. He threw out something fresh and beautiful
     from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands
     wherever he passed along.
You slimy bunkshooter, you put a **** on every human
     blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching
     about hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who
     lived a clean life in Galilee.

When are you going to quit making the carpenters build
     emergency hospitals for women and girls driven
     crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about
     Jesus--I put it to you again: Where do you get that
     stuff; what do you know about Jesus?

Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash
     a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance.
     Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your
     nutty head. If it wasn't for the way you scare the
     women and kids I'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat.
I like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when
     he starts people puking and calling for the doctors.
I like a man that's got nerve and can pull off a great
     original performance, but you--you're only a bug-
     house peddler of second-hand gospel--you're only
     shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this
     Jesus wanted free as air and sunlight.

You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it
     up all right with them by giving them mansions in
     the skies after they're dead and the worms have
     eaten 'em.
You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need
     is Jesus; you take a steel trust ***, dead without
     having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of
     age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross
     and he'll be all right.
You tell poor people they don't need any more money
     on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job,
     Jesus'll fix that up all right, all right--all they gotta
     do is take Jesus the way you say.
I'm telling you Jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're
     handing out. Jesus played it different. The bankers
     and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and
     murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus
     wouldn't play their game. He didn't sit in with
     the big thieves.

I don't want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.
I won't take my religion from any man who never works
     except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory
     except the face of the woman on the American
     silver dollar.

I ask you to come through and show me where you're
     pouring out the blood of your life.

I've been to this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgotha,
     where they nailed Him, and I know if the story is
     straight it was real blood ran from His hands and
     the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in red
     drops where the spear of the Roman soldier rammed
     in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth.

585

I like to see it lap the Miles—
And lick the Valleys up—
And stop to feed itself at Tanks—
And then—prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains—
And supercilious peer
In Shanties—by the sides of Roads—
And then a Quarry pare

To fit its Ribs
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid—hooting stanza—
Then chase itself down Hill—

And neigh like Boanerges—
Then—punctual as a Star
Stop—docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door—

The election is upping the antes
for a White House surrounded by shanties.
May we brace for a fall
when the winner takes all.
(Let the other side **** in their *******.)

Look at us pseudo clever race of ignorance,
Addicted to entertainment our only common
Pleasure filled pain. We will fight to maintain
An uncomfortable satisfying false reality
A reality where we all are individuals controlled by
Another uncontrolled individual.
Through a maze of tunnels lies the mystic wastes
Smoke filled shanties makeshift villages and,
Dim lit ***** dens
The marijuana plants in the basement
Grow into the hard wood floors of the cigar rooms
Of an ancient aristocrat mansion
No infested with the ***** demons of the wasteland
Goats amongst sheep, the bring rolled joys
To dying black hearts of the innocent sinful
Humans in our civilized chaos.
Renaming our creators for the simple bliss of renaming a unnamed
Uncreated creator.

"Death's gaze ever present on it's tentacles
A weight of power unformidable
Crashing down upon its victims"


Beware the Kraken! A monster of seas
The one sung about in many shanties
Marauding, ripping, and crushing its victims
This a myth by which the crew schisms
But the unsteady seas beneath the hull
Bubbling and boiling, the ocean calls
Unleashing from the bowels of the deep
A beast of lost worlds, oceans it reaps
The Kraken, awaken, outstretches it limbs
The skies are blackened, the heavens dim
With tyrannical force he unfurls his power
The mast snaps, wood shards and splinters shower
Fearful men aboard are pulled to a watery grave
Oceanic law, for this crew of knaves
The last aboard the teetering deck
A captain standing tall within the wreck
Howling at the beast below
Again tentacles high above the sea grow
Dragging the wreckage into the water
Appeasing the beast, the great destroyer

Mysterious , Tennessee nighttime wind , what fables do you bring on a cool Spring eve .. Tales of Mountain 'lore , of whispering rivers and moonlit hollers , black Bear antics and coonskin chapeaux , pristine valleys and hillside shanties , Memphis Riverboats and Elvis Presley .. Cascading brooks , foggy morning dales and Bluegrass pickers , Dulcimers , twisting highways and Nashville Telecasters* ..

hunched over, a brown-skinned army,
picking, the field soon to be stripped of its bounty;
they will move to the next one, fast,
before the fruit falls to the ground

"los ninos, los viejos tambien"
the young, the old ones also help, though
they are slower and tote less a load  

when the day is done, they build fires
for the frijoles, and to keep the night's spirits
at bay; they sleep in the shanties, the sheds
the master provides  

the next day will be the same, though maybe
not as hot--maybe a rain will give them respite
from their labors  

a gentle, short shower they pray,
for a storm might lay ruin to the crops, the treasure
they borrow only long enough
to basket and truck

not even a cloud visits the white sky
so the stooping, the loading drags on without relief
but from the north, a cool wind does blow

in it they hear a voice without cords vibrating,
yet one that speaks a language their hearts know well,
telling them their toil is to be brief, yet eternal: that winter
only whispers now, but soon commands all to rest

A life on the ocean wave, **!
In the olden days of sail
When pirate ships were proud and brave
And their crews were very male.

Captain **** stood upon his bridge
Looking smart and flash;
But below the decks, the orders were
*** and *** and the lash.

First Mate **** went to the **** deck,
His willie at the ready;
Initiation time had come
For trainee pirate Freddy.

"Thtwap him o'er that cannon, ladth!"
Roared the hirsute lisper,
"Gag hith mouth thecurely, ladth,
Thilenth hith evewy whithper."

The pirates did as he had bid -
Refuse and they'd be punished -
And they knew their turn would come
Once First Mate **** had finished.

The lisping brute went up the poor young lad
And soon was pumping away;
Poor little Fred looked rather pained -
As he wasn't really gay.

Then came the turn of the other men
And they joined in with a will;
Little Freddy could not say "no"
Until they'd had their fill.

What a life our pirates had,
Always singing shanties;
When men were men and big and butch
And the skipper wore silk *******.

The pirates' frigates ruled the waves -
Good sailors feared them coming;
If captured, they'd be condemned
To a life of seaborne bumming.

I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
             how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
             into points of mystery quivering with color.

  I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day
             it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers
Go running back to dust and mist.

THE HIGH horses of the sea broke their white riders
On the walls that held and counted the hours
The wind lasted.
  
Two landbirds looked on and the north and the east
Looked on and the wind poured cups of foam
And the evening began.
  
The old men in the shanties looked on and lit their
Pipes and the young men spoke of the girls
For a wild night like this.
  
The south and the west looked on and the moon came
When the wind went down and the sea was sorry
And the singing slow.
  
Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going
Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle
To tell the how of it.
  
I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you
The wind that blew them across and across,
The scooping, mixing wind.

When I travel, I find home.
Home is so strictly defined and constricted
****** in, forced to **** in,
Constrictions put forth by suffocating friends
Where small towns tighten the rope
It has placed around my neck.
I am the dog on the leash that is surrounded
By every tree and every ball in the biggest park
Who is tied to the tree and forgotten
Beaten and told to stay.
We grow up being force fed the idea of thinking small,
Staying small, working small, living small
But this world is too big to live small!
I travel and find the people that I call home
I find the shacks and shanties and weathered souls
And every single person you and I will meet,
Mutual or not,
Knows something that you and I don't know
And if that doesn't spark enough curiosity,
Get out of the house.
There is so much to learn and so much to absorb
And maybe your house is your home
Everyone, at some point, has a home,
Some just travel with you,
Others you have to find.

charismatic charlatan cloaking reality  
smile, the day is new
many a mark still to be worked
and left in squalor; penniless and without hope
it is a good show you put forth
standing in front  of a waving flag
speaking of unity and the dreams of freedom
I see the puppet strings, marionette style
eyebrows raise and hands wave
all while Jesus saves and teens rave
craving sustenance I reject the normal modes
seeking instead the dark corners and shabby shanties
where the real humans live
none of this post cold-war propaganda, only hate and fear for the unknown
broken dreams litter cracked sidewalks
dead grasses stand brown in the crevasses
longing for water or sunlight
both of which were banned in the last election
subjugated lonely folks stand single file
awaiting the stamped hand
signifying meat for the masses
if you are not procreating, your digested in the new American machine
shocked, I **** my head thinking of my youth
blue skies and free cheese

Silence is the memories of late night truck stops
Some sticky September serenades of noise
And just legal cleavage
The dawn rises too early
With the whipping snap of a bitter wind
Romancing the trees, grass, and man-made nightmares
Of construction, pavement, and steel
We are alone here some voice echoes
Reassuring that no one will ever be with anyone
And the dying days of our light is just that
Left hanging in the whimpering breeze

*Traveling to foreign shores with seaside shanties
Of mermaids, sirens, and demons of the depth
One day we will rest in Davey Jones’ locker
Telling stories of our youth to rusted seashells
Waiting for a sun to rise beneath the trenches of dead whales

I saw a little boy
running across the street,
He had a satchel on his back,
but no shoes on his feet.

Don't know what struck me,
I ran from the window to the balcony,
To get a better view of the child.

I felt a strange pang in my heart
to see him run past the shanties.
My eyes followed him till he entered one of the houses
with brick walls and thacthed roof.
Yes, he's one those million children
who still dream of school.

Do you believe in angels?
Well, now, I do...
Yet it makes me wonder,
Doesn't He deserve a good life too?

It was a night of sulking darknesses

there in the distance, clouds thunder
raining tears down the shanties

crickets scratch the silences elsewhere
as winds bring the smell of ash home

in their thousands, mayflies clash
for a swab at an orb
hung hazy into the shadows
canoodling the trees

foreboding come thoughts clouding

the morning after, the stairs are awash
in swarms of broken wings
and shattered dreams

a newspaper's thrown across
there are deaths:
heaving at the heart.

the expanding shadows of my depleted day
stretch out like fingers
trying to gain purchase on my
fleetfoot soul
but the past is a parody of the now
with all the same actors playing different roles
and i know who will let me
slip unnoticed out the stage door
while the drunkard nightwatchman
sings sea shanties and laments the poorboy pay

out the door and up the alley
and skate along the thieves highway looking for treasures
with the maiden of dumpsterdivers in tow
she is carrying little red riding hood on a waitress's salary
but the two of em love eachother
so the three of us make scary bandit faces
and go on and on about how we don't
need no stinkin' badges
the alley treats us all to a few jems
and more stinky socks than a reformed
cheerleader like little red riding in the hood
can shake a stick at

by the time i shuffle back to
my home on the shooting range
don quixote had turned off the lights
and driven off in his VW bug
the band had packed its gear
and the bartender was three sheets to the wind
all i could do to mend my own fences
was sing old cowboy songs at a winter moon

fleetfoot to from the greasy lock of hair
to the itchy feet looking to travel
its all just another day under strange skies
we all got questions
but few got answers
i just got a pocket full of dust
and a pair of running shoes
so here i go....

six sozzled sailors
sang several sea shanties
sailing stormy seas

I began my humble journey

    At the peak of a mighty *****

        Dropped by a humble poet

             Making his long walk home



As I started my wis'ning voyage

      I spied the miserly rich man

         Counting his weekly excess

                Money, gold, silver, land



His heart, consumed with greed for his gains

      Was too focused on his returns

          To care for a common penny

                 So on I went, for a home, my heart, it yearned.



As I passed through the place

   Where daily, business was done

        Buildings, structures that scraped the sky

               Blocked the sun, where once it shone.



My passage continued through the city

     To the crowded shopkeepers' stores

           A wonderful place of smells and sights

              Cooked goose, cattle, and boars!



But the keepers' minds were distracted

    With the day's stresses and concerns

      To notice what was around them

        So on I went, for a home, my heart, it yearned.



Then I came to the ghetto,

    That horrible, wretched place

        With hovels and shanties and shacks

             Loan sharks and gangsters and snakes



The people there were fearful

    Of what, I could not tell

          For it was more than thugs

               It was their hate; love was encased in shells



Then something that I saw made me stop,

    A family of five, happy and alive

      Their love for another was stronger than fear

          So on I went, toward home, I would strive



Until I was taken by the lowly thief

     Looking to pay for his next meal

        He dropped me when he was arrested

            For as you know, thieves, they steal.



I stopped at the bottom of the *****

    Where hill turned into rolling plains

         I thought there I would rust forever.

            Until I saw the humble poet, flesh & veins.



               He picked me up and told me of his day

          And  how he had followed me, a mere penny

       For I was important to him, special.

He put me in his pocket, with my family to join!



So there I stayed, returning home,

Recounting my tale to the rest.

How he had found me when all hope had been lost

And my excitement for new journeys, and what would come next.

The clouds scatter askew
Into the dimness of mere moments to twilight
Water jumped on my skin
Playing run and hide
Sifting pieces of a small town
Into a phantom's mosaic
I was a spectator to the familiar
While mother has sent me
To an errand of a quarter pound of ginger
Those deformed baby toe-like things
Hideous almost supernatural

A middle aged cabby stops
With a knowing look
On to my face that only moves
To answer, not to question
I sat down on the old leather chair
A waft of fish and dried sweat
Dust and a little exhaustion
Regaining his gear, every bit
A weary man and so
The drive went silently
As a secret.
The exhausted cement path
Looked frozen, deserted
As a widow's heart.

There were faces of mixed hues like
Technicolor film in a psychedelic haze
Lined like domino pieces
In the streets of this sick town
Some leaving, some going
To some smaller street perhaps
Off to estrange their lives
From grey shanties, small lumps of
Grains on their shaky family tables.
Like the downpour they are sad
Sadder than the cabby's squeaking wheels
Between the tension of the road
And the misfortune of its master
I say hello like an egg laid by chance
In a nest made for spiders
I do not belong here
But the web ties me head first.

Lonely faces look out the rail cars windows longing for the city sky

The eyes wander around the Slums and Shanties, praising the heavens above that they're not getting off there

A mist starts to well up in those undulating optical's as the thoughts of honesty and faith leave them

A Calm.

A Blink.

A sigh of relief as we pull away towards a better civilization.

A pounding of gauntlet on iron and oak
Called a stout hearted watchman of local regard
How the rain played a march on his armor and cloak
As he dashed to the gate through the cobblestone yard
And he rattled the thunder itself when he spoke
"Are you friend or foe? Are you bandit or bard?"

A mighty voice spake thusly:

"Tis I, tis I, Sir Hampton Chase,
The worthiest of knights
A foe to all of evil deed
A dragon slain, a damsel freed
Quite often found atop a steed
In armor, helm and tights"

The guard retorted thusly:

"I can't say I've heard tell of you
My good Sir Hampton Chase
Nor can I, in this ghastly storm
Get a good look at your face
Pray, tell me more about yourself
Regale me, your grace"

A somewhat muted voice returned:

"Are you ******* mate?"

A deadpan tone responds:

"Try me"

A noble sigh and then:

"Very well

I marched upon the dreaded spire
Destroyed the evil lord
I cast aside the dragon's fire
And smote it with my sword
I fought the groaning garglebuck
I clove it's head in twain
In taverns all across the land
They call me Bandit Bane..."

A meaningful look towards the closed gate prompted the watchman:

"Please continue, Sir"

The gate received a certain look from the knight:

"Seriously? Huh...

I walked the path of no return
To find the holy grail
I crept up on a unicorn
And grabbed it by the tail
In certain taverns I could name
I'm known for singing shanties
When I'm in town each married dame
Gets locked in metal *******"

Another meaningful look at the gate:

"Go on..."

A stony silence until:

"I sometimes rescue baby birds
And nurse them back to health
I spend my days amongst the strays
Redistributing wealth
I never miss the privvy ***
I always brush my hair
I went to school in Caldecott
My parents come from there

I'm running out of material here mate, can I just come in?"

The guard contemplated this:

"Sorry mate, I've just been killing time. *******"

The sullen clunk of retreating armor was swallowed by the howling tempest as once again, the legendary Sir Hampton Chase trudged into the night...

come earth
come flushly
come trees
come birds
come all warm living heat
come frothing leaves and grass
come oceans brimming deepest
come able breaths of god
come creation
come body
come soul
come all rightness; all rawness; all bleeding and kissing
come hurt
come pain sorely and pleasure elated
come knees greenly sooted in the Summers virginal lush embrace
come lovers
come clear crystal nights
come drunken muddled nights
come stars
come lips and cheeks
come arms
come hearts
come urge
come increase
come wilt
come rind
come life
come death
come all things simple
come all things complex
come all
come everything
come and i will meet you
come and i will greet you
come and i will touch your bodies with my bodies
come and i will brush the lewd breaking dirt of you with the clean sturdy skin of my body
come and i will know you
come and you will know me
come O soft careless husk of amorous purple spring
come lilting
come graceful careful colours of flowers blossoming
come sun
come light
come women
come men
come **** ample female things
come mothers
come children
come into each distinct infinite freckle of the days agreeable self
come churches
come houses
come hovels and shanties
come love(and hate even)
come each thing and i will kiss you and i will tangle the crass and the beauteous in the immutable soul of my flesh
come and make
come and do
come and live
come and rejoice

All things good
All things evil
(nothing was ever either wholly
even holy neither)
All things studious
All things slack
All things fair
All things ugly

(the world's a body innumerable
a body complete
a voice and sinew
and to each great
frolicking kind bit
and to each meek
cowering mean bit
we are all
and everyone of us is
we contain every creation
every destruction
every birth
every immolation)so let's reconcile our own flesh with it
                                 and let's meet it squarely
                                 let's fit into it's cracks snugly
                                 and let's kiss each grain of sand
                                 let's love it
                                 let's become it
                                 (for it was always us
                                 and we were always it)
                                 (and i know it)

I'm trapped...
Trapped inside this ball of deceit bouncing off rubber
Suffocate me...
Leave me in a dumpster so that I might be taken to an island with no others

My ears have saved me once again
Blind I would rather be than to not hear soothing sultry sounds
On the contrary, I would be more content if not to hear the lies that pour from your shanties you call hearts

Trust, I have very little of, though it runs all through my blood
I'm close to giving up on all of you
Me, myself, and my irate moods
All thanks to you

Sometimes I wanna drive away and leave everyone behind
It's not me, it's all of you, most of the time

Floating
by Michael R. Burch

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs ...
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms;
unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea . . .
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is a poem I wrote as a teenager. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine, The Chained Muse and Poetry Life & Times.



These are poems about mermaids, Lorelei, sirens, water nymphs, octopuses, manatees, and other mysterious creatures that inhabit the depths of seas, lakes and rivers…

Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her ...

How can they resist
her seductive voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



Lures of the Lorelei
by Michael R. Burch

These are the rocks where the Lorelei combs
her wind-tangled hair as the dark water moans,
and her uncanny hymns echo softly between
worlds fashioned of stone and her strange algaed dreams …

Here men hear her songs, as they always have done,
as they dream to be one with the pale weightless foam …
as they also now long for her sleek, slender arms—
sweet relief from their dull lives, wives, shanties and farms!

But what does she offer them—is it love?
As she croons her desire, is she moray, minx, dove?
Or merely a mystery: an enigma, like death,
to men bent on drowning, unhappy with breath?



The Abyss
by Michael R. Burch

Love, the abyss
where pale Lorelei dwell,
swells with bright music —
the music of hell.

For the sirens there lure
countless men to their doom,
crying, “Give us a child!”
in the luminous gloom.

And who can resist
their cries — wild & untamed —
or the flash of a breast,
its pink ****** inflamed?

So the young men all leap
in their lemming-like urge
to thresh their soft shells
where the dark waters surge.

Now many lie shattered
on the sharp, hidden rocks
where they succor the spawn
of some wily sea-fox.



Adrift
by Michael R. Burch

I helplessly loved you
although I was lost
in the veils of your eyes,
grown blind to the cost
of my ignorant folly
—your unreadable rune—
as leashed tides obey
an indecipherable moon.



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.



Sinking
by Michael R. Burch

for Virginia Woolf

Weigh me down with stones …
fill all the pockets of my gown …
I’m going down,
mad as the world
that can’t recover,
to where even mermaids drown.



The Drawer of Mermaids
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Alina Karimova, who was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. Alina loves to draw mermaids and believes her fingers will eventually grow out.

Although I am only four years old,
they say that I have an old soul.
I must have been born long, long ago,
here, where the eerie mountains glow
at night, in the Urals.

A madman named Geiger has cursed these slopes;
now, shut in at night, the emphatic ticking
fills us with dread.
(Still, my momma hopes
that I will soon walk with my new legs.)

It’s not so much legs as the fingers I miss,
drawing the mermaids under the ledges.
(Observing, Papa will kiss me
in all his distracted joy;
but why does he cry?)

And there is a boy
who whispers my name.
Then I am not lame;
for I leap, and I follow.
(G’amma brings a wiseman who says

our infirmities are ours, not God’s,
that someday a beautiful Child
will return from the stars,
and then my new fingers will grow
if only I trust Him; and so

I am preparing to meet Him, to go,
should He care to receive me.)



Excerpt from “The Song of the Spirits over the Waters”
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wind is water's
amorous pursuer:
the Wind, upswept,
heaves waves from their depths.
And you, mortal soul,
how you resemble water!
And a mortal’s Fate,
how alike the wind!



The Fisher
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The river swirled and rippled;
nearby an angler lay,
and watched his lure with a careless eye,
like any other day.
But as he watched in a strange half-dream,
he saw the waters part,
and from the river’s depths emerged
a maiden, or a ****.

A Lorelei, she sang to him
her strange, bewitching song:
“Which of my sisters would you snare,
with your human hands, so strong?
To make us die in scorching air,
ripped from our land, so clear!
Why not leave your arid land
And rest forever here?”

“The sun and lady-moon, they lave
their tresses in the main,
and find such cleansing in each wave,
they return twice bright again.
These deep-blue waters, fresh and clear,
O, feel their strong allure!
Wouldn’t you rather sink and drown
into our land, so pure?”

The water swirled and bubbled up;
it lapped his naked feet;
he imagined that he felt the touch
of the siren’s kisses sweet.
She sang to him of mysteries
in her soft, resistless strain,
till he sank into the water
and never was seen again.



Ophélie (“Ophelia”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
... while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by ...
Here, tangled in her veils, she floats on the tide ...
Far-off, in the woods, we hear the strident bugle’s cry.

For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
This albescent phantom, has rocked here, to and fro.
For a thousand years, or more, in her gentle folly,
Ophelia has rocked here when the night breezes blow.

For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
Has passed, an albescent phantom, down this long black river.
For a thousand years, or more, in her sweet madness
Ophelia has made this river shiver.



Circe
by Michael R. Burch

She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.

She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.

And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.

Goddesses and sirens like Circe can be difficult to deal with, as Ulysses and his men discovered.


In the next poem, “The Divide,” please keep in mind that manatees have been mistaken for mermaids and mermen…

The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide …
was man born to sorrow that first day,
the moon—a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied—
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?

The sea was not salt the first tide …
but grew bitter, bitter—man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing—forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.

The sea was not salt the first tide …
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.

The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.

The sea was not salt the first tide …
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.

For “The Divide” I prefer the slightly longer and rounder "bourgeoning" to the more common "burgeoning." The unconventional line breaks aside, this is a villanelle.



I Panajia I gorgona (“The Mermaid Madonna”)
by Michael R. Burch

To touch—the trembling eagerness of fingers
that sightless, in blind darkness, knew to *****,
to seize the hand outstretched, and thus to hope ...
such was your touch, and softly, now, it lingers:

fond memory! I do not understand
this foreign hand that grasps mine now: crude claws’
rude pincers, which engage, but without cause
except to suffocate me in strange sands.

O softer than your mermaid’s swimming tresses:
your arcane touch, your almost human hand!
You held a shell shaped like an ampersand
close to my ear; the surging sea’s caresses

spoke to my heart ... until Gorgona neared
on crablike feet: repulsive, skittering, weird.



Strange Tides, Stranger Tidings
by Michael R. Burch

for Sharon Rose

She walked into the sea one night
to never be seen again;
the Maelstrom made her hair a fright
as she left the world of men.
Some say she thus gained second sight.
Beware strange tides! Amen.

The first year of her life was hard;
the second harder still.
Like a cameo carved out of sard
she bent to God’s harsh will.
At last her doctors all agreed:
“Just give her some **** pill!”

The years flashed by; she did not age
so much as disappeared.
For who could see human dignity
in a thing small, wizened, weird?
At last she had no memory
save all she’d ever feared.

Then the sea called to her strangely,
as if the Voice of God:
“I repent, O, I repent
of my Anger and my Rod!
Now I only wish to hold you,
and have you Tulip-Cod!”

She thought her nickname sweet indeed;
she did not stop to think,
for who can doubt the Word of God?
She tottered to the brink
of Doom itself, an ancient crone
doomed like a stone: to sink.

She made a votive offering;
she cast a lonely spell
upon the sea, before she stepped
into the gates of Hell;
the Maelstrom took her greedily;
she bade the world, “Farewell!”

So what became of her, you ask?
I can’t pretend to say:
did Michael and the Devil
contend for her that day?
Did the Voice of God mislead her,
or the wind lead her astray?

But sometimes late at night
when the ocean’s dreary roar
abates somewhat, an eerie light
gleams on that rocky shore,
and a lovely Mermaid, tulip-white,
sings, tremulous and pure ...

sweet ancient songs of ancient wrongs
the “love” of God endures.

Amen



Floating
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 19

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs …
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.

Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea …
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

“Floating” is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one, in the form of a water nymph or mermaid. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem was originally published as "Entanglements."



Nothing Returns
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks …

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear …

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur:

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,

here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s bright eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like entangled hair where cold currents rise …
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something curious, old and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and, with tentacles like Medusa's squirming,
it feels the cloud blot out the skies' …
then shudders, settles with a sigh,
understanding man’s demise.



I think the octopus is evidence of three things: that there are aliens, that they live among us, and that they are infinitely wiser than we are …

The Octopi Jars
by Michael R. Burch

Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels'…

you are beyond all hope
of salvage now…
and yet I would pause,
no, fear!,
to once touch
your arcane beaks…

I, more alien than you
to this imprismed world,
notice, most of all,
the scratches on the inside surfaces
of your hermetic cells …

and I remember documentaries of albino Houdinis
slipping like wraiths through walls of shipboard aquariums,
slipping down decks' brine-lubricated planks,
spilling jubilantly into the dark sea,
parachuting down down down through clouds of pallid ammonia …

and I now know this: you were unlike me …
your imprisonment was never voluntary.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden—
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray—
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.

Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.

Originally published by Southwest Review



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her ...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



I wrote “Nevermore” in my late teens, under the rather obvious influence of Edgar Allan Poe…

Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18-19

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
—the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore—
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure ...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely covered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way ...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea ...

their skeletal love—impossibility!



Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen.
By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.

With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.
Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.

In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.
I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.

I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no man has sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.

And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing …

But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray …

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs that I used to climb
when the wind was **** with a taste of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.

Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright.

Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-aged wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.

Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam …
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!

It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then … what then?
I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach …
And then, what then?

Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.
When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.

Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.
The distant cooling clouds.

Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over different lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.

Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that rush into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams …
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems. To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18, circa 1976-1977.



Alice
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15

There were nights when we would wander together
the banks of a lake cast in strange monotones
where once I had wandered before,
lost and alone.

And along the moonlit banks we strolled
the silver waterfalls recoiled
to, screaming, die upon the folds
of tranquil waters far below.
For tranquil waters fed below
on melting ice and crumbling stone.

The nights we spent beside that lake
we spent there with the stately drake,
the graceful swan, the grotesque eel,
close to the sound of a waterfall's peal,
close to the sound of a lake's midnight meal.

And Alice's hair hung like hacked hemp,
gnarled and twisted on the wind,
glistening with an unearthly light,
Medusan at midnight.

And her lips shone with a radiance
that blinded my eyes
as they closed in reply
to the slightest pressure of her touch;
and I wanted her so much ...
but did not have her,
for the lake that gave her soon took her away.

For she died in the mists of a moonlit night
with a rush of green water filling her mouth; ...

then the skies
rang with her startled cries
and her algaed eyes
gleamed agony.
She pled with me ...

"Come too, come too!" She softly begged.
"Oh, no! I can't!" I witlessly said.
And she, the enchantress, was ****** down;
some will say that she drowned ...

But her eyes were the eyes of that eerie lake
and her lips mouthed its soft and eloquent plea
in a voice weirdly ancient, wild and free,
crying, "I am Alice ... come to me!"

This is one of my earliest poems, written around age 15.

Keywords/Tags: love, romantic, romanticism, mermaid, siren, Lorelei, sea, night, dreams, eyes, lips, limbs, *******, breath, sunset, surf, waves, caves, moon, moonlight, seaweed, hair, storms