Little tiny beads
Vibrating in space
Connecting us all together
Like loving mates

Little tiny beads
Zillions of years old
Came from a start
That was growing old

Little tiny beads
The children of old starts
Came together
To form who we are

Little tiny beads
Connecting us all
Giving us a ****
Unthinkable ages old

Pakistani Mohammad Aamer,
Much too young to buy his own beer,
   But his bowling is ace,
   He got in Ponting's face,
Other batsmen are living in fear.

Pakistani Afridi is mad,
Though he is not inherently bad,
   But he did chew a ball,
   Which about says it all,
But watching him play makes me glad.

Look, Shahid Afridi is crazy,
Even though he appears quite lazy,
   He wants to be strong,
   But it turns out all wrong,
It's because his brain is all hazy.

I know little of Umar Amin,
My knowledge of him is too thin,
  Does he bat left or right,
  Will he give Oz a fright,
Or meekly get out once he's in?

Then Umar Akmal will stride out,
He's tiny but he gives it some clout,
   An average of fifty,
   Looks pretty **** nifty,
From behind him, the crowd they will shout.

We could barely hear her breathe, the air too thick for her lungs to knead.

You'd think she'd never make it home, she made it early really though.

Went back from which she'd come, maybe she was a gift to give

since she left alone and soon, life something she would not live.


The flowers could hardly bloom, planted again in just a few days,

before a tiny tomb, in a cradle where feathered wings won't let her lay.

And she must not be too cold, the warmest blanket she has turned down.

Closest thing to Heaven… Lilyan, not six feet underground.


She may have even heard our cries, but she won't feel the weather on her grave.

The rain she'll never know,  not with the wings that wouldn't let her stay,

And she must not be too cold, the warmest blanket she has turned down.

Closest thing to Heaven… the little girl that left at the speed of sound.

i'll sing softly, until you're asleep
i know you were never mine to keep
i'll ignore the tears that roll down my face
because i know you'll be in a better place
my decisions, you shouldn't have to pay
every night i'll get down on my knees and pray
that you find such happiness, a family of your own
i'm so sorry that i couldn't give you a home
but i'm too young and i don't know what to do
and all i want is what's best for you
i never knew a pain that could rip me apart
but i feel it now, the way it's breaking my heart
for nine months i kept thinking that maybe
there'd be a way i could keep my baby
but i'm stumbling, lost and afraid
papers are signed, decisions made
the best i've ever been was wrapped up in you
tiny fingers and toes, eyes so soft and blue
and i will hold on to these moments we had together
you will be in my heart always and forever
i cry as i give you my final kiss
i hope someday you'll understand this
and you'll grow up happy

Vernarth was ready at the threshold of the validity of the constellation of Orion, barely a hundred millionths as indicated by the Duoverse in his Cosmogonic amphiboly, and sensitive to physical space with the Kli vessels that he carried on his back that were in the proximity of the Loop of Bernard as the Omission nebula as the exponential hemicycle in the center of Aurion's oculus waiting for Vernarth and redistribute its molecules at 518 light-years or 440 Parsec, with the diameter that will be reflected in Patmos of more than 300 light-years condensed with the element of Hydor or water from high space over Aurion. Vernarth, united by the fragrant hand of the Mashiach, could carry it when he moved away from the Opistodomos and the remains of incandescent lagoons of supernova materials that surrounded them to accelerate the mass of the Iridescent Nimbus that Vernarth would carry, and the Mashiach as a sentinel of his Purgation. already defined whenever the simultaneous explosion of the Super Nova with Patmos becomes effective, and the Terrestrial World in impulsiveness that admonished him under the right shoulder blade in the skinny hollow of the arm that was getting rid of the oscillometer right at the original entrance of Betelgeuse, and when Vernarth remained alone in the frontal altitude chamber to take off towards the cosmogonies of Eridanus to tune into the Ptolemaic astral. The Sybilla who acted as stellar consort would be Herophile with overtones of expansion and her brilliant metric mass that would take her through Betelgeuse Orionis allied to a multifunctional instrument such as the entrance Aulos, expelling hydrogen-like an Ace in 240 harmonic scales, and sounds of light that they boomed towards the Pleiades and the Milky Way where it would be the supposed first state of paradox where Vernarth would utter: "Give me a little Gála and I will be more than Zeus". This is where he will experience the diarthrosis of his synovial joints in the process of Hyaline cartilage, allying himself with the two bones and synovium to hunt down the Trapper Aurion in advance to wake up from the feared defenseless world that he feared since everything he abandoned despite having his Purg discharged, he kept sensing that if nothing would work for a lost world. Here Vernarth would hold Alexander the Great's first childhood vision as an infant at Péla using his scapula with the force of rubbing discs at the Olympiad making the sky his Odyssey-encrusted Constellation of whips, and sullen Hellenistic being by May in the amber trunk trapezoid and in each hand a Xiphos and Dorus.

The pathologies were at the forefront with dexterous inclinations of his Kopis to the west when he throws it and the whistle of return makes him see that the meteorites reached as far as his gaze could observe the latitudes of the Tyrrhenian. He takes his bronze-brass cudgel with the corrosive breath, filing the odysseys on the concupiscent ******* of Eos, Goddess of the dawn, opening the heavens of the eager natives of Gála, by sipping raw milk from the right edge of the corner of her upper lips before the first dawns of the world, when Eos would be in grains or grasses that brandished from the bronze club that Vernarth waited for before leaving Gaia, or rather the fertile land of Patmos that officiated at him. Mega hectares appeared that threatened Enopion's revenge, disturbing his eyes that shone in Hesiod's striae by advocating for him in the Duoverse where all deities would be annulled but his psychic ramifications as stellar humans would be covered by the action of Helium gas. In this way Vernarth was already bidding farewell to Saint John the Apostle with his rounded eye set on the shine of both pupils between Mintaka, Alnitak, and the third shine of his pupils united in communion with Vernarth when arriving sideways at the pale shine of Alnilam (The Three Mariah) fourth star to follow in Orion as the brightest of the three on Vernarth's neck like a necklace of precious pearls. In this way, he climbed the steps to measure the slow brilliance of the immensity of the celestial solstice that raised him with the expedient Sun that also led him towards the twelfth lunation of the celestial vault attached to Pléyone in his bolometric oceanic matrix, which will arise between the stellar limitrophe between the Canes Mayores and Menores, and a priori in the measurement of the eye of Aurion always harassing the Pleiades. The intrigue will be reborn for the second time from the Duoverse's momentum that Vernarth will have to leave in the biosphere oscillation wasteland of Prometheus already freeing himself from life in community, and from an extreme sensitivity of major psychic connections that will flow throughout the immensity of inaccessible time. , on the atmosphere of the earth like bronzes that twist in the necks of the oxen that urinate on the endowments of the Barnard Loop, and its polyphonic magnetic exciter, on it the ***** of Orion falling on the poles as flagrant Amphibology. The Kanti Steed and the Aorion nebula to the beat of a waltz will ionize chemical portents of ions free of electrons, on the neutral molecules of Betelgeuse to propagate in the nerves of the shoulders of the bronze club ad limit of harmonious praxis, and net compromise by supplying steps to the nebula and art of the Duoverse that shows the primeval daily days as in his alchemical armband, germinating astral Lynothorax and axillary armpit that held him in his maximum club, cutting down roots of Olivo Bernar after Barnard's Loops in between of fugitive stars that go regimented in their ionized bleeding esplanade, like Stellae Novae that transfers astronomical cults in the formation and pretext of going through the darkness to sleep near his parents Poseidon and Euryale, acclaiming him near the gramineous fields to paste him with explosive clay on the portfolio of such a smiling face drunk with Ionian wine, in precedence of the disemi nar by the new and expandable Duoverso, Vernarth was already on the last steps of the stairs similar to that of Florence in the Medicea Laurenziana as well said to feel alive when going to paradise next to the Messiah who came to pick him up. But at times electrifying residues would vanish over his field of vision in small beams or flashes, which would prevent him from moving forward to the last stirrups without looking back where all the Birthright was watching him for one last time.

Sitting on the edge of Andromeda, Zefian was waiting for him to meet him in his dark chamber, since the most intimate and primordial causality of his metaphysics emerged from the bases of the reason for all things that should exist, before everything was created and that it has never had pre-eminence as it is in this case of the parasitic chamber of Zefian in the company of the Auriga, which also came to wait for him in the calash running wild as prescribed by the Duoverse in the structures of luminosity in the midst of this colossal inter-planetary chamber, between molecular agitated points that will venture through the axon of infinity longitudinally unpredictable for light-years even though it is so. The thermal outcomes of superheated remnants over the entire luminosity will speak of the catastrophe, and of the inherent emptiness in the eyes of the eternal hothouse very close to the supernovae that can only strengthen the fusion of the space disks of the Universe-Duoverse long before the explosion between Orion and Andromeda. The axes of time will be dislocated between both astral components in this dissonant chaos that will contract with Vernarth's levitation whenever he has stepped on the last step before entering the Hydor chamber in every dark portion of the Universe, making both constellations the ferrule or ring that will yield to the underbelly of Betelgeuse, dispossessing the boasts of the appropriate Commander Hetairoi of his Lynothorax to resist the ravages and turbulence of the Apokálypsis, which brought the immense loads of matter that discharged all its constant energy through the circulating nuclear power plants, and tangents that caused galaxy changes pierced by Hetairoi Aorion clods satirizing expenses for retracting the galaxies below Soldier's precept and super homeostatic mass attracted from their distance on astronomical scales of 2.5 million light-years.

The galactogenic galaxy made use of great prominences that would cover the greater proportional that is outlined in Andromeda of the strands of the Universe adjacent to the spiral that rolls on the underbelly, deferring to telescope sections, and the gravitational field to execute its nocturnal translation like the Hyperdisis Galaxy that collects the bubbling of the belt in conjunctions of minor stars making star mechanics by exaltation, and magnetic disorders creating other leading atmospheres in those detached from the cord of Andromeda, the Milky Way, and Orion. Vernarth was still holding on to the transparent hand of the Messiah while he was climbing the ascension steps to Hydor that would transport him to travel with him through the globular clusters, they will form the perfect delay in transfusing the lineage and not another, in this way the Lynothorax or bleeding pectoral de Vernarth continued to flow from this polynomial tractatum between all area subjugation guidelines, and refinement of the sagittal profile of Hyperdisis in the inter-galactic reversible staked Duoverse.

Lenticular to irregular above the nails of the trapezoid, it spread towards Aurion's right armband, sequentially making the centric radiogram hiccup, despite taking advantage of interstellar matter to self-generate its own transmission light, this made it refrain from emanating the hybridity that came out of its body by vibrating above everything that expelled from its center towards the right rectitude of Orion, thus making the multiplied speed of containing itself of both parts of the null hemisphere of its free will when verifying that it never existed, that it was only an illusion of doubtful matter that would soon Go away like gasified water on the galactic repulsions that would settle on Patmos as devotions of Skalá, and Astro-omegas that would be adhered to the Xiphos and Kopis, who were still united to their being rather in the contour of the perimeter of his soul two meters floating like invisible quantum universes. The totality of everything was inciting the fields of omega-stars that would begin to advance after becoming visible from the spur of the sword that became denser with the viscosity of the Hebrew Adom, which trickled from Orion to Hellenic lands as an Omega age for Vernarth which is conceived early when it carries Hecate's Kleidia or keys to the Omega world towards the proto-galaxies that provide ultramarine loaves, knowing that the Milky Way and Andromeda come so close in their stellar mass that they can collide in a few million light-years. The Duoverse of Hyperdisis was predicted in the visual reality of a fusion of change to interact with each other as it dismembered but re-transformed into the new theoretical core of the Duoverse as a large Black Hole embedded in the center of Patmos. In such a way all the inhabitants began to worry when phenomenal masses of warm air that began to take on the appearance of the Universe plagiarized each other generating incoming earthquakes, not affecting the Opistodomos or the Primogeniture, nor the crowd that was waiting. of all the monstrosity of monks who were grouped kneeling on the top of the Profitis, floating the shattered shaggy skein parts of the Himation. As it was dyed in the albi-color of Calígine, demonstrating the darkness of the intrinsic terror of whoever plows later to free all the succumbed who fell throughout Greece and Judah, exposing all the origins of appearance from the internal now in the converted Universe that was reimplanting itself in the helical of polarity, and bifurcating by pretexting all the reincarnations and polishing the stagnant cessation of darkness towards a luminance that could warn them and observe where their feet could move, sheltered from the monumental litter of calorimetry, and chromatics that was linked in romances trivial with the residuals of the angel shark galaxies where Aurion's progenies will deliver in candelas per square meter: LV waking is the luminance, measured in Nits or candelas per square meter (cd/m²).

• F is the luminous flux, in lumens for the Andromeda triad, the Milky Way, and Hyperdisis in conjunction with Orion. From here Vernarth will supply all of them as the one who will dwell in it in the preface of his Fables of Calígine with the following: "Ex Calígine Chaos: ex Chao et Calígine, Nox, Dies, Erebus, Aether", which transliterated means "Of Darkness: Chaos. From Chaos and Darkness: Night, Day, Erebus, and Ether", Decreeing the (Burning Darkness) before Chaos as flow F, is he also the only one who divinized this abstraction, conferring a proper meaning to the word. And then make of the normality of dwelling in the darkness that is the irrevocable opulence of the desire to maintain the radiance of all the forces that devour eternity. From the remote aces came dark families of flying Lepidoptera Ditrisios, lined up with countless other species that carried dimensional eyes that will be devoured by ocelli or giant eyes that come from the chaos of Vernarth's Caligine to appease the effects of ultraviolet rays, which started from the Nimbus Iridescent creating a layer of protection between the new dimension of the twilight of flight that was already beginning to ignite from the Aurion's scaly fingers.

• dS is the surface element considered the triad Kímolos, Rodas and Patmos. While Vernarth is distracted, he manages to dissipate the twilight of the inverted Erebus between Eleos and Ezis, personifying Clemency and Sadness, where they border the worlds that are not yet riddled with chaos or Calígine, who exalted himself over Erebos with the redemption of Eleos, who was getting ready to swallow the sadness of Ezis. Therefore Kimolos, Rhodes, and Patmos will consolidate their hegemony of unalterable lands where Eleos' piece of clemency will bring the support that makes Ezis's faceless portent, close to the hybridity of the Itheoi gods, in the Transversal Valleys of the Horcondising, with the Norns and generosity of Apollo who had given them after long stays in Hyperborea as female spirits once again as advocacy and imperishable protection of the legacy of Smintheus's travels by providing the company of Dísir, Uror, Verdandi, and Skuld as a female entity, of the past, current and future that should occur by order of Skuld. This will allow the three to unite with the Ds to merge the three as a complement of three female entities that will safeguard all climate change on future disasters in the Dodecanese.

• dΩ is the solid angle element, from Vernarth Omega and the origin of the Duoverse. From this premise, the worst of Vernarth's fears was to let go of the Messiah's hand and fall into the anger that blushes even Hetairoi Hero from Deimos, when the night reverts to the rest of the demons and the night adopts those who go perceiving in Vernarth that perhaps he was holding hands with Ares for the battle alongside his brother Etrestles, under the orders of the savagery of the metaphysical engines of panic. From this vision, Vernarth manages to open his eyes with the desire to show those who were watching him and to be able to show that he was aware of being a prisoner of his emotions and escaping from himself in the illustrious suffering of thousands of arrows, which ran around him like fleeting meteorites to the flat field of Tisiphone's revenge. The luminances became and became colors that were molecularly twinned with disparate tones that were capable of differentiating them, and at the same time nullifying the power of obscuring Vernarth's countenance to take his right hand and take the arrow to break the darkness that was lunged at him.

• θ is the angle between the diameter from Andromeda and the Milky Way (2.5 million light-years), Nemesis or Ramnusia as the retributive coercion of disobedience, being aware Vernarth became more and more of a being adopted by balance Nemesis for balance to command him to his senses before entering the field of limpidity of his soul in transit to liberate himself from all the chained who used to be happy, but sad that no one acclaimed them except Aionius Itheoi of Vernarth who translated the messages that from now on will move diametrically from Andromeda to the Milky Way, without any of these two portions being invaded only under the order of Nemesis, and Vernarth abiding by the retributive justice of The luminance that can be defined from the radiometric magnitude of the radiance without more than weighting each length of the wave by the sensitivity curve of the eye. Thus, if LV is the luminance, Lλ represents the spectral radiance and V (λ) symbolizes the sensitivity curve of Vernarth's eye in the underbelly of Betelgeuse, spilling plasma and magnetic bruises on the galaxies and Eyes of Orion.
Meanwhile, it manifested itself as a personal universe, not excluded from time and space for a metaphysical causality that will not be able to compose the mentality that is measurable in the joint senses of a Zig Zag birth from this same calígine emerging from another creature of self-observation and see the physiognomy of the anti-material and mass Universal Horcondising. From which we pre-exist to waste of science that models the system of energy and matter in causes of ancestors with which his life and ours that were propelled furtively. Gravity made great paternity in Vernarth's active Biomass, being in the Dodecanese and cosmos in the verification of curvature that makes us with the moon of its romantic astrophysical swings and exaggerated geometry of a Zigzag.

We are versatile multi-dynamic mass that expands simultaneously in the void that pauses in the Nothofagus Obliqua of Vernarth's Horcondising, and also of time2-space2 that have not been attributed to the origin of the stars that move irregularly in Zig Zag, for their immature componential that is clearly of Aramaic blue light from the Pealim of the Abba, circulating with bullets movements skimming the air of the grasses attracting the attention of the entire order of the hypnotized universe, making appear before them the duplication of the universe itself; in Duoverse, which is the recently shaken Universe and of gratitude in the distribution of nearby galaxies that are keys to the paleo kosmous already arranged in macro waves, which are percentages of the spaces of the Tri-solated energy fields, which interact with the phylogeny of the Mashiach in Gethsemane, lying now in a stagnant decomposed future, in a frozen present specific to the peri Kosmous. Its final station is to wager the Zig Zag Universe on the temporal middle Ages chrestomathies re-expanding in qualities of gregarious Sub-mythology, already settling here in Archangels to activate. The implosion of gravity has procreated worlds of visibility of magnanimous astronomical longings, in some fractions of time in Zig Zag by millions of fractioned light-years, as an irregularity that resembles the measure of everything quantifiable, being omniscience or not acquiring the hexagonal of the primogeniture of the fragment since Jerusalem goes to Bethlehem, where the Davidian prism whose Original is attributed fractal in form.

The personification of longevity was trapped by Geras, always escaping from the obfuscated universe or temperament that could be represented in humanity that relied on the antigens that served as support for the reversibility of every hero like Vernarth, who tried to glorify himself in the fullness of life in Heraklion or in the sand that was dyed red-azure when the soul of Alexander the Great would rise together with Vernarth with the Mashiach. The fractal beating line of the Mediterranean towards a vein resembling the rhinestones of King David to the Ziziphus of the Messiah simulating to be irregular symmetrical formats, to build gems in thorns of landscapes that basically subdivide into similar conical funnels, to then be randomly displaced towards its central point shared with King David's five o'clock Incorruptible crown, recursively reiterating it in each square until the eminence of the desired detail was reached in the curve that joins the landscape to Bethlehem and then to the Baptistery of the Shepherds in its hexagonal base, figuring to be the sleet in the final Crown of Rejoicing falling on the top of the roofs "Doroteo or theological gifts" in which the Mashiach's stable of Kafersuseh burst and agonized in the abstraction of the One-Dimensional Beams with foreign eyes, and own tissue eroding to mortal frowns that can be seen with their divine eyes in our own likeness, and of the planet n failed to increase the size so unknown and analytical in this peripeteia of the implosive ideology of the bubbling of the Verthian Duoverse.
The nature of the snowflakes in Bethlehem are natural fractals detailed in their nature, and in the natural infinity that here was envisioned from the new privileged world for self-similarity in speculative functions of Vertnarth, by intervals in each space of shadowy fences, bringing accelerated courier bulbs from Gethsemane in intermediates of olive trees transformed towards other humans.“Their correlation is infinite with reversible observable time, and paternal belonging to mobile gagged echoes of a space that is obstructed by Vernarth, in such a monograph and integers among the fractional integers "Finite is the curvature between the path that walks through the thickness of the Duo-Universe as an alternative of Zigzag and Duoverse energy, which is unleashed to our subconscious observable orb, and what a great beacon reflecting eye that ignores and prescribes extreme distant and focal parts of the One Dimensional Beams of Kafersuseh in Ein Karem. The Duoverse is the rehearsal Universe that the Mashiach had before coming to the Holy Land, provided by his form of Hyperdisis escorting him from Betelgeuse Orion, changes of arduous colors in gradient and Avant-Garde, for limits of perspectives and verbally of amendments of physical fields framed by an external gravitational means. The macro waves are exposed to matters not contained in the abrupt changes of the Mashiach optical selection with the One-Dimensional Beams, attracting selection crystals to atomize them in reaction disturbances, and recreation of multiform plasma saviors of Christian astronautics, examining the double of the macro waves and equation of them on the axis of the universe converted into Duoverse, already in millions of light-years, they will continue in the Duoverse, to reconvert from ectoplasm with large margins of assertiveness. Cartography is the error correction of the current universe, getting lost in the second thousandths of figures that separate us from the Universe, but all being more than time…!, remaining at the expense of the wick of the Cirio with all its electro-matter” Having already established the sub-mythology, Hestia appears after having slept a great dream, when she appeared before Vernarth in Tsambika she was seen changing size, when she was six meters away she looked tiny and when she was already two meters away from him It looked monumentally enormous, but with a versatile physiognomy, therefore it was already appreciated in the last steps with its domestic figure of a goddess that emanated light-years disserted by chimneys and its rooms. The critique of immanence that would happen, would pre-exist the perfectible plan for the Zig Zag Universe and Hyperdisis as Hyper-Hestia, bringing torn words for those who were approaching the main altar of the Vas Auric, which consisted of the great ratio of the proscenium in the Teodora vicinity of Tsambika, between Clairvoyance/Judgment for Wisdom/Meditating constant mechanisms according to the cosmological constant, leading perhaps to the beginning of a decade and third universe called the Triverse. The oscillation of all these fantasies was observed by Vernarth, but he knew that he would have to collide with this finally, already precipitated by temperatures that acted on the average of the normal range, therefore it was imminent to mutate him into the proselytizing provisional Duoverse, which moves backward between the lights vertiginous of creation. Immediately afterward, the Universe has torn apart and lost among those around him, establishing units of millions of years of compressed light from the piccolo Aulós, which Hestia carried in one of his pale hands, his prytaneion was lighting up with the flames of the heart of fire and passion of consanguineous love, "Prytaneum", paving the light in the clarity of the faith of the owners of farmhouses that were founded when they arrived in Tsambika in search of the Vas Auric, acclaiming with the omphalos stone that marked the navel of the world with defiance wandering to the island of Delos in the daily warmth of a spring afternoon in Rhodes. She is a woman with veils over her face always walking to and from her home unscathed in the house of foolish or vestal virgins, there is no Hestia, only perhaps there are some similar ones who were staying in the cold fire of her climacteric losing fertility after his father swallowed them, and then they were expelled from himself regurgitated in flaming matches from a blessed house full of indemnity, giving the Duoverse another category calculated with angles never contained vibratingly sliding between distances that discount minutes of Hestian space for such a corollary of approaching to its finitude and inaugurate the sub-finite,  which will never be a source of terminus in a disconcerting end of time not finished flush with the physical equation. “This consolidates the Duoverse in Duouniverse, expressed in figures that moderate the length of a physical state before it is consummated and restarted in a process that does not end (sub-infinite).

Vernarth was a few meters from entering the Nimbus, when suddenly his soul darkened and his panic flared..., suddenly he felt a scream from above and below he saw how everything was made of rubble. Courage blinded him, not wanting to observe what the evident end of the world and rubble intended to consume him if he said goodbye to his most beloved beings, until the lines of infinity approached those of the earthly world, intending to eliminate all traces of his family lineage. In this way, he begins to run through his hands the reflected Hydor of colors that pierced the skylight of austere words. He manages to see Calígine del Apokálypsis farther from the mist, detached from all gravitational force, only being able to see his mother among the smoke, who was coming up by a ray of light, Vernarth tries to free her from that moment of expiration but does not reach the synchrony of catastrophe in what pretended to be from the hand of Eris as the disagreement that did not allow him to put his survival weapons in order, believing that this instance would not allow him to ****** her from the goddess Eris, if he could believe that it was inevitable that his mother Luccica became a granite coat of arms, after the dark night that threatened to unravel her from her flimsy solid state, and then crumble to the ground turned into the ground that was crushed from roots that postponed it to be consumed by the gift of the light of life, and end of a light that is visible in all the roots of the earth when consumed by the infinite that vanishes in the existence of all being.

Vernarth, when a moment of clarity allows him to see his mother, tries to rescue her, realizing that his father Bernardolipo was with her, between them they would try to redeem them from the spread of Nix and Calígine, who behaved with great pain by mocking the edges of the Ether that they received Crono, they could not be victorious in arriving in time to rescue them, if from the harmony of a troubadour of the Mashiaj he observed him see if he would return with him to enter. They became visible in their parents as they contended before an avoidable awareness of this indivisible event with the aggressor words of hindrances and generations of millennials who anticipated the omega of everything in the lower part, under the feet of their parents appearing insignificant one (w) that precedes and succeeds the beginning of a beginning based on the end of a beginning a thousand times more than a threshold based on hundreds, appropriate to the metric unit of the numeral Myríaz = ten thousand, three times more than the Falangists, one thousand less than the Peltasts and three thousand fewer than the horsemen, total thirty-seven thousand fewer than the fighting forces in Gaugamela out of a total of forty-seven thousand, under the myriads of the Myriaz of Phalangists undermined by their Xiphos in the area of the right calcaneus of each faithful man under his command before facing the Achaemenides. During this period, Vernarth took extreme steps to rescue them and stop the numbing effect of all organic matter, not being able to rescue them, only granting them in the image of each one when they began to turn stone from feet to head until the fragile solidification of their eyes. when for the last time, they looked at each other only making it clear that it was a belated rescue gesture. The omega was ineffable even beyond the omicron, being Omega and Micron in the warfare primer of initiation of its cause within the prophetic in all the necropolis of lowercase omega (ω), towards an Omega that reaffirmed the raised hand in Saint John the Apostle to rewrite the Apocalypse twice, having to be the same but with the voice of Vernarth commanding the ten thousand Phalangists that made up the intergenerational gaps, more than mimicked alien ancestors. In such an effect, as is known, the Duoverse opened the skylights with its sheathed pillars and with the strings of tetrachloride of chlorine in solid angles of Ω in what was Virgo institutionum/Aurion, an entity that interfered by projections and leaks that converged in the strut of the omphalos of his heavenly father dealing in frequency and bloodless of immortality, consisting of an auxiliary being towards the planes of subconscious reprogramming and perspective. With its arms raised in each claw, a sword raised to pierce the vanishing point between the spaces that were ascribed, under the solid projection from an observer that inhibits and limits the biomass in all the aqueous filter pastes and lumens, towards the throne of the angelic guardian of Avant-guard by stereotype and sclerosis of Zeus of dissociated physicality, still being an amorphous entity with magnitudes pulverized between numerosities of Pi and Aureos, fading without area or volume.

Saint Jerome of Estridón: “Vernarth, I come from Bethlehem to help your life because I have detected the subsuming of the chains where your parents made the alliance from where your life has been erected from Sudpichi, Transversal Valleys in the temple that bears my pseudonym. The only rune that will determine that your parents can remain united, is through the action and direction that has been consecrated to me. No dead language will unsay what a dead soul cannot interpret. Our Mashiaj has entrusted me to free the languages that have conspired at night, and low luminance where Calígine has been uncomfortable seeing me knowing that it is my favorite environment, the memory of the chains want to incarnate in the stones that surround your parents, but  they are typical of a response that I will get to conclude by urging your mother and father to recognize that here they made the alliances, ordering, and reconciliation of your world that concerns us all in endless dictates to be agreed, I know very well that the point has not of allowing your atonement to have been prevented by this cosmological affront, here are the transverse Valleys in the favorite place of the Spirits lie the treaties that will move my greatest interest to re-marry your parents from the true chains of the complacent scholar, thus all the vastness that afflicts you will belong to your servant Jerome”

Vernarth replies: “At your service, his majesty, here I have been since dawn arriving at the town to meet them when they contracted their marriage. I know I shouldn't be here, rather I know that decades of inquiry had planned it that way. Of such conviction that their chains were anointed from the heights of the Kanthillana whose partiality emits the partials close to your direction? As is known, my very extensive walk through these dusty paths must recognize that the personality and nobility of its burial mounds will strengthen my presence so that everything that is incomprehensible if it is brief by making it neighbor to my reason”

Saint Jerome of Estridón: “everything has been planned like this, and as time drags on I know that your wounds burn in my epistolary like Latin and Greek voices that reluctantly direct me to your aid. Everything is beautifully comparable, and first to what should not be said..., but to do to the genre that above all it practices, the second to one of the ways with the above all that it practices "
By the reverse of the expletive to the insurmountable destiny, Vernarth takes his hands and Saint Jerome withdraws them telling him that it was not time for greater vain for the equivalence of minor desires to please him if he had not appeared before him. It shows him to celebrate him and to want to make of him the permutation of his golden polysemy or interpretation of the world's Apokálypsis by not changing his axis of change, by redirecting them to stated comfort interests. Namely; the leaders of the world in their world of annulled freedom of will to practice following as they please when interpreting the Apokálypsis only as a revelation, and not as a destiny that exalts the senses and compensation that will reconquer the consistency of the nature of the Apokálypsis that adheres to humanity as golden that will consolidate humanity fearful of its own ******* and excess of greed, just as it was just a few steps before entering the Temple of San Jerónimo in Alhué hand in hand with Vernarth already fully healed of his Lynothorax pectoral. They go to the ambo and Saint Jerome essentially takes out of his pockets chaff that was from the escape of the mass of stone that had not yet finally hardened, allowing them to generate a mystical sermon so that their parents return to the nave of the temple in person to surpass farther from the spring of awakening of the Kantillana requesting the unification of the ashes of his father Bernardolipo and Vernarth, to rescue his mother from a poor abundance, and is transposed by the metaphor of the life-giving spirit. Immediately afterward, Saint Jerome pours the chaff of his parents all over the surface, a great noise is produced, the doors and windows of the temple are suddenly closed, and his parents can be seen walking along the central row of the nave, where fiction could testify that everything was a fantasy, rather a great testament that would exhibit the union of two juxtaposed flanks prior to an invaluable crossing of smiles and flowers that fell from the upper altar on their crowns, they came holding their arms like open borders with the procedure before the harsh reality of a metaphor made real in the future of two beloved shepherds who crossed the limbo of their fingers, with the ferrule or the act of engendering rings of family procreation. The crosses of Lisbon and Saint Jerome resembled the monograph in beats of her wealthy feet that were consistent with the nubile gesture of her lips and then released with all frenzy towards the meeting of her beloved Vernarth, the three of them dancing together on the central pinnacle of the obese light that sheltered them, meaning from the testamentary Hebrew the Aleph on the way to Sudpichi after the Raphaca “Healing” ceremony until the diastole that adheres between the middle of the gap that was produced when the three confronted each other and the word “Heth” again He was bent over to take them like gigantic camels to meet his relatives and ghosts that surrounded him when observing the heights of Kanthillana at the assent of all this.

Because of all this similarity, the tribulation from Patmos was raging with very strong resistance, leaving totally clear of the conditionals of the flint or flint, which enveloped the parents, began to fade from their bodies while it was recomposed of seven elemental forms in relation to the transcription and identification of the three as a family trunk enormously of its exegetical possibilities. Tangent to the transcription, and if it is the case identification of the names that we stick to reunion and redemption of their parents, like all anthropology that was chained to the figures and characters that cordoned off the top of the temple when the three met they hugged and held hands as a sign of illustrative demonstrations of never surpassing oneself. Beginning with the compensations in the fullness of the tables, and completion of all the facts that showed that nothing of language escapes what an eye can observe; that is to say, as long as there is a speaking light, it will always be necessary to listen and then observe in the presentation of the mechanics by the lines that expressed the figures, which were increasing the number of letters that were possible to decipher; called stichometry or measurement of the lines in the texts that Saint Jerome that they were ordering to order a vade mecum or memorandum of this unbridled situation, which in any case had to simplify it whenever it is indicated for the reading of three beings that would meet in what literal of four spirits articulated in the continuum, in such a way that Vernarth added his bilocation to this symmetrical experience to meet again with the Mashiach who awaits him on the third step before entering the Iridescent Nimbus.

His parents will be the co-princes gathered on the Supichi road bound for the Horcondising, where Vernarth all Austral Winter Solstices will come to ask his parents for an audience in the Kanthillana Heights where they will summarize the exact day, that everything happened from a Thursday to a Sunday in the first hour of the most certain Saturday in which the twelve unnatural candles will be incorporated into the Duoverse from the branch of the Raedus Codex, specifically from the Antiphon that accompanies them to the compromised one, and sinuous height that was misted by the mist of snow, and vehemence that was perceived in the greatest regulars of Spílaiaus, having a ring of lights as if such were a gesture of Jerome and everything that was named in the concordance that could be confusion that slipped from the metaphysics of new space by beginning. From such a root emerges the Eta or value number and Vernarth symbolized as  N times from "8" to the entire value of the figure of 800 "w" or Omega, which will be the values of figures and numbers to predispose the alternation of the visits that will take place. to have with his precursors each Solstice, after alternating with the Elves of Archimedes, and to cross with them the manifestations that made him lighter than air, as could be expected before the imposition of everything that he imagined to sleep to the badly gestated world that had been altered, even with a remote Faith that symbolized the decisions of Saint John the Apostle by disposing of the salvages of the vestiges that had been destroyed in the physiognomy of a cause that proved more eloquent than a mere revelation that was never believed which would awaken from its very Semitic superlative. In this case, the allegory surpassed the prototype of all curly visual language that emanated from Vernarth's decision for the humanity that needed him, on the one hand, Saint Jerome already resolved, and Saint John the Apostle in the division of two events of the same story that It was melting into the complexity that would be unspeakable for two Saints in the middle of Vernarth, demonstrating that he had taken them with all the power of the force that is capable of pulling and manipulating until arriving at the darkness of the senses where all understanding and reasoning fall asleep. only allowing the silence to take them in the ellipsis recently emanated by the Nothofagus that were walking on the flaccid snow, the three went with graces of faith and satisfaction, Saint Jerome escorted them with everything healthy that made the incomparable awakening of two latitudes explode who managed to revive in invisibility, after resisting the latent verbigrace of the Apokálypsis that showed that the incomparable topic denoted the ma Greater resistance to everything destructive and Omega with the only subjection that only the verb "Love" does. They reached the icy and stinking gases similar to what Santa Rita de Casia emanated, which at the same time would be dividing breakers like those declared by the Corinthians about the Israelites when they were blinded by the radiance of Moses. The same would happen in the veil of little snow that was left behind his last steps when everything was white as a growing incident that would be attached at once to Patmos and Sudpichi, as well as Kanthillana and Olympo. He says goodbye to his parents and they carry their impulsive agreements to meet on the next Solstice together with Saint Jerome and Spilaiaus on the plateau.

These are longer poems and longish poems by Michael R. Burch

Les Bijoux (“The Jewels”)
by Charles Baudelaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My lover **** and knowing my heart's whims
Wore nothing more than a few bright-flashing gems;
Her art was saving men despite their sins—
She ruled like harem girls crowned with diadems!

She danced for me with a gay but mocking air,
My world of stone and metal sparking bright;
I discovered in her the rapture of everything fair—
Nay, an excess of joy where the spirit and flesh unite!

Naked she lay and offered herself to me,
Parting her legs and smiling receptively,
As gentle and yet profound as the rising sea—
Till her surging tide encountered my cliff, abruptly.

A tigress tamed, her eyes met mine, intent ...
Intent on lust, content to purr and please!
Her breath, both languid and lascivious, lent
An odd charm to her metamorphoses.

Her limbs, her *****, her abdomen, her thighs,
Oiled alabaster, sinuous as a swan,
Writhed pale before my calm clairvoyant eyes;
Like clustered grapes her ******* and belly shone.

Skilled in more spells than evil imps can muster,
To break the peace which had possessed my heart,
She flashed her crystal rocks’ hypnotic luster
Till my quietude was shattered, blown apart.

Her waist awrithe, her ******* enormously
Out-******, and yet ... and yet, somehow, still coy ...
As if stout haunches of Antiope
Had been grafted to a boy ...

The room grew dark, the lamp had flickered out,
Till firelight, alone, lit each glowing stud;
Each time the fire sighed, as if in doubt,
It steeped her pale, rouged flesh in pools of blood.

Published by Lush Stories, The ****** Salon and loovebook



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness ... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka ... if I wished
upon a frozen star ... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm ...
yet something still not love ... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove ...

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

“Upon a Frozen Star” was my first attempt at blank verse.



These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .

I.

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber
of these ancient halls.

I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone,
not untouched.

And I am as they were
...unsure...
for the days
stretch out ahead,
a bewildering maze.

II.

Ah, faithless lover—
that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.

For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart having vaulted the Pinnacle of Love,
             and the result of each such infatuation ...
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.

III.

A solitary clock chimes the hour
from far above the campus,
but my peers,
returning from their dances,
heed it not.

And so it is
that we fail to gauge Time’s speed
because He moves so unobtrusively
about His task.

Still, when at last
we reckon His mark upon our lives,
we may well be surprised
at His thoroughness.

IV.

Ungentle maiden—
when Time has etched His little lines
so carelessly across your brow,
perhaps I will love you less than now.

And when cruel Time has stolen
your youth, as He certainly shall in course,
perhaps you will wish you had taken me
along with my broken heart,
even as He will take you with yours.

V.

A measureless rhythm rules the night—
few have heard it,
but I have shared it,
and its secret is mine.

To put it into words
is as to extract the sweetness from honey
and must be done as gently
as a butterfly cleans its wings.

But when it is captured, it is gone again;
its usefulness is only
that it lulls to sleep.

VI.

So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night,
to the moans of the moonlit hills’
bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill
with the nightjar’s strange bullfrog-like trills.

But I will not sleep this night, nor any;
how can I—when my dreams
are always of your perfect face
ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace,
and a tear upon your pillowcase? / framed by your rumpled pillowcase?

VII.

If I had been born when knights roamed the earth
and mad kings ruled savage lands,
I might have turned to the ministry,
to the solitude of a monastery.

But there are no monks or hermits today—
theirs is a lost occupation
carried on, if at all,
merely for sake of tradition.

For today man abhors solitude—
he craves companions, song and drink,
seldom seeking a quiet moment,
to sit alone, by himself, to think.

VIII.

And so I cannot shut myself
off from the rest of the world,
to spend my days in philosophy
and my nights in tears of self-sympathy.

No, I must continue as best I can,
and learn to keep my thoughts away
from those glorious, uproarious moments of youth,
centuries past though lost but a day.

IX.

Yes, I must discipline myself
and adjust to these lackluster days
when men display no chivalry
and romance is the "old-fashioned" way.

X.

A single stereo flares into song
and the first faint light of morning
has pierced the sky's black awning
once again.

XI.

This is a sacred place,
for those who leave,
leave better than they came.

But those who stay, while they are here,
add, with their sleepless nights and tears,
quaint sprigs of ivy to the walls
of these Hallowed Halls.



Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

for Anais Vionet

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

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

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

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

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

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



"Orpheus" was recited by Carla Maria Gnappi to her English literature class in Italy, along with other poems of mine, during a study of the poetry of William Blake.

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.



At the Natchez Trace
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

Beside me stands a woman,
a stanza in the song
that plays so low and fluting
and bids me sing along.

Beside me stands a woman
whose eyes reveal her soul,
whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown,
whose hips and ******* are full.

Beside me stands a woman
who scarcely knows my name;
but I would have her know my heart
if only I knew where to start.

II.
Not every man is as he seems;
not all are prone to poems and dreams.
Not every man would take the time
to meter out his heart in rhyme.
But I am not as other men—
my heart is sentenced to this pen.

III.
Men speak of their "ambition"
but they only know its name...
I never say the word aloud,
but I have felt the Flame.

IV.
Now, standing here, I do not dare
to let her know that I might care;
I never learned the lines to use;
I never worked the wolves' bold ruse.
But if she looks my way again,
perhaps I will, if only then.

V.
How can a man have come so far
in searching after every star,
and yet today,
though years away,
look back upon the winding way,
and see himself as he was then,
a child of eight or nine or ten,
and not know more?

VI.
My life is not empty; I have my desire...
I write in a moment that few men can know,
when my nerves are on fire
and my heart does not tire
though it pounds at my breast—
wrenching blow after blow.

VII.
And in all I attempted, I also succeeded;
few men have more talent to do what I do.
But in one respect, I stand now defeated;
In love I could never make magic come true.

VIII.
If I had been born to be handsome and charming,
then love might have come to me easily as well.
But if had that been, then would I have written?
If not, I'd remain; **** that demon to hell!

IX.
Beside me stands a woman,
but others look her way
and in their eyes are eagerness...
for passion and a wild caress?
But who am I to say?

Beside me stands a woman;
she conjures up the night
and wraps itself around her
till others flit about her
like moths drawn to firelight.

X.
And I, myself, am just as they,
wondering when the light might fade,
yet knowing should it not dim soon
that I might fall and be consumed.

XI.
I write from despair
in the silence of morning
for want of a prayer
and the need of the mourning.
And loneliness grips my heart like a vise;
my anguish is harsher and colder than ice.
But poetry can bring my heart healing
and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling.
And so I must write till at last sleep has called me
and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me.

XII.
Beside me stands a woman,
a mystery to me.
I long to hold her in my arms;
I also long to flee.

Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
more handsome, charming,
chic, alarming?
I hope I never know.

Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
who ever wrote her such a poem?
I know not even one.



BeMused
by Michael R. Burch

You will find in her hair
a fragrance more severe
than camphor.
You will find in her dress
no hint of a sweet
distractedness.
You will find in her eyes
horn-owlish and wise
no metaphors
of love, but only reflections
of books, books, books.

If you like Her looks,

meet me in the long rows,
between Poetry and Prose,
where we’ll win Her favor
with jousts, and savor
the wine of Her hair,
the shimmery wantonness
of Her rich-satined dress;
where we’ll press
our good deeds upon Her, save Her
from every distress,
for the lovingkindness
of Her matchless eyes
and all the suns of Her tongues.

We were young,
once,
unlearned and unwise...
but, O, to be young
when love comes disguised
with the whisper of silks
and idolatry,
and even the childish tongue claims
the intimacy of Poetry.



Resurrecting Passion
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



Progress
by Michael R. Burch

There is no sense of urgency
at the local Burger King.

Birds and squirrels squabble outside
for the last scraps of autumn:
remnants of buns,
goopy pulps of dill pickles,
mucousy lettuce,
sesame seeds.

Inside, the workers all move
with the same très-glamorous lethargy,
conserving their energy, one assumes,
for more pressing endeavors: concerts and proms,
pep rallies, keg parties,
reruns of Jenny McCarthy on MTV.

The manager, as usual, is on the phone,
talking to her boyfriend.
She gently smiles,
brushing back wisps of insouciant hair,
ready for the cover of Glamour or Vogue.

Through her filmy white blouse
an indiscreet strap
suspends a lace cup
through which somehow the ****** still shows.
Progress, we guess,...

and wait patiently in line,
hoping the Pokémons hold out.



Poppy
by Michael R. Burch

“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse, “The Second Coming”

It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn...
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.

The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows...

Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.

The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.

Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!

Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.
You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no ****** for the heart.

Originally published by Borderless Journal



An Obscenity Trial
by Michael R. Burch

The defendant was a poet held in many iron restraints
against whom several critics cited numerous complaints.
They accused him of trying to reach the "common crowd,"
and they said his poems incited recitals far too loud.

The prosecutor alleged himself most artful (and best-dressed);
it seems he’d never lost a case, nor really once been pressed.
He was known far and wide for intensely hating clarity;
twelve dilettantes at once declared the defendant another fatality.

The judge was an intellectual well-known for his great mind,
though not for being merciful, honest, sane or kind.
Clerics loved the "Hanging Judge" and the critics were his kin.
Bystanders said, "They'll crucify him!" The public was not let in.

The prosecutor began his case by spitting in the poet's face,
knowing the trial would be a farce.
"It is obscene," he screamed, "to expose the naked heart!"
The recorder (bewildered Society), well aware of his notoriety,
greeted this statement with applause.

"This man is no poet. Just look—his Hallmark shows it.
Why, see, he utilizes rhyme, symmetry and grammar! He speaks without a stammer!
His sense of rhythm is too fine!
He does not use recondite words or conjure ancient Latin verbs.
This man is an impostor!
I ask that his sentence be... the almost perceptible indignity
of removal from the Post-Modernistic roster!"

The jury left, in tears of joy, literally sequestered.

The defendant sighed in mild despair, "Might I not answer to my peers?"
But how His Honor giggled then,
seeing no poets were let in.

Later, the clashing symbols of their pronouncements drove him mad
and he admitted both rhyme and reason were bad.



Ann Rutledge’s Irregular Quilt

based on “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie

I.
Her fingers “plied the needle” with “unusual swiftness and art”
till Abe knelt down beside her: then her demoralized heart
set Eros’s dart a-quiver; thus a crazy quilt emerged:
strange stitches all a-kilter, all patterns lost.
                                                                ­      (Her host
kept her vicarious laughter barely submerged.)

II.
Years later she’d show off the quilt with its uncertain stitches
as evidence love undermines men’s plans and women’s strictures
(and a plethora of scriptures.)

III.

But O the sacred tenderness Ann’s reckless stitch contains
and all the world’s felicities: rich cloth, for love’s fine gains,
for sweethearts’ tremulous fingers and their bright, uncertain vows
and all love’s blithe, erratic hopes (like now’s).

IV.
Years later on a pilgrimage, by tenderness obsessed,
Dale Carnegie, drawn to her grave, found weeds in her place of rest
and mowed them back, revealing the spot of the Railsplitter’s joy and grief
(and his hope and his disbelief).

V.
For such is the tenderness of love, and such are its disappointments.
Love is a book of rhapsodic poems. Love is an grab bag of ointments.
Love is the finger poised, the smile, the Question — perhaps the Answer?
Love is the pain of betrayal, the two left feet of the dancer.

VI.
There were ladies of ill repute in his past. Or so he thought. Was it true?
And yet he loved them, Ann (sweet Ann!), as tenderly as he loved you.



The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

There was relief there,
without remorse,
when the tin whistle lifted its voice
in a tune of artless grief,
piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth.

And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief,
but of their faith and belief—
like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf.

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

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

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

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



I wrote this poem after discovering the poetry of e. e. cummings while reading poetry independently in high school. My “cummings period” started around 1974 at age 15-16. I believe this poem was the first of its genre. I seem to remember working on it my sophomore and junior years, making mostly minor revisions in 1975.

i (dedicated to u)

i.

i move within myself
i see beyond the sky
and fathom with full certainty:
this lifes a lethal lie

my teachers try to tell me
that they know more than i
(and well they may
but do they know
shrewd TIME is slipping by
and leaving us all to die?)

i shout within myself
i stand up to be seen
but only my eyes
watch as i rise
and i am left between
the nightmare of “REALITY”
and sleeps soothing scenes
and both are only dreams

i cry out to my “friends”
but none of them can hear
i weep in dark frustration
but they swim beyond my tears
i reach out to assist them
but they cannot find my hand
they all believe in “GOD”
yet all of them are ******

come, my self, come with me
move within your shell
cast aside such “enlightenment”
and let us leave this living hell

ii.

i watch the maidens play
their fickle games of love
and is this is what
life is of
then i have had enough

all my teachers tell me
to adjust to SOCIETY
yet none of them will venture
how (false) it came to be
this gaud, SOCIETY

i watch the maidens play
and though i want them much
i know the illusion of their purity
would shatter at my touch
leaving annihilated truth
to be pieced together to dispel
the lies that accompany youth

i watch the maidens play
and know that what i want
i cannot take because
then it would be gone

iii.

i watch the lovely maidens
i search their sightless eyes
i find that only darkness
lies behind each guise

i try to touch their feelings
but they have been replaced
by intelligence and manners
and tact and social grace

i want to make them love me
but they cannot love themselves
and though they seek love desperately
and care for little else
they stand little chance
of much more than romance
for a few days

i try to friend the men
but they have even less
for they want nothing more
than whatever seems “the best”
their hollow, burnt-out eyes
reveal their souls have flown
and all that loss has left
is a strange, sad fear of debt
and a love for things of gold

ive.

ive never seen a day break
but ive seen a life shatter
it was mine
and i suppose it still is:
all ten thousand pieces

id.

id like to put it together
(someONE please tell me how!)
for i am out of the glue
called u
that held my life together

i.e.

and i wish that u
and i were through
but whatever u do
dont say that we are!



Cycles
by Michael R. Burch

I see his eyes caress my daughter’s *******
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe...

And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers...

and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again—hard, staring, and silent—
though long-ago forgotten...

And I remember conjectures of ***** lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares...

Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard—
with a long, ineffectual stare

that years from now, he may suddenly remember.



Sunset, at Laugharne
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

At Laugharne, in his thirty-fifth year,
he watched the starkeyed hawk career;
he felt the vested heron bless,

and larks and finches everywhere
sank with the sun, their missives west—
where faith is light; his nightjarred breast

watched passion dovetail to its rest.



He watched the gulls above green shires
flock shrieking, fleeing priested shores
with silver fishes stilled on spears.

He felt the pressing weight of years
in ways he never had before—
that gravity no brightness spares,

from sunken hills to unseen stars.
He saw his father’s face in waves
which gently lapped Wales’ gulled green bays.

He wrote as passion swelled to rage—
the dying light, the unturned page,
the unburned soul’s devoured sage.

*

The words he gathered clung together
till night—the jetted raven’s feather—
fell, fell... and all was as before...

till silence lapped Laugharne’s dark shore
diminished, where his footsteps shone
in pools of fading light—no more.



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One feels no need to rush:
he smiles from beds soft, green and lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees screeching owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.



“Jessamyn’s Song” was inspired by Claude Monet’s oil painting “The Walk, Woman with a Parasol,” which I first saw around age 14 and interpreted as a walk in a meadow or heather. The woman’s dress and captivating loveliness made me think of an impending wedding, with dances and festivities. The boy made me think of a family. I gave the woman a name, Jessamyn, and wrote her story, thinking along these lines, while in high school. The opening lines were influenced by “Fern Hill” by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, one of my boyhood favorites and still a favorite today. “Jessamyn’s Song” was substantially complete by age 16, my first long poem, although I was not happy with the poem, overall. I have touched it up here and there over the last half century, but it remains substantially the same as the original poem.

Jessamyn's Song (circa age 14-16)
by Michael R. Burch

16

There are meadows heathered with thoughts of you,
where the honeysuckle winds
in fragrant, tangled vines
down to the water's edge.

Through the wind-bent grass
               I watch time pass
slow with the dying day
on its lolling, rolling way ...
And I know you’ll soon be mine.

17

There are oak trees haggard and gnarled by Time
where the shrewd squirrel makes his lair,
sleeping through winters unaware
of the white commotion below.

By the waning sun
                              I keep watch upon
the earth as she spins—so slow!—
and I know within
                   they’re absolved from sin
who sleep beneath the snow.

They do not sin, and we sin not
although we sleep and dream, in bliss,
while others rage, and charge ... and die,
and all our nights’ elations miss.

For life is ours, and through our veins
it pulses with a tranquil flow,
though in others’ it may surge and froth
and carry passions to and fro.

18

By murmuring streams
                               I sometimes dream
of whirling reels, of taut bows lancing,
when my partner’s the prettiest dancing,
and she is always you.

So let the meadows rest in peace,
and let the woodlands lie ...
Life is the pulse in your veins, and in mine—
let us not let it die.

19

By the windmill we have often kissed
as your clothing slipped,
exposing pale ******* and paler hips
to the shameless glory of the sun.

Yes, my darling, I do love you
with all my wicked heart.
Promise that you'll be my bride
and these lips will never part
for any other’s.

20

There are daisies plaited through the fields
that make the valleys shine
(though the darker hawthorns wind
up to the highest ledge).

As the rising sun
                 blinks lazily on
the horizon’s eastern edge,
I watch the tangerine dawn
congeal to a brighter lime.

Oh, the season I love best is fall—
the trees coyly shedding their leaves, and all
creation watching, in thrall.

Now you in your wedding dress, so calm,
seem less of this earth than the sky.

I expect you at any moment to
ascend through the brightening, dimensionless blue
to softly go floating by—
a cloud, or a pure-white butterfly.

21

There are rivers sparkling bright as spring
and others somber as the Nile,
but whether they may frown or smile,
none can match this brilliant stream
beside whose banks I lie and dream;
her waters, flowing swift, yet mild,
lull to sleep my new-born child!

22

There are mountains purple and pocked with Time,
home to goats and misfit trees ...
in lofty grandeur above vexed seas,
they lift their haughty heads.

When the sun explodes over tonsured domes
while bright fountains splash in youthful ruin
against the strange antediluvian runes
of tales to this day untold ...

I taste with my eyes the dawn's harsh gold
and breathe the frigid mountain air,
drinking deeply, wondering where
the magic days of youth have flown.

23

There are forests aged and ripe with rain
that loom at the brink of the trout's blue home.
There deer go to feast of the frothy foam,
to lap the gurgling water.

In murky shallows, swamped with slime,
the largemouth bass now sleeps,
his muddy memories dark and deep,
safe ’neath the sodden loam.

Now often I have wondered
how it must feel to sleep
for timeless ages, fathoms deep
within a winter dream.

26

By the window ledge where the candle begs
the night for light to live,
the deepening darkness gives
the heart good cause to shudder.

For there are curly, tousled heads
that know one use for bed
and not any other.

“Goodnight father.”
“Goodnight mother.”
“Goodnight sister.”
“Goodnight brother.”
“Tomorrow new adventures
we surely shall discover!”

66

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

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

Now, as I watch the leaves’ high flight
before the fading autumn light,
I think that, perhaps, at last I may
have learned what it means to say

goodbye.



Finally to Burn
(the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus aided by Tom o’ Bedlam)
by Michael R. Burch

Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand

and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands

where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting

and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting

and all I remember
—upon awaking—

is

to Love sometimes
is like forsaking

one’s Being—to glide
heroically beyond thought,

forsaking the here
for the There and the Not.



O, finally to Burn,
gravity beyond escaping!

To plummet is Bliss
when the blisters breaking

rain down red scabs
on the earth’s mudpuddle ...

Feathers and wax
and the watchers huddle ...

Flocculent sheep,
O, and innocent lambs!,

I will rock me to sleep
on the waves’ iambs.



To sleep’s sweet relief
in Love’s recursive Dream,

for the Night has Wings
pallid as moonbeams—

they will flit me to Life,
like a huge-eyed Phoenix

fluttering off
to quarry the Sphinx.



Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,

Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.

Quixotic, I seek Love
amid the tarnished

rusted-out steel
when to live is varnish.

To Dream—that’s the thing!
Aye, that Genie I’ll rub,

soak by the candle,
aflame in the tub.



Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,

Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.

Somewhither, somewhither
aglitter and strange,

we must moult off all knowledge
or perish caged.



I am reconciled to Life
in crypts beyond thought

where I’ll live the Elsewhere
and Dream of the Naught.

Methinks it no journey;
to tarry’s a waste,

so fatten the oxen;
make a nice baste.

I am coming, Fool Tom,
we have Somewhere to Go,

though we injure noone,
ourselves wildaglow.

Published by The Lyric and The Ekphrastic Review

This odd poem invokes and merges with the anonymous medieval poem “Tom O’Bedlam’s Song” and W. H. Auden’s modernist poem “Musee des Beaux Arts,” which in turn refers to Pieter Breughel’s painting “The Fall of Icarus.” In the first stanza Icarus levitates with the help of Athena, the goddess or wisdom, through “strange dreamlands” while Apollo, the sun god, lies sleeping. In the second stanza, Apollo predictably wakes up and Icarus plummets to earth, or back to mundane reality, as in Breughel’s painting and Auden’s poem. In the third stanza the grounded Icarus can still fly, but only in flights of imagination through dreams of love. In the fourth and fifth stanzas Icarus joins Tom Rynosseross of the Bedlam poem in embracing madness by deserting “knowledge” and its cages (ivory towers, etc.). In the final stanza Icarus agrees with Tom that it is “no journey” to wherever they’re going together and also agrees with Tom that they will injure no one along the way, no matter how intensely they glow and radiate. The poem can be taken as a metaphor for the death and rebirth of Poetry, and perhaps also as a prophecy that Poetry will rise, radiate and reattain its former glory ...



Chit Chat: in the Poetry Chat Room
by Michael R. Burch

WHY SHULD I LERN TO SPELL?
HELL,
NO ONE REEDS WHAT I SAY
ANYWAY!!! :(

Sing for the cool night,
whispers of constellations.
Sing for the supple grass,
the tall grass, gently whispering.
Sing of infinities, multitudes,
of all that lies beyond us now,
whispers begetting whispers.
And i am glad to also whisper . . .

I WUS HURT IN LUV I’M DYIN’
FER TH’ TEARS I BEEN A-CRYIN’!!!

i abide beyond serenities
and realms of grace,
above love’s misdirected earth,
i lift my face.
i am beyond finding now . . .

I WAS IN, LOVE, AND HE ******* ME!!!
THE ****!!! TOTALLY!!!

i loved her once, before, when i
was mortal too, and sometimes i
would listen and distinctly hear
her laughter from the juniper,
but did not go . . .

I JUST DON’T GET POETRY, SOMETIMES.
IT’S OKAY, I GUESS.
I REALLY DON’T READ THAT MUCH AT ALL,
I MUST CONFESS!!! ;-)

Travail, inherent to all flesh,
i do not know, nor how to feel,
although i sing them nighttimes still:
the bitter woes, that do not heal . . .

POETRY IS BORING!!!
SEE, IT *****!!! I’M SNORING!!! ZZZZZZZ!!!

The words like breath, i find them here,
among the fragrant juniper,
and conifers amid the snow,
old loves imagined long ago . . .

WHY DON’T YOU LIKE MY PERFICKT WORDS
YOU USELESS UN-AMERIC’N TURDS?!!!

What use is love, to me, or Thou?
O Words, my awe, to fly so smooth
above the anguished hearts of men
to heights unknown, Thy bare remove . . .

Keywords/Tags: Poetry, writing, chit, chat room, forum, website, social media, workshop, mortal, mortality, grass, multitudes, Walt Whitman, love, awe, serenity, serenities, grace, heights, Parnassus, art, spelling, grammar

I wrote “Chit Chat” after various experiences in online forums with wannabe poets who seemed to be more about “expressing themselves” and their gripes – often in pidgin English – than exploring the mysteries of Life and the Universe through language. There is a marked difference between your average social media poet and a John Keats, a Walt Whitman, a Pablo Neruda or an Emily Dickinson. I tried to capture something of that difference in my lyrics. My speaker is a cross between Keats and Whitman, with a touch of Neruda’s surrealist romanticism and Dickinson’s alienness thrown in. The result, I hope, is a Voice that is both enchanted by Life and detached from it. As I often feel myself.



To Have Loved
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published by The Raintown Review, Triplopia, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), The Chained Muse, Borderless Journal, The Pennsylvania Review, and in a YouTube recital by David B. Gosselin

"To Have Loved" may be as close as I have come in my original poems to ancient classical poetry channeled via modern English. I also like the fact that this poem, like my translation of "Wulf and Eadwacer," gives voice to women who are the innocent victims of wars today, in Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Yemen and  Nagorno-Karabakh.



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.

“*** 101” and “Burn, Ovid” were written about my experiences during ninth grade at Faith Christian Academy, circa age 14-15 in 1972-1973. However, these poems were not completed until 2001 and are in a more mature voice and style than most of my other early poems.



*** 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.

“*** 101” and “Burn, Ovid” were written about my experiences during ninth grade at Faith Christian Academy, circa age 14-15 in 1972-1973. However, these poems were not completed until 2001 and are in a more mature voice and style than most of my other early poems.



“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18 in high school my senior year, then worked on in college. It appeared in my poetry contest notebook and thus was substantially complete by 1978.

Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

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 vessel’s 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 I’d so often climb
when the wind was **** with the tang 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-seasoned 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 sprightlier 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 tumble 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, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” For years I thought I had written “Sea Dreams” around age 19 or 20. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about the poem in my freshman dorm, so the poem must have been started by age 18 or earlier. Dating my early poems has been a bit tricky, because I keep having little flashbacks that help me date them more accurately, but often I can only say, “I know this poem was written by about such-and-such a date, because ...”



Sharon
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15

apologies to Byron

I.

Flamingo-minted, pink, pink cheeks,
dark hair streaked with a lisp of dawnlight;
I have seen your shadow creep
through eerie webs spun out of twilight...

And I have longed to kiss your lips,
as sweet as the honeysuckle blooms,
and to hold your pale albescent body,
more curvaceous than the moon...

II.

Black-haired beauty, like the night,
stay with me till morning's light.
In shadows, Sharon, become love
until the sun lights our alcove.

Red, red lips reveal white stone:
whet my own, my passions hone.
My all in all I give to you,
in our tongues’ exchange of dew.

Now all I ever ask of you
is: do with me what now you do.

My love, my life, my only truth!

In shadows, Sharon, shed your gown;
let all night’s walls come tumbling down.

III.

Now I will love you long, Sharon,
as long as longing may be.

The first and third sections are all I can remember of a “Sharon” poem that I destroyed in a fit of frustration about my writing, around age 15. The middle section is a poem entire that I wrote around age 17. The italicized line comes from the original poem.



El Dorado
by Michael R. Burch

It's a fine town, a fine town,
though its alleys recede into shadow;
it's a very fine town for those who are searching
for an El Dorado.

Because the lighting is poor and the streets are bare
and the welfare line is long,
there must be something of value somewhere
to keep us hanging on
to our El Dorado.

Though the children are skinny, their parents are fat
from years of gorging on bleached white bread,
yet neither will leave
because all believe
in the vague things that are said
of El Dorado.

The young men with outlandish hairstyles
who saunter in and out of the turnstiles
with a song on their lips and an aimless shuffle,
scuffing their shoes, avoiding the bustle,
certainly feel no need to join the crowd
of those who work to earn their bread;
they must know that the rainbow's end
conceals a *** of gold
near El Dorado.

And the painted “actress” who roams the streets,
smiling at every man she meets,
must smile because, after years of running,
no man can match her in cruelty or cunning.
She must see the satire of “defeats”
and “triumphs” on the ambivalent streets
of El Dorado.

Yes, it's a fine town, a very fine town
for those who can leave when they tire
of chasing after rainbows and dreams
and living on nothing but fire.

But for those of us who cling to our dreams
and cannot let them go,
like the sad-eyed ladies who wander the streets
and the junkies high on snow,
the dream has become a reality
—the reality of hope
that grew too strong
not to linger on—
and so this is our home.

We chew the apple, spit it out,
then eat it "just once more."
For this is the big, big apple,
though it’s rotten to the core,
and we are its worm
in the night when we squirm
in our El Dorado.

This is an early poem of mine. I believe I wrote the first version during my “Romantic phase” around age 16 or perhaps a bit later. It was definitely written in my teens because it appears in a poetry contest folder that I put together and submitted during my sophomore year in college.



Longing

We stare out at the cold gray sea,
overcome
with such sudden and intense longing . . .
our eyes meet,
inviolate,
and we are not of this earth,
this strange, inert mass.

Before we crept
out of the shoals of the inchoate sea,
before we grew
the quaint appendages
and orifices of love . . .

before our jellylike nuclei,
struggling to be hearts,
leapt
at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun,
then watched it plummet,
the birth and death of our illumination . . .

before we wept . . .
before we knew . . .
before our unformed hearts grew numb,
                                                           ­     once again,
in the depths of the sea’s indecipherable darkness . . .

When we were only
a swirling profusion of recombinant things
wafting loose silt from the sea’s soft floor,
writhing and ******* in convulsive beds
of mucousy foliage,

flowering,
flowering,
flowering . . .

what jolted us to life?



The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Love among the infinitesimal
flotillas of amoebas is a dance
of transient appendages, wild sails
that gather in warm brine and then express
one headstream as two small, divergent wakes.

Minuscule voyage—love! Upon false feet,
the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep
toward self-immolation: two nee one.

We cannot photosynthesize the sun,
and so we love in darkness, till we come
at last to understand: man’s spineless heart
is alien to any land.
                                   We part
to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears,
amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ...
and still we sink.
                              The night is full of stars
we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours.

Have we such cells within us, bent on love
to ever-changingness, so that to part
is not to be the same, or even one?
Is love mere evolution, or a scream
against the thought of separateness—a cry
of strangled recognition? Love, or die,
or love and die a little. Hopeful death!
Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.



Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps ...

How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded ...

They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover’s ease idly tracing flesh ...

They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen ...

Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda ...

Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.

Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye



Prodigal

This poem is dedicated to Kevin Longinotti, who died four days short of graduation from Vanderbilt University, the victim of a tornado that struck Nashville on April 16, 1998.

You have graduated now,
to a higher plane
and your heart’s tenacity
teaches us not to go gently
though death intrudes.

For eighteen days
—jarring interludes
of respite and pain—
with life only faintly clinging,
like a cashmere snow,
testing the capacity
of the blood banks
with the unstaunched flow
of your severed veins,
in the collapsing declivity,
in the sanguine haze
where Death broods,
you struggled defiantly.

A city mourns its adopted son,
flown to the highest ranks
while each heart complains
at the harsh validity
of God’s ways.

On ponderous wings
the white clouds move
with your captured breath,
though just days before
they spawned the maelstrom’s
hellish rift.

Throw off this mortal coil,
this envelope of flesh,
this brief sheath
of inarticulate grief
and transient joy.

Forget the winds
which test belief,
which bear the parchment leaf
down life’s last sun-lit path.

We applaud your spirit, O Prodigal,
O Valiant One,
in its percussive flight into the sun,
winging on the heart’s last madrigal.



wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down
by michael r. burch

each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival.

the fiercer and more perilous the wrath,
the wilder and wickeder the weaponry,
the better the daily odds
(just don’t bet on the long term, or revival).

so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically,
if indeed He exists
                                 as ur Bible insists—
the Wildest and the Wickedest of all
with the brightest of creatures in thrall
(unless u
somehow got that bleary
Theo-ry
wrong too).



They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch

“We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”—George W. Bush

We will not forget ...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment),
still flashing grins they could not quite repent ...
Nor should they—anguish triumphs just an instant;
this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope—the shriveled chrysalis
that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then ***** about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. “Survive”
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s
awakening ... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.



Alien Nation
by Michael R. Burch

for J. S. S., a Christian poet who believes in “hell”

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices “speech”
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro —
far colder than Jesus’s words
over the “fortunate” sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
must have felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.

Note: The coinage “grok” appears in Robert Heinlein’s classic sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The novel’s protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, was raised on Mars by enlightened Martians, and he often feels out of sorts on Earth, where he struggles to grok (understand deeply and profoundly) earthlings and their primitive, often inhuman, ways.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and white is white
and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

A madman does not choose his words;
they come to him:
the moon’s illuminations,
intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now,
and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell,
and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen,
or cut off your ears,
for I Am weary.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

2.
Listen to me now: I had a Vision.
An elevated train derailed, and Fell.
It was the Church brought low, almost to Hell.
And I alone survived, who dream of Mercy:
the Heretic, who speaks behind the Veil.

3.
Listen to me now: I saw an airplane
fall from the sky. And why should I explain?
The Visions are the same. It is my Heresy
that I survive, because I sing of Mercy,
while elevated “saints” go down in flames.

4.
Listen to me now: I saw in Nashville
how those who “soar” will plummet—Fame in flames!—
and fall on those below, as if to **** them.
The lowly, saved, will understand their names.

5.
Listen to me now: I heard another
say, “That which died shall Resurrect and Live.”
An angel with a Rose bestowing Mercy!
What can it mean, but that my Visions give
fair warning to the world that God wants Mercy.
My Heresy is that we must forgive!

6.
Listen to me now: she heard god calling —
O, who will love me, who will be my friend?
Does he want Perfect Saints, the whitewashed Purists,
who frown down on their “brothers,” without end?

7.
Listen to me now: you are not perfect,
and your “wise counsel” helps no one at all:
unless it’s sweetened with the sweetest Mercy,
it’s pure astringent antiseptic gall.

8.
Listen to me now, and learn this lesson:
If God wants mercy, why dig at the speck
in your brother’s eye, when even now the Beam,
your lack of mercy, spares, no, neither neck,
becomes the Hangman’s Millstone. We’re all children,
all little ones! Be patient with the fleck!

9.
Listen to me now: for the Announcer
explained that wars have given Presidents
the precedents to soon assume all Power.
Vote, citizens, or be mere residents!

10.
O, listen to me now: I saw the Warheads
stored safely underground, except for One.
A red-haired woman with a bright complexion
seduced the guard. Translucent blouse, red thong,
white bra — these were her fearsome antique weapons.
I saw the Skull and Crossbones! Heed my Song!

11.
O, listen to me now, and hear my Gospel:
three verses of such sweet simplicity!
God is Light: in Him there is no darkness.
In Christ, no condemnation: Liberty!
God want no Sacrifice, but only Mercy.
O, who could ask for sweeter Heresy?

12.
Theology? I swear that I disdain it!
If Love can be explained, why then explain it!
If Love can’t be explained why, then, should God,
if God is Love? Nor hell nor cattle ****
is needed, if God’s good, and God’s supreme.
Ask, children, what “re-ligion” truly means:
“return to *******!” Heed the bondsman’s screams!

13.
Heed, children, which Theologies you dream
when Hellish Nightmares wake you, when you Scream
for comfort, but no comforter is there.
Which Voices do you heed, which Crosses bear?
If god is light, whence do Dark Visions come
which leave the Taste of Venom on your Tongue,
with which you **** your brother for one Sin
you do not share, ten thousand underskin
like Itching Worms that Squirm and Vilely Hiss:
“Your brother’s sin will keep him from god’s bliss,
but You are safe because god favors You!”
If God is Love, how can this voice be true?

14.
For God is not a favorer of men.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.



And a Little Child Shall Lead Them
by Michael R. Burch

1.
"Where's my daughter?"

"Get on your knees, get on your knees!"

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

2.
where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails
when thunder howls
when hailstones scream
when winter scowls
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
where does the butterfly go?

Four-year-old Dae'Anna Reynolds, nicknamed Dae Dae, loves fireworks; we can see her holding a "Family Pack" on the Fourth of July; the accompanying Facebook blurb burbles, "Anything to see her happy." But perhaps Dae Dae won’t appreciate fireworks nearly as much in the future, or "Independence" Day either.

Diamond Lavish Reynolds, Dae Dae’s mother, will remain "preternaturally calm" during the coming encounter with the cops, or at least until the very end.

Philando Divall Castile, cafeteria manager at a Montessori magnet school, was "famous for trading fist bumps with the kids and slipping them extra Graham crackers." Never convicted of a serious crime, he was done in by a broken tail light. Or was it his “wide-set nose” that made him look like a robbery suspect? Or was it racism, or perhaps just blind—and blinding—fear?

Lavish, Dae Dae and Castile went from picnicking in the park early on the evening of the Fourth, in an "all-American idyll" celebrating freedom, to the opposite extreme: being denied the simple freedom to live and pursue happiness. Over a broken tail light and/or a suspiciously broad nose.

Castile can be seen sitting on a park bench. Dae Dae and a friend are "running happily across the grass." Lavish, wearing an American flag top, exclaims, "Happy Fourth, everybody! Put the guns down, let these babies enjoy these fireworks!" Odd to have to put guns down to celebrate a holiday. Only in America, land of the free and the home of the brave?

3.
where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill,
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
when the only relief’s a banked fire’s glow
where does the butterfly go?

... Now the cop’s gun is drawn in earnest, four shots ring out, Castile slumps over in his seat, a "gaping bullet hole in his arm," the vivid red blood seeping "across the chest of his white T-shirt." The cop continues to point his pistol into the car. His voice is "panicky."

"****!"

The same curse a Baton Rouge police officer screamed after shooting another black man in a similar incident.

"He was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him!"

"Ma'am just keep your hands where they are!"

"I will sir, no worries."

"****!"

"I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand open."

"You told him to get out his ID, sir, and his driver's license."

Little Dae Dae, sitting in the back seat, watches it all unfold. So praiseworthy when confronting the unthinkable, she seeks to console her mother, her voice "tender and reassuring" in marked contrast to the cop’s screams.

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

4.
and where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?

"Oh my God, please don't tell me he's dead! Please don't tell me my boyfriend went like that!"

"Keep your hands where they are, please!"

Suddenly so polite, perhaps sensing some sort of mistake?

"Yes, I will, sir. I'll keep my hands where they are."

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

5.
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

More cops appear on the scene.

"Get the female passenger out!"

"Ma'am exit the car right now, with your hands up. Exit now."

"Keep 'em up, keep 'em up! Face away from me and walk backward! Keep walking!"

"Where's my daughter? You got my daughter?"

"Get on your knees! Get on your knees!"

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

6.
Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

"Ma'am, you're just being detained for now, until we get this straightened out, OK!"

By now the cops realize the severity of the situation and Castile's injuries, which will result in his death within twenty minutes of the shooting.

"****! ****! ****! ****! ****!"

"Please don't tell me my boyfriend's gone! He don't deserve this! Please, he's a good man. He works for St. Paul Public Schools. He doesn't have a record of anything. He's never been in jail, anything. He's not a gang member, anything."

Lavish begins praying aloud: "Allow him to be still here with us, with me … Please Lord, wrap your arms around him … Please make sure that he's OK, he's breathing … Just spare him, please. You know we are innocent people, Lord … We are innocent. My four-year-old can tell you about it."

Lavish asks one of the cops if she can retrieve her phone.

"It's right there, on the floor."

"****! It has to be processed."

The cop speaks to Dae Dae, who has started heading back to the car.

"Can you just stand right there, sweetie?"

"No, I want to get my mommy's purse."

"I'll take care of that for you, OK? Can you just stand right there for me?"

The cops continue to treat Lavish as a suspect. She later said that the cops "treated me like a criminal ... like it was my fault."

"Can you just search her?"

Mother addresses daughter tenderly: "Come here, Dae Dae."

"Mommy…"

"Don't be scared."

Lavish informs Facebook Live: "My daughter just witnessed this."

She tips the phone's camera to the side window of the squad car: "That's the police officer over there that did it. I can't really do **** because they got me handcuffed."

"It's OK, mommy."

"I can't believe they just did this!"

Lavish cries out, sounding "trapped, grief-torn." Dae Dae speaks again, "mighty with love," a child whose "quiet magnificence" commands us to also rise to the occasion.

"It's okay, I'm right here with you."

7.
And a little child shall lead them.

Amen

NOTE: The quoted parts of this poem were taken from a blow-by-blow account of the incident, "The Bravest Little Girl in the World," written by Michael Daly and published by The Daily Beast.



Chariots Afire
by Michael R. Burch

“He was too gentle for this earth.” — Elizabeth Harris Burch, who asked me to write this poem

Elijah Jovan McCain was a young, slight black man who weighed just 140 pounds and had never been arrested or charged with any crime. Friends and family described him as a “spiritual seeker, pacifist, oddball, vegetarian, athlete, and peacemaker who was exceedingly gentle.”

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world —
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

Elijah had taught himself to play violin and guitar. During lunch breaks from his job as a massage therapist, Elijah took his instruments to animal shelters and played for the abandoned animals, believing his music helped put them at ease. Friends said Elijah’s gentleness with animals extended to his fellow human beings. One of his clients recalled Elijah as “the sweetest, purest person I have ever met. He was definitely a light in a whole lot of darkness.”

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace —Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.

On August 24, 2019, in the Denver suburb of Aurora, a 911 caller reported that someone who turned out to be Elijah was wearing a ski mask, flailing his arms, and looked “sketchy.” (Elijah was dressed warmly and  wearing a ski mask because he had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to chill easily. His family believes the “arm flailing” was dancing and the transcript below confirms that Elijah was listening to music as he walked home.) After being accosted by three police officers, Elijah was pinned down, placed in a choke hold, and given an overdose of 500 mg of the sedative ketamine. He then went into cardiac arrest and died six days later. All three officers said their body cameras were knocked off during the incident.

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

Jurors would later convict one officer of third-degree assault and criminally negligent homicide, while acquitting two other officers of all charges. Two paramedics who administered the overdose were found guilty of negligent homicide.

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

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

THE TRANSCRIPT

Officer: Do me a favor. Stop right there. Hey, stop right there. Stop. Stop.

Elijah: I have a right (crosstalk).

Officer: Stop. Stop. I have a right to stop you, because you’re being suspicious.

Elijah: Well, okay.

Officer: Turn around. Turn around.

Elijah: I see your (inaudible).

Officer: Turn around. Stop. Stop tensing up, dude.

Elijah: Let go of me.

Officer: Stop tensing up, bro. Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Let go of me.

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Let me go.

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: No, let go of me.

Elijah: No. I am an introvert!

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking.

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Stop. Stop!

Officer: Relax.

Elijah: I’m going home!

Officer: Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.

Elijah: Leave me alone!

Officer: Stop.

THE OFFICERS TAKE ELIJAH TO THE GROUND

Elijah: You guys started to arrest me and I was stopping my music to listen. Now let go of me.

Officer: (inaudible) Let’s get over to grass there. Lay you down (inaudible).

Elijah: I intend to take my power back because I intend to be (inaudible). I get to be (inaudible).

Officer: (crosstalk) He just grabbed your gun, dude.

Officer: (crosstalk) Stop, dude! (inaudible). Get us some more units. We’re fighting him.

ELIJAH IS PINNED DOWN

Elijah: I can’t breathe!

Officer 1: Get him on back, he’s getting cuffs.

Officer 2: (Inaudible) In a bar-hammer.

Officer 1: Stop!

Officer 2: Stop!

Elijah: I can’t breathe, please stop!

Elijah: My name is Elijah McClain!

Officer: We had to use carotid.

Elijah: That’s all I was doing, I was just going home! (inaudible). I’m an introvert, and I’m different!

Officer: I heard some snoring.

Elijah: (Inaudible) I’m just different! I’m just different. That’s all! That’s all I was doing!

Officer: It was actually Rosenblatt’s. He reached for your gun, dude.

Officer: When we showed him up. When we showed up, he was wearing a ski mask.

Elijah: (crosstalk) Forgive me! All I was trying to do was become better.

Officer: We started it because he reached for Rosie’s gun.

These were Elijah’s last words:

I can't breathe. I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McClain. That's my house. I was just going home. I'm an introvert. I'm just different. That's all. I'm so sorry. I have no gun. I don't do that stuff. I don't do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don't even **** flies! I don't eat meat! But I don't judge people, I don't judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I will do it. I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I'll do it. You all are phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I'm a mood Gemini. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Ow, that really hurt! You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. [after vomiting] Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to do that. I just can't breathe correctly.

THE END

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

Elijah would cling to life for six days before his soul left his body forever...

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.



Keywords/Tags: These Hallowed Halls, ivy, college, university, school, class, classmates, students, study, Baudelaire, jewels, lover, Ars Poetica, Chariots Afire, And a Little Child Shall Lead Them, Sharon, Byron

Now that people are becoming more aware of my poetic efforts, interests are being expressed regarding the background of my poetry - in addition, to my spiritual muse. In this installment, I share the background and poem "In Remembrance of Grandma".

I recognize that most of you reading this article will not know much about my maternal Grandmother, other than what you're able to glean from this page. However, there are universal lessons that need to be shared. This poem was originally written for her funeral.

For nearly forty years, I was blessed to have known my grandparents; blessed - because many people don't have the opportunity to know their family history personally from those who came before them. Within about one decade, mine were all gone - with my maternal grandmother being the last one to die. Of the four of them, I had spent the most time with her. My grandmother had moved to Portland, Maine; this came about as the result of two significant events in her life. First, her husband Al ***** died unexpectedly; second, her oldest daughter (and my mom) had gone through a divorce. So they decided to purchase a home jointly and move on with their lives. Also living with them was my aunt Tina, my mother's younger sister.

My grandmother was an intelligent woman; she was one of those people who completed the New York Times crossword puzzles - in ink and usually in under an hour. And she grew some of the most beautiful roses in her tiny backyard. It was wonderful to see the joy in her eyes when it came to her flowers. The problem was that she was heart-broken when Al passed away; for decades they would go dancing at night, just to hold one another more often. With him gone, she stopped living for herself. Less than a year from his retirement, her husband died on the picket line at work. Although I can only imagine her grief, it was difficult to see the affects of this tragedy slowly eat away at her soul. She rarely left her home, with the exception of going to Church, the grocery store or some of the neighbors' homes a few times during the month. She and Al were to go to Hawaii for a second honeymoon, but she could not bear to go there without him. In The Word, we are essentially reminded that "people without vision perish" (and yes, I know that there are variations of interpretation of this concept). Despite our ability to absorb pain, we must learn to move forward in life and not let the pain consume us.

For many years, she smoked cigarettes and was unwilling to give them up. She did so eventually; my mother moved out of their house, Tina got married; she and her husband lived with my grandma. Tina and husband Greg started their own family, raising three boys - thus giving her the incentive to quit. As most everyone knows, smoking increases one's risk of having cancer. My family were under the impression that she had managed to escape the misery of that disease. Less than two weeks from her death was when most of the family learned that she had contracted cancer and emphysema.

Although I understand and appreciate the need for privacy, it was selfish of my grandmother not to share the condition of her health. Her justification for not telling anyone, was that she had decided not to go through with the cancer treatment. By not telling us, she figured that no one would be given the opportunity to dissuade her from her decision. After all, it was her decision (and rightfully so). Before she died, Tina started quickly gathering information about cancer - to better learn about what to expect regarding the few remaining days of her mother's life. One cancer brochure shocked her; as a result of reading the material, she was now having to deal with guilt. This particular pamphlet laid out symptoms and patterns of human behavior of those suffering from this fatal disease - stuff that Tina had observed, but never realized the meaning of until it was too late. So in effect, my grandmother caused her family more pain by not sharing. In addition, not everyone who cared about her, had enough time to say good-bye (while she was alive).

Although I had time to compose this brief poem in her honor, I did not have enough time to process my grandmother's death fully (prior to the service). I was supposed to read the following poem and share a few words. To my surprise, I was choked up with immense grief, which kept me from delivering my eulogy; my wife kindly stepped in and presented the poem. One of my brothers was extremely upset for my inability to talk on behalf of my grandmother; so he spoke on my family's behalf. It's one of my few regrets in life; however, she was the only grandparent of mine that got to read my poetry manuscript. Less than two months before her death, she had taken time read my poetry and was pleasantly pleased with my efforts. During her appraisal of my work was the first time I learned that she wrote poetry - as of today, I've never gotten to read a line of poetry that she wrote. So it breaks my heart not to know what she composed, as well as not being able to share any more of my writing with her. And so here is my tribute for her...



　

In Remembrance of Grandma

A manicured garden
of colored, cultured roses
now goes untended.
For Marguerite has been freed
of all mortal constraint;
left behind
is a silver trowel
and dancing shoes,
as her spirit flies
to the Hawaiian shore
for pirouetting barefoot
on the seashell sand.

Goodbye Grandma *****; I miss you already.
(18 June 2006)

Sleepy murmurs with the shades drawn shut
Only a thin crack of light attempting to say,
A early & abrupt good morning
But I don't really want a morning at all
Rolling over as the sheets rub my skin
Light & airy, but I feel very heavy
I admire you in muted silence
You meet my eyes with ocean calm
I shift closer to you, pulling my chest to yours
You wrap your arms around me
And I do the same, we are mirrors
I lay my head against your collar bone
Let out a long held breath,
That pushes it's way out hurriedly
One of my legs goes between yours
A tangle of me & you
I feel your chin on my head
I feel like a tiny flower in your hands
I whisper, closing my eyes,
"Is it going to be like this forever?"
I feel you sigh,
Your chest rises & falls
Filled, then emptied with it
You run your hand over,
Then through my hair
And I let out a thankful bit of air
"Only if you want it to be, my love."

in their formative years*
these stars burnt bright
movie theatres took them
on a stratospheric flight

they became famous
for being kids of talented nerve
the rolling camera's
showing their dynamic verve

yet the tinsel clad images
weren't portraying the true self
child actors were a studio's
road to greedy pelf

when reaching the teenage
period of their existence
drugs and alcohol plagued them
with much persistence

something was absent
as they grew to adulthood
little or no care given by
pushy parents in their childhood

tiny stars that once twinkled
did fall ******* the ground
their careers in dream flicks
bought them all unbound

Hollywood's picture factory
wasn't substantive in its part
which left many juveniles
*to feel so aggrieved of heart

Senlin sat before us and we heard him.
He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him.
Was he small, with reddish hair,
Did he light his pipe with a meditative stare
And a twinkling flame reflected in blue eyes?
'I am alone': said Senlin; 'in a forest of leaves
The single leaf that creeps and falls.
The single blade of grass in a desert of grass
That none foresaw and none recalls.
The single shell that a green wave shatters
In tiny specks of whiteness on brown sands . . .
How shall you understand me with your hearts,
Who cannot reach me with your hands? . . .'
The city dissolves about us, and its walls
Are the sands beside a sea.
We plunge in a chaos of dunes, white waves before us
Crash on kelp tumultuously,
Gulls wheel over foam, the clouds blow tattered,
The sun is swallowed . . . Has Senlin become a shore?
Is Senlin a grain of sand beneath our footsteps,
A speck of shell upon which waves will roar? . . .
Senlin! we cry . . . Senlin! again . . . no answer,
Only the crash of sea on a shell-white shore.
Yet, we would say, this is no shore at all,
But a small bright room with lamplight on the wall;
And the familiar chair
Where Senlin sat, with lamplight on his hair.

As we sit here, facing a picture
Framed
It means nothing to us
The shapes all shift into blurs
A band of starry eyed kids scream below as if they've never been hurt
People smile for a second as they forget the aching pain they've felt in their veins all day
Meanwhile a small child is crying in alley
A mud pie is being cooked in the sun for supper
Tiny knots are being pulled to create a product that will be overlooked or celebrated
Or worn in a puddle through the dirt maybe on a beach

From this island
water and more tiny islands
heavily treed with Douglas fir
landing ground for ocean otters
while orca whales glide by
spout and spray
the beach, broken shelled
puddled wells of tide pools
filling, spilling over again
brown bauble seaweed mingles
round algae rocks, barnacle shingled
here where the air breathes salt scented
water running wild with salmon.

Last Saturday, I took an empty seat
on a park bench, with book in hand.
Feeling sorry for myself, I failed-
to notice others on this public land.

Disillusioned with life’s loneliness,
my heart and face both wore sad frowns.
From my perspective, this world was…
insistent on dragging my weary soul down.

While my inner sadness wasn’t enough,
to completely complement my pitiful day,
I was approached by a breathless boy,
who had taken time to rest from his play.

With unexpected exuberance, he spoke
to me, with his head oddly, tilted down,
as he shared an unwanted gift with me-
"Look at this flower, I’ve just found!"

Though all of its petals were badly worn,
I could tell, it had been a supple rose;
my spirit, desired only misery’s company
and not his presence of disheveled clothes.

I hoped that he would take his treasure
and leave- in search of solitary play;
so I imitated my finest, insincere smile
and intentionally shifted my gaze away.

Instead of retreating, he sat beside me.
“My flower is scented and beautiful too;
thanks for being my newest friend today,
for I picked this, especially for you.”

Patiently waiting, with tiny hands extended,
he presented the remnant of his dead ****;
I knew I had to take it, to induce his leave-
so I sarcastically replied "Just what I need."

Without an explanation, he held it mid-air;
then I finally noticed, for the first time,
that this happy, gift-toting child was blind
and I’m left more speechless than a boxed mime.

Thanking him with a repentant, quivering voice,
my streaming tears shone brightly like the sun;
while I managed to express some real gratitude,
I acknowledged that he had chosen the “best one”.

Unaware of the powerful impact that he had on me,
he smiled and joyfully slid down off our bench;
then he wandered off, as quickly as he could-
with a second, dead rose that he lovingly clenched.

So I was stunned, wondering how he managed to see
this woman drowning in her self-indulgent plight.
Through his blindness, I saw that the problem was me;
by his heart action, he blessed me with true sight.

From this moment, I vow to change and see beauty
in life and appreciate every second that's mine.
Therefore, I’ve decided to move forward with purpose,
for I can’t allow my fragile heart to remain blind.

And even now, I’m becoming emotionally overwhelmed
with this unexpected flood of tear-filled shame.
In retrospect, my manners were severely lacking:
for I neglected to ask- this earth-angel… his name.

I’ve cried a lot inside
since we said our last good-bys.
I couldn’t believe my eyes
and my ears but this was our very last round.

You drank your usual beer
I took four more shots of my favorite tequila.
“I don’t want you to cry; you love crying it seems, but time will pass.”
You said with a forced smile
and falling tears.

My own falling tears, that I tried to hide,
were tiny sharp pieces of shattered glass
inside my heart.
But I know we had to say it,
our last “Good bye!
And for the rest of our lives...

I knew it would happen that way;
My inevitably bad fate!
So I bowl my eyes out from day one;
There was no way out...

But even when we are apart,
together this far,
I will never forget you!
I will always forgive you
for not loving me enough
or maybe loving me too much.

I'll never know for sure
If I was just a price to win
the one thing  
you couldn't have,
"The one that got away"
or if I really was
your first true love, the One
and only true love of your life...

I am crossing the oceans not knowing the answers of what love was?
I thought you had all the answers
but you didn’t know how to love either.
We were to young souls swimming in an idle  loveless lustful lost world.

But I made my bed and my final choice.
I had to say goodbye forever,
to my first love!  
It was time to let go
and finally grow up!
Adios Amor!

if you are the sun,
i am the moon.

you are spring afternoons
wrapped in sunshine and birdsong.

i am crisp autumn evenings
cinnamon scented and starlit.

you are a swimming pool
on the hottest day of the year
that appears cool at first glance
but smothers with its heat.

i am crinkled red, orange, and brown;
drifting with the breeze.
i am melting ice with tiny air bubbles trapped inside
releasing frigid air in tiny bursts.

1

Senlin sat before us and we heard him.
He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him.
Was he small, with reddish hair,
Did he light his pipe with a meditative stare
And a twinkling flame reflected in blue eyes?
'I am alone': said Senlin; 'in a forest of leaves
The single leaf that creeps and falls.
The single blade of grass in a desert of grass
That none foresaw and none recalls.
The single shell that a green wave shatters
In tiny specks of whiteness on brown sands . . .
How shall you understand me with your hearts,
Who cannot reach me with your hands? . . .'

The city dissolves about us, and its walls
Are the sands beside a sea.
We plunge in a chaos of dunes, white waves before us
Crash on kelp tumultuously,
Gulls wheel over foam, the clouds blow tattered,
The sun is swallowed . . . Has Senlin become a shore?
Is Senlin a grain of sand beneath our footsteps,
A speck of shell upon which waves will roar? . . .
Senlin! we cry . . . Senlin! again . . . no answer,
Only the crash of sea on a shell-white shore.

Yet, we would say, this is no shore at all,
But a small bright room with lamplight on the wall;
And the familiar chair
Where Senlin sat, with lamplight on his hair.

2

Senlin, alone before us, played a music.
Was it himself he played? . . . We sat and listened,
Perplexed and pleased and tired.
'Listen!' he said, 'and you will learn a secret--
Though it is not the secret you desired.
I have not found a meaning that will praise you!
Out of the heart of silence comes this music,
Quietly speaks and dies.
Look! there is one white star above black houses!
And a tiny man who climbs toward the skies!
Where does he walk to? What does he leave behind him?
What was his foolish name?
What did he stop to say, before he left you
As simply as he came?
"Death?" did it sound like, "love and god, and laughter,
Sunlight, and work, and pain . . .?"
No--it appears to me that these were symbols
Of simple truths he found no way to explain.
He spoke, but found you could not understand him--
You were alone, and he was alone.

"He sought to touch you, and found he could not reach you,--
He sought to understand you, and could not hear you.
And so this music, which I play before you,--
Does it mean only what it seems to mean?
Or is it a dance of foolish waves in sunlight
Above a desperate depth of things unseen?
Listen! Do you not hear the singing voices
Out of the darkness of this sea?
But no: you cannot hear them; for if you heard them
You would have heard and captured me.
Yet I am here, talking of laughter.
Laughter and love and work and god;
As I shall talk of these same things hereafter
In wave and sod.
Walk on a hill and call me: "Senlin! . . . Senlin! . . ."
Will I not answer you as clearly as now?
Listen to rain, and you will hear me speaking.
Look for my heart in the breaking of a bough . . .'

3

Senlin stood before us in the sunlight,
And laughed, and walked away.
Did no one see him leaving the doors of the city,
Looking behind him, as if he wished to stay?
Has no one, in the forests of the evening,
Heard the sad horn of Senlin slowly blown?
For somewhere, in the worlds-in-worlds about us,
He changes still, unfriended and alone.
Is he the star on which we walk at daybreak,
The light that blinds our eyes?
'Senlin!' we cry. 'Senlin!' again . . . no answer:
Only the soulless brilliance of blue skies.

Yet we would say, this was no man at all,
But a dream we dreamed, and vividly recall;
And we are mad to walk in wind and rain
Hoping to find, somewhere, that dream again.

me, a tiny moth
i'm unsettled
i'm scattered
and i don't know which light is the right one
i'm not the person i knew
or the person i want to me
i feel like a blueprint folded into origami
and i don't know how to be useful
i've been taking magazine clippings
like little bits of stolen wool
i've been keeping them in a book
making pictures of the parts
and i don't know where my heart is
i don't know what i want from the bulb

It begins with a look
A quiet exchange of the eyes
Time no longer exists
Seconds quicken to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to months
Becoming precious artifacts in a once empty soul
Every encounter shared becomes sacred
In this endless world of possibilities you two created
And then it happens
Your heart becomes so full with love, it feels as if it might burst
And then it happens

Your heart explodes
Matter strewn across places unknown
Millions of tiny pieces
Where you began, he ended
Every day now
night, filled with shards of rain
You see him everywhere
Because your imagination wishes it so
You become afraid of the dark
Not only the one in your head
But the absence of his slumbering silloutte traced by moonlight
Endless drudgery with a phantom limb
Dreams gone up in smoke
Mockingly dissipating
Like the hope you once had

                                


Forever turned to never
Pain absolute

You tried to be my lighthouse
(though I never asked you to),
a bright, clean, unwavering beacon
that could guide me through
the most treacherous,
the most turbulent,
the most shark-infested of waters,
and bring my sea-tossed self
safely back to harbour.

How frustrating it must have been for you to watch me
- in spite of your true, benevolent light -
wrecking myself against every rock I could find,
chasing storms,
searching for mines and riptides,
hanging out where the sirens
in their tiny, iridescent-scaled bikinis
ride on barracuda.

Moonlight; just enough to illuminate the silhouettes creating the forest -
just enough to help the sky glow; a black ocean freckled with stars, so modest.
With tiny chimes in the distant wind of the flickering trees
signalling the beat of pure white galloping hooves heard over the silent breeze.
A myth? Perhaps. Or, more believably, the strength of the woodland?
She casts a playful spell upon us all with her charm easily, as if planned.
Wild and free, full of purity and innocence; she brings excitement  
and is a reminder to never grow up but stay full of enchantment.

A shot of mauve and iridescent green caught my eyes ‘a dragonfly danced on the edge of the falling water.
My fingers dug into the soft delicate moss growing beside me as I stood naked my body pressed back against the smooth worn rock.

A warm breeze fought to caress my skin like exquisite silk, cool crisp water slithered down my freshly hot oiled coconut skin dancing and sparkling into yin mists that perfumed the air, tiny rainbow suns burst into stars and bounced off into cascading waters below.

Beautiful emerald shadows like Balinese painted ritual dancers played in the corners of my eyes, the spirits of the forest were alive and the leaves played their music rustling in the tropical breeze, above the waterfalls symphony played beautifully down on me

── my gaze ever wanton.

Brilliant hibiscus flowers were exploding into purples, orange, yellow and sweet creams fading to pink dusk island dreams that flowed all about me, my mind tasted luscious heat dew from sweet blood red oranges in clusters that hung low on branches, and ripe swollen Guavas fallen left fruit in rotting, pungent sweetness filled my nose rising from rich soil beds.

Bright butterflies were prancing on giant flowers, as though unknown souls of the past still played here. Delicate webs weaved and flowed as I gazed upward into the emerald canopy, silk strands struck red glittered in fine sun rays furrowing a haste of gold and silver as topical spiders weaved wearing the mark of poison.

Pomegranate and caramel coconut memories filled my mind, as I drifted picturing his face, enchanted lips that whispered incantations and rasp his tongue captures me in passions everlasting pulse.
My nails dug deeper into the mosses and the water continued to rush over me quelling the fire within, cooling, caressing slowly closing my eyes I could see,

── I could taste, I dreamt only in his mind.

He smelt of sandalwood, patchouli ash and cedar, I shifted back closer to the coolness of the rock pressing my cheeks harder against the smoothness, his eyes loomed before me cocoa brown haunted paradise. Each tasting of him caressed my veins, I became his fruit, my heart rapt in succession as pomegranate juice filled my mouth.

Yearning I burned for him glowing and the forest chanted in ceremony the ritual had begun, sentences filled the air as though written by constellations and I his, a silver star in quiver.
He whispered softly, “Come, I call to thee take of the day I conjure by night, your adornment and paradise our fleshes emerald by moon light are worn as one.”

──He sits gazing, his coat shimmering sable shot by nights obsidian, pearled teeth bared in paradises hunger, it is dawn evermore among the night trees. He gleans silently watching and waiting.....

© Arnay Rumens (ASPAR) 2016

I kissed daniel because
he made me feel like a little girl
and that's all I've ever wanted to stay.
I kissed him because
he made me feel like a live wire,
ready to sizzle
and pop
and maybe **** someone.
We can only hope.
I kissed him hard,
I kissed him wet
so I could feel the spit
break between our lips.
I kissed him good
and fast against the wall.
I kissed him goodnight
I kissed him good bye

2. He got me so high I coughed and drool came out of my mouth and
his friend asked
"hey.... Um are you okay?"
And I shook my head no,
but they didn't really care anyway.  And I walked down the long hallway in my tiny shorts so they could both see the sway of my ***,
the sway in the walk of someone
who has gone entirely mad.

3. Daniel said 37 is his last real year before he hits middle age.
And he's halfway through it.
And I'm turning 19 next month
and he says that's where the real fun is cause that means I've had a year
of adulthood to figure my **** out
and I've still decided to be a *****.
He says 19 will be my real slutty year, the year I turn this bag of meat
and bones into a **** star.
He says I'll always be the best.
He says I'll make it real real big.
He says he will watch me
******* another man while he's ******* someone else
in the next town he goes to

4. Daniel said I was evil.
I told him he was a horrible person and he pinned me down
and did the things horrible people do.
I asked him why he thought I was evil and he said he can see it in my eyes. Real cold and mean,
oh **** it's a real nice gleam.
Like sharpened knives and laughter when a chalkboard screeches.
He says I'll die within next year if I keep living like I am.
I guess he doesn't believe me
when I say I just really don't care.

5.
Bad girl bad girl sad girl they say.
Like how I can't make eye contact
and malls freak me out.
How I don't care how fast I drive my car cause I've got places to be,
like nowhere.
Knives don't scare me,
in fact,
cut me so I can show you how good
I am at not flinching.
Pull my hair and
pin my down and
I'll show you a good time babe,
cause this feels like love if
you're good enough at pretending. They call it self destruction,
I call it preservation.

These days I am amazed
How this tiny apartment
Suddenly contains so much space
Vast, like an ocean
I am drowning in endless spheres

I am thinking about how we didn’t even fit a couch into it
How you threw away your old shoes
How I buried mine under pillars of clothes in the cellar
How the walls hugged us at night
How our hopes and dreams tried to escape the window
How we didn’t let them
How we wanted to adopt a cat so badly
How we were afraid the walls would swallow it

But this morning I woke up,
Sheets like a large blanket of snow
A heavy silence weighing me down
So much air but so little breath

I barely saw the end of the room
Just a dark tunnel where there is no light at the end or anything at all
Just me and is ridiculously large space
Suffocating me with its infinity

I recovered your stuff from the cellar
Hung your pictures on the wall again
Even put up that ugly shelf you used to love

But no matter how hard I tried to fill the room
The floor just soaked in everything
And there was only so much space

Can't you see the tiny storm cloud
With it's thunder cracks so loud
Feeling the gentle rain caress my skin
A thousand tiny kisses felt so deep within
To pirouette between the drops
Quickly losing all the agonizing thoughts
Spining and changing with the wind, a tango of prefect grace
I taste the rain upon my lips, as the lighting splashes light across my face
An exceptional balance of beauty and the beast
Absorbing the fierce energies release
Dancing in the storm's sweet rain
Relieving the searing pain

Every time I went to the bar, I saw him sitting there.
It didn’t matter what day it was,
didn’t matter if it was early or late.
The same man was sitting in the same spot, alone.
Some days he was nursing a beer,
other days he’d be sipping coffee,
but every day he’d be sitting there, alone.
I never heard him speak a word,
the bartender would bring him a new drink
when his was empty, he’d pay and leave a tip,
all without speaking.
There were times I’d feel compelled to speak to him,
make small talk, try to draw him out of his shell.
But, somehow, I could never bring myself to.
Maybe it was because he never looked at people,
not even when the bar was crowded,
or when someone bumped into him.
Maybe it was the look on his face,
neither smiling nor frowning, utterly blank.
Even thought I could never speak to him
I looked for him every time I was there.
Eventually I noticed, he didn’t just sit,
he was writing in a notebook.
Not constantly, he’d sit, stare off into space for a while,
then pick up his pencil, write furiously for a moment,
then stare off into space again.
Once noticed, the notebook was as constant as he,
a thick, five subject notebook, looking battered and worn.
When I first noticed it, he was barely a fourth
of the way into it.
Watching him became kind of an obsession,
I felt drawn, compelled.
Sometimes I would walk past him,
try to see what he was writing,
I never could.
Some nights he’d only fill a page or two,
other nights, whatever muse inspired him
led him to fill a dozen or more.
As time went by I watched him progress,
slowly, but steadily through his notebook.
Halfway, three quarters,
until one night, he reached the end.
My curiosity was still burning,
maybe he had just finished
the next great American novel,
or maybe a screenplay
that I’d soon be paying to see.
Even more than that, I wondered,
now that his project was done,
would he become sociable?
He waved away the bartender, who was approaching,
a fresh drink in his hand.
He sat and stared for a moment,
then wrote a brief something
on the inside of the back cover.
With that, he closed the notebook,
placed his mechanical pencil on the top of it,
placed it gently, almost reverently, and stood.
I watched him walk out the door,
wondering if I’d see him the next time I came out,
perhaps with a new notebook.
When I looked back at this seat,
I saw that he had forgotten his notebook.
I grabbed it, rushed out the door,
hoping to catch him, to give it to him.
When I got out the door, he was nowhere to be seen.
I was about to head back inside, leave it at the bar.
I was sure he’d be back for it soon.
I paused with my hand on the door, battling with myself.
I wanted to look inside, see what he had written,
yet I knew it was private,
he had never shown it to anyone.
I ended up taking it home, unopened.
I figured I’d return the next night, give it to him.
I’d assure him that I didn’t read it, and then maybe,
maybe he’d tell me what it was.
But when I returned the next night, he wasn’t there.
I left my name and number with the bartender,
said to have him call me if he came looking for it.
A week went by, with no call.
I returned to the bar but he wasn’t there,
the bartender told me that he hadn’t been in
since that last time I had seen him there.
I couldn’t believe it,
I was sure that the notebook was very important to him,
and said as much to the bartender.
As I said this, there was a tap on my shoulder,
I turned to see a guy that I had seen at the bar before,
seen him, but had never spoken with him.
“You must be talking about Peter, always sat right there.”
He pointed to the writer’s usual spot, and I nodded.
“Sorry to tell you this, but he’s dead.
Hung himself about a week ago.”
He walked away and I left the bar,
unsure of how to feel.
I got home, picked up the notebook,
it seemed to weigh a hundred pounds.
I wondered if it was the loss of the notebook
that had driven him to suicide.
I disregarded that thought,
he hadn’t even come back that night,
to look for it.
I put the notebook down on my nightstand, still unopened.
I had trouble trying to sleep,
feeling more grief than was warranted,
after all, I had never spoken with him.
Mixed with the grief, was guilt,
maybe if I had spoken, had reached out...
Finally, I fell into a restless sleep,
riddled with half-formed nightmares.
I woke early the next morning, not rested,
the notebook sill on my nightstand
where I had left it.
I picked it up, considered throwing it away,
after all, it wasn’t mine.
But instead, I sat on my bed and opened it.
His penmanship was neat, precise,
almost too tiny to read.
The first page was simple, a list,
titled “The List of My Regrets”.
Nothing shocking in the list, no major sins or crimes.
Friends he didn’t believe,
people he never got to know better,
women he never asked out.
The next page he had doodled on,
a series of geometric shapes, some simple,
some complex, others placed just so,
to form a stark face.
I flipped through the pages, reading some,
skimming others, a third of the way in
I found a poem.
There was more raw emotion on this page
then I had felt in my entire life.
The poem was about love,
and all the expected images were there,
but somehow he had constructed it in such a way
that reading it saddened me nearly to the point of tears.
There were other poems, as I worked my way through the notebook,
even some short stories.
Some pages only had a few words written,
but even these sparse entries had a feeling of finality, of completeness.
Even though everything I had read gave the feeling
of rightness, some sort of unexplained symmetry,
the tone kept growing darker, more somber,
as I neared the end.
The last poem, on the last page, written on his last night alive,
made me weep with it’s simple purity.
“A life filled with loneliness warms nobodies soul.”
The last line of his last poem.
I felt more guilt now than ever, if I had tried,
maybe I could have made a difference.
Maybe I could have eased his loneliness,
warmed his soul,
saved his life.
Then I read what he had jotted down,
on the inside of the back cover,
the last thing he had ever written.
Just three lines.
“I know you’ll take this notebook
and I want you to know,
it’s not your fault.”

My darling little one I am tasked.
Tasked with the idea of imparting what I know.
It might not all help,
But it is what I wish I knew.

If you don’ t already;
Pretend you like yourself,
Because if people think you are untouchable
They won’t attempt to approach you and tell you the negative things that you already tell yourself.

Take the time to listen to classical music,
You will like Toccata and Fuge in Dmin,
Trust me.

Don’t regret anything;
You are who you are because of what you have done,
Even if you don’t like the person you are now,
Use the present as a catalyst to become who you picture yourself being.

Fall in love with weird people.
They are a different type of person
And you learn much about how the mind works from them.

Pick up the ukulele.
It is bright and happy.
But only do this after your long stint as a metalhead.
People can say what they want,
But you have to be talented for metal
And if anyone knows about community and looking out for their own it is metalheads.

It is okay to be unhappy-
Even now I don't have the hang of this one.
But maybe someday
Maybe someday.

My tiny shining star,
The world will be cruel to you,
But it will be kind if you let it.
Take in the little things that give you joy.

But your Mum and I cannot wait,
To see the joys you experience
And the mistakes you make,
Because I will be waiting with tea and gumboots
And your Mum will be waiting with blanket forts and chocolate
And probably a better solution.

You will be an unstoppable force in this world
And I couldn't be more excited to meet you

Jelly babies I love them so
All squishy and fruity
In my mouth
How I like to squash them down

I bite their heads of then the legs
And leave them scared
Wibbly jelly babies
Your all dead

I laugh at the look of their tiny face
As one by one they fill a space
In my tummy
What a disgrace

this day has gone so slowly fast

as in
each minute ticks by as if an hour
but at the end of each hour
I can scarcely remember a minute of it

but how was it?
this slow,
yet fast
day?

fantastic?
no,
but it has been happy.

friends,
memories,
entertainment.

I kept busy,
yes,
and that keeps the mind
busy from thinking about
the bad things.

the sad things,
the memories,
the frustrations.

god,
it’s late now,
the day is so slow,
slow enough that they’re
catching up with me.

so I speed up,
speed up in any way I can
till my body is like electricity
trying to dance away the dark
with only the tiny shocks to make
light