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Chloe Zafonte Jun 2016
Everyone deserves to be accepted unless you're white, a male, straight and stayed the gender you were born with and don't agree with the views I have. I have the right to my opinion but if you're not voting for Bernie Sanders you need to be beaten to a pulp. Our opinions need to be heard and yours needs to be silenced with an air horn. If you believe in killing terrorist you're a bigot and if you don't believe in abortion you're stupid and 36 weeks is a proper time to abort the baby. Accept me for all my genders although you don't even know half of them. Everyone is racist subconsciously and educate yourself to find out why because I don't need to educate you myself really because I have no supporting evidence and quite frankly  I'm talking out of my ***. I absolutely despise white people although I have ,German, Irish, British and French ancestry but they're still pieces of **** for what they did back in the before I was even born! You don't like me although I'm black NOT because I'm black as a matter of fact you never made a comment on my race but you're still racist. I don't care what people think as I'm outside protesting a bakery who won't make cakes for gay people. Women are oppressed in this country, the men who lose their kids in a divorce settlement, being told that women can't **** or abuse them mean nothing to us it's all a myth. I'm a loud mouth, unappealing, racist, violent controlling perpetrator but just love me!!
I'm using complete sarcasm in this
She Writes Nov 2017
I am a butterfly
I was once small and unappealing
I have grown to be
beautiful and awe inspiring

I am a lotus
I was once held back
by a muddy past
I have blossomed into a delicate flower

I am a Phoenix
I have lived to be burned
Only to rise from the ashes
Stronger, smarter, and more adept
Matalie Niller Sep 2012
two tales
of three cities
identical
expect that
one was made of straw
tall
he has eyes like nothing
nothing at all
not even extraordinary
actually
very ordinary
so unappealing
but really
****
Dexter Terzungwe Sep 2016
1,
Are we to speak, first day of the week
or are we to await the third day of next week?
these little monsters that weigh heavily on my mind.
monsters that grow larger at night.

2,
Stumbling words at the bar,
empty glasses,
the unappealing smell of ethanol.
these monsters threaten to shatter my reality.

3,
Beauty blue eyes, my order of fries
splurging tomato sauce,
layers of sour cheese atop my order.
I drown in my own honesty.
...
My beauty sleep deprived,
Death came and we left hand in hand;
Momma why do you cry?
the black rose Feb 2015
here's to a la mort of a love that can never be,
a outrance of feelings that never got to be expressed.
i hate that my heart is so refractory,
how can i be in love with someone i know nothing about?

never seen you yet somehow i've seen you,
never spoken to you yet i've had numerous conversations about you..
i want to enodate my thoughts onto the canvas that is your heart,
but how can i?

you're probably in love with a lightskin beauty,
but is there any room for a caramel skinned Queen?
or will i be too much of a challenge,
too much of something too brilliant?

my feelings for you are pygalgia,
please darling allow me the chance
to search your soul & find the most unappealing things,
but love you anyway...

you're soul is too ostrobogulous for a quean,
may my being coruscate in the very darkest place of your heart.
til you realize your soul's worth,
til you realize yupukta my love.
for one of my readers..
David Williams Jun 2011
The Ever Winding Wall

I have given up counting sheep
Instead, I count the stones in the
Granite wall, all hand built by

Men and boys, boys and men all
Toiling in weather I can only imagine
Hands as cold as a North pole trek

Backs breaking, brows sweating
Living a life I secretly admire
Strong arms, focused concentration

On the tiny pebbles, grey unappealing
But maintaining a way of life
A life some would never give up

Each generation learning that secret
Skill, to keep animals in and enemies out
Till finally, those same granite stones cover

Their weather torn, but proud bodies
As they lay in a well earned sleep
Lain by the next pair of strong hands.
Michael R Burch May 2020
When I Was Small, I Grew
by Michael R. Burch

When I was small,
God held me in thrall:
Yes, He was my All
but my spirit was crushed.

As I grew older
my passions grew bolder
even as Christ grew colder.
My distraught mother blushed:

what was I thinking,
with feral lust stinking?
If I saw a girl winking
my face, heated, flushed.

“Go see the pastor!”
Mom screamed. A disaster.
I whacked away faster,
hellbound, yet nonplused.

Whips! Chains! *******!
Sweet, sweet, my Elation!
With each new sensation,
blue blood groinward rushed.

Did God disapprove?
Was Christ not behooved?
At least I was moved
by my hellish lust.

Does God judge human beings for the ****** desires he presumably gave them? Is the purpose of religion called Christianity to torture us for being human with human lust, passion, and desire? At puberty do the gates of hell and damnation swing wide open for us? Keywords/Tags: God, religion, Christ, Christianity, lust, passion, desire, hell, damnation, puberty, mrbigrew mrbgrew



Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

I came up with this epigram after reading the Bible from cover to cover at age eleven.



who, US?
by michael r. burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there's no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of "no Room! "
and Puritanical scorn...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same —
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame...

"who's to blame? "

In the poem "US" means both the United States and "us" the people of the world, wherever we live. The name "jesus" is uncapitalized while "Room" is capitalized because it seems many evangelical Christians are more concerned about land and not sharing it with the less fortunate, than the teachings of Jesus Christ. Also, Jesus and his parents were refugees for whom there was "no Room" to be found. What would Jesus think of Christian scorn for the less fortunate, one wonders? What would Jesus think of people adopting his name for their religion, then voting for someone like Trump, as four out of five evangelical Christians did, according to exit polls? Keywords/Tags: Jesus Christ, children, abuse, hypocrisy, Christian, Christianity, religion, USA, racism



A Child's Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don't bring me toys, or games, or candy...
just... Santa, please...
I'm on my knees! ...
please don't let Jesus torture Gandhi!



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and Plunder?

For he'll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



***** Nilly

for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah

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

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

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



Red State Religion Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

I’d like to believe in your LORD
but I really can’t risk it
when his world is as badly composed
as a half-baked biscuit.



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see...



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u'd blaspheme if u could
because ur God's no good,
but of course u cant:
ur just a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant) .



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He's lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that's His fashion.

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he's a sinner;
give up ***, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.

In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man's Ego, precipitous Peak! ,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably.

Originally published by The Chimaera and Lucid Rhythms



Evil Cabal
by Michael R. Burch

those who do Evil
do not know why
what they do is wrong
as they spit in ur eye.

nor did Jehovah,
the original Devil,
when he murdered eve,
our lovely rebel.



I've got Jesus's face on a wallet insert
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

I've got Jesus's face on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt.
And I uphold the Law,
for Grace has a Flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.

I've got ten thousand reasons why Hell must exist,
and you're at the top of my fast-swelling list!
You're nothing like me,
so God must agree
and slam down the Hammer with His Loving Fist!

For what are the chances that God has a plan
to save everyone: even Boy George and Wham! ?
Eternal fell torture
in Hell's pressure scorcher
will separate **** from Man.

I'm glad I'm redeemed, ecstatic you're not.
Did Christ die for sinners? Perish the thought!
The "good news" is this:
soon my Vengeance is His! ,
for you're not the lost sheep He sought.



jesus hates me, this i know
by michael r. burch

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
"little ones to him belong"
but if they use their dongs, so long!
yes, jesus hates me!
yes, jesus baits me!
yes, he berates me!
Church libel tells me so!

jesus fleeces us, i know,
for Religion scams us so:
little ones are brainwashed to
believe god saves the Chosen Few!
yes, jesus fleeces!
yes, he deceases
the bunny and the rhesus
because he's mad at you!

jesus hates me—christ who died
so i might be crucified:
'cause if i use my **** or brain,
that will drive the "lord" insane!
yes, jesus hates me!
yes, jesus baits me!
yes, he berates me!
Church libel tells me so!

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
first Priests tell me "look above, "
that christ's the lamb and god's the dove,
but then They sentence me to Hell
for using my big brain too well
and understanding half the Bible
(if god is love) is clearly libel.
yes, jesus hates me!
yes, jesus baits me!
yes, he berates me!
Church libel tells me so!



lust
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god's creation
then spoke for the Beast:

he called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne'er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
"the ***** jezebel."

my sweet passions condemned
by ungenerous men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, "yay, aye-men! "...

together we learned why Religion is hell.



Tillage
by Michael R. Burch

What stirs within me
is no great welling
straining to flood forth,
but an emptiness
waiting to be filled.

I am not an orchard
ready to be harvested,
but a field
rough and barren
waiting to be tilled.



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man’s tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men’s frozen genes convene ...
there is no answer—death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth’s “highest species”—
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.



Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of 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.



Love is her Belief and her Commandment
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love is her belief and her commandment;
in restless dreams at night, she dreams of Love;
and Love is her desire and her purpose;
and everywhere she goes, she sings of Love.

There is a tomb in Palestine: for others
the chance to stake their claims (the Chosen Ones),
but in her eyes, it’s Love’s most hallowed chancel
where Love was resurrected, where one comes
in wondering awe to dream of resurrection
to blissful realms, where Love reigns over all
with tenderness, with infinite affection.

While some may mock her faith, still others wonder
because they see the rare state of her soul,
and there are rumors: when she prays the heavens
illume more brightly, as if saints concur
who keep a constant vigil over her.

And once she prayed beside a dying woman:
the heavens opened and the angels came
in the form of long-departed friends and loved ones,
to comfort and encourage. I believe
not in her God, but always in her Love.



You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch

You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened . . .

You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching . . .

You paid love no notice,
though she lay in my arms
as the stars rose in swarms
like a legion of poets,

as the lightning recited
its opus before us,
and the hills boomed the chorus,
all strangely delighted . . .



Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch

Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.

Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.

When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.



don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved
(like your Heart)
and that even Light is bent
by your Gravity.

I dedicated this poem to the love of my life, but you are welcome to dedicate it to the love of yours, if you like it. The opening lines were inspired by a famous love poem by e. e. cummings. I went through a "cummings phase" around age 15 and wrote a number of poems "under the influence."



The One and Only
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

If anyone ever loved me,
It was you.

If anyone ever cared
beyond mere things declared;
if anyone ever knew ...
My darling, it was you.

If anyone ever touched
my beating heart as it flew,
it was you,
and only you.



Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

for Anaïs 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.



Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch

for Anaïs Vionet

Desire glides in on calico wings,
a breath of a moth
seeking a companionable light,
where it hovers, unsure,
sullen, shy or demure,
in the margins of night,
a soft blur.

With a frantic dry rattle
of alien wings,
it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato
and flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.
And yet it returns
to the flame, its delight,
as long as it burns.



Playmates
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

Hell, we seldom thought about the next day,
when tomorrow seemed hidden—adventures away.
Though sometimes we dreamed of adventures past,
and wondered, at times, why things couldn't last.

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

This is probably the poem that "made" me, because my high school English teacher called it "beautiful" and I took that to mean I was surely the Second Coming of Percy Bysshe Shelley! "Playmates" is the second poem I remember writing; I believe I was around 13 or 14 at the time. It was originally published by The Lyric.



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

This is not what I need . . .
analysis,
paralysis,
as though I were a seed
to be planted,
supported
with a stick and some string
until I emerge.
Your words
are not water. I need something
more nourishing,
like cherishing,
something essential, like love
so that when I climb
out of the lime
and the mulch. When I shove
myself up
from the muck . . .
we can ****.



Impotent
by Michael R. Burch

Tonight my pen
is barren
of passion, spent of poetry.

I hear your name
upon the rain
and yet it cannot comfort me.

I feel the pain
of dreams that wane,
of poems that falter, losing force.

I write again
words without end,
but I cannot control their course . . .

Tonight my pen
is sullen
and wants no more of poetry.

I hear your voice
as if a choice,
but how can I respond, or flee?

I feel a flame
I cannot name
that sends me searching for a word,

but there is none
not over-done,
unless it's one I never heard.

I believe this poem was written in my early twenties, around 1980.



Love Has a Southern Flavor
by Michael R. Burch

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle's spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume...

Love's Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations' dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree's
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight...

Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

Published by The Lyric, Contemporary Sonnet, The Eclectic Muse, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Setu (India) , Victorian Violet Press, A Long Story Short, Glass Facets of Poetry, Docster, Trinacria, PS: It's Poetry (anthology), and in a Czech translation by Vaclav ZJ Pinkava



Our English Rose
by Michael R. Burch

for Christine Ena Burch

The rose is—
the ornament of the earth,
the glory of nature,
the archetype of the flowers,
the blush of the meadows,
a lightning flash of beauty.

This is my loose translation/interpretation of a Sappho epigram.



teacher
by michael r. burch, age 17

teacher, take a look at my life,
for it has just begun
and u think that i am “misinformed”
merely because i'm young;

but the truth is often hidden
(what lies lurk behind ur eyes?)
and maybe Puff can tell u
where the Dragon flies.

teacher, take a look at my life:
urs is a dull-edged knife
(the white-hot blade long blunted).
now ur as cold as ice.

still, when u come to class,
act like u know it all,
for if u show insecurity,
surely wee will folderol.

I wrote "teacher" after hearing the song "Old Man" by Neil Young. "Wee" is a pun, not a typo.



These are my translations of Holocaust poems by Ber Horvitz (also known as Ber Horowitz); his bio follows the poems.

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray ...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.

The birds have fled
far overseas;
"Tomorrow I’ll migrate too,"
I said ...

These gloomy autumn days
it rains and rains.
Woe to the bird
Who remains ...



Doctorn
"Doctors"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Early this morning I bandaged
the lilac tree outside my house;
I took thin branches that had broken away
and patched their wounds with clay.

My mother stood there watering
her window-level flower bed;
The morning sun, quite motherly,
kissed us both on our heads!

What a joy, my child, to heal!
Finished doctoring, or not?
The eggs are nicely poached
And the milk's a-boil in the ***.



Broit
“Bread”
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness. Why?
On the hard uncomfortable floor the exhausted people lie.

Flung everywhere, scattered over the broken theater floor,
the exhausted people sleep. Night. Late. Too tired to snore.

At midnight a little boy cries wildly into the gloom:
"Mommy, I’m afraid! Let’s go home!”

His mother, reawakened into this frightful place,
presses her frightened child even closer to her breast …

"If you cry, I’ll leave you here, all alone!
A little boy must sleep ... this, now, is our new home.”

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness all around,
exhausted people sleeping on the hard ground.



"My Lament"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Nothingness enveloped me
as tender green toadstools
lie blanketed by snow
with its thick, heavy prayer shawl …
After that, nothing could hurt me …



Ber Horvitz aka Ber Horowitz (1895-1942): Born to village people in the woods of Maidan in the West Carpathians, Horowitz showed art talent early on. He went to gymnazie in Stanislavov, then served in the Austrian army during WWI, where he was a medic to Italian prisoners of war. He studied medicine in Vienna and was published in many Yiddish newspapers. Fluent in several languages, he translated Polish and Ukrainian to Yiddish. He also wrote poetry in Yiddish. A victim of the Holocaust, he was murdered in 1942 by the Nazis.



Departed
by Michael R. Burch

Christ, how I miss you! ,
though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips.
Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips
and the dishes are all stacked away.
You left me today...
and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets.



Describing You
by Michael R. Burch

How can I describe you?
The fragrance of morning rain
mingled with dew
reminds me of you;
the warmth of sunlight
stealing through a windowpane
brings you back to me again.
This is an early poem of mine, written as a teenager.



This Distance Between Us
by Michael R. Burch

This distance between us,
this vast gulf of remembrance
void of understanding,
sets us apart.

You are so far,
lost child,
weeping for consolation,
so dear to my heart.

Once near to my heart,
though seldom to touch,
now you are foreign,
now you grow faint...

like the wayward light of a vagabond star—
obscure, enigmatic.
Is the reveling gypsy
becoming a saint?

Now loneliness,
a broad expanse
—barren, forbidding—
whispers my name.

I, too, am a traveler
down this dark path,
unsure of the footing,
cursing the rain.

I, too, have felt pain,
pain and the ache of passion unfulfilled,
remorse, grief, and all the terrors
of the night.

And how very black
and how bleak my despair...
O, where are you, where are you
shining tonight?



Confession
by Michael R. Burch

What shall I say to you, to confess,
words? Words that can never express
anything close to what I feel?

For words that seem tangible, real,
when I think them
become vaguely surreal when I put ink to them.

And words that I thought that I knew,
like "love" and "devotion"
never ring true.

While "passion"
sounds strangely like the latest fashion
or a perfume.

NOTE: At the time I wrote this poem, a perfume named Passion was in fashion.



Consequence
by Michael R. Burch

They are fresh-faced,
not innocent, but perhaps not yet jaded,
oblivious to time and death,
of each counted breath
in the pendulum's sway
falling unheeded.

They are bright, undissuaded
by foreign tongues,
by sepulchers empty and waiting,
by sarcophagi of ancient kings,
by proclamations,
by rituals of scalpels and rings.

They are sworn, they are fated
to misadventure and grief;
but they revel in life
till the sun falls, receding
into silent halls
to torrents of inconsequential tears...
... to brief tragedies of tears
when they consider this: No one else sees.
But I know.
We all know.
We all know the consequence
of being so young.



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.



Dancer
by Michael R. Burch

You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,

waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.

Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.

They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled

of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,

of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.

They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh

for ages,
stages
slipping by.

You pause;
applause
is all you hear.

You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.



Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch

There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were cannon shots' soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise...
and then... annihilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were nights our hearts conceived
dawns' indiscriminate sighs.
To dream was our consolation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood's salt libations...

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



Damp Days
by Michael R. Burch

These are damp days,
and the earth is slick and vile
with the smell of month-old mud.

And yet it seldom rains;
a never-ending drizzle
drenches spring's bright buds
till they droop as though in death.

Now Time
drags out His endless hours
as though to bore to tears
His fretting, edgy servants
through the sheer length of His days
and slow passage of His years.

Damp days are His domain.

Irritation
grinds the ravaged nerves
and grips tight the gorging brain
which fills itself, through sense,
with vast seas of soggy clay
while the temples throb in pain
at the thought of more damp days.

I believe I wrote the first version of this poem around age 16, or so.



Fairest Diana
by Michael R. Burch

Fairest Diana, princess of dreams,
born to be loved and yet distant and lone,
why did you linger—so solemn, so lovely—
an orchid ablaze in a crevice of stone?

Was not your heart meant for tenderest passions?
Surely your lips―for wild kisses, not vows!
Why then did you languish, though lustrous, becoming
a pearl of enchantment cast before sows?

Fairest Diana, as fragile as lilac,
as willful as rainfall, as true as the rose;
how did a stanza of silver-bright verse
come to be bound in a book of dull prose?



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

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

I sought Her...

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

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

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

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



Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch

Meg, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I'm with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy...



130 Refuted
by Michael R. Burch

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
— Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Seas that sparkle in the sun
without its light would have no beauty;
but the light within your eyes
is theirs alone; it owes no duty.
And their flame, not half as bright,
is meant for me, and brings delight.

Coral formed beneath the sea,
though scarlet-tendriled, cannot warm me;
while your lips, not half so red,
just touching mine, at once inflame me.
And the searing flames your lips arouse
fathomless oceans fail to douse.

Bright roses' brief affairs, declared
when winter comes, will wither quickly.
Your cheeks, though paler when compared
with them? —more lasting, never prickly.
And your cheeks, so dear and warm,
far vaster treasures, need no thorns.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly. I wrote this poem as a teenager, after reading Shakespeare's sonnet 130 and having "issues" with it.



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.



Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you—
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

not as you are now,
but as you were then—

eternally present
and Sovereign.



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her . . .
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

I believe I wrote this poem around age 20, in 1978 or thereabouts. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Light verse and nonsense verse …

Less Heroic Couplets: Mini-Ode to Stamina
by Michael R. Burch

When you’ve given so much
that I can’t bear your touch,
then from a safe distance
let me admire your persistence.



The Trouble with Elephants: a Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

An elephant never forgets
which is why they don’t make the best pets:
Jumbo may well out-live you,
but he’ll never forgive you
so you may as well save your regrets!



The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On ...)
by Michael R. Burch

Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts
at “meter,” I crossly concluded
I’d use each iamb
in lieu of a lamb,
bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded.



Trump’s real goals are obvious
and yet millions of Americans remain oblivious.
—Michael R. Burch



Cover Girl
by Michael R. Burch

Cunning
at sunning
and dunning,
the stunning
young woman’s in the running
to be found **** on the cover
of some patronizing lover.

In this case the cover is a bed cover, where the enterprising young mistress is about to be covered herself.



First Base Freeze
by Michael R. Burch

I find your love unappealing
(no, make that appalling)
because you prefer kissing
then stalling.



Paradoxical Ode to Antinatalism
by Michael R. Burch

A stay on love
would end death’s hateful sway,
someday.

A stay on love
would thus BE love,
I say.

Be true to love
and thus end death’s
fell sway!



Antinatalist Poems

Habeas Corpus
by Michael R. Burch

from “Songs of the Antinatalist”

I have the results of your DNA analysis.
If you want to have children, this may induce paralysis.
I wish I had good news, but how can I lie?
Any offspring you have are guaranteed to die.
It wouldn’t be fair—I’m sure you’ll agree—
to sentence kids to death, so I’ll waive my fee.



Bittersight
by Michael R. Burch

for Abu al-Ala Al-Ma'arri, an ancient antinatalist poet

To be plagued with sight
in the Land of the Blind,
—to know birth is death
and that Death is kind—
is to be flogged like Eve
(stripped, sentenced and fined)
because evil is “good”
as some “god” has defined.



veni, vidi, etc.
by Michael R. Burch

the last will and testament of a preemie, from “Songs of the Antinatalist”

i came, i saw, i figured
it was better to be transfigured,
so rather than cross my Rubicon
i fled to the Great Beyond.
i bequeath my remains, so small,
to Brutus, et al.



Lighten your tread:
The ground beneath your feet is composed of the dead.

Walk slowly here and always take great pains
Not to trample some departed saint's remains.

And happiest here is the hermit with no hand
In making sons, who dies a childless man.

Abu al-Ala Al-Ma'arri (973-1057), antinatalist Shyari
loose translation by Michael R. Burch



There were antinatalist notes in Homer, around 3,000 years ago...

For the gods have decreed that unfortunate mortals must suffer, while they remain sorrowless. — Homer, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is best not to be born or, having been born, to pass on as swiftly as possible.—attributed to Homer, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

One of the first great voices to directly question whether human being should give birth was that of Sophocles, around 2,500 years ago...

Not to have been born is best,
and blessed
beyond the ability of words to express.
—Sophocles, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It’s a hundred times better not be born;
but if we cannot avoid the light,
the path of least harm is swiftly to return
to death’s eternal night!
—Sophocles, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: birth, control, procreation, childbearing, children,  antinatalist, antinatalism, contraception



Yasna 28, Verse 6
by Zarathustra (Zoroaster)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lead us to pure thought and truth
by your sacred word and long-enduring assistance,
O, eternal Giver of the gifts of righteousness.

O, wise Lord, grant us spiritual strength and joy;
help us overcome our enemies’ enmity!

Translator’s Note: The Gathas consist of 17 hymns believed to have been composed by Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, Zarathushtra Spitama or Ashu Zarathushtra.



Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals
by Michael R. Burch

"I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble." — Mark Twain

Making sense from nonsense is quite sensible! Suppose
you’re running low on moolah, need some cash to paint your toes ...
Just invent a new religion; claim it saves lost souls from hell;
have the converts write you checks; take major debit cards as well;
take MasterCard and Visa and good-as-gold Amex;
hell, lend and charge them interest, whether payday loan or flex.
Thus out of perfect nonsense, glittery ores of this great mine,
you’ll earn an easy living and your toes will truly shine!



Less Heroic Couplets: Crop Duster
by Michael R. Burch

We are dust and to dust we must return ...
but why, then, life’s pointless sojourn?



Less Heroic Couplets: Shady Sadie
by Michael R. Burch

A randy young dandy named Sadie
loves ***, but her horse neighs “She’s shady!”



The couplet above is based on the limerick below:

Shady Sadie
by Michael R. Burch

A randy young dandy named Sadie
loves ***, but in forms fancied shady.
(I cannot, of course,
involve her poor horse,
but it’s safe to infer she’s no lady!)



Less Heroic Couplets: Just Desserts
by Michael R. Burch

“The West Antarctic ice sheet
might not need a huge nudge
to budge.”

And if it does budge,
denialist fudge
may force us to trudge
neck-deep in sludge!

The first stanza is a quote by paleoclimatologist Jeremy Shakun in Science magazine.



The Limerick as Parody

Marvell-Less (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Mr. Marvell was ill-named? Inform us!
Alas, his crude writings deform us:
for when trying to bed
chaste virgins, he led
off with his iron ***** ginormous!



Marvell-Less (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Andrew Marvell was far less than Marvellous;
indeed, he was cold, bold, unchivalrous:
for when trying to bed
chased/chaste virgins, he led
off with his iron ***** ginormous!

When reading the second version of the poem, the reader can select “chased” or “chaste” or read them together, quickly.



I Learned Too Late
by Michael R. Burch

“Show, don’t tell!”

I learned too late that poetry has rules,
although they may be rules for greater fools.

In any case, by dodging rules and schools,
I avoided useless duels.

I learned too late that sentiment is bad—
that Blake and Keats and Plath had all been had.

In any case, by following my heart,
I learned to walk apart.

I learned too late that “telling” is a crime.
Did Shakespeare know? Is Milton doing time?

In any case, by telling, I admit:
I think such rules are ****.



Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
by Michael R. Burch

At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...
But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.

The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more *****-y!



Limericks

There once was a poet from Tennessee
who was known to indulge in straight Hennessey
for his heart had been broken
and cruelly ripped open
by an ice-hoarding Dame of Paree.
—Michael R. Burch

A coquettish young lady of France
longed to have ***** men in her pants,
but in lieu of real joys
she settled for boys,
then berated her lack of romance.
—Michael R. Burch

A virginal lady of France
longed to have a ménage in her pants
but in lieu of real boys
she settled for toys
& painted pinkies to make her bits dance.
—Michael R. Burch

There was a young lady of France
Who’d let cute boys root in her pants:
Where they'd give her the finger
And she'd let them linger
because that's the point of romance!
—Michael R. Burch

A germane young German, a dame
with a quite unpronounceable name,
gave me a kiss;
I lectured her, "Miss,
we haven't been intro'd, for shame!"
—Michael R. Burch

A germane young German, a dame
with a quite unpronounceable name,
Frenched me a kiss;
I admonished her, "Miss,
you’ve left me twice tongue-tied, for shame!"
—Michael R. Burch

A germane young German, a dame
with a quite unpronounceable name,
French-kissed me and left my lips lame.
I lectured her, "Miss,
That's a premature kiss!
We haven't been intro'd, for shame!"
—Michael R. Burch

Although I prefer
onions
to bunions,
I still primarily defer
to legal ******.
—Michael R. Burch

Cancun Cruz
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a senator, Cruz,
whose whole life was one pus-oozing schmooze.
When Trump called his wife ugly,
Cruz brown-nosed him smugly,
then went on a sweet Cancún cruise!

Anchors Aweigh!
by Michael R. Burch

There once was an anchor babe, Cruz,
whose deployment was Castro’s bold ruse.
Now the revenge of Fidel
has worked out quite well
as Cruz missiles launch from his caboose!

Canadian Cruz
by Michael R. Burch

There was a Canadian, Cruz,
an anchor babe with a bold ruse:
he’d take Texas first
and then do his worst
to infect the whole world with his views.

Keywords/Tags: light verse, nonsense verse, doggerel, limerick, humor, humorous verse, light poetry



Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.

Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all

for children, however tall.
And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call

the one who was everything.
That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all

for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.

And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.
No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.



Final Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

Sleep peacefully—for now your suffering’s over.

Sleep peacefully—immune to all distress,
like pebbles unaware of raging waves.

Sleep peacefully—like fields of fragrant clover
unmoved by any motion of the wind.

Sleep peacefully—like clouds untouched by earthquakes.

Sleep peacefully—like stars that never blink
and have no thoughts at all, nor need to think.

Sleep peacefully—in your eternal vault,
immaculate, past perfect, without fault.



Published as the collection "When I Was Small, I Grew"
Deep within a leafy dell
There lived a hairy fairy
Who very often cast a spell
That was frightening and scary.
The only friend the fairy had
Was an old green warty toad,
He never thought the fairy bad,
Just lonely and old.
So he’d sit with her and croak
And watch her practice magic.
She very rarely often spoke,
This to him was tragic.
The fairy dress; the fairy wore
Had seen better days.
It was *****, tattered, creased and tore
The hem hung loose in frays.
Her head seemed always in a cloud,
He never saw her smile,
Her wand no longer taut and proud
But still she was not vile.
Somewhere inside he saw her love;
He longed to be her mate,
So he prayed to God above
And asked her for a date.
She thought he saw her as a joke.
He was playing with her heart.
Up she went, in a puff of smoke,
That gave the toad a start.
Never having seen this done before
He had a mixed-up feeling.
His warts and looks she must abhor
And she found him unappealing.
For days he waited there for her
Because he was alarmed;
A toad and fairy love was rare
He thought she might be charmed.
If she would only hear him out,
That he may just explain.
Then she, he felt, could have no doubt
His love just would not wane.
But if his looks she hated so,
Then this he’d have to take.
He’d just hop-off; away he’d go,
Take bravely his mistake.
He realised, ‘how sad it is,
I never asked her name.’
With one loud bang and mighty ****
Back to his side she came.
“It occurred to me, you might be kind,
My name is Nuff,” the fairy cried,
“And I can read your mind.”
“Fairy Nuff,” the toad replied.
Then she kissed him on his cheek
A shock that made him wince.
Before he had a chance to speak
He was a fairy Prince.
She was beautiful and young,
Like his clothes, hers were new.
A love that’s ‘Magic’ is not wrong
Especially for these two.
Shafira Mar 2014
We are just like this poetry
unflattering
unappealing
unappreciated

unfinis—


March 15th 2014, 1:15 a.m.
extasis Jan 2010
Crackling criss-crossing blue in mind. It scissors down the lanes through the pipes and tubes and little dividers. Electrical mind numbing beauty. Veins-bursting in excited anticipation. Convulsions and scenic skittering routes. Into the Nexus! Here simmers what we are thinking and believing. Our mind's eye focuses and drips into the pool until completion. Psionic figures dance flicker through life existence. Pulse-width fluctuations. Tiny menagerie of our Will. Scribbling through dusted panes of time interface. All afire with ourselves once we have discovered ourselves. Nano-tech emotions. Hope fear anger mercy curiosity buzzing swarms of grey goo jibbering and bubbling in an artificial mind-****. What is all this allusion? Nothing complicated. Speculation on future times where sensual technological biological singularity is paramount. In my room where the clocks are taped over and the sun is dark and dim. Through the windows I see myself. The boxes on the floor emanate simple clickings with melodies intertwined casually. I myself appear redundant. I have done this and so have others. To discuss oneself is worthless unless you become convinced you are another entity gazing back across the room. I feel I am being watched. I become cautious as he may have noticed. Tingling weightlessness tickles in waves in both heads. The Jazz Classic appears. Old dark men and women in hazy environments. Organic supposition or cold observation? Both hold importance so let us appreciate it all. The cello quivers and hums with vibration. Fingers callused and riveted like the age-old corn field bother still strings. A child hums to just myself. What does he want? I never asked him for an audience. Yet he freely gives it to me. Now he multiplies. Or she? Children confuse and cause one to be apprehensive. Nothing and silence. Silence in movement. Cease my visual stimulation for a couple seconds each. The child is back. What does he speak? Pray inside the rubble? Heal in this place? In disgrace? I do not know. His octaves are meshing together. Whining and thrumming with strange alterations. Some madmen tweaks my ears. Maybe he knows the child? I'm not sure. Let us continue on. The flute is the child. Old cello, you have stopped? These musings mean nothing. I would look upon them in a year and think nothing of it. Yet it feels as if this time is important. Da Vinci knocks on the door. Not as if I wanted to talk to it. Wouldn't mind I suppose. He is gone. We talked but I do not remember the conversation. Perhaps we've all talked but we just don't remember our conversations. That's ridiculous though. Then anything is possible. We could have flown to the moon on scarlet weasels outfitted with the latest nano-pores that secreted pure liquid indulgence. And we did because I just imagined we might have. However, I don't remember actually doing it. Just what I thought it might have been like. How frustrating. My thoughts are the same as all others who write out their thoughts when under the influence of yourself. It always seems like some thing is scuttling near my feet or under the nightstand; just out of view. Strange. I would be afraid. No reason to fear that which doesn't bother me. No reason to fear much of anything. That's been said before. Why are we so often concerned with saying that which has been said before? Cliche? auump-ump auump-ump auump-ump little thumping noise in my ears. That vibration is calming. Every night I am awake. Every day I seem asleep. I do not like it but I do not care yet I allow it to be what it will. Vision defaults to out of focus. My eyes always cross if I cease trying to control them. People are strange. Animals are strange. Same thing I guess. Someone will find that clever. Someone will find it cliche. This someone won't care. ****** fantasy permeates day to day. More entertaining than living a fantasy though. ***. Not that entertaining. Perhaps no one knows how to do it properly anymore. Maybe we never did. Maybe some people are just disenchanted with it. When I'm by myself, I never have any ****** desire. When around others, I generally think of it out of curiosity: what would it be like to please the person in front of me? The only enjoyment I've had with *** would consist of pleasing another or observing another ****. The human body is intriguing. Definitely. I really do think so. Sometimes I look at my own. Not out of appreciation really. Just the fact that I have body allows me to investigate it and understand it more. Pain is merely a stage one can get past, so I suppose I injure myself sometimes to see how I react. It's like I need to check I'm still working properly. I can't tell when I'm tired. I feel something, but when I ask myself if I'm tired, I murmur back, "I don't know." Maybe that is why I stay up till early mornings? I wanted to add again that the human body is beautiful and unappealing all in the same space. Perhaps the unattractiveness and softness and strangeness produces attraction. A negative and a negative equals a positive. Three negatives likes to fluctuate. In my mind at least. I may ask another to remove their clothing and whatnot during those intimate moments. Eh, never quite feel like having *** though. I like the emotions and sensuality of just looking at someone. They usually want to physically play around with each other. I think I enjoy fighting more. One day I'll leave everyone except I'll reminisce on those I enjoyed meeting. Maybe come back and visit? I would like to ride something quickly through an empty desert. Find my own food and water. Create shelter. Think by myself. My room is the smallest desert I have and the biggest. I have more in my head but I only occupy one at a time. I suppose I like I do like things like all others. I mean, materials can be nice. If I impart meaning on to an object it gains importance. I see it vital to also say that if it were to be lost, then I wouldn't mind and I would obtain something else or nothing at all.The constitution. Just mentioned by some woman in my room. Or in my ears would be more correct. Constitutional Rights. I honestly don't see the need for them. I was criticized for burbling that once. We should not need a constitution. We should be able to do what we like to do without fear or concern. Unless natural fear and concern appears. Now that may confuse a bit. Right to bear arms. I shouldn't have to be told or allowed to massive bear arms if I feel the need to have them. Big hairy bear arms. Curious little mishap. Freudian slip as Johnny said once? Danger Danger. Anyway, Right to bare arms. I shouldn't have to be told, as I look back,  go back and throw in that comma after told, that I'm allowed to bare arms and defend myself. I'll just do it if the need arises. Freedom of speech. That already has many issues these days. However, there shouldn't have been a need to tell people they have freedom of speech. Speech should have been freely allowed and never oppressed in  the first place. Theme? We have erred so much in the past and I would think sometimes we ignore that and just try make little cosmetic fixes by saying it's okay. Another point. Hold that: side discomfort. I sometimes feel like a little spider or creature is crawling or skittering on my leg under the covers or I'll change the music to Galaxy 2 Galaxy 90's hi-tec jazz there we go. Done! Now back! Or I forget what I said about the spiders. Another point: what? ******, curse damnable ****. Can't recollect what it was I was connecting together. Something that tied in to deceiving people into things are okay. I could go on about consumerism and all that jazz. Instead I'm listening to some techno-jazz whatever-decided-to-call-it. Hyphenated phrases are fun when I decide they are appropriate. English and grammar in such can be cool but at the same time I want to say **** it and stay proper. Do both. Acknowledge how to write and speak "correctly," but as long as someone understands what you are trying to say, then why correct more? Someone large doesn't like the fact I make a lot of noise in the morning. I stole some speakers and subwoofer from the room next to me as I was going to say Austin.  They are on the floor and whichever large person lives below me is probably annoyed or was. I don't spend any of my actual time despising them, but I'll easily say I despise them when someone asks. Otherwise it isn't worth wasting time on. Perhaps the vibration quivers downstairs and shakes them silently. The greate beast is perturbed and sneaky vibrations cause electro-annoyance! Her pulsewidth as I understand it must be like a super-saw as I think it. Silence. Some woman said it's just a feeling. HEA not sure what why I put that sounds like a garageband song. Switched to Inspiration! That is what I did this night. Finally start writing and making things again. Even though I never did and always did. My head sometimes hurts from thinking. Never truly though. Gotta say those things to keep the conversation going. That is really the only reason I say anything. To keep the conversation going. Otherwise I'd just watch people and be just fine. Just yelled "bahh," out loud (didn't sound the comma) because I felt the need or the want. Same. Wrong keys erased. sdas=a====dddddddddd Sorry. Oh well. Oh My. How the time flies goodbye. Going nowhere. Could write more but I felt the slight flicker of wanting to stop. So I do. What an ending. Now I'm only typing to continue the conversation with myself. Just thought ******* sounds good melody. Do as I sayt way to go good job. STOPSDMFA

****** a

Guess I'll read this little conundrum I wrote up. Stop writing ******. Stop EDITING
Anderson Ritchie Jul 2012
Tell her this,
Daily.
She is beautiful,
she is wonderful,
she is pleasant
and delightful,
Ne’er is she disastrous,
Ne’er is she unappealing,
Tell her that you love her,
even if as a friend,
Tell her she is a wondrous blessing,
amongst the very best.

Tell Her these things,
tell her you support her,
even in the bad days,
tell her you are there,
even if its hard some days,
Tell Her this,
there is none like her.
SG Holter May 2014
My brother has fewer
Vices than most.

Hands that need to
Create non-idly

Folding reciepts; wrappings;
Pieces of unappealing waste

Into origami -by now nearly
Unconsciously-

Turning nothing to something
And leaving behind him

Little signatures of beauty
Where less was before he

Unbored himself. Such healthy
Opposites to the cigarette butts

And crumpled discardments
Of us other; lesser men of art.

My brother has the vices
Of Nature. Of little gods.

We need him more than
He'll ever care to grasp.
DaRk IcE Apr 2015
The silence is deadening
Death is beckoning
Hope is failing
Life's just bailing
Feelings are disappearing
Darkness is reappearing
Numbness is calling
Faith is falling
Sight isn't seeing
My vision is fleeing
Smell is an illusion
Filled with defusion
Touch is feeling
It's deemed unappealing
Hearing is a lie
It's crossing its fingers and hoping to die
Speaking is a sin
Never wondering where I've been
Listening is being silent
Quickly turning violent
Kissing is fire
Vacant...with no *desire
Michael R Burch Aug 2024
These are poems about floods, being lost at sea, and other calamities...



After the Deluge
by Michael R. Burch

She was kinder than light
to an up-reaching flower
and sweeter than rain
to the bees in their bower
where anemones blush
at the affections they shower,
and love’s shocking power.

She shocked me to life,
but soon left me to wither.
I was listless without her,
nor could I be with her.
I fell under the spell
of her absence’s power.
in that calamitous hour.

Like blithe showers that fled
repealing spring’s sweetness;
like suns’ warming rays sped
away, with such fleetness ...
she has taken my heart—
alas, our completeness!
I now wilt in pale beams
of her occult remembrance.

I almost lost my wife Beth during the Great Nashville Flood when she took ill while out of town for a funeral and I was trapped as our house's hill became an island.



Adrift
by Michael R. Burch

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



Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch

These are the narrows of my soul—
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.

Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.

Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned

why it is named:
Mare Clausum.



Sandy Hook Call to Love
by Michael R. Burch

Our hearts are broken today
for our children's small bodies lie broken;
let us gather them up, as we may,
that the truth of our Love may be spoken;
then, when we have put them away
to nevermore dream or be woken,
let us think of the living, and pray
for true Love, not some miserable token,
to command us, for strength to obey.



War is Obsolete
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Momentum! Momentum!
by Michael R. Burch

for the neo-Cons

Crossing the Rubicon, we come!
Momentum! Momentum! Furious hooves!
The Gauls we have slaughtered, no man disapproves.
War’s hawks shrieking-strident, white doves stricken dumb.

Coo us no cooings of pale-breasted peace!
Momentum! Momentum! Imperious hooves!
The blood of barbarians brightens our greaves.
Pompey’s head in a basket? We slumber at ease.

****** us again, great Bellona, dark queen!
Momentum! Momentum! Curious hooves
Now pound out strange questions, but what can they mean
As the great stallions rear and their riders careen?

Published by Bewildering Stories

Bellona was the Roman goddess of war. The name "Bellona" derives from the Latin word for "war" (bellum), and is linguistically related to the English word "belligerent" (literally, "war-waging"). In earlier times she was called Duellona, that name being derived from a more ancient word for "battle" relating to our “duel.”



Nuclear Winter: Solo Restart
by Michael R. Burch

Out of the ashes
a flower emerges
and trembling bright sunshine
bathes its scorched stem,
but how will this flower
endure for an hour
the rigors of winter
eternal and grim
without men?



Transplant
by Michael R. Burch

You float, unearthly angel, clad in flesh
as strange to us who briefly knew your flame
as laughter to disease. And yet you laugh.
Behind your smile, the sun forfeits its claim
to earth, and floats forever now the same—
light captured at its moment of least height.

You laugh here always, welcoming the night,
and, just a photograph, still you can claim
bright rapture: like an angel, not of flesh—
but something more, made less. Your humanness
this moment of release becomes a name
and something else—a radiance, a strange
brief presence near our hearts. How can we stand
and chain you here to this nocturnal land
of burgeoning gray shadows? Fly, begone.
I give you back your soul, forfeit all claim
to radiance, and welcome grief’s dark night
that crushes all the laughter from us. Light
in someone Else’s hand, and sing at ease
some song of brightsome mirth through dawn-lit trees
to welcome morning’s sun. O daughter! these
are eyes too weak for laughter; for love’s sight,
I welcome darkness, overcome with light.



Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.

Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.

And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.

That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.

And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.

No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.



Enigma

for Beth

O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night, or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior.

Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?

Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love, this—our reclamation;
fallen wren,
you must strive to fly though your heart is shaken;
weary pilgrim,
you must not give up though your feet are aching;
lonely child,
lie here still in my arms; you must soon be waking.



Love is her Belief and her Commandment
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love is her belief and her commandment;
in restless dreams at night, she dreams of Love;
and Love is her desire and her purpose;
and everywhere she goes, she sings of Love.

There is a tomb in Palestine: for others
the chance to stake their claims (the Chosen Ones),
but in her eyes, it’s Love’s most hallowed chancel
where Love was resurrected, where one comes
in wondering awe to dream of resurrection
to blissful realms, where Love reigns over all
with tenderness, with infinite affection.

While some may mock her faith, still others wonder
because they see the rare state of her soul,
and there are rumors: when she prays the heavens
illume more brightly, as if saints concur
who keep a constant vigil over her.

And once she prayed beside a dying woman:
the heavens opened and the angels came
in the form of long-departed friends and loved ones,
to comfort and encourage. I believe
not in her God, but always in her Love.



Sailing to My Grandfather
by Michael R. Burch

for George Edwin Hurt Sr.

This distance between us
—this vast sea
of remembrance—
is no hindrance,
no enemy.

I see you out of the shining mists
of memory.
Events and chance
and circumstance
are sands on the shore of your legacy.

I find you now in fits and bursts
of breezes time has blown to me,
while waves, immense,
now skirt and glance
against the bow unceasingly.

I feel the sea's salt spray—light fists,
her mists and vapors mocking me.
From ignorance
to reverence,
your words were sextant stars to me.

Bright stars are strewn in silver gusts
back, back toward infinity.
From innocence
to senescence,
now you are mine increasingly.

Note: Under the Sextant’s Stars is a painting by Bernini.



The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

for Harvey Stanbrough

I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.

Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.

Published by The Raintown Review, Mindful of Poetry and FireBug



Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark . . .
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?

Uncanny seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared . . .
what sights have you seen,
what dreams have you dreamed,
what rhetoric have you heard?

Is love an oration or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

. . . quiescent unions . . . thoughts of bliss, of hope . . .
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars . . .
like childhood’s long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions . . . slip and bra . . .

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare

to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

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

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

and my eyes to her flame
like the sphingid’s are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.

The sphingid gets its name from the legendary Sphinx and is commonly called the sphinx moth.



The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch

for Vicky

Yesterday I saw you
as the snow flurries died,
spent winds becalmed.
When I saw your solemn face
alone in the crowd,
I felt my heart, so long embalmed,
begin to beat aloud.

Was it another winter,
another day like this?
Was it so long ago?
Where you the rose-cheeked girl
who slapped my face, then stole a kiss?
Was the sky this gray with snow,
my heart so all a-whirl?

How is it in one moment
it was twenty years ago,
lost worlds remade anew?
When your eyes met mine, I knew
you felt it too, as though
we heard the robin's song
and the sky was turning blue.



Tillage
by Michael R. Burch

What stirs within me
is no great welling
straining to flood forth,
but an emptiness
waiting to be filled.

I am not an orchard
ready to be harvested,
but a field
rough and barren
waiting to be tilled.



Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low

for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men . . .
when we were men, or almost so.



Distances (II)
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.



In My House
by Michael R. Burch

I was once the only caucasian in the software company I founded. I had two fine young black programmers working for me, and they both had keys to my house. This poem looks back to the dark days of slavery and the Civil War it produced.

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

Manifest Destiny?

I was wrong;
my plantation burned to the ground.
I was wrong.

This is my song,
this is my plea:
I was wrong.

When you are in my house,
now, I am not free.

I feel the song
hurling itself back at me.

We were wrong.
This is my history.

I feel my tongue
stilting accordingly.

We were wrong;
brother, forgive me.

Published by Black Medina



911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”

They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,

far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot . . .

Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.



R.I.P.
by Michael R. Burch

When I am lain to rest
and my soul is no longer intact,
but dissolving, like a sunset
diminishing to the west, ...

and when at last
before His throne my past
is put to test
and the demons and the Beast

await to feast
on any morsel downward cast,
while the vapors of impermanence
cling, smelling of damask ...

then let me go, and do not weep
if I am left to sleep,
to sleep and never dream, or dream, perhaps,
only a little longer and more deep.

Published by Romantics Quarterly and The Chained Muse. This is an early poem from my “Romantic Period” that was written in my late teens.



iou
by michael r. burch

i might have said it
but i didn’t

u might have noticed
but u wouldn’t

we might have been us
but we couldn’t

u might respond
but probably shouldn’t



Delicacy
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch, and all good mothers

Your love is as delicate
as a butterfly cleaning its wings,
as soft as the predicate
the hummingbird sings
to itself, gently murmuring—
“Fly!  Fly!  Fly!”
Your love is the string
soaring kites untie.



chrysalis
by michael r. burch

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

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

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

and yet You must love Your Self



Love Is Not Love
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love is not love that never looked
within itself and questioned all,
curled up like a zygote in a ball,
throbbed, sobbed and shook.

(Or went on a binge at a nearby mall,
then would not cook.)

Love is not love that never winced,
then smiled, convinced
that soar’s the prerequisite of fall.

When all
its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed,
where does Love find the wherewithal
to try again,
endeavor, when

all that it knows
is: O, because!



The One and Only
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

If anyone ever loved me,
     It was you.
If anyone ever cared
beyond mere things declared;
if anyone ever knew ...
     My darling, it was you.

If anyone ever touched
     my beating heart as it flew,
it was you,
and only you.



Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch

Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.

Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.

When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency), that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.



Hiroshima Child
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I come to beg at every door,
but who can hear my phantom tread?
I knock and yet remain unseen,
for I am dead,
for I am dead.

I’m only seven, though I died
in Hiroshima so long ago.
I’m seven now, as I was then,
for how can phantom children grow?

White incandescence charred my hair;
my eyes grew dim, then I was blind;
my fragile bones became fine ash;
my ash was scattered by the wind.

Today I need no fruit, no rice;
I crave no sweets, nor even bread.
I beg for nothing for myself,
for I am dead,
for I am dead.

All that I beg of you is peace:
You fight today! You fight today!
Peace, so earth’s living children may
live and grow and laugh and play.



faith(less)
by michael r. burch

for the “Chosen Few”

Those who believed
and Those who misled
lie together at last
in the same narrow bed

and if god loved Them more
for Their strange lack of doubt,
he kept it well hidden
till he snuffed Them out.

ah-men!



hey pete!
by michael r. burch

for Pete Rose

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

This is a poem I wrote around age 16-18, during my “cummings period.” Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player as a boy; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather ironic commentary on the term “superstar.”



Have I been too long at the fair?
by Michael R. Burch

Have I been too long at the fair?
The summer has faded,
the leaves have turned brown,
the Ferris wheel teeters,
not up, yet not down . . .
Have I been too long at the fair?



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound of falling leaves
and the scent of new-mown grass;
I held out my arms to her and she passed

into oblivion ...

This is one of my early poems, written around age 16 and published in my high school literary journal, the Lantern, and by Borderless Journal (Singapore).



Huntress
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire

Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep
across a crevice dropping deep
into a dark and doomed domain.
Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane.
Rain falls upon your path, and pain
pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause
and heed the oft-lamented laws
which bid you not begin again
till night returns. You wail like wind,
the sighing of a soul for sin,
and give up hunting for a heart.
Till sunset falls again, depart,
though hate and hunger urge you—On!
Heed, hearts, your hope—the break of dawn.



Men at Sixty
by Michael R. Burch

after Donald Justice’s “Men at Forty”

Learn to gently close
doors to rooms
you can never re-enter.

Rest against the stair rail
as the solid steps
buck and buckle like ships’ decks.

Rediscover in mirrors
your father’s face
once warm with the mystery of lather,
now electrically plucked.



All the More Human, for Eve Pandora
by Michael R. Burch

a lullaby for the first human Clone

God provide the soul, and let her sleep
be natural as ours, unplagued by dreams
of being someone else, lost in the deep
wild swells of grieving all that human means . . .

and do not let her come to doubt herself—
that she is as we are, so much alike
in frailty, in the books that line the shelf
that tell us who we are—a rickety ****

against the flood of doubt—that we are more
than cells and chance, that love, perhaps, exists
because of someone else who would endure
such pain because some part of her persists

in us, and calls us blesséd by her bed,
become a saint at last, in whose frail arms
we see ourselves—the gray won out of red,
the ash of blonde—till love is safe from harm

and all that human means is that we live
in doubt, and die in doubt, and only love
the more because together we must strive
against an end we loathe and fear. What of?—

we cannot say, imagining the Night
as some weird darkened structure caving in
to cold enormous pressure. Lacking sight,
we lie unbreathing, thinking breath a sin . . .

and that is to be human. You are us—
true mortal, child of doubt, hopeful and curious.



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.

There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.

There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.

There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.



Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

the heart ice breaking.

Published by Poet Lore, PoetryMagazine.com, Penumbra, Poet’s Haven and the Net Poetry and Art Competition



The Locker
by Michael R. Burch

All the dull hollow clamor has died
and what was contained,
removed,
reproved
adulation or sentiment,
left with the pungent darkness
as remembered as the sudden light.



Ironic Vacation
by Michael R. Burch

Salzburg.
Seeing Mozart’s baby grand piano.
Standing in the presence of sheer incalculable genius.
Grabbing my childish pen to write a poem
& challenge the Immortals.
Next stop, the catacombs!



Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch

I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.

A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright.

Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling;
here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead.
Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling,
simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed,

his tongue flicking rhythms,
the sun—throbbing, spilling.



The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Lancelot, my noble friend,
how time has thinned your ragged mane
and pinched your features; still you seem
though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged.

Your sword hand is, as ever, ready,
although the time for swords has passed.
Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady
meeting mine ... you must not ask.

The time is not, nor ever shall be,
for Merlyn’s words were only words;
and now his last enchantment wanes,
and we must put aside our swords ...



Less Heroic Couplets: Unsmiley Simile, or, Down Time
by Michael R. Burch

Quora is down!
I frown:
how long can the universe suffice
without its ad-vice?



Fierce ancient skalds summoned verse from their guts;
today’s genteel poets prefer modern ruts.
—Michael R. Burch



Vice Grip
by Michael R. Burch

There’s no need to rant about Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The cruelty of “civilization” suffices:
our ordinary vices.



Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends I
by Michael R. Burch

Conformists of a feather
flock together.

Winner of the National Poetry Month Couplet Competition



Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends II
by Michael R. Burch

Fascists of a feather
flock together.



Less Heroic Couplets: Shell Game
by Michael R. Burch

I saw a turtle squirtle!
Before you ask, “How fertile?”
The squirt came from its mouth.
Why do your thoughts fly south?



The Better Man: a Double Limerick
by Michael R. Burch

Dear Ed: I don’t understand why
you will publish this other guy—
when I’m brilliant, devoted,
one hell of a poet!
Yet you publish Anonymous. Fie!

Fie! A pox on your head if you favor
this poet who’s dubious, unsavor-
y, inconsistent in texts,
no address (I checked!):
since he’s plagiarized Unknown, I’ll wager!

“The Better Man” is a double limerick originally published by The Eclectic Muse



The Hippopotami
by Michael R. Burch

There’s no seeing eye to eye
with the awesomely huge Hippopotami:
on the bank, you’re much taller;
going under, you’re smaller
and assuredly destined to die!



Cover Girl
by Michael R. Burch

Cunning
at sunning
and dunning,
the stunning
young woman’s in the running
to be found **** on the cover
of some patronizing lover.



First Base Freeze
by Michael R. Burch

I find your love unappealing
(no, make that appalling)
because you prefer kissing
then stalling.



Less Heroic Couplets: Negotiables
by Michael R. Burch

Love should be more than the sum of its parts—
of its potions and pills and subterranean arts.



Less Heroic Couplets: Mini-Ode to Stamina
by Michael R. Burch

When you’ve given so much
that I can’t bear your touch,
then from a safe distance
let me admire your persistence.

Published by ***** of Parnassus



Unapproved Absence, or, Slip Up
by Michael R. Burch

Christ, how I miss you!,
though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips.

Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips
and the dishes are all stacked away.

You left me today ...
and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets.



The Red State Reaction
by Michael R. Burch

Where the hell are they hidin’
Sleepy Joe Biden?

And how the hell can the bleep
Do so much, in his sleep?



Red State Reject
by Michael R. Burch

I once was a pessimist
but now I’m more optimistic
ever since I discovered my fears
were unsupported by any statistic.



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur Gaud’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).

The wordplay of “ur Gaud” and “u cant” is intentional, as always.



briefling
by michael r. burch

manishatched,hopsintotheMix,
cavorts,hassex(quick!,spawnan­ewBrood!);
then,likeamayfly,he’ssuddenlygone:
plantfood

Here “briefling” is a diminutive of “brief” and also a pun on “brief fling.”



Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please,
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!



Hymn to Apollo
by Michael R. Burch, age 16

something of sunshine attracted my i
as it lazed on the afternoon sky,
golden, splashed on the easel of god;
what, i thought,
could this airy stuff be,
to, phantomlike, flit
through tall trees
on fall days, such as these?

and the breeze
whispered a dirge
to the vanishing light;
enchoired with the evening, it sang;
its voice enchantedly rang
chanting "Night! "...

till all the bright light
retired,
expired.

I wrote this poem around age 15 or 16 and it was published in the Lantern, my high school literary journal, as “Something of Sunshine.”



Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They ***** to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair ...
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.

This is one of my most-rejected poems, but I have always liked it myself.



Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.—Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl
                                              (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
                            It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
                                And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
                                     Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.



Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch

Where you have gone are the shadows falling . . .
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
. . . do you not hear me calling?

Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen . . .
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
. . . is silence at last your anthem?



Lean Harvests (II)
by Michael R. Burch

for Tom Merrill

the trees are shedding their leaves again:
another summer is over.
the Christians are praising their Maker again,
but not the disconsolate plover:
     i hear him berate
     the fate
     of his mate;
he claims God is no body’s lover.



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.

I wrote the first version of this poem around age 15.



Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of the forming of my soul,
in the dawning of desire, with passion at first bloom,
with lightning splitting heaven to thunder's blasting roll
and a sense of welling fire and, perhaps, impending doom—

that I cried out through the tumult of the raging storm on high
for shelter from the chaos of the restless, driving rain . . .
and the voice I heard replying from a rift of bleeding sky
was mine, I'm sure, and, furthermore, was certainly insane.



Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low

for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men . . .
when we were men, or almost so.



Stewark Island (Ambiguity)

“Take your child, your only child, whom you love...”

Seas are like tears—
they are never far away.
I have fled them now these eighteen years,
but I am nearer them today
than I ever have been.

Oh, I never could bear
the warm, salty water
or the cool comfort here
in the shade of an altar
sweeter than sin ...

Sweeter than sin,
yet cleansing, like love;
still its feel to doomed skin
either too little or too much
of whatever it is.

Seas and tears
are like life—
ridiculous,
ambiguous.

I wrote "Stewark Island (Ambiguity)" around age 17-18 as a high school junior or senior.



stones
by michael r. burch

i.
far below me lies a village
with its houses hewn from stone
and though Everyman who lives there
bravely claims he’s not alone,
i can tell him, yes u are!
for u cannot touch the stars
no matter how u try;
nor can u tame the mountain,
nor appease the darkening sky.

ii.
and late at night
their flinty fires blazing cannot warm their stony hearts;
though each villager “believes” (in what?)
the terror-fear departs
them only at mid-day
for they fear what Others say
when their walls have shut them in.

iii.
and do they sin?
who am i to say?
most stones are shades of gray;
what does it matter, anyway?

iv.
oh, i think that living is not easy
and that dying is not hard ...
as the stars above wink, meaningless,
so they are;
so we all are.

v.
a legion without sound
in dusky darkness drawing down
to settle on the town,
the Night is like a stone —
hard and dark and rolling on,
hard and dark and rolling on.



With my daughter, by a waterfall
by Michael R. Burch

By a fountain that slowly shed
its rainbows of water, I led
my youngest daughter.

And the rhythm of the waves
that casually lazed
made her sleepy as I rocked her.

By that fountain I finally felt
fulfillment of which I had dreamt
feeling May’s warm breezes pelt

petals upon me.
And I held her close in the crook of my arm
as she slept, breathing harmony.

By a river that brazenly rolled,
my daughter and I strolled
toward the setting sun,

and the cadence of the cold,
chattering waters that flowed
reminded us both of an ancient song,

so we sang it together as we walked along
—unsure of the words, but sure of our love—
as a waterfall sighed and the sun died above.

This poem was published by my college literary journal, Homespun, in 1977. I believe I wrote it the year before, around age 18.



Yesterday My Father Died
by Michael R. Burch

Rice Krispies and bananas,
milk and orange juice,
newspapers stiff with frozen dew . . .
Yesterday my father died
and the feelings that I tried to hide
he’ll never knew, unless
he saw through my disguise.

Alarm clocks and radios,
crumpled sheets and pillows,
housecoats and tattered, too-small slippers . . .
Why did I never say I cared?
Why were no secrets ever shared?
For now there's nothing left of him
except the clothes he used to wear.

Dimmed lights and smoky murmurs,
a brief “Goodnight!” and fitful slumber,
yesterday's forgotten dreams . . .
Why did my father have to go,
knowing that I loved him so?
Or did he know? Because, it seems,
I never told him so.

The last words he spoke to me,
his laughter in the night,
mementos jammed in cluttered cabinets . . .

I wrote "Yesterday My Father Died" in high school, circa age 16.



What The Roses Don’t Say
by Michael R. Burch

Oblivious to love, the roses bloom
and never touch ... They gather calm and still
to watch the busy insects swarm their leaves ...

They sway, bemused ... till rain falls with a chill
stark premonition: ice! ... and then they twitch
in shock at every outrage ... Soon they’ll blush

a paler scarlet, humbled in their beds,
for they’ll be naked; worse, their leaves will droop,
their petals quickly wither ... Spindly thorns

are poor defense against the winter’s onslaught ...
No, they are roses. Men should be afraid.

This was my second attempt at blank verse, after “Once Upon a Frozen Star.”



The Monarch’s Rose or The Hedgerow Rose
by Michael R. Burch

I lead you here to pluck this florid rose
still tethered to its post, a dreary mass
propped up to stiff attention, winsome-thorned
(what hand was ever daunted less to touch
such flame, in blatant disregard of all
but atavistic beauty)? Does this rose
not symbolize our love? But as I place
its emblem to your breast, how can this poem,
long centuries deflowered, not debase
all art, if merely genuine, but not
“original”? Love, how can reused words
though frailer than all petals, bent by air
to lovelier contortions, still persist,
defying even gravity? For here
beat Monarch’s wings: they rise on emptiness!

This was my third attempt at blank verse.



Fairest Diana
by Michael R. Burch

Fairest Diana, princess of dreams,
born to be loved and yet distant and lone,
why did you linger—so solemn, so lovely—
an orchid ablaze in a crevice of stone?

Was not your heart meant for tenderest passions?
Surely your lips—for wild kisses, not vows!
Why then did you languish, though lustrous, becoming
a pearl of enchantment cast before sows?

Fairest Diana, fragile as lilac,
as willful as rainfall, as true as the rose;
how did a stanza of silver-bright verse
come to be bound in a book of dull prose?



Elemental
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Dylan Thomas

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

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

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



gimME that ol’ time religion!
by michael r. burch

fiddle-dee-dum, fiddle-dee-dee,
jesus loves and understands ME!
safe in his grace, I’LL **** them to hell—
the strumpet, the harlot, the wild jezebel,
the alky, the druggie, all queers short and tall!
let them drink ashes and wormwood and gall,
’cause fiddle-dee-DUMB, fiddle-dee-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee . . .
jesus loves and understands
ME!



Happily Never After
by Michael R. Burch

Happily never after, we lived unmerrily
(write it!—like disaster) in Our Kingdom by the See
as the man from Porlock’s laughter drowned out love’s threnody.

We ditched the red wheelbarrow in slovenly Tennessee,
then made a picturebook of poems, a postcard for Tse-Tse,
a list of resolutions we knew we couldn’t keep,
and asylum decorations for the King in his dark sleep.

We made it new so often, strange newness, wearing old,
peeled off, and something rotten gleamed—dull yellow, not like gold—
like carelessness, or cowardice, and redolent of ***.
We stumbled off, our awkwardness—new Keystone comedy.

Huge cloudy symbols blocked the sun; onlookers strained to see.
We said We were the only One. Our gaseous Melody
had made us Joshuas, and so—the Bible, new-rewrit,
with god removed, replaced by Show and Glyphics and Sanskrit,
seemed marvelous to Us, although King Ezra said, “It’s S--t.”

We spent unhappy hours in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
drunk on such Awesome Power only Emperors can See.
We were Imagists and Vorticists, Projectivists, a Dunce,
Anarchists and Antarcticists and anti-Christs, and once
We’d made the world Our oyster and stowed away the pearl
of Our too-, too-polished wisdom, unanchored of the world,
We sailed away to Lilliput, to Our Kingdom by the See
and piped the rats to join Us, to live unmerrily
hereever and hereafter, in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
in the miniature ship Disaster in a jar in Tennessee.



Duet (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad,
how worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we danced together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .

Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement—in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us—our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .

Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .

No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .



Duet (II)
by Michael R. Burch

If love is just an impulse meant to bring
two tiny hearts together, skittering
like hamsters from their Quonsets late at night
in search of lust’s productive exercise . . .

If love is the mutation of some gene
made radiant—an accident of bliss
played out by two small actors on a screen
of silver mesh, who never even kiss . . .

If love is evolution, nature’s way
of sorting out its DNA in pairs,
of matching, mating, sculpting flesh’s clay . . .
why does my wrinkled hamster climb his stairs

to set his wheel revolving, then descend
and stagger off . . . to make hers fly again?

Published by Bewildering Stories



Oasis
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.



Melting
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous,
                     so bright,
                                                      so beautiful . . .
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.

Published by Borderless Journal



All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.

Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.



Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor
by Michael R. Burch

After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs,
Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs:
“Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!”
(His name, let’s assume, was, er ... Percival Queemly.)

“Expel me! Expel me!”—She flashes her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise,
for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name ...
Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!”

“Continue to live here—carouse as you please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees.
Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose:
“I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.”
(Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.)



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch

In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.

Great pyramids, the looted tombs
—how still and desolate their wombs!—
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.

Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?

Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?

or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”

Published by Golden Isis and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



The People Loved What They Had Loved Before
by Michael R. Burch

We did not worship at the shrine of tears;
we knew not to believe, not to confess.
And so, ahemming victors, to false cheers,
we wrote off love, we gave a stern address
to things that we disapproved of, things of yore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We did not build stone monuments to stand
six hundred years and grow more strong and arch
like bridges from the people to the Land
beyond their reach. Instead, we played a march,
pale Neros, sparking flames from door to door.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We could not pipe of cheer, or even woe.
We played a minor air of Ire (in E).
The sheep chose to ignore us, even though,
long destitute, we plied our songs for free.
We wrote, rewrote and warbled one same score.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

At last outlandish wailing, we confess,
ensued, because no listeners were left.
We built a shrine to tears: our goddess less
divine than man, and, like us, long bereft.
We stooped to love too late, too Learned to *****.
And the people loved what they had loved before.



Bertolt Brecht Translations

These are my modern English translations of poems written in German by Bertolt Brecht. After the poems I have translations of epigrams and quotations by Bertolt Brecht.

The Burning of the Books
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he'd been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven't I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!

Published by Poetry Super Highway, The Tory and Convivium



Parting
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We embrace;
my fingers trace
rich cloth
while yours encounter only moth-
eaten fabric.

A quick hug:
you were invited to the gay soiree
while the minions of the 'law'
relentlessly pursue me.

We talk about the weather
and our friendship's eternal magic.
Anything else would be too bitter,
too tragic.



Radio Poem
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You, little box, held tightly
to me
during my escape
so that your delicate tubes do not break;
carried from house to house, from ship to train,
so that my enemies may continue communicating with me
by land and by sea
and even in my bed, to my pain;
the last thing I hear at night, the first thing when I rise,
recounting their many conquests and my cares,
promise me not to go silent in a sudden
surprise.



The Mask of Evil
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A Japanese woodcarving hangs on my wall —
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not unsympathetically, I observe
the forehead's bulging veins,
the strain
such malevolence requires.



Bertolt Brecht Epigrams and Quotations

These are my modern English translations of epigrams and quotations by Bertolt Brecht.

Everyone chases the way happiness feels,
unaware how it nips at their heels.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The world of learning takes a crazy turn
when teachers are taught to discern!
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unhappy, the land that lacks heroes.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hungry man, reach for the book:
it's a hook,
a harpoon.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Because things are the way they are,
things can never stay as they were.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

War is like love; true...
it finds a way through.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What happens to the hole
when the cheese is no longer whole?
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank
than by threatening the poor clerk.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not fear death so much, or strife,
but rather fear the inadequate life.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: Bertolt Brecht, translation, translations, German, modern English, epigram, epigrams, quote, quotes, quotations



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“... what rough beast ... slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a streaked glass pane,
jeers jubilant,
mocking.

Brutality is shocking—
tiny orifices torn,
impaled with hard lust,
the fetus unborn
tossed in a dust-
bin. The scarred skull shorn,
nails bloodied, tortured,
an old wound sutured
over, never healed.

Brutality, all its faces revealed,
is legion:
Death March, Trail of Tears, Inquisition . . .
always the same.
The Beast of the godless and of man’s “religion”
slouching toward Jerusalem:
horned, crowned, gibbering, drooling, insane.



Bible libel (ii)
by Michael R. Burch

ur savior’s a cad
—he’s as bad as his dad—
according to your horrible Bible.

demanding belief
or he’ll bring u to grief?
he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival!

was the man ever good
before being made “god”?
if so, half your Bible is libel!



Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch

Meg, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I’m with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy ...



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man’s tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men’s frozen genes convene ...
there is no answer—death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth’s “highest species”—
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.



Having Touched You
by Michael R. Burch

What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.

And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west,
another remained

suspended in memory
like a flower
in crystal

so that eternity
is but an hour
and fall

is no longer a season
but a state
of mind.

I have no reason
to wait;
the wind

does not pause
for remembrance
or regret

because
there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget . . .

Forget that we were very happy
for a day.
That day was my lifetime.

Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine,

the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root
and I grew.

Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife,
and yet I can bear it,
having touched you.



Children
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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



we did not Dye in vain!
by michael r. burch

from “songs of the sea snails”

though i’m just a slimy crawler,
     my lineage is proud:
my forebears gave their lives
     (oh, let the trumps blare loud!)
so purple-mantled Royals
     might stand out in a crowd.

i salute you, fellow loyals,
     who labor without scruple
as your incomes fall
     while deficits quadruple
to swaddle unjust Lords
     in bright imperial purple!

Originally published by The American Dissident

Notes: In ancient times the purple dye produced from the secretions of purpura mollusks (sea snails) was known as “Tyrian purple,” “royal purple” and “imperial purple.” It was greatly prized in antiquity, and was very expensive according to the historian Theopompus: “Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon.” Thus, purple-dyed fabrics became status symbols, and laws often prevented commoners from possessing them. The production of Tyrian purple was tightly controlled in Byzantium, where the imperial court restricted its use to the coloring of imperial silks. A child born to the reigning emperor was literally porphyrogenitos ("born to the purple") because the imperial birthing apartment was walled in porphyry, a purple-hued rock, and draped with purple silks. Royal babies were swaddled in purple; we know this because the iconodules, who disagreed with the emperor Constantine about the veneration of images, accused him of defecating on his imperial purple swaddling clothes!



Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch



Roll on, Red River
by Michael R. Burch

Roll on, Red River,
a cowboy has died.
Roll on; we lay him
down here at your side.
Carry him off
to the wild, raging sea...
     Roll on, Red River,
     and set his soul free.

Roll on, Red River,
roll on to the sea,
and sing him to sleep
as you roll up his dreams.
Sing him to sleep
with some old, lonesome song...
     Now roll on, Red River,
     and roll him along.

Roll on, Red River
and say a kind word
for an old surly cowhand
who died poor and hurt;
poor as a pauper
and hurt by his friends...
     Roll on, Red River,
     roll on to the end.

Roll on, Red River,
a cowboy has died.
Nobody loved him
and nobody cried.
A cowboy's not much,
but at least he's a man...
     So roll on, Red River,
     roll on and be ******.

I believe I wrote the original version of this poem around age 14-15.



Moore or Less
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

Less is more —
in a dress, I suppose,
and in intimate clothes
like crotchless hose.

But now Moore is less
due to death’s subtraction
and I must confess:
I hate such redaction!



u-turn: another way to look at religion
by michael r. burch

... u were born(e) orphaned from Ecstasy
into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms
dreaming of Beatification;
u’d love to make a u-turn back to Divinity,
but having misplaced ur chrysalis,
can only chant magical phrases,
like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ...



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see ...



The Tally
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lovers
don't reveal
all
their Secrets;
under the covers
they
may
count each other's Moles
(that reside
and hide
in the shy regions
by forbidden holes),
then keep the final tally
strictly
from Aunt Sally!



jasbryx
by michael r. burch

hidden deep inside of Me
is someone else, and he is free;
he laughs aloud, but never is heard;
he flits about, as free as a bird,
so unlike Me

silently within Myself,
he shouts aloud and shuns the shelf
that others deem to be his place;
yet society is not disgraced,
nor are we,
for he is never heard
above the spoken word

o, i am not as others are —
pale things of ice, devoid of fire,
for i am all i seem to be —
innocent, childlike, frolicsome, free —
and i raise no ire

no, he is not as others are —
he lives his life without a care;
and he is all he seems to be —
wild, rambunctious, fervent, free,
so unlike Me

I wrote "jasbryx" in high school, under the influence of e. e. cummings, around age 16.



The Red State Reaction
by Michael R. Burch

Where the hell are they hidin’
Sleepy Joe Biden?

And how the hell can the bleep
Do so much, in his sleep?



Red State Reject
by Michael R. Burch

I once was a pessimist
but now I’m more optimistic
ever since I discovered my fears
were unsupported by any statistic.



Late Frost
by Michael R. Burch

The matters of the world like sighs intrude;
out of the darkness, windswept winter light
too frail to solve the puzzle of night’s terror
resolves the distant stars to salts: not white,

but gray, dissolving in the frigid darkness.
I stoke cooled flames and stand, perhaps revealed
as equally as gray, a faded hardness
too malleable with time to be annealed.

Light sprinkles through dull flakes, devoid of color;
which matters not. I did not think to find
a star like Bethlehem’s. I turn my collar
to trudge outside for cordwood. There, outlined

within the doorway’s arch, I see the tree
that holds its boughs aloft, as if to show
they harbor neither love, nor enmity,
but only stars: insignias I know—

false ornaments that flash, overt and bright,
but do not warm and do not really glow,
and yet somehow bring comfort, soft delight:
a rainbow glistens on new-fallen snow.



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they’ll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there’s decent *** in jail.
Don’t fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We’ll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don’t make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)

The second stanza is a punning reference to the Tailhook scandal, in which US Navy and Marine aviation officers were alleged to have sexually assaulted up to 83 women and seven men.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . .
Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned,
complaining that I am no longer “pure?”

I threw myself before you, and you frowned,
so full of noble chastity, renowned
for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark

I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips
were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark
to light the cold dominions of your heart.

What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim
upon these territories, cold and dark,
do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light

my heart in death and leave me ashen-white,
as you are white, extinguished by the Night?



The Unregal Beagle vs. The Voracious Eagle
by Michael R. Burch

I’d rather see an eagle
than a beagle
because they’re so **** regal.

But when it’s time to wiggle
and to giggle,
I’d rather embrace an angel
than an evil.

Plus, when it’s time to share the same small space,
I’d much rather have a beagle lick my face!



Update of "A Litany in Time of Plague"
by Michael R. Burch

THE PLAGUE has come again
To darken lives of men
and women, girls and boys;
Death proves their bodies toys
Too frail to even cry.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!

Tycoons, what use is wealth?
You cannot buy good health!
Physicians cannot heal
Themselves, to Death must kneel.
Nuns’ prayers mount to the sky.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty’s brightest flower?
Devoured in an hour.
Kings, Queens and Presidents
Are fearful residents
Of manors boarded high.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!

We have no means to save
Our children from the grave.
Though cure-alls line our shelves,
We cannot save ourselves.
"Come, come!" the sad bells cry.
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!



Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
—Ronald Reagan

A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."

Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.

Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."

Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.

This road is neither long nor wide ...
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.

Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



Mingled Air
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Ephemeral as breath, still words consume
the substance of our hearts; the very air
that fuels us is subsumed; sometimes the hair
that veils your eyes is lifted and the room

seems hackles-raised: a spring all tension wound
upon a word. At night I feel the care
evaporate—a vapor everywhere
more enervate than sighs: a mournful sound

grown blissful. In the silences between
I hear your heart, forget to breathe, and glow
somehow. And though the words subside, we know
the hearth light and the comfort embers gleam

upon our dreaming consciousness. We share
so much so common: sighs, breath, mingled air.



Doppelgänger
by Michael R. Burch

Here the only anguish
is the bedraggled vetch lying strangled in weeds,
the customary sorrows of the wild persimmons,
the whispered complaints of the stately willow trees
disentangling their fine lank hair,

and what is past.

I find you here, one of many things lost,
that, if we do not recover, will undoubtedly vanish forever ...
now only this unfortunate stone,
this pale, disintegrate mass,
this destiny, this unexpected shiver,

this name we share.



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun . . .

We are nonplussed, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant . . .

We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade—
we will watch him decay

as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Improve yourself by others' writings, attaining freely what they purchased at the expense of experience. — Socrates, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Celebrate the New Year?
The cat is not impressed,
the dogs shiver.
—Michael R. Burch



Relativity and the "Physics" of Love
by Albert Einstein
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour,
it seems like a minute.
Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute,
it seems like an hour.
That's relativity!

Oh, it should be possible
to explain the laws of physics
to a barmaid! . . .
but how could she ever,
in a million years,
explain love to an Einstein?

All these primary impulses,
not easily described in words,
are the springboards
of man's actions—because
any man who can drive safely
while kissing a pretty girl
is simply not giving the kiss
the attention it deserves!



Unaware it protects
the hilltop paddies,
the scarecrow seems useless to itself.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ebb-tide:
everything we stoop to collect
slips through our fingers ...
—Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Ascendance Transcendence
by Michael R. Burch

Breaching the summit
I reach
the horizon’s last rays.
—Michael R. Burch



Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch

With her small eyes, pale blue and unforgiving,
she taught me: December is not for those
unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings
who bicker for worms with dramatic throats

still pinkly exposed, ... who have yet to learn
the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour
their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned
fortress and impregnable bower

from which men must fly like improbable dreams
to become poets. They have yet to grasp that,
before they can soar starward like fanciful archaic machines,
they must first assimilate the latest technology, ... or

lose all in the sudden realization of gravity,
following Icarus’s sun-unwinged, singed trajectory.



The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever we became climbed on the thought
of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings
ten thousand miles above the breasted earth
that vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ...

I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling
my human form about; I writhe; I writhe.
Invention is not Mastery, nor wings
Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides
and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ...

Oh, some will call the sun my doom, since Love
melts callow wax the higher atmospheres
made brittle. I flew high, just high enough
to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers.



Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds!
by Michael R. Burch

“Bury St. Edmonds—Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, download files or surf the Web, absolutely free.”—Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.)

Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let
you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet,
commune with nature, interact with hackers,
design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers.

Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs—
four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs,
so your privacy’s assured (a *******’s fine)
while invited friends can scan the party line:

for Internet alerts on new positions,
the randier exploits of politicians,
exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!).
The cybersex is great, it’s guaranteed

to leave you breathless—flushed, free of disease
and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees,
the birds, the bench—this product of Our pen.
We won in with an ode to MSN.



Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray
by Michael R. Burch

It was not so much dream, as error;
I lay and felt the creeping terror
of what I had become take hold . . .

The moon watched, silent, palest gold;
the picture by the mantle watched;
the clock upon the mantle talked,
in halting voice, of minute things . . .

Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings
scored anthems to my loneliness,
but I have dreamed of what is best,
and I have promised to be good . . .

Dismembered limbs in vats of wood,
foul acids, and a strangled cry!
I did not care, I watched him die . . .

Each lovely rose has thorns we miss;
they ***** our lips, should we once kiss
their mangled limbs, or think to clasp
their violent beauty. Dream, aghast,
the flower of my loveliness,
this ageless face (for who could guess?),
and I will kiss you when I rise . . .

The patterns of our lives comprise
strange portraits. Mine, I fear,
proved dear indeed . . . Adieu!
The knife’s for you.



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Eagle, raven, blackbird, crow . . .
What you are I do not know.
Where you go I do not care.
I’m unconcerned whose meal you bear.
But as you mount the sun-splashed sky,
I only wish that I could fly.
I only wish that I could fly.

Robin, hawk or whippoorwill . . .
Should men care if you hunger still?
I do not wish to see your home.
I do not wonder where you roam.
But as you scale the sky's bright stairs,
I only wish that I were there.
I only wish that I were there.

Sparrow, lark or chickadee . . .
Your markings I disdain to see.
Where you fly concerns me not.
I scarcely give your flight a thought.
But as you wheel and arc and dive,
I, too, would feel so much alive.
I, too, would feel so much alive.

I don’t remember exactly when this poem was written. I believe it was around 1974-1975, which would have made me 16 or 17 at the time. I do remember not being happy with the original version of the poem, and I revised it more than once over the years, including recently at age 61! The original poem was influenced by William Cullen Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl.”



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of wanting her himself, so much the lie
that she was meant for him—obscene illusion!—
made him seem a monarch throned like God on high,
when he was less than nothing; when to die
meant many stultifying, pained embraces.

She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces
that tied her to the earth: then she was his.
Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces
and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness—
her ghost beyond perfection—for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.



Professor Poets
by Michael R. Burch

Professor poets remind me of drones
chasing the Classical queen's aging bones.
With bottle-thick glasses they still see to write —
droning on, endlessly buzzing all night.
And still in our classrooms their tomes are decreed ...
Perhaps they're too busy with buzzing to breed?



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The night is dark and scary—
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star ...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother’s love
and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit!



The Song of Roland
by Michael R. Burch

“for spring in retreat”

Rain down,
strange murmurous water...
no, summer is not yet nigh.

Cease your complaining,
for May is,
calling December a lie,
still rocking the high white sky.

Sleep now,
summer hours...
too soon your time shall come.

Softly straining,
the raining
spring begs, "Let me run
one more hour beneath the sun,
for soon I shall be gone."

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

Remember a pyre
of stars blazing higher
upon night’s immense dark sky
unsettling as her eyes,
unregretful, as you died...

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.



Poet to poet
by Michael R. Burch

I have a dream
...pebbles in a sparkling sand...
of wondrous things.

I see children
...variations of the same man...
playing together.

Black and yellow, red and white,
... stone and flesh, a host of colors...
together at last.

I see a time
...each small child another's cousin...
when freedom shall ring.

I hear a song
...sweeter than the sea sings...
of many voices.

I hear a jubilation
... respect and love are the gifts we must bring...
shaking the land.

I have a message,
...sea shells echo, the melody rings...
the message of God.

I have a dream
...all pebbles are merely smooth fragments of stone...
of many things.

I live in hope
...all children are merely small fragments of One...
that this dream shall come true.

I have a dream!
... but when you're gone, won't the dream have to end?...
Oh, no, not as long as you dream my dream too!

Here, hold out your hand, let's make it come true.
... i can feel it begin...
Lovers and dreamers are poets too.
...poets are lovers and dreamers too...

Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



Editor's Notes
by Michael R. Burch

Eat, drink and be merry
(tomorrow, be contrary).

(***** and complain
in bad refrain,
but please—not till I'm on the plane!)

Write no poem before its time
(in your case, this means never).
Linger over every word
(by which, I mean forever).

By all means, read your verse aloud.
I'm sure you'll be a star
(and just as distant, when I'm gone);
your poems are beauteous (afar).



Amending Walls
by Michael R. Burch

“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”
Robert Frost, one fears, was undoubtedly right.
They can’t go beyond their father’s saying.

They’re building walls, the intolerant and the straying.
They’re building walls again, to shut in night.
“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”

“Stabbed in the back!” Thus cry the ones betraying,
who turn their sullen backs on the Lord of Light.
They can’t go beyond their father’s saying.

Screaming curses, froth-mouthed, vile and baying,
having no care for their frailest victim’s plight.
“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”

The oddest of heroes, fraying while still braying,
embracing hatred, it seems, with great delight,
they can’t go beyond their father’s saying.

Raging at children, brutes intent on slaying.
Robert Frost, one fears, was undoubtedly right.
“Do as dad did, from hating queers to praying.”
They can’t go beyond their father’s saying.



My Epitaph
by Michael R. Burch

Do not weep for me, when I am gone.
I lived, and ate my fill, and gorged on life.
You will not find beneath this glossy stone
the man who sowed and reaped and gathered days
like flowers, undismayed they would not keep.
Go lightly then, and leave me to my sleep.



Everlasting
by Michael R. Burch

Where the wind goes
when the storm dies,
there my spirit lives
though I close my eyes.

Do not weep for me;
I am never far.
Whisper my name
to the last star ...

then let me sleep,
think of me no more.

Still ...
By denying death
its terminal sting,
in my words I remain
everlasting.



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

I.

If I should die,
there will come a Doom,
and the sky will darken
to the deepest Gloom.

But if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

II.

If I should die,
let no mortal say,
“Here was a man,
with feet of clay,

or a timid sparrow
God’s hand let fall.”
But watch the sky darken
to an eerie pall

and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and scoffs at these churchyards
littered with roods.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

III.

If I should die,
let no man adore
his incompetent Maker:
Zeus, Yahweh, or Thor.

Think of Me as the One
who never died—
the unvanquished Immortal
with the unriven side.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

IV.

And if I should “die,”
though the clouds grow dark
as fierce lightnings rend
this bleak asteroid, stark ...

If you look above,
you will see a bright Sign—
the sun with the moon
in its arms, Divine.

So divine, if you can,
my bright meaning, and know—
my Spirit is mine.
I will go where I go.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.
Haley Lorish Jan 2015
Alas, the dreaded winter wind
stale and bitter to the taste
she blew in disposition
her breath dispersed in white
as the key of G rang through
unappealing at the onset
winter's song commenced
spirits begins to perish
enveloped in her frost
howling out in utter agony
our crisp, frigid hearts
yearning to be thawed only
at the palm of spring's sweet song
winter's envy hastily erupts
wrapping the world in her arctic grasp
the song of winter will prevail
Brent Kincaid Mar 2016
If only that stranger
Turned into the love
I prayed so long for
To some god up above.
If only that person
Found me irresistible
Instead of totally
Unappealing and risible.

If only the shape of face
Of body and my hair
Was something enticing
Instead of meant to scare.
If only I didn’t sound like
A babbling fool when I’d speak
A loser, a wannabe lothario,
A dingbat, a troll, a freak.

If only I could quickly tell
Who found me very hot
And which love object
Most certainly did not.
If only I was the dream
Some gorgeous soul had
Instead of being someone
They found a bit mad.

If only I looked classy,
Upper echelon and clean
Like a Manhattan executive,
A model from a big magazine.
If only I could finally stop
Compulsively asking myself why
I couldn’t just accept that I
Am a regular, normal kind of guy.
Sarah Camacho Nov 2013
I’m very tired of working past my capability
I know I deserve to be happy, but I’m not
I know I need to fix this on my own
Even if someone were to dry my tears,
they could not heal my heart
I’ve been watching you treat me as anyone else
Like you aren’t my best friend and I’m not yours
When you do these things, even the little things,
like post that someone else is your “best friend”,
or hangout without me, it hurts a lot
But I know now, for sure
I can’t depend on other people to be there for me
I can’t expect people to care the way I do
or be considerate and thoughtful
I know now, for the last time
I will not depend on you
I will not expect you to care the way I did
or be considerate and thoughtful as I was
I know now that I am better off
treating you as anyone else
and caring about you only as a person
Don’t take it to heart, and I know you won’t,
because nothing can be done from here
My hope in this friendship has worn away
Not on it’s own, but it is a little late now
To apologize would be gracious and appreciated,
but it wouldn’t change my feelings
I would like to be able to thank you
for all those years we’ve conquered,
but I can’t, because there is very much I regret
I know I will be happy someday
and I know you may not be there to see it
So I will instead look to myself
I will depend on myself and thank myself
for my aspirations, interests, talents,
appearance, knowledge, and open-mindedness
as you didn’t deem necessary to do
I will push myself at my own will
I will look in the mirror and be satisfied
I will write out my feelings and fix physically
all that I find unappealing
I will appreciate myself and honor myself
as a human being, like everyone else
I will put myself first as I haven’t before
And I will be happy without a best friend
Angelique Feb 2016
unknown voices
trapped in visions
find their reflection unappealing
shattered, they're left constantly longing for wingless angels
Katie Lo Jun 2013
I can't seem to grasp the fact that the world in fact is an ugly place.
We live in a world where suicide is an easier way out than being yourself.
We live in a world where kids have adult minds.
We live in a world where no one is utterly happy.

We live in a world where no one seems to understand the idea of being kind.
The world from afar is such a beautiful thing.
Yet close up, face to face with one another, everything is far much unappealing.

We live in a world where war is an option to obtain peace.
We live in a world where our leaders keep secrets from the public.
We live in a world where women cannot go outside without being harassed.
We live in a world where homosexuality is seldom accepted.

Why is it that as human beings, instead of helping our own kind, we turn our backs to one another.
One day you people will see the error of your ways.
One day you people will see the pain you've inflicted on not only others but a prolonged pain on yourselves.

But for now I'll continue to sit back and watch the planet wither. Slowly but surely.

And I just don't understand.
Scarlet McCall Nov 2016
If only a little eye of newt,
or mandrake root, or hemlock bark,
could turn these loathsome suitors
into lovers handsome, tall and dark.
They paste their unappealing photos
next to profiles trite and silly,
and send flirtations cut-and-pasted
into the ether *****-nilly.
Don’t you know my time you’ve wasted?
I have no interest in your wooing.
Instead of listing your opinions
there are things you should be doing:
Learn to listen, read more books,
lose 15 lbs and use some manners.
Answer emails, learn to cook,
travel widely, study language.
Say what you mean, do what you say,
you’ll find a date without delay.

I haven’t found the witches’ brew
that will turn boys into men.
'Til then with dating I am through,
and bitter missives I will pen.
An old Poetfreak favorite.
Invocation Dec 2014
thoughts dripping -plink, plink-
coagulating into a suffiently-sized puddle
some
transparent and luminescent as diamonds
refracting light into white-hot shards
piercing and radiant
others
black ink dank and dark
as unappealing as a rusty pillow
caustic like hydrochloric acid

the tinctures wrestle and combine
motor oil in water, rainbow patterns at night
suddenly a painful thump,
as I've hit my forehead on my dusty keyboard again.
with this, a parting word -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI
THIS VIDEO IS MY SWEETEST REMINDER
Angela Rose Feb 2018
He said I was so beautiful
I said beautiful was an incredibly lazy, unappealing and shallow way to describe the soul that inhabits my body

That soul is full of yearning for tomorrow
She is constantly hunting for the next adventure and looking for it in places nobody else looks
Her mind is full of words and lyrics and melodies
Her heart is so overflowing with love and compassion and kindness for even the smallest of creatures
She can smile in a corner to herself thinking of jokes from weeks ago, and that smile still lights up a room
She sometimes laughs out loud at her own hilarity and everyone in the room is caught up in the contagion that is her giggle
Her whole demeanor rests on the sole fact that she wakes up and does better than she did yesterday

So sure, beauty is a sweet word
But beautiful sure is a lousy way to capture my soul's presence.
Bryan Rogers May 2015
The Eturi
Part 1 - Genesis


I shall tell you of the first Eturi.
I shall tell you how the seas did not want them--
Coughing them up on the shore
Like water from the lungs of a drowning man.


They were unseemly things.
Arms stretched sinewy from their sockets
Fingers tipped with bulbs
And dripping a sticky mucus
Tearing flesh off prey caught in their hands
On teeth with edges like sawed-off metal.


Their stomachs--
A swollen gelatinous sack of a belly
Mottled with spots and partially translucent
Allowed for an uninhibited view onto the trophy of their latest meal
As it slowly digests.


The Eturi were humanoid only by their incipience
To foul the word--
Human.


The land was bare rock and mud then.
The Eturi were kings
Nothing lived that could challenge their predominance
For nothing lived,
There were yet no plants or other animals
Nothing to eat.


On all fours, they scrabbled the earth for food
Stiff-arming on knuckles
And the tippy toes of their feet
Lip-******* the dirt
Pumping their bellies full of mud and sand
Licking the rocks and chewing clay--
Always hungry
Scouring from beach--to desert--to canyon--to cracked earth--to volcano
Anything to eat.


Until starving, their belly made its final demand--
They must feed.


The first to fall to hunger was unexpected.
A look
From one Eturi upon another
A look that may have been casual or even sincere
Suddenly took on a thoughtful gaze
Then a deliberate stare.


Soon a second Eturi took up that gaze
Then a third,
No words passed between them
Their eyes were like the baying of hounds
Calling the others to them
Swelling into a pack
Drinking the scent of their gaze--
Silent
Coiling
Hunger so close to the surface
The air was almost chewy.


When the other Eturi turned
And saw their eyes upon him
The eyes of his brothers and sisters
The look in their eyes,
He could barely register protest
Before they were on him--
Ripping flesh from muscle
Muscle from bone
Bones snapped to **** out the marrow.
The Eturi was eaten
Before he died.


Survival did not go to the biggest and strongest
For they had the most to eat.
No, survival went to the scrawniest
The smelliest
The most deformed
Those with unappealing prickles of hair
For they were the most unsavory.


And out of this interspecial gorging
Bred a trait
That would become their greatest and most lasting legacy--
Cunning.


For what mattered resourcefulness
Self-preservation
Or strength of the will to live,
If you could predict the hunger in others
And twist them to your own?


It was said that the Land was so moved
Upon seeing the Eturi,
That taking the earth in her hands
She tore open her own breast
And drew forth life
In plants and grasses and fruit and trees and rich vegetation
And to lure other animals--
That anything
The Eturi may feed on anything
Anything but themselves.


But so the Eturi were
So when the Land gave up its last blossom
So would the Eturi always be.
dj Dec 2012
what on earth is this feeling
(yellowing formaldehyde)
kind of like old heartbreak reeling

a vivisection, never healing
coat & spray on the insecticide
what on earth is this feeling

criminal butterflies stealing
the cogs & screws in my arthropod insides
kind of like old heartbreak reeling

heartthrobs come frenzied then unfeeling
my vague worries preside
what on earth is this feeling

whateverphobia; a personal ceramic ceiling
to myself, is how I've always lied
kind of like old heartbreak reeling

carcass littered webs are usually unappealing
my own web has much to elide
kind of like old heartbreak reeling
what on earth is this feeling
the villanelle has been often used (for the element of repetition in the form) to express feelings of dislocation and disassociation. I've always found it ironic that such a rigidly structured poem could be used for such a feeling. (I completely said '**** it' with the meter, though)
Daniel Evans Sep 2014
I’d been waking up in this bed for 17 years now, in a land so alien to me when I first arrived that it had created deep within me equal amounts of fear and excitement, both in their rawest forms. This was a place where I felt nothing of the world around me and from this I found great solace, a numbed reality. People always described China to me as being a ‘culture shock’ however I came here and took it upon myself to undergo a cultural reinvention – a rejection of all I had known previous.  My home had felt stagnant and unappealing for much of my adolescence and as thus I never intended to stay grounded. Nevertheless my striking choice to move to the Far East was no bold adventure; it was simply a regression into a state of complete disassociation only made possible by such a decision, such a radical change in scenery. I have never fully integrated into the society I chose to place myself in and so never feel any want or need to leave, it was the disappointing nature of human interaction that made me leave my birthplace in the first place. To this day I know little of anybody I once knew, how they now live or even how they reacted to my exit, in this lack of knowledge I find bliss. If I were to know then this little bubble of ignorance I have created for myself would be popped – the illusion destroyed.
Either the opening for a short story or a small piece of prose.
Melissa June Mar 2014
Ripping off my unappealing skin
the agonising pigment of my complexion
to release the pain held deep within
under the flesh of a dysphoric reflection

Torn veins peacefully rest at my heels
as I drain the blood from my face
until what once was, forever conceals
the vision of me I couldn't embrace

So I chisel away at the exposed bone
obliterating the imperfect structure of me
as mangled pieces are viciously thrown
faraway from where the eyes can see

Feeling serene as my unconscious rage dies
as I covered the remains of my dissection
looked into the mirror through porcelain eyes
as I held to my face a mask of perfection.
I've always
Had a strange attitude toward libraries
Some
Self-proclaimed peculiar insanity
Engraved and not really reasonable
Imperative
upon me
was
Spellbounded
And occasionally emerging
As
My
Elephantic memory skills


This rather charming ability

Acknowledged once and for Goooood

that:
I cannot breathe, live and develop creative
Thought processes
Flying as they are  ~ Ethereal
Divinational
Sparks of Fanaticism
Along my  

True ingeniosity at any lessser plie

Of books dancing with my diagonal glances all 9 at once

& reading 6

Three of them were  
A
Total
crap
quickly put aside

as a pun melts away when one
hears of thy neighbours death

This
Undefined sophisticated fatality Adoring
flying letters

within the prism of our lust
A narcissistic self proclaimed libido

Called love

( will you call )



YouI The Knowledge Seeker


( You can easily replace I with You whilst thorough reading )

This unfulfilled hunger
For Truth
Piled over Our dreams


Not obeying the law of Sintropy
Which was undiscovered as a scientific paradigm

Do my frangrance linger
Within you

Do you
love
me

To do it
At times you stood there frozen, as an oponnent


To all the women's
Race

At the end. . .

Staring at me Silently

Widespread floor to ceiling windows
Said nothing

Only your two pals
Were blabbering about this Biblical
Not pointing directly
At - The
Highest
Babel Wrong Priestess Fish

Who diss
missed
diss
possesed

Liked me
Ipso facto like A
Fantasy


And
Dismantled his own declination
Of
Giggling
Witches like me

Mad about cherry tea and three hearts
**** bubbles
at the
sea
humming it's beautyful melody

For each
For Us
For U
A différence
For each one with love waves

Chesee is healthy
You have a Tastful Tongue

And you knew that behind my sharp intelligence
Books and photos were draged chaotically
Mostly on the most impossible

Places
Scattered

And piled as flowering colours
As plants lacking a
solid
structure
and
Thorough Thoughts

Thorough Thoughts
( Usually Unite US )
Were We Are Found
At least my-not-importance
Usualy riding on a slick blue silvery back of the nearest
Dolphin
Diving For
Pearl Ear Shells

Or this furry crazy smiling cat
Grinnin' at my newest
Fairy Tale naïveté
Novel

We can all can communicate well
Even when we are statues


Oh ~ you'll love me !
Of that I'm sure!

As a friend or a person worth of a sirious dialog

Eventually: : :

I know
That I'm not
Special
But Spatial

The Menu at your place is not for my veggy nerves ( or have you changed your habitual ethics )

Within my genotype hides an obnoxious little nerdish
Analitical psychotherapist

The nearest person would nod as an affirmation:
A fascinatingly developed natural psychologist
That's for sure!


But I don't mind
To be in love
I love life and laugter and songs

And
I hate your
Non existing
Guardianship
Beacons
Hats

And your
Non existing
Kind sparks
Beaming at me
Loving your beating
Protecting
Whales

Pinacle of your being

Alas ! Old Chap
Thou tribute to deceased master was one of the most

. . . herein lies the enchanted ink of invisibility. . .

Through your perception

The world is seen as a Round Sphere
Substantial to your glasses and the dispersed angles the light hits you
Directemont inbetween
Daily diaries with black frames
For Architects, Thinkers and Designers

I once said that you have a broken unappealing dark face without
beauty spots
central
symetries

Healthy self-esteem
To my friend

She's no longer
Closefriend

I've altered my mind and Beauty categories
Dyonis  & Artemis :
Eros was never destroyed within books
Consumed

Intimacy

Quietness

From my heart to
A Small college library

At least ~ for me :

Here dwell forest dwarfs
Elves and near by Nasa Cute Freaks


Every once in a while I saw three handsome friends
shaking paws
HE has two
persons
or just
One

requested
Water
Fire and Ice
And Theborders of Illlusion
That was A wisdom to my deep golden WIT
y
Heart
Stiched On a T  Shirt


Ignited isynaptic crystals

Are those unforgettable *****
Burning eraticaly on wings of lust and 'creatio ex nihilo'
pressing enter
under the soft-silk soothing shade
of your
Healing un-experienced friends
Under

Rustling treetops contempt, swaying with wind
And the Grass
Swaying
Shaping
Shifting

Ignoring ***
And
Gender


Sorry Ich Bin Langsam und Gothic Mefistofeles
Who has fallen for you
Slender man creature
Masculin
Energy

Feminine and full of abundant Joy
I was
I will
)vegot
The intention is craving
Knowledge

I knowledge is null and void


As a symbolic inflated red balloon

I have it
As long as I do not have
It
Any more

...you can peacefuly replace I with You whilst thorough reading...
and tear
the love
letters
dr.op

All the absurdity

Thank you!

All the arrogance
Vanished within a Dream. . .

Until we give up The True Love
I'm hanging upon Poetry
Tree of life
Spinning

Paper life. . .span
Hanged for a fible moment,
Arrow's Swift Air Cut
Release
Please
Hear
MY
Heart
Palpitations
Die
With
Me only metaphorically

&
Listen to The Universal
Divine Ancient
Scripts

— The End —