Surrounded by friends
A welcoming hug lingers
Filled with what ifs
Uncomfortable for some
Warmly welcomed by others
Conversations fueled by
Wine, beer, and martinis
The comfort of acceptance
Non-judgmental reception
Imagining what’s not said
Some thoughts you can read
Others arise unbidden tongue-tied
Accidental truth shared
Sheltered by laughter
We retell our practiced stories
Not noticing the kind
I’ve-heard-it-before looks
Oh to hear the late night summaries
The evenings score card
We sway from oh so silly to
Pugnacious
We may have crossed lines
We never saw and wouldn’t have cared
If we did

and in that deafening silence,
i’ve never wished more to be heard,
wracked with endless demurs of regret and remorse –
impure, impure, impure.

ii.
but it’s my choice, isn’t it?
to bear the knot of pearls come undone,
to feel it shift from skin to soul,
to speak of loving, and then let go.
(i see this now as a luxury i could not afford.) iii.
if i don’t rise come blooming spring,
ring the church bells for those left unheard,
wash the red from the bed sheets,
please unhinge my strife from the earth;

and know this:

a man is no longer a man,
after his unbidden pillage,
has left an innocent soul shaken;
unholy.

holy, holy, holy.

Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear . . .

once starlight
languished
in your hair . . .

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret . . .
a pain
I chose to bear . . .

unleash
the torrent
of your hair . . .

and show me
once again―
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse



White Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell

Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.

Published by Carnelian, The Chained Muse, A-Poem-A-Day and in a YouTube video by Aurora G. with the titles "Ghost, " "White Goddess" and "White in the Shadows."



The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.

Originally published by The Lyric



If
by Michael R. Burch

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh ...

our soft cries, like regret,

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...

now that I have forgotten her face.

Published by Poetry Magazine, La luce che non muore (Italy), Kritya (India), The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Carnelian, Triplopia, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Strange Road, Inspirational Stories, and Centrifugal Eye



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.

Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Eclectic Muse, Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine and Other Voices International



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.

Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.

There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times



Absence
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.



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 we were utterly
happy 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.

I wrote this poem as a teenager after watching "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble"



Circe
by Michael R. Burch

She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.
She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.
And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Annual
by Michael R. Burch

Silence
steals upon a house
where one sits alone
in the shadow of the itinerant letterbox,
watching the disconnected telephone
collecting dust ...
hearing the desiccate whispers of voices’
dry flutters,—
moths’ wings
brittle as cellophane ...
Curled here,
reading the yellowing volumes of loss
by the front porch light
in the groaning swing . . .
through thin adhesive gloss
I caress your face.



Come!
by Michael R. Burch

Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?

When my womb has conformed to the chastity
your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,
will you finally be pleased that my *** was thus rendered
unpalatable, disengendered?

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so
have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow
with the approval of God that I ended a maid—
thanks to a *****?

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?



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 sunlit sky,
I only wish that I could fly.
I only wish that I could fly.

Robin, hawk or whippoorwill . . .
Should men care that 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.

This is a poem that I believe I wrote as a high school sophomore.



Every Man Has a Dream
by Michael R. Burch

Every man has a dream that he cannot quite touch ...
a dream of contentment, of soft, starlit rain,
of a breeze in the evening that, rising again,
reminds him of something that cannot have been,
and he calls this dream love.

And each man has a dream that he fears to let live,
for he knows: to succumb is to throw away all.
So he curses, denies it and locks it within
the cells of his heart and he calls it a sin,
this madness, this love.

But each man in his living falls prey to his dreams,
and he struggles, but so he ensures that he falls,
and he finds in the end that he cannot deny
the joy that he feels or the tears that he cries
in the darkness of night for this light he calls love.



Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen.
By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.
With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.
Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.
In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.
I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.
I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no man has sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.
And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing . . .
But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray . . .

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs that I used to climb
when the wind was **** with a taste of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.
Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright.
Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-aged wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.
Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam . . .
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!
It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then . . . what then?
I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach . . .
And then, what then?
Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.
When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.
Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.
The distant cooling clouds.
Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over different lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.
Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that rush into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams . . .
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18, circa 1976-1977.


He Lived: Excerpts from “Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death erases.

II.
He built the great ramparts of Uruk-the-Sheepfold
And of holy Eanna. Then weary, alone,
He recorded his thoughts in frail scratchings called “words”:
But words made immortal, once chiseled in stone.

III.
These walls he erected are ever-enduring:
Vast walls where the widows of dead warriors weep.
Stand by them. O, feel their immovable presence!
For no other walls are as strong as this keep’s.

IV.
Come, climb Uruk’s tower on a starless night—
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
The Goddess of Ecstasy and of Terror!

V.
Find the cedar box with its hinges of bronze;
Lift the lid of its secrets; remove its dark slate;
Read of the travails of our friend Gilgamesh—
Of his descent into hell and man’s terrible fate!

VI.
Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild bull of the mountains, the Goddess his dam
—Bedding no other man; he was her sole rapture—
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I am!”



Enkidu Enters the House of Dust
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

I entered the house of dust and grief.
Where the pale dead weep there is no relief,
for there night descends like a final leaf
to shiver forever, unstirred.

There is no hope left when the tree’s stripped bare,
for the leaf lies forever dormant there
and each man cloaks himself in strange darkness, where
all company’s unheard.

No light’s ever pierced that oppressive night
so men close their eyes on their neighbors’ plight
or stare into darkness, lacking sight ...
each a crippled, blind bat-bird.

Were these not once eagles, gallant men?
Who sits here—pale, wretched and cowering—then?
O, surely they shall, they must rise again,
gaining new wings? “Absurd!

For this is the House of Dust and Grief
where men made of clay, eat clay. Relief
to them’s to become a mere windless leaf,
lying forever unstirred.”

“Anu and Enlil, hear my plea!
Ereshkigal, they all must go free!
Beletseri, dread scribe of this Hell, hear me!”
But all my shrill cries, obscured

by vast eons of dust, at last fell mute
as I took my place in the ash and soot.



Reclamation
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me—progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically—her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure

to a consuming emptiness.
We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture—
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts

to the first note.
Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.



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.

Keywords/Tags: Epic of Gilgamesh, epic, epical, orient occident, oriental, ancient, ancestors, ancestry, primal

Words have power.
Words as weapons.
Words as praise.
Words as motivation.

From the time they begin rolling around Inside my head,
Joining with others to form ideas
Until the moment they,
      Unbidden,
Force their way through me
And out onto the page,
I Love Words!

Hiroshima Poems

Let Us Be Midwives!
by Hiroshima survivor Sadako Kurihara
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midnight . . .
the basement of a shattered building . . .
atomic bomb survivors sniveling in the darkness . . .
not a single candle between them . . .
the odor of blood . . .
the stench of death . . .
the sickly-sweet smell of decaying humanity . . .
the groans . . .
the moans . . .
Out of all that, suddenly, miraculously, a voice:
"The baby's coming!"
In the hellish basement, unexpectedly,
a young mother has gone into labor.
In the dark, lacking a single match, what to do?
Scrambling to her side,
forgetting themselves . . .

It appears that my translation above has been used by Hiroshima University in a new field of study called International Peace and Coexistence. I found my translation on the university’s Peace and Coexistence Facebook page. Being a longtime peace activist, I am particularly happy with the name of the course!



Now the remaining Hiroshima survivors are aging, and they must wonder what the world has learned from their harrowing ordeal:

See: whose surviving sons
visit the ancestral graves
white-bearded, with trembling canes?
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



We should always consider the fates of innocent children:

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
―Michael R. Burch, "Epitaph for a Child of Hiroshima"



The intense heat and light of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts left behind ghostly silhouettes of human beings whose lives were erased in an instant:

Hiroshima Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Hiroshima shadows ... mother and child ...
Oh, when will our hearts ever be beguiled
to end mindless war ... to seek peace,
            reconciled
to our common mortality?



Poets remind us that we all share a common destiny:

Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
―Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Something
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this―
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then, and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.

Bring back a pretty
flower,
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.

There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.



The day the Cloud reigned
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was clear on Hiroshima,
sealing her fate.
The report of the weather plane,
neither early nor late,
was certainly plain.

The few innocuous clouds did not refrain
from abandoning the city.
Only the silence, monstrous in its complicity,
regarding man’s error
acknowledged the horror.

Only the small, astonished victims
understood the immaculate heavens:
the inconceivable light
igniting their bones;
the Cloud, all of a sudden,
billowing unbidden,
and then the apocalyptic rain
descending again and again.

So that where white chrysanthemums
had once whispered with bemused tongues
instantly only ashen ruins remained
the day the Cloud reigned.



War Close Up
by Hiroshima survivor Kurihara Sadako
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stirring bugles! Rousing martial music!
The announcer reporting "victory"
like some messenger from on high,
fanning, fanning the fervored flames of battle!

Masterful state magicians materializing
in a wizardly procession,
spreading cleverly poisoned words
to bewilder reason!
Artistic expression abracadabra-ed into state-sponsored magic!

The sound of boots, guns, bombs, cannons
as our army advances, advances, advances toward the enemy!
The thunder of our invincible tanks advancing! Alleluia!
The sudden, sweet gurgles of drowning enemy ships!

The radio broadcasts the sounds of battle:
A war hymn resounding to the skies,
sung by courageous men and women
who worship this cruel idol, War.

Oh, so powerful the merest whiff
addles even the most independent spirit―
the ***** of patriotism!
the religion of race!

While on scenic islands
scattered like stepping stones across the globe,
and on farflung continents,
driven by boundless avarice,
the landlords rage and rave again,
instilling hatred in indigenous populations
then prodding, driving them into battle.
Full of high-sounding pretexts
inevitably adapted to expediency
they raise indisputable banners―
God is on our side!
Righteous war!
Holy war!

"Right" becomes the password of thieves.
They square their shoulders:
"To secure world peace
annihilate
the evil opponent!"

They bark commands:
"For ten years, a hundred years,
fight to the last man, the last woman!"
The master magicians' martial music
resounds magisterially;
fanatic bull-mad patriots
roar and run amok;
completely bewitched, the people carol in unison:
"O, let me die by the side of my sweet Sovereign!"

Keywords/Tags: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, atomic bomb, Japan, Japanese, translation, nukes, nuclear weapons, nuclear war, epitaph, child, children, mother, mothers, father, fathers, WWII, apocalypse, Armageddon

A Woman's Reflection on Her Reflection (Valence and Value)

one poem, written by two authors


~~~

Ever the analyst,
A mirror functions as surface to
Parse the fleeting constant
Of youth's beauty.

From genetic gift
Of symmetry and bone,
To technological tampering,
Until the equation is solved,
As experience and character
Models and maps the result.

The answer, a reflection,
Of individual valence and value

(written by S.D., a woman)

~~~

(written by N.L., a man)

unbidden and unannounced, a
"not fully formed poem,
but a simple reflection"
inbound missile arrives inbox,
armed with silent power,
the lethality of the
Holy Unexpected

the man reflects
on her mirror-on-the-wall's
fulsome reply,
parsing the words of a
woman's reflection,
while gazing on her own

every human's momentary glass notation,
but an instance of summation,
a human poem, whose editing,
unceasing

a comma here,
a period inserted,
an eye shadowed, an eyebrow tweezed,
a eye dark circle line added,
to tree-mark time's authorship

all  these
but a person's
excerpted extraction,
notarized,
then auto-erased and revised,
as out of date,  
instantaneously compromised

but,

it is upon  the conceptual,
valence and value,
more that the man reflects perpetual,
less on transitory morphing changes of
exterior mortality

while overlooking her
glassine realization from behind,
he concludes:

every reflection,
no matter how oft the snapshot,
the unfleeting constancy
of the combining of the

princes of principles,
valence and value

that he witnesses,
in the calming pool
of her eyes,
(those borrowed windows into her soul's well,)
so well reflect
her unchanging greater finery,

her character

this reflection,
metamorphosis transformed.
into a planetary permanency poem,
high placed in his the firmament
of their conjoined sky

Unseemly are the open eyes
  That watch the midnight sheep,
That look upon the secret skies
  Nor close, abashed, in sleep;

That see the dawn drag in, unbidden,
  To birth another day--
Oh, better far their gaze were hidden
  Below the decent clay.

She said over the ether: ‘I’m eating a perfectly ripe fig. So nice, I’m going to have another’.

We’ve been here before he thought as he read her text. In a memory’s moment he was back at her dining room table with five figs in a small bowl. The table wore a blue cloth, and she a Scandinavian skirt with pockets. It was that time of year when the midday light can be so golden, so wonderful. He remembered her delight that he had ‘brought figs to her table’. He was so full to the brim with love for her on that autumn day that those figs had seemed so very right, more than appropriate; a perfect addition to their developing intimacy. She had not been wooed by figs before. He wasn’t sure she understood their significance, their ****** stance.  She hadn’t read The White Goddess. When pressed to explain he was tempted to tell her exactly what he understood a fig might suggest between lovers, and lovers they certainly were. She had cried out under his touch, had opened her mouth, her beautiful eyes, had cried out like no woman he had even begun to know. She was so extraordinarily passionate as he touched her. She moved with him and their bodies would kiss and stroke as though unbidden, of their own volition, ungovernable even. So when he touched the closest fig in the blue bowl on the lunchtime table it was a little like being touched by her in the greatest intimacy. The skin of the fig has this rub, it feels like the ******* of his passion, that she had so generously touched, had stroked, had known, had brought between the valley of her dear ******* that now, these several years gone and past, he still wondered at, that such a curve and fall and sensation in the hand and fingers could remain so wondrous, so magically beautiful.

He had responded in a text by writing: you sensuous woman . . .  And she in reply had said:  ‘Just pecking’. Does one really peck at figs? Surely not, he thought. She wrote: I meant peckish! Stupid predictive text. And he said: Surely one doesn’t eat figs because one is peckish. That’s what digestive biscuits are for.

And so it went on a little, this conversation over the ether. But all the while he was back in that sunlit room quite alone with her, before he should have been alone with her and feeling such passion, such a passion that its imprint still remained on his consciousness. He wondered if she really understood about this passion of his. It was beyond any possible fig known to man or woman. They were never figgish, only once and she had said it was not for her, and he had understood, and loved her all the more for such frankness in the face of passion. He was still feeling his way, hardly knowing how to deal with such passionate closeness, such desire to be close. How he loved her, he thought this again and again, again and now. He seemed to hold a whole litany of love inside him that he longed to sing out to her.

He was so grateful that she had interrupted those afternoon labours at his desk with her teasing words, and wondered whether she really did eat that second fig.

“The Maiden”

Over her long legs,
Hips sway in a salacious manner,
As she strolls,
Past the gaggle of gentlemen,
Mustering the valor to face,
Their glances varying from curiosity,
To disgust,
Perhaps intrigue as these men,
Behold this exotic form of femininity.

An aura of mystery emanates,
From a tenderly warm demeanor,
Welcoming the viewers,
Who encounter this daughter of Aphrodite,
Capturing attention regardless of,
One’s alleged reasoning.

Intrepid knights receive the blessing,
To witness the hazel windows,
Into a maiden’s soul,
Deeply adorned with unbidden intensity,
Bestowing a small glimpse,
Into a beguiling beauty,
Mistaken as a cozening siren,
To an untrained eye.

Many chaps desire her,
Until revelations bereave these fellows,
Of security interwoven into the fabric,
Of society sewn with fine threads,
Uniting into an existence of conformity.

Some licentious men lunge,
At the maiden,
Gaping at what these fellows,
Observe as a tantalizing goddess,
Desiring to place lascivious hands,
Upon her soft skin.

Misguided stories allow life to be given,
To glaring spectators,
Spewing jeers of rancor,
Bemused as the unknown,
Deftly saunters near,
The valley of Oblivion.

Like the majestic Mona Lisa,
The maiden consists of subtle nuances,
Painting her tributes behind cryptic techniques,
Allowing one to inspect her façade,
Learning her similarities to the wind,
Feeling her spirit,
Rather than glancing upon visual proof.

The souls encountering the maiden,
Gain respite from strangling thoughts,
Placated by her light,
Revealing the contrasts,
The highlights to expose,
An extraordinary beauty,
Manifesting from genuine kindness,
Breaths of generosity,
And irrevocable love of all shades and tints,
Within a painter’s palate.

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are bright’ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight—

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves:

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt—
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

Antagonism
burgeons back bad blood.
Compatriots, courtesy can cool contentions:
doubly, disrespect demands decisive
execution. Early efforts evolved
fatuously, force facilitated farcical fighting.
Gambling gents gleefully gored
hedonistic harlots. Harassing
ignorantly, igniting
jealously,
killings
listlessly- liars lament
momentarily. Meanwhile, monetary
nuances
of opulence obscure
prime problems.
Quarries quake
running red. Remembering
solitarily- stoic steeds stand silent, sending
thoughts,
unbidden, unbeknownst.
Violence:
we were
xanthic,
yellow years yaw…
Zymotic.

Twice lost, one soul appeared, unbidden,
Ambushed, in plain sight.
Results?     All hidden.
As I walked, I thought of this,
Imagined as I sought,
A sign of full surrender,
In the battles that we fought.
I threw what always seemed, to you,
The ordnance of the soul,
Words on leaves and tissue tigers,
Weak and boring, far from whole.
My engine had an inner working, impossible to see.
My feet still carry me to you,
And you just stare at me.

Forgive me for my passion. I feel so stupid to feel so much, so deeply. Abashed, embarrassed, shamed by a feeling that so many seek and never find: love. And I've got too much of it to give, and no one wants all of it.

Forgive me for my sweetness, my purity of thought. No one wants idealism mixed with such bitter truth. No one wants to see the ugly realities of life through such tender eyes.

Forgive me my simple admiration, adoration, intensity. No one wants to be worshiped with such devotion and selflessness. No one wants to be so loved without reason.

Forgive me for my undivided attention and careful agreement. No one wants to be listened to.

Forgive me empathy and sympathy and care. For no one wants to see that others share their feelings, and want to help. Not really. Everybody wants to be alone in their troubles, and somehow special for it.

Forgive me honesty and honor and truth. Nobody wants the truth, not really, the ugly truth. We like to live in our lies, and hurt our friends, and deceive ourselves.

Forgive me for my absolution. Cruelly I withhold my vengeance and bitterness. No one wants to be forgiven, not really.

Forgive me for seeing beauty unbidden, unrealized, unappreciated. No one wants to see the good in such a world that has hurt them.


*Forgive me for myself.

(Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni)

1

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendor, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters,—with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, amon the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

2

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—
Thou many-colored, many voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odors, and their mighty swinging
To hear—an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;—
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion,
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound—
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

3

Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.—I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far and round and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes amon the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears,—still snowy and serene—
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,
And the wolf tracks her there—how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.—Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None can reply—all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

4

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower;—the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him, and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquility,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands , for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves,
Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air.

5

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them:—Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

I would shed my skin
Leaving dust and bone by the cliffside
And bare myself to the world
Amidst the storm of lightning and thunder
I would hold lightning in my hand
And grip it tightly as it struggled and squirmed
Uncaring of the black blood soaking my hands and the ground
From its burning arches of light
Until I finally set aflame
And leave you to watch,
gripping the fabric of your sleeves
As I jump

from the precipice

to fly

And



drop

soundlessly into the sea
lost
in the roaring crescendo
of life
itself

As water had birthed life and nurtured it
One day I would emerge
Unrecognizable to your tearful eyes

But Gods aren't meant to be beautiful
And angels strike mortals with madness
And turn the impure blind
So as I return
Having been dipped into the lifeblood of our world
I spiral into the sky
"Goodbye" unable to leave your trembling lips
And tears falling unbidden
The only words I know now
"Be not afraid"
I took with me into the sky

So I leave you
With no understanding
And only the atrocity
That I had become

I don’t want this dust laden room to become my tomb. However, I cannot abide the outside, a world where lovely flowers still bloom. A sense of sweet smells do not pass through the wooden membrane. Instead, it is the stench of fear and death that wed themselves to my nose.
Children no longer leave their rooms. The streets are far too quiet so, it would be safe for me to venture outside. No one would really bother me, but I am scared, unprepared for anything less than the despair of my self-imposed isolation.
The ***** blue trash can is a quarter full with **** filled plastic bottles, *** covered Kleenexes, and perishables. The metal grate vibrates and clicks as heat tries to press in like an abstract specter. The noise would keep me awake if I ever tried to sleep.
Thirty-four hours is too long. My eyes burn heavy. Sleep would welcome me, but I refuse to yield to that release. Unconsciousness frightens me. I know what dreams might visit me, fictions, and dark fantasies that vaguely recall the painful realities. Perhaps a cup of coffee might save me from those nightmares. I know that I will eventually succumb to the demon of slumber. My dry eyes find water that I did not know existed.” No sleep, no sleep, god please no sleep.”
Memory movies come unbidden. steel breaks glass, metal crunches, someone screams. I shudder as my fingers follow a map of pain from my lower lip down and to the right. “No, no, no, no, not today!” I cry out. Then, recalling the powdered stimulants that I stored in my old book bag I dash up and towards the door, stopping just short of opening it and stepping out to the living room.
“*******, stupid *******, you ******* ******. ****!” I yell as I retreat from the dangerous door.
More tears make a guest appearance on my face. ***** fingers ****** my chipped tooth, pushing it in and pulling it a little way out resisting the urge to cringe in disgust and pain. Till **** and blood pop from the pink gum bubble just under the disfigured tooth. I bite my tongue, till more blood comes and swallow the putrid mixture.
Small shadows slip sideways and back into place as an ambulance rides by my window. My body tremors with a familiar terror. “No, no, not again. Oh god please not again.” A strangled voices weeps. The multi-colored lights of police cars play a strange shadow show on my wall. “Not again, not again.” I whimper.
A thud, thud, thud, thud, sounds to my right, followed by a muffled voice. “Come on man you got to come out sometime.” My fingers fall to a thin scar just beneath my left pec. I trace the scar completely then push against it as hard as I can. Until, my breaths become shallow. “Go away *******, just *******!” I scream back uncertain who I am yelling at.
“Fine” the muffled voice replies in defeat.
“Good, good.” I mumble
Tears threaten to swallow what is left of me. Instead of letting them win I decide
that this has to end. I find a small book of matches, strike the first one and let it burn out.
A small face fills my mind, little cowboy brother. I strike the second one and let it burn  down to my finger. The face returns, and it burns worse than the fire. Mad laughter crackles as heat and smoke fill my lungs.
A shard of glass scratches my left cheek, and I can see my little brothers body crumbled in the passenger seat. I cannot feel the fire burning me. Someone yells in my ear stop struggling.
He tries to pull me out of my room. I punch him in the jaw yelling “*******!”

Now, I am outside. Panic fills every ounce of my being. I struggle to climb back in my burning room.
A stranger yells “stop him.”
I scream. “No, I have to go back in, let me go. I can’t be out here.”
Despite my struggles I am forced to watch my sanctuary smoke and burn, until water squelches the last bits of angry orange.
With the wooden walls now broken, I break to.
“Please come back, I am sorry. Please come back.”
Only the soft sizzle of some nearby ember answers my pleas.
I realize that my photos have being incinerated. There will be no more pictures to help me see my little buddy. The night ends, as an ambulance carries me away. I am strapped in, certain that no happy place awaits me.
A strange thought  come unbidden, and I ask the EMT sitting next to me “do you think they will let me have a padded room. I can’t be outside.”

He came unbidden one frosty night
To the village of Barkly Chase,
He didn’t look out of the ordinary
But carried a single case,
The empty cottage of Peggy Sykes
Had been rented once before,
The neighbours watched as the Wizard walked
Right up to the old front door.

‘He’s going in, it’s as sure as sin,’
Said the Widow Marx from her blinds,
‘I’ll tell old Mrs. McCafferty
He’ll be playing around with our minds.’
She’d heard a wizard was headed their way
From Jenny, the Witch of the Moor,
And had bought up seventeen toilet rolls
From Rafferty’s village store.

‘What would you want with seventeen rolls,’
Said Ethel McGurk with the gout,
‘I don’t, it’s part of my strategy,
I’m going to drive him out.
There isn’t a store in a couple of miles
And they’re not delivered ‘til June,
We’ll see how long he can go without
When he’s bursting his balloon.’

The women cackled with evil glee,
They thought it a perfect plan,
‘We’ll see how his spells will help him out
When he has to use his hand.’
‘He’ll not come near, I can tell you that,’
Said the ******, Hazel Pace,
‘If he so much looks, I will knock him flat,
I’ve got fifteen cans of mace.’

The Wizard stayed for a week, he did,
And never came out the door,
The week turned into a fortnight, and
He looked like staying for more.
‘He must have been constipated,’ said
The Widow Marx to her friend,
‘He probably had a roll in his case,’
Said the woman from Brissom End.

Excitement grew in the village square,
‘His washing’s out on the line,
I’d never have looked but I saw it flap,
It’s a most mysterious sign!’
They held their breath at the news from Beth:
‘There are demons all over his jocks,
And you wouldn’t credit the Wizard’s gall,
There are magic stripes on his socks!’

A month went by, and the women pried
At night when his lights were out,
They’d peer on in though his curtains,
Widow Marx and the one with gout.
‘He’s got himself a computer thing
Those ones that glow through the house,
And he’s keeping a little familiar there,
I heard him call it ‘The Mouse’.

They lifted their skirts in horror, and
The ****** had jumped on a chair,
‘Those magical mice are demon things
And they climb up everywhere.’
‘This Wizard’s going to be hard to crack,
I thought he’d be gone by now,
He has to be brewing a terrible spell,
We have to find out, but how?’

The Wizard went for a walk one night
When he thought to get some air,
And Hazel Pace jumped out of a tree,
Poured honey all through his hair,
The Widow Marx had a besom broom
And beat him over the head,
‘We know you’re plotting the village’s doom,
What about this, instead?’

The Wizard packed up his single case
And left the very next day,
All the women hung on the gate
And shouted ‘Hip hip, hooray!’
‘We beat the Wizard, we saw him off
With his spells and his little case!’
But they wonder why there isn’t a man
Within miles of Barkly Chase.

David Lewis Paget

Before that August--

(strange month                                        echo)--

bloomed in the east
sunrise bomb                                           sunset dawn

you sometimes
                                                                   rose
(unbidden)

to the surface
of my mind.

These were some of my triggers:

Calgary                                                     (always Calgary)
me too
Christmastime.

And all the times                                     you attempted
to reach out to me

(sucker punch                                          sleep ****).

And then that August--

(good mornin'                                         bombshell)

the news--
for shame.

For I had fallen for the lie
(while you talked all the while
                                                                 in your human voice).

So you like 'em young.
So you like it rough.

August sun                                            beat me down.

It took this glaring
of a light

to show me
the darkest                                             of men's natures--

and that I knew them
intimately.

It is a furiously humbling experience
to be helpless before the gale
and exposed without cover,
knowing that cotton takes roughly a millennia to fully dry.

Even though I know that skin is waterproof,
in the moment it is hard to envision a future
where water is not dripping salt and sweat
into my mouth,
even if I know that just such a future
lies just minutes over the horizon
beyond the rain haze that blurs the twinkling city lights.

My shirt clings to me ever tighter as the storm waxes wroth;
the heavy fibers seem to cower from the far-off flashes of lightning,
the thunder to which we never hear.

Freshwater tears course unbidden down my face
in forks and rivulets, washing away the sand and grit and anger
as I trudge through the blowing sheets of broken glass.

And then, the inconceivable future dawns,
and as quickly as it had spawned,
the downpour abates,
leaving behind a sodden figure plodding slowly
through the newly-dappled sand.

Poems about Children


The Desk
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

There is a child I used to know
who sat, perhaps, at this same desk
where you sit now, and made a mess
of things sometimes.I wonder how
he learned at all...

He saw T-Rexes down the hall
and dreamed of trains and cars and wrecks.
He dribbled phantom basketballs,
shot spitwads at his schoolmates' necks.

He played with pasty Elmer's glue
(and sometimes got the glue on you!).
He earned the nickname "teacher's PEST."

His mother had to come to school
because he broke the golden rule.
He dreaded each and every test.

But something happened in the fall—
he grew up big and straight and tall,
and now his desk is far too small;
so you can have it.

One thing, though—

one swirling autumn, one bright snow,
one gooey tube of Elmer's glue...
and you'll outgrow this old desk, too.

Originally published by TALESetc



A True Story
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Jeremy hit the ball today,
over the fence and far away.
So very, very far away
a neighbor had to toss it back.
(She thought it was an air attack!)

Jeremy hit the ball so hard
it flew across our neighbor's yard.
So very hard across her yard
the bat that boomed a mighty "THWACK! "
now shows an eensy-teensy crack.

Originally published by TALESetc



Success
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

We need our children to keep us humble
between toast and marmalade;

there is no time for a ticker-tape parade
before bed, no award, no bright statuette

to be delivered for mending skinned knees,
no wild bursts of approval for shoveling snow.

A kiss is the only approval they show;
to leave us—the first great success they achieve.



Picturebook Princess
by Michael R. Burch

for Keira

We had a special visitor.
Our world became suddenly brighter.
She was such a charmer!
Such a delighter!

With her sparkly diamond slippers
and the way her whole being glows,
Keira's a picturebook princess
from the points of her crown to the tips of her toes!



The Aery Faery Princess
by Michael R. Burch

for Keira

There once was a princess lighter than fluff
made of such gossamer stuff—
the down of a thistle, butterflies' wings,
the faintest high note the hummingbird sings,
moonbeams on garlands, strands of bright hair...
I think she's just you when you're floating on air!



Tallen the Mighty Thrower
by Michael R. Burch

Tallen the Mighty Thrower
is a hero to turtles, geese, ducks...
they splash and they cheer
when he tosses bread near
because, you know, eating grass *****!



Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Cherubic laugh; sly, impish grin;
Angelic face; wild chimp within.

It does not matter; sleep awhile
As soft mirth tickles forth a smile.

Gray moths will hum a lullaby
Of feathery wings, then you and I

Will wake together, by and by.

Life's not long; those days are best
Spent snuggled to a loving breast.

The earth will wait; a sun-filled sky
Will bronze lean muscle, by and by.

Soon you will sing, and I will sigh,
But sleep here, now, for you and I

Know nothing but this lullaby.



Sappho's Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call,
while the pale calla lilies lie
listening,
glistening . . .
this is their night, the first night of fall.

Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone . . .
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.

Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I’m alone . . .
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.

NOTE: The calla lily symbolizes beauty, purity, innocence, faithfulness and true devotion. According to Greek mythology, when the Milky Way was formed by the goddess Hera’s breast milk, the drops that fell to earth became calla lilies.



Oh, let me sing you a lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy (written from his mother’s perspective)

Oh, let me sing you a lullaby
of a love that shall come to you by and by.

Oh, let me sing you a lullaby
of a love that shall come to you by and by.

Oh, my dear son, how you’re growing up!
You’re taller than me, now I’m looking up!
You’re a long tall drink and I’m half a cup!
And so let me sing you this lullaby.

Oh, my sweet son, as I watch you grow,
there are so many things that I want you to know.
Most importantly this: that I love you so.
And so let me sing you this lullaby.

Soon a tender bud will ****** forth and grow
after the winter’s long ****** snow;
and because there are things that you have to know ...
Oh, let me sing you this lullaby.

Soon, in a green garden a new rose will bloom
and fill all the world with its wild perfume.
And though it’s hard for me, I must give it room.
And so let me sing you this lullaby.



Springtime Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

They’ll have to grow like crazy,
the springtime baby geese,
if they’re to fly to balmier climes
when autumn dismembers the leaves ...

And so I toss them loaves of bread,
then whisper an urgent prayer:
“Watch over these, my Angels,
if there’s anyone kind, up there.”

Keywords/Tags: Nature, spring, birth, baby animals, babies, fawns, fledglings, angels, prayer, heaven, mercy, compassion, chesed



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

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon

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

Amen



Maya's Beddy-Bye Poem
by Michael R. Burch

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon

With a hatful of stars
and a stylish umbrella
and her hand in her Papa’s
(that remarkable fella!)
and with Winnie the Pooh
and Eeyore in tow,
may she dance in the rain
cheek-to-cheek, toe-to-toe
till each number’s rehearsed ...
My, that last step’s a leap! ―
the high flight into bed
when it’s past time to sleep!

Note: “Hatful of Stars” is a lovely song and image by Cyndi Lauper.



Limericks

There once was a leopardess, Dot,
who indignantly answered: "I'll not!
The gents are impressed
with the way that I'm dressed.
I wouldn't change even one spot."
—Michael R. Burch

There once was a dromedary
who befriended a crafty canary.
Budgie said, "You can't sing,
but now, here's the thing—
just think of the tunes you can carry! "
—Michael R. Burch



Generation Gap
by Michael R. Burch

A quahog clam,
age 405,
said, "Hey, it's great
to be alive! "

I disagreed,
not feeling nifty,
babe though I am,
just pushing fifty.

Note: A quahog clam found off the coast of Ireland is the longest-lived animal on record, at an estimated age of 405 years.



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Mother's Smile
by Michael R. Burch

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much."

So more than "much, " much more than "all."
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother's there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.

There never was a stronger back
than father's back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,
then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother's tender smile
will leap and follow after you!

Originally published by TALESetc



Keep Up
by Michael R. Burch

Keep Up!
Daddy, I'm walking as fast as I can;
I'll move much faster when I'm a man...

Time unwinds
as the heart reels,
as cares and loss and grief plummet,
as faith unfailing ascends the summit
and heartache wheels
like a leaf in the wind.

Like a rickety cart wheel
time revolves through the yellow dust,
its creakiness revoking trust,
its years emblazoned in cold hard steel.

Keep Up!
Son, I'm walking as fast as I can;
take it easy on an old man.



Poems for Older Children

Reflex
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Some intuition of her despair
for her lost brood,
as though a lost fragment of song
torn from her flat breast,
touched me there...

I felt, unable to hear
through the bright glass,
the being within her melt
as her unseemly tirade
left a feather or two
adrift on the wind-ruffled air.

Where she will go,
how we all err,
why we all fear
for the lives of our children,
I cannot pretend to know.

But, O!,
how the unappeased glare
of omnivorous sun
over crimson-flecked snow
makes me wish you were here.



Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes)ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad's...
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats...
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.



Limericks

There once was a mockingbird, Clyde,
who bragged of his prowess, but lied.
To his new wife he sighed,
"When again, gentle bride? "
"Nevermore! " bright-eyed Raven replied.
—Michael R. Burch



Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

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



Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat...
though first, usually, he'd stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone,
talking about poke salat—
how easy it was to find if you knew where to look for it...
standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green,
straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches,
crowding out the less-hardy nettles.

"Nobody knows that it's there, lad, or that it's fit tuh eat
with some bacon drippin's or lard."

"Don't eat the berries. You see—the berry's no good.
And you'd hav'ta wash the leaves a good long time."

"I'd boil it twice, less'n I wus in a hurry.
Lawd, it's tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst."

He seldom was hurried; I can see him still...
silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight,
stooped, but with a tall man's angular gray grace.

Sometimes he'd pause to watch me running across the yard,
trampling his beans,
dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants.

He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression.

Years later I found the proper name—"pokeweed"—while perusing a dictionary.
Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a ****.
I still can hear his laconic reply...

"Well, chile, s'm'times them times wus hard."



Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

for Anais Vionet

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

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

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

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

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

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



Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is your concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence of tears
without action?
What help, the eloquence of prayers,
or a pleasant benediction?

Before this day is gone,
how many more will die
with bellies swollen, wasted limbs,
and eyes too parched to cry?

I fear for our souls
as I hear the faint lament
of their souls departing...
mournful, and distant.

How pitiful our "effort, "
yet how fatal its effect.
If they died, then surely we killed them,
if only with neglect.



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.



Passages on Fatherhood
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

He is my treasure,
and by his happiness I measure
my own worth.

Four years old,
with diamonds and gold
bejeweled in his soul.

His cherubic beauty
is felicity
to simplicity and passion—

for a baseball thrown
or an ice-cream cone
or eggshell-blue skies.

It's hard to be "wise"
when the years
career through our lives

and bees in their hives
test faith
and belief

while Time, the great thief,
with each falling leaf
foreshadows grief.

The wisdom of the ages
and prophets and mages
and doddering sages

is useless
unless
it encompasses this:

his kiss.



Boundless
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Every day we whittle away at the essential solidity of him,
and every day a new sharp feature emerges:
a feature we'll spend creative years: planing, smoothing, refining,

trying to find some new Archaic Torso of Apollo, or Thinker...

And if each new day a little of the boisterous air of youth is deflated
in him, if the hours of small pleasures spent chasing daffodils
in the outfield as the singles become doubles, become triples,
become unconscionable errors, become victories lost,

become lives wasted beyond all possible hope of repair...

if what he was becomes increasingly vague—like a white balloon careening
into clouds; like a child striding away aggressively toward manhood,
hitching an impressive rucksack over sagging, sloping shoulders,
shifting its vaudevillian burden back and forth,

then pausing to look back at us with an almost comical longing...

if what he wants is only to be held a little longer against a forgiving *****;
to chase after daffodils in the outfield regardless of scores;
to sail away like a balloon
on a firm string, always sure to return when the line tautens,

till he looks down upon us from some removed height we cannot quite see,

bursting into tears over us:
what, then, of our aspirations for him, if he cannot breathe,
cannot rise enough to contemplate the earth with his own vision,
unencumbered, but never untethered, forsaken...

cannot grow brightly, steadily, into himself—flying beyond us?



Chip Off the Block
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

In the fusion of poetry and drama,
Shakespeare rules! Jeremy’s a ham: a
chip off the block, like his father and mother.
Part poet? Part ham? Better run for cover!
Now he’s Benedick ― most comical of lovers!

NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be.



Tall Tails
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Irony
is the base perception
alchemized by deeper reflection,
the paradox
of the wagging tails of dog-ma
torched by sly Reynard the Fox.

These are lines written as my son Jeremy was about to star as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing at his ultra-conservative high school, Nashville Christian. Benedick is rather obvious wordplay but it apparently flew over the heads of the Puritan headmasters. Samson lit the tails of foxes and set them loose amid the Philistines. Reynard the Fox was a medieval trickster who bedeviled the less wily. “Irony lies / in a realm beyond the unseeing, / the unwise.”



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves...

... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles...

... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss...

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens' hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs...

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees...

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers...

... of voices of the wolves' tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams' soft, windy vowels...

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron—
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful—
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker's knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Just Smile
by Michael R. Burch

We'd like to think some angel smiling down
will watch him as his arm bleeds in the yard,
ripped off by dogs, will guide his tipsy steps,
his doddering progress through the scarlet house
to tell his mommy "boo-boo!, " only two.

We'd like to think his reconstructed face
will be as good as new, will often smile,
that baseball's just as fun with just one arm,
that God is always Just, that girls will smile,
not frown down at his thousand livid scars,
that Life is always Just, that Love is Just.

We do not want to hear that he will shave
at six, to raze the leg hairs from his cheeks,
that lips aren't easily fashioned, that his smile's
lopsided, oafish, snaggle-toothed, that each
new operation costs a billion tears,
when tears are out of fashion. O, beseech
some poet with more skill with words than tears
to find some happy ending, to believe
that God is Just, that Love is Just, that these
are Parables we live, Life's Mysteries...

Or look inside his courage, as he ties
his shoelaces one-handed, as he throws
no-hitters on the first-place team, and goes
on dates, looks in the mirror undeceived
and smiling says, "It's me I see. Just me."

He smiles, if life is Just, or lacking cures.
Your pity is the worst cut he endures.

Originally published by Lucid Rhythms



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published by The Flea



For a Sandy Hook Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

―for the mothers and children of the Holocaust and Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon's table
with anguished eyes
like your mother's eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother's hand
for a last bewildered kiss...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother's lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears...



This is, I believe, the second poem I wrote. Or at least it's the second one that I can remember. I believe I was around 13 or 14 when I wrote it.

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 batter was our only lust!

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 injustice, or fate.

Then we never thought about the next day,
for tomorrow seemed hidden—adventures away.
Though sometimes we dreamed of adventures past,
and wondered, at times, why things didn'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.



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.



Kindergarten
by Michael R. Burch

Will we be children as puzzled tomorrow—
our lessons still not learned?
Will we surrender over to sorrow?
How many times must our fingers be burned?

Will we be children sat in the corner
over and over again?
How long will we linger, playing Jack Horner?
Or will we learn, and when?

Will we be children wearing the dunce cap,
giggling and playing the fool,
re-learning our lessons forever and ever,
never learning the golden rule?



With a child's wonder
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

With a child's wonder,
pausing to ponder
a puddle of water,

for only a moment,
needing no comment

but bright eyes
and a wordless cry,
he launches himself to fly ...

then my two-year-old lands
on his feet and his hands
and water explodes all around.

(From the impact and sound
you'd have thought that he'd drowned,
but the puddle was two inches deep.)

Later that evening, as he lay fast asleep
in that dreamland where two-year-olds wander,
I watched him awhile and smilingly pondered
with a father's wonder.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

I have come to watch my young son,
his blonde ringlets damp with sleep . . .
and what I know is that he loves me
beyond all earthly understanding,
that his life is like clay in my unskilled hands.

And I marvel this bright ore does not keep—
unrestricted in form, more content than shape,
but seeking a form to become, to express
something of itself to this wilderness
of eyes watching and waiting.

What do I know of his wonder, his awe?
To his future I will matter less and less,
but in this moment, as he is my world, I am his,
and I stand, not understanding, but knowing—
in this vast pageant of stars, he is more than unique.

There will never be another moment like this.
Studiously quiet, I stroke his fine hair
which will darken and coarsen and straighten with time.
He is all I bequeath of myself to this earth.
His fingers curl around mine in his sleep . . .

I leave him to dreams—calm, untroubled and deep.



The Tapestry of Leaves
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Leaves unfold
as life is sold,
or bartered, for a moment in the sun.

The interchange
of lives is strange:
what reason—life—when death leaves all undone?

O, earthly son,
when rest is won
and wrested from this ground, then through my clay’s

soft mortal soot
****** forth your root
until your leaves embrace the sun's bright rays.



The Long Days Lengthening Into Darkness
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Today, I can be his happiness,
and if he delights
in hugs and smiles,
in baseball and long walks
talking about Rug Rats, Dinosaurs and Pokemon

(noticing how his face lights up
at my least word,
how tender his expression,
gazing up at me in wondering adoration)

. . . O, son,
these are the long days
lengthening into darkness.

Now over the earth
(how solemn and still their processions)
the clouds
gather to extinguish the sun.

And what I can give you is perhaps no more nor less
than this brief ray dazzling our faces,
seeing how soon the night becomes my consideration.



Renown
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Words fail us when, at last,
we lie unread amid night’s parchment leaves,
life’s chapter past.

Whatever I have gained of life, I lost,
except for this bright emblem
of your smile . . .

and I would grasp
its meaning closer for a longer while . . .
but I am glad

with all my heart to be unheard,
and smile,
bound here, still strangely mortal,

instructed by wise Love not to be sad,
when to be the lesser poet
meant to be “the world’s best dad.”

Every night, my son Jeremy tells me that I’m “the world’s best dad.” Now, that’s all poetry, all music and the meaning of life wrapped up in four neat monosyllables! The time I took away from work and poetry to spend with my son was time well spent.



Miracle
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

The contrails of galaxies mingle, and the dust of that first day still shines.
Before I conceived you, before your heart beat, you were mine,

and I see

infinity leap in your bright, fluent eyes.
And you are the best of all that I am. You became
and what will be left of me is the flesh you comprise,

and I see

whatever must be—leaves its mark, yet depends
on these indigo skies, on these bright trails of dust,
on a veiled, curtained past, on some dream beyond knowing,
on the mists of a future too uncertain to heed.

And I see

your eyes—dauntless, glowing—
glowing with the mystery of all they perceive,
with the glories of galaxies passed, yet bestowing,
though millennia dead, all this pale feathery light.

And I see

all your wonder—a wonder to me, for, unknowing,
of all this portends, still your gaze never wavers.
And love is unchallenged in all these vast skies,
or by distance, or time. The ghostly moon hovers;

I see; and I see

all that I am reflected in all that you have become to me.



Always
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Know in your heart that I love you as no other,
and that my love is eternal.
I keep the record of your hopes and dreams
in my heart like a journal,
and there are pages for you there that no one else can fill:
none one else, ever.
And there is a tie between us, more than blood,
that no one else can sever.

And if we’re ever parted,
please don’t be broken-hearted;
until we meet again on the far side of forever
and walk among those storied shining ways,
should we, for any reason, be apart,
still, I am with you ... always.



The Gift
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth and Jeremy

For you and our child, unborn, though named
(for we live in a strange, fantastic age,
and tomorrow, when he is a man,
perhaps this earth will be a cage

from which men fly like flocks of birds,
the distant stars their helpless prey),
for you, my love, and you, my child,
what can I give you, each, this day?

First, take my heart, it’s mine alone;
no ties upon it, mine to give,
more precious than a lifetime’s objects,
once possessed, more free to live.

Then take these poems, of little worth,
but to show you that which you receive
holds precious its two dear possessors,
and makes each lien a sweet reprieve.



This poem was written after a surprising comment from my son, Jeremy.

The Onslaught
by Michael R. Burch

“Daddy, I can’t give you a hug today
because my hair is wet.”

No wet-haired hugs for me today;
no lollipopped lips to kiss and say,
Daddy, I love you! with such regard
after baseball hijinks all over the yard.

The sun hails and climbs
over the heartbreak of puppies and daffodils
and days lost forever to windowsills,
over fortune and horror and starry climes;

and it seems to me that a child’s brief years
are springtimes and summers beyond regard
mingled with laughter and passionate tears
and autumns and winters now veiled and barred,
as elusive as snowflakes here white, bejeweled,
gaily whirling and sweeping across the yard.



To My Child, Unborn
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

How many were the nights, enchanted
with despair and longing, when dreams recanted
returned with a restless yearning,
and the pale stars, burning,
cried out at me to remember
one night ... long ere the September
night when you were conceived.

Oh, then, if only I might have believed
that the future held such mystery
as you, my child, come unbidden to me
and to your mother,
come to us out of a realm of wonder,
come to us out of a faery clime ...

If only then, in that distant time,
I had somehow known that this day were coming,
I might not have despaired at the raindrops drumming
sad anthems of loneliness against shuttered panes;
I might not have considered my doubts and my pains
so carefully, so cheerlessly, as though they were never-ending.
If only then, with the starlight mending
the shadows that formed
in the bowels of those nights, in the gussets of storms
that threatened till dawn as though never leaving,
I might not have spent those long nights grieving,
lamenting my loneliness, cursing the sun
for its late arrival. Now, a coming dawn
brings you unto us, and you shall be ours,
as welcome as ever the moon or the stars
or the glorious sun when the nighttime is through
and the earth is enchanted with skies turning blue.



Transition
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

With his cocklebur hugs
and his wet, clinging kisses
like a damp, trembling thistle
catching, thwarting my legs—

he reminds me that life begins with the possibility of rapture.

Was time this deceptive
when my own childhood begged
one last moment of frolic
before bedtime’s firm kisses—

when sleep was enforced, and the dark window ledge

waited, impatient, to lure
or to capture
the bright edge of morning
within a clear pane?

Was the sun then my ally—bright dawn’s greedy fledgling?

With his joy he reminds me
of joys long forgotten,
of play’s endless hours
till the haggard sun sagged

and everything changed. I gather him up and we trudge off to bed.



What does it mean?
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

His little hand, held fast in mine.
What does it mean? What does it mean?

If he were not here, the sun would not shine,
nor the grass grow half as green.

What does it mean?

His arms around my neck, his cheek
snuggling so warm against my own ...

What does it mean?

If life's a garden, he's the fairest
flower ever sown,
the sweetest ever seen.

What does it mean?

And when he whispers sweet and low,
"What does it mean?"
It means, my son, I love you so.
Sometimes that's all we need to know.



First Steps
by Michael R. Burch

for Caitlin Shea Murphy

To her a year is like infinity,
each day—an adventure never-ending.
    She has no concept of time,
    but already has begun the climb—
from childhood to womanhood recklessly ascending.

I would caution her, "No! Wait!
There will be time enough another day ...
    time to learn the Truth
    and to slowly shed your youth,
but for now, sweet child, go carefully on your way! ..."

But her time is not a time for cautious words,
nor a time for measured, careful understanding.
    She is just certain
    that, by grabbing the curtain,
in a moment she will finally be standing!

Little does she know that her first few steps
will hurtle her on her way
    through childhood to adolescence,
    and then, finally, pubescence . . .
while, just as swiftly, I’ll be going gray!



The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch

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.



Life Sentence or Fall Well
by Michael R. Burch

... I swim, my Daddy's princess, newly crowned,
toward a gurgly Maelstrom... if I drown
will Mommy stick the Toilet Plunger down

to **** me up?... She sits upon Her Throne,
Imperious (denying we were one),
and gazes down and whispers "precious son"...

... the Plunger worked; i'm two, and, if not blessed,
still Mommy got the Worst Stuff off Her Chest;
a Vacuum Pump, They say, will do the rest...

... i'm three; yay! whee! oh good! it's time to play!
(oh no, I think there's Others on the way;
i'd better pray)...

... i'm four; at night I hear the Banging Door;
She screams; sometimes there's Puddles on the Floor;
She wants to **** us, or, She wants some More...

... it's great to be alive if you are five (unless you're me) :
my Mommy says: "you're WRONG! don't disagree!
don't make this HURT ME! "...

... i'm six; They say i'm tall, yet Time grows Short;
we have a thriving Family; Abort! ;
a tadpole's ripping Mommy's Room apart...

... i'm seven; i'm in heaven; it feels strange;
I saw my life go gurgling down the Drain;
another Noah built a Mighty Ark;
God smiled, appeased, a Rainbow split the Dark;

... I saw Bright Colors also, when She slammed
my head against the Tub, and then I swam
toward the magic tunnel... last, I heard...

is that She feels Weird.


Keywords/Tags: child, children, childhood, son, daughter, grandchild, grandson, granddaughter, family, mother, father

February 23, 2019:

Freddie Mercury tells Mary Austin
“I think I’m bisexual”.
And my heart beats like mad
Because no one else has connected to
A secret like this before
No one else notices
The drum beats of my chest
This isn’t even one of the three times
Tears fall
Unhindered

Pt. 1:

He tells his band
His family
That he has it
It’s an ending that is known to the world
But in the moment
Aids is not life-shattering
Because of the sun that filled his soul
And it fills theirs
As they promise
To break a hole in the sky

Pt. 2:

His hand rests gently upon
Jim Hutton’s
It’s accepted
His arms wrap around
His father
And his father’s wrap around him
It’s accepted

Pt. 3:

The opening bars
To chords
That only hours ago
I’d deemed my favorite
Begin to play and his life
And its end are played out with it
I’m glad he got his happy ending
Through drops of water
I tell my dad
That this is it

(Unbidden) Pt. 3:

I researched immediately after the dream-like
To see if that’s all it was
A dream
I try to explain
But my mother is stuck on the
Anti
To something she didn’t even know
Graced my reveries
I push down doubts
Doubts that have filled the both of us
Him and I
That still linger

But
It’s a moment of light projected into
My soul
A moment so gold-coated
That a vision of the same words almost
Leave my lips
And fill the comfortable silence
Of my dad’s car
They don’t
But unfazed I vow
To remember
Golden
Silver
Bronzed
Freddie Mercury
When they do.

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at ‘clink and bandy’ ‘chock’ and ‘taw’ and
    ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone

When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a ’swing’
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a
    thing
With heart just like a feather—now as heavy as a stone
When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches broke
To make our harvest cart like so many working folk
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak
O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to
    wing
Leaving nothing but a little naked spring

When jumping time away on old cross berry way
And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may
And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day
On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy well
When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black again
We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain
With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain
How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry day
O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away
The ancient pulpit trees and the play

When for school oer ‘little field’ with its brook and wooden
    brig
Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big
While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig
And drove my team along made of nothing but a name
‘Gee hep’ and ‘hoit’ and ‘woi’—O I never call to mind
These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind
While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the wind
On the only aged willow that in all the field remains
And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their
    chains
And in a silent murmuring complains

Here was commons for the hills where they seek for
    freedom still
Though every commons gone and though traps are set to ****
The little homeless miners—O it turns my ***** chill
When I think of old ’sneap green’ puddocks nook and hilly
    snow
Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew
And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view
When we threw the pissmire crumbs when we’s nothing
    else to do
All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough
All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing now
All settled here for ever on its brow

I never thought that joys would run away from boys
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such
    summer joys
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered **** and trampled down and
    done
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer
    sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won

By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill
On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill
And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will
To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey
And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane
With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again
Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain
It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill
And hung the moles for traitors—though the brook is
    running still
It runs a naked brook cold and chill

O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men
I had watched her night and day besure and never slept agen
And when she turned to go O I’d caught her mantle then
And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay
Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys bower
And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her flower
And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny hour
As keepsakes and pledges to fade away
But love never heeded to treasure up the may
So it went the comon road with decay

Walking through the market,
fishtails hanging sluttishly over the edge,
scales glinting
the smell is vaguely familiar,
          I try to place it.

You wink across the crowd of people
as you weigh a bag of squid, your hands dripping dank water
and my cheeks redden--
I’m shy as the memories of my striped underwear on your stained carpet
and your mouth on my ******* rise unbidden.

You are nameless, but now at least,
I recognize the smell.

Scrape flakes off the surface
Doesn't matter one whit, or two
No need to hide any unbidden thoughts
The mirror cannot see the back of your mind.*

1.
Come along and take my hand
Fear not the things which tempt you
Come a long way, why dither now?
Lest you lose your taste buds for good.

Let the tale unfold itself for you
And allow fate to break old sequence
So afraid to step outta that mould
To unravel said threads for a while...

2.
Must make you fully understand
Manic moon is on the searing wax again
Making fools slip on magic treachery
Is perdition really all that awaits?

So, please...lie on your side in the mirror
Look at the shapes I want to hold
Touch the petals I ache to crush
You're letting it go.. yes, getting so bold.

Pushing up against you, under your bra
Do you know no-one can see? Look at me.
Try and relax, come on.. please let go
Stop looking around, there's nobody there!

I watch your eyes as I do that thing
That which I tried before but failed
You were in tune with the moment
But found your hand a tad lively.

You let me do some things I want to do
Let my fingers drift around, over mound
I lift you over me, ever-so-slow
Your eyes rail at me, but make no sound.

3.
You kiss the dip below my busy-Apple
Make me collect your embraces in a deep frenzy
Lucid enough to realise, sad to say
That you sometimes end as abrupt as you please.

You tell me things, how I love lappin 'em all up
Your words enter and sit on a shelf in my mind
As on a throne, they beckon to parts of me
And play jolly games of hide-and-seek.

Yet I feel your agitation gripping at your insides
I try again to make you float away with me
But all around, even with eyes pressed shut
Whose critical faces do you see peering at you?

4.
No, the looking glass reflects not the truth
Like a fish pulled backwards, desire drowns thus
Rudely suffocated by refined conflicts
Usurped by typical ideals set impossibly high.

Twisting in my arms, you try to wriggle out
Why, pray tell.. are you fighting me so?
Super-quick, you're on your feet. What the hell... ?
You can be so utterly fierce in your defense!

5.
I am so attracted to you; yet must I depart hence?
You thwart us at every perfect turn, slit us
You clog beautiful efforts at unity
Placing a huge drain on our collective energy.

So, while the mirror may appear a tranquil lake
No-one does see the turmoil swirling below, down
Hard to hide that inescapable spiral of reality
Cannot sustain that persistent eddy, 'tis all done.

Unbeknown to us both, playing at life thus
Nothing new to humanity, yet so petrified
While taking everything so serioso, we forget
Joke's on us: no-one gets out here alive, ******!



Yes, all that remains in the wake of dying embers
Would be those very flakes you tried to dismiss
See? Told you, no need. Came down all its own
And the mirror still cannot see the back of your mind.




S T - 23 sept 2013

---- 2023 youtube I wonder if, and lo': The Planets
A grand background orchestra, mental direct
there, you hav it, too, listen, a few times,
just in the mood, to listen
maybe as you get, that it starts at Mars,
begin as we
think we
Read this at your pace the writer advised,
and I did, a couple of times,
like long stuck records…
To Holst, an offered libation,
to all the minds whose words
are music as big as any mind
limited by my unknowing,
only
using, the truth, music, leading after words,
through ever away,
silent for a now,
or so,
from the Sun, past the fragment,
the single lump at the core,
of the process,
Ash as
Icarus, and Hermes, speedy messenger,
such as see thee, hold the knowledge holy,

watch, see, the wandering planets Holst,
might have seen today,
looking through my eyes,
wordless, right on, so far, as we

agree, there
is power in the mind that writes and reads
music,
power alloted some in blind feel,
power exuding from an ever in times past,

lasting ever tones thinning, spreading, patterning
perfected harmonies unexpected
yet
taken as granted, felt, in passion y sympassion,
same sound,

my once known wind, my bass oboe player,
acquaintance, who called me by name,
accusing me, subtly of not knowing,
there is a forest of low stature,
and there are missions there,
where if you pray,
they feed you twinkies… I recall, between
Venus and busy laughing Earth,

I remember Mars is next,
I am ready, I went into the dark kitchen,
back of the Mission on Fourth Street,
across from an Electra Records Billboard…

ifery approaches, Holst has not gotten me to Mars,
I am pulling in an experience, from a mission,
on Fourth Street, in a mindtimespace shared,

as of yet, by a few, who will know the place,
the ******* Mission, the one
with the Joker who used rats,
to get a startle response,

and at exactly the wrong place, for men with
certain
kinds of sure thing reactions, to diabolic attacks.

2023, approaching Mars with Lou Holtz, I thum thum
thummin wearin' my Razorback hat,
Inter Planatary Hwy 71, to Joplin,
ur in my realm.

Bass every thing slow creep slow, seep as sludge,
to the edge, and look beyond,
this is it, this is the Earth,
we shall survive!

We slay the unbelievers and fake it til we make it,
right, kids?

---------- longhair music, epicyc-lical as neckties,
to male tipped stacking schema for *****,
or stones,
or crystaline tones accompanying the heating up
of life's core cargo cult's last load,

Holst, bass trombones,
here, is the dance of little devils with a mind to make
a difference
in the depths of ever after,
up to now,
I had forgotten the piccolo parts, and the French horns,
and the joy of the big parade,
marching off
to war explore the unknown
for exploitations as per the underling theme,
go forth
subdue the Earth, and conquer all who refuse, to say
this is the way,
this is the good old way,

war
glory and honor, earn the urim'nthummin'n'human
inhumainity, we, the chosen warrior beings,
messengers of differing mocking gods of ****** mud
beyond the final river,
every slogger knows, forever, there remains
one more
river to cross, a final thread to tie to you, listener,

Holtz, still in the background, a journey, what price
each player plays in this, orchestration shared,
as I read, I wrote, as I hoped, I did,

and I remain, giddily glad… my side won the war
I lost.

Peace came, unbidden, apparently,
a deep breath, and harp strings,

this is the future from any ever before, now
to know
this is common, not so rare, as even the idea,
not so long ago,
first radio mono performance,
what child lay in the crib and heard this,
through the grand horn of Gram's Gramma phone.
Y''ello,
toldja, ai ain't no Injunsaint. Pretend, then,
right, ai and mai-y grandma

can piece together some occassional lessons, given us,
she in her time telling me in mine,sssince ever about
I was forty-nine, or so, she told me she was an orphan,
and had no family knowledge, past begins
at the last common thread,
to a native american epic,

when the old deluder, Satan, act, attached
to law and order and rectangular resettlement
of wilderness liberated from savages and beasts…
pawn, both steps, dare… help the Macedonians
and take Uncle Tom wit'cha, whicha oughtn't had
never the less, young wombed men, did tend
to become aspirational, after becoming
inspired read-up young wombed men, hot
to seek adventure, teachin' young'n's, out west.

indistanct depth Holst at the kettle drumms softerafter
- the silent version has a different light show
--- circa 1880's, not historically long ago, most places.
This character,
qwerty guy's friend, has kin as close as my Uncle Cebe'n'me,
who died at Wounded Knee, where my liege republic,
honored some two dozen rapid fire cannon supported
avengers of The Seventh Cav!
And in their hearts,
if not their lips,
was the march in time to Garry Owen. Their families
must be proud.

And that's a shame. We were taught to grant worth
to a medal signifying honor brought to the liege, in victory.

Peace passes that, music makes bubbles, we revisit,
replay the gramma phone version,
some scratchy
real realizing strings singing chimes and harps
of ages past
unveiling, hiding nothing knowing freedom is a sense,
you know
you do not own it,
you do not make it up, it is free. The idea

I had, approached as
hunter
in pursuit, steady as she blows,

leave us hap as may be at a triumph of joyous
curious
dancing twinkle noise amusing being a muse used,
enter tained, and voiced by bass
then tinkles
thin thin thin then Zildjian  K-bang!

____

I sit here in the dead of night,
In these four walls, I haunt myself.
There's hours yet 'til I'll see light,
And I am feeling...not so well.

The day was cold, with warm embrace
And I was feeling so alive.
The touch of sunlight on my face,
And joy, unbidden, in my stride.

But reality, the heartless *****,
Has ways of jerking on the heart.
Her nimble fingers squeeze and clench -
So fragile things will fall apart.

And so it was that I returned
To what I know I can't escape.
Something I could not help but learn,
And once I had, it would remain.

That I am independent, see,
And spirited beyond control.
I know there's things I cannot be,
For I have no submissive soul.

It would, perhaps, do me some good
To better watch the things I say.
I speak things that I never should,
And I regret them, day by day.

Yes, I have tried to change myself,
To coax out in me what is meek,
But every time, I'm lost in hell,
For such exertion makes me weak.

I struggle every day with this,
For who I am, shall always be.
Sometimes I cannot help but wish
Spirit was not so strong in me.

Perhaps it is not understood,
That I'm not mean in any way.
"My heart," I cry out, "it is good!"
And still people will turn away.

Yes, I confess, I do compare
Myself to those I could be like.
Demure and quiet, gentle flair -
I feel that I am not quite right.

I've been the same way all my life,
Opinionated, loud, and strong.
It's only been in recent nights
That I have felt...there's something wrong.

Why can't I reign it in, I think?
Is it so hard to settle down?
My heart constricts, my stomach sinks
At just that thought which I have found.

I know that I would not survive
If I would change in any way.
My boisterous spirit gives me life,
It's how I handle every day.

So why, then, must it be so hard
To get through life the way I am?
I'm only playing with the cards
Dealt from an unforgiving hand.

But it is every day I feel
That we do not walk side-by-side.
It's almost like I am not real,
But rather, wind, just floating by.


The sun is setting on the year,
And now, reflecting, I confess
That for the future, I've no fear
(Though I know it will hurt no less).

I'll wake tomorrow, one more day
On which the curtains will be drawn
And as the daylight fades away,
I'll hope that so, too, will my flaws.

I pray the new year brings me peace,
And ends the struggle I endure.
Not every challenge yet will cease,
But life gets better, I am sure.

the images
come in flashes,
now:

red lines on my dark skin;
a loose noose;
a cliff to fall from
and a fear of falling.
the tip of a sharp blade
against my throat.
(for some reason
i never think of guns.)

they come unbidden
in the midst of everything:
while i am eating;
in conversation with family;
in the shower;
when i wake up in the mornings
wondering why i have still awoken,
and in these moments,
time slows,
stretches out like a drawn-out punishment
while i watch myself stare into nothing.

the indescribable messy affair
of limbo,
of nothing being bad
but nothing being good;
of things not being terrible,
but feeling that they are about to be;
of wanting to leap off the cliff
before you are pushed off;
a pretence
of control.

outside, the storm keeps raging,
and a tree knocks on my bedroom window.
i sit up in time to see the lightning
illuminate a leaf
blown off of its tree.
in the morning, the leaf will have dried
or be floating in flood.
it will not see the storm pass;
it will only turn yellow
and crumple under someone’s foot.
a satisfying crunch.
i wonder only if the leaf had the chance to leap
before the wind pushed it off.
lately i have been wondering
that if everything leaves eventually,
what is the point of arriving at all.

in my bed,
with only the thunder to speak to,
i lay back again.
i plead with the images to let me sleep,
and close my eyes.

It was September when you closed your eyes.

The trees were verdant and fat,
Their boughs abuzz with the fluttering of birds;
The warmth of pre-autumnal breezes, pale and whispering:
“Alive, alive,” as the breath in your lungs.

I rarely contemplated your absence
Not for lack of trying, I assure you
It’s just hard to miss something you never really had
Not altogether impossible, but difficult, nonetheless

I could not miss you as my tongue
Could miss the taste of sugar sweet;
As my hand
Could miss the hand of a lover fair;
As my mind
Could miss the dulcet caress of poetry
Poignant and soft;
But I could miss you still, blood of my blood
As your presence should grace my thoughts faintly
Like some spectral invader---
A sometimes patriarch beguiled.

I dreamed of you the day mother informed me
Your eyes had finally opened.

The trees had worn thin by the time of my visitation
I could see them rapping between your blinds,
Scratching the glass in a hallowed colloquial,
The language of arboreal appendages fading:
“Alive, alive,” but just barely.

It was October.

Your days and dreams and dalliances
Compartmentalized into a series of sterile routines:
The steady drip of morphine
Into your veins;
The turning of your body,
In bed,
At the passing of each half day;
The fluids vacuumed,
From the hole in your throat,
At a quarter till every hour.

Your body became a clock, defected
Feebly measured in the perfunctory gasp
Of your heart’s meticulous monitor

It was just a week shy of November, and you were waning.

Haunted by those seventy-one years,
Long-lived, painfully slow,
Taunting you from the fraying end,
Of an agonizingly short rope---
Seventy-one years, and all it took
For the months to drop, skittering away,
Was the blink of a bloodshot eye.

It was October, but it should have been September.

That ruddy, porous grin,
The bullfrog blues of your grandfather’s smile,
Now made far and few between
By your unabashed lassitude,
By your hesitance to meet the gaze of another,
By your impatience at the sound of voices,
Talking about you like you weren't there.

You were a big guy, I noticed
I never realized how much so until I saw you
Laid up and sprawled unnaturally upon a hospital bed
Little more than an invalid,
Unable to lift a finger, even to catch
The choking, viscous saliva that would dribble,
Infantile and unbidden down your chin;
Unable to speak.

The catatonia fooled you, unbeknownst,
It pried the words from your swollen mouth
With skeletal, sable fingers,
Leaving penitent ghosts in their wake
So that your lips were moving, muttering,
Pressed with the phantom vocalizations
Of what half-formed apologies needled their way into your mind;
Of what no sounds produced
You even tried to tell me you loved me---
Though the affections never quite came to fruition,
I felt your taciturn ruminations, regardless.

I suppose that was a start.
You were near an end.
But it was a start, nevertheless.

Inhabiting the mere space of a windowpane
Inside of yourself as you were,
Your eyes remained outgoing:
At times they contained boredom,
At others longing or contempt,
And within those murky depths, I swear I recognized
The unshakeable, abject face of terror.

So much change for so little provocation:
The leaves outside, they rustled;
Cars continued their coming and going on distant highways;
The soothing azure of the day dampened,
Corroded by the cold, unrelenting hand of a changing season;
Gradually, the sun rose and fell.

It rose and fell:
(Your chest) rose and fell.
(Your face) rose and fell.
(Our hearts) rose and fell.
It always stayed the same.

And in your vacant, unwavering gaze,
Always something different:
The deathly vestige of repentance,
Folded between the window’s shade;
The laughing, lilting silhouette,
Of days forever passing;
And you, unmoving,
In that hospital bed,
A sharp juxtaposition to your caretakers
And their mock celebration:
“Alive, alive!”

But those saintly visitations of shadow and climate
Rapping against the window,
Waltzing across the far wall of your antiseptic prison,
They bespoke celebrations of their own,
Callous facts you knew all too well:

“It’s October, Tom. Autumn is here.
And you shouldn’t be.”

There’s a man with a hole
that goes straight through his soul
and it’s open for all to see.

Just ask and he’ll tell
every joy, every hell,
and how it all came to be.

He will tell you unbidden;
no secret is hidden;
and he’ll speak with a gleam in his eyes

But he hides in the shells
of the stories he tells;
each story a cunning disguise.

It’s easy to heal
when all that you feel
is bared like a page in a book,

but the depth of a hole
in a broken man’s soul
depends on how deeply you look.

Each story’s a mask
with the ultimate task
of hiding the tears at the seams.

Tears in the heart
are bad for a start
but there’s nothing like tears in your dreams.

I
 
Fold upon fold
your origami letters
map  thoughts,
images and moments
of three days,
two nights.
 
Now to unfold
the creased trajectories,
intersecting space,
following time:
bird-like flightpaths
on the radar screen.
 
Each coloured sheet,
placed on this desk,
becomes a tessellated diary,
and grows beneath the hand.
So generous a gift.
So readily received.

II
 
Ah, that's your secret:
the power of the list;
 this, then this,
 then freedom follows,
 knowing the necessaries
 dusted and done.

  Peaceful now,
  and watching the clouds
  cross the skylight,
  Bach decorates your soul
  with his meditations
  on the possibility of everything.

  How did you guess
  I love the detail of life-
  lived, up to the hilt:
  the embellishment of dreams
  pulled from the ether,
  sound and sense in tow.
 
III
 
I travelled North
in the seat opposite.
You didn’t notice me
as you gazed
through your reflection,
sighting the past.

When you look at me
you rarely blink or
glance away (as people do).
Poor nature,
She hasn’t a chance, has she?
Never a mote missed.

As my passenger
I shall care for your silence;
to let you loose on
unbidden thoughts
as they rise above
the scrolling hills.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

crimsons from the runaway sundown
were an open **** on the sea surface
skyline's throat ingested the fireball
whole without mastication

her fingers played hide and seek
while her unbidden tears
matched the hues of the rippling waters

and staccato sad moans lingered like dirge
above the melody of the distant surf…

Bethlehem is still glowing
Everyone loves a baby story especially this one he was born for the whole human family yes he threw his arms about kicked his feet
Smiled back at mother and all those that looked on in adoration but in his heart a tiny love burst into a small flame it also glowed
With light the echo of the angels singing to Sheppard boys on those dark Judean hills it has survived, a darker night their voices pierced
His love light and their song has circled the Globe all lands and islands of the sea have felt the effects yes he cried as a baby as babys
Do but as a man untold tears some recorded he wept for Jerusalem saying you didn’t know your time of visitation know not that I
Would have gathered you as a hen does her chicks he remembered his birth place a stable the animals were in the presence of him who
Created them even chickens He as the living word says all things were made by him and for him oneness truth is shown in that and
Other places we must worship in spirit and in truth not a trinity that was coined by Tertullian in (c.155-230) at the Nicene council you
Can’t take a man’s account go to the unerring word more tears are described Jesus wept at Lazarus tomb those tears you have wept at
the grave of your loved one they meant a lot to you well they mean a lot to God his word says he captured them and keeps them in a
Bottle why because he won’t forget your pain their deaths are honored in heaven not just in a newspaper it says you are engraved in
The palms of his hands think you’re not loved and alone right beneath the very complete essence of who you are and ever will be is
Nail prints that put that and all other contradictions to rest forever and if in the sad event your parents forget you which happens
In the weakness or outright cruelty that’s when God says he put you in his hands you are never forgotten the babies cooing turned to
Words that were added to tears and at Gethsemane through agony that love alone produced his sweat fell as great drops of blood
Dear one don’t let the devil or this world stomp, you are blood bought the stable became a cross its shadow and its light reaches every
Hidden place of pain sorrow, rejection, or abuse ****** or physical nothing can triumph over love just one thing unbelief Jesus him self
Said I can’t do mighty works or miracles here because of your unbelief got a mountain move it got an ocean walk over it like Peter
Oh everyone knows that was back then a young mother was distraught she lived in the Seattle area the whole world was pressing her
Down she was finished lose the children become a faceless waif a vagabond or like the man without a country no place to belong one
Problem the children playing in the front yard she setting on the porch in despair then the children screamed it wasn’t a drive by it was
A walk by mommy mommy it’s Jesus and it was far from Bethlehem she saw him too and he was smiling all tyrannical grip of despair
Died in his living presence from total supposed defeat to victory and fulfilled life he knows where you live he will be with you for
Christmas but also the whole year and especially when sorrow and tears flow unbidden he is the man of sorrows but he gives joy and
Comfort for now and forever. Merry Christmas

Forever bonded, blue dark ocean
nothing can compare, icy embrace
sweet salty lips, carress mine
fine white, deep sea dive
lost forever, bonded and lost
wet eyes, soaked to the bone
rotting ship, netted trap
pull me under, take away the pain
Love unbidden, not unwanted
Ocean blood, love unrequited
smooth sensation, unforgivable
I love you, my dear sea god
Green ocean blue, lips of salt
Kiss and carress, love and lust
forever bonded, blue dark ocean.

is different for each meandering
but arises unbidden though there
must be a prompt a spring a welling-
up that begins to trickle down the page
as the current courses down this arm
to fingertips grippimg the pen lightly
but firm enough to make the marks
and trickle a stream to slake again
my thirst.  Wyre ? Ribble ? Mersey ?
Thames ? Rhine ? Danube ? Ganges ?
Amazon - yes immense over life as Amazon.

(c) C J Heyworth