Lovers entered a forbidden forest bower,
And as they stalked that range, with eyes glazed,
She offered up her hind. Now, with doe eyes,
Deep as his, deep in arousal's sleep, heels fell, 
As he knocked and pulled her dark honey hair 
And whispered, surrender, into wanting ears, 
Softly he drove his hunting command, homing 
To his huntress.

Her body braced, yet bade, with heat and vibrance.
Ruthlessly, he ****** his arrow deeper and then 
Once more and then again.  She bucked fiercely 
And defiant, goading his prodding lance ever more
Ever longer, and parting the pink lines of her white
Rose, he was, and once again, Prince to the dark
Dominion of her quarters.

In the middle of this carnal match they paused.
And looking into the forest beyond they saw
A yearling fawn, a feral Goddess, grazing still, 
Bathing in a vale, virginal, wholly unmoved 
By their act of venery, lustfully playing, in the innocent 
Leaves.  It was as if they were among her kin, a gentle 
Doe and a noble stag. From that moment on 
The human hunters did not speak.

Falling, again, rolling eyes were deep in arousal's sleep.
Her back was a crescent moon pocked and wet with dew.
He could feel her heart beating in time with his piercing 
Prong, her arching back glistened in the suns spittle
As it broke through the dark and vernal ceiling wood.

In the final shot her quivering buck lowered and broke
And a sound not heard, made a scene, a sweet murmuring
Shuddered and sank onto the floor of the forest leaves 
With her tale, taken and told, her breathless breath, 
Her nostrils cold and her heated and lanced openings 
Dripping, draining; here was a New World’s beginning.

Sated, solemn and softly quaking, his woman sweetly laid,
And now, doomed with her doe eyes, two lovers, fated, made;
She glowed, divine, like the rolling brook that mellowed
Slow, in the vine-dark and golden forest stable,
In Artemis’s wood.

Red. Blue. Green balloons skip from hand to air.
Their buoyance pulling taught on string without a care
For cutting of birthday cake or pink frosty icing melting
In the sun, party plates pass from Nanna to Papa.
The sleek magic man pulls another trick, waves his hands and ‘ta-da’.

The birthday boy sits unblinking,
Whilst those around make merry clinking,
Stupor with drinking.
Unmoved in his party of one.

Pink candy, fluffy pillows, sugar spun round like may pole in June
Sun, gliding through shrouds of baby blue glue on the day when somebody loved you,
The faded scent of burning popcorn scars memory.
Faint, old, warm voices rise in chorus of lukewarm water, embrace the scene
As children in play, chase white rabbits through hedges all summer day.

The birthday boy sits with guard folded,
and his mind is moulded,
his memory of play is shrouded,
thoughts making merry grounded,
unmoved in his party of one.

Sweet, suckling, pig aroma, dancing through the air and making merry
all the guests, with hustle and bustle, meeting and greeting with every
burst of laughter, rising and drowning in the air like Ariel,
Enchantress of Garden chairs, thin napkins caped in Tomato,
Children bounce around on castles, kings clinging to memories of tomorrow

The birthday boy sits far away,
Where his thoughts are free to flay,
All memory of that savage day,
Where innocence and virtue lay,
Unmoved in his party of one,

Ice cream Sundaes glitter as diamonds, yawning and smiling
As cream floats down the exquisite vase in timing
To lecherous looks promising requiem to appetite,
A chorus of laughter fills the air with, pop- another bottle,
Warm embrace of familiar friends, we smile soft as a bubble…

The birthday boy,
with stern and solemn stare,
Dares not cut the air,
Or insist on what is fair,
But sits to fester in the sun’s cold glare,
Looking like he does not care,
Unmoved in his party of one.

Sun flakes leaping over my neighbour’s
Stubbly white palace, beams trickle round its walls in party favours,
Death lightning blinding, level-climbing, stupor rising, smiling clowns,
Gracefully rummage through pockets for silver-shining keys,
Embraces kind faces with kinder eyes and another cherished memory leaves.

The birthday boy sat silent as the grave,
His parents want him to behave,
No boy like fancies left to save,
Stooped low in his plastic cave,
Ruing the knife that thought him brave.
Unmoved in his party of one.

1051

I cannot meet the Spring unmoved—
I feel the old desire—
A Hurry with a lingering, mixed,
A Warrant to be fair—

A Competition in my sense
With something hid in Her—
And as she vanishes, Remorse
I saw no more of Her.

I hate the dripping dark hollow behind the little wood;
Its tips a cursed maroon with a blood-red heath.
I think I praised and lamented it too soon;
Before seeing its scent; I saw already its stray mystical death.

My crown is torn, outraged by florid winds and scorn;
Like a tangled old roots of the windblown thorn;
I shall feel scanty by my own poetry,
And throw it about, duly, like a static little joke.

I shall let my heart grow dull and illiterate;
I shall not taste joy, no more, in any clear--flowery fate.
I shall seek everything bitter, and not sweet;
Even not pure as the honey of a bee; for it shall be plain.

I shall curve and bend any straightforward light;
I shall harass it, and blind it--as if my ghost’s dead soul is very not here.
Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Perhaps she is astray in my memory still, and not by my side.

I feel relieved so soon as glanced at her beside me;
She owns still that full lips like a perniciously tasty moon;
She is adorable like the flower of heaven itself;
She strikes me again when away, and tosses me about when near.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
Tame me again with thy rain of laugh;
Saint me once more like a fresh young bird;
Come to me now, and return my unheeded love.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And kissing her forehead takes me back to that day;
A day of myths, a day of agile swans and storms;
An ornate time of hatred; a whirl of bitter fate; a dust of sorrow.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And again I was alive in this tale, with a burning heart;
On one eve of tears, a mischief, and a wan poetry;
I caught about shadows in which there was no soul of Maud.

I could only see the stones, lying ghastly about the fireplace;
Ah, Maud, are you but still haunting those whimsical moors?
Their strange murmurs but I cannot hear;
But still they consume me, ah, I am scared;
I wish they would be gone soon, I wish you were but here.

These storms were amusing but peculiar;
They are bizarre, but intelligent and stellar;
And calling thy name out but breathes into me strength;
Ah, but should I be here, and bear away thy image alone?

Ah, and thou wert in but nymphic and lilac dream;
And my heart was still not massaged by the tender storm;
For it meant thee, and hungered but for thee only;
And in the midst of love had it longed, and yearned for thee.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Her with her childish eyes and rounded head of bronze,
With her rapturous steps and wild glittering aroma,
With her atrocious jokes, and a wintry secret touch?

But still she was not anywhere about;
She dissolved like one romantic bough of soda;
And within a rough joke, she would be but gone;
And now the storm returned, but I was wholly on my own.  

Ah, and now the striking storm is mounting the earth;
Should I write alone and chill myself by the green hearth?
For I hath nothing to console and lengthen my parched logs;
I shall wait outside and drift about yon wintry bog.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud with her heart-shaped face and bare voice aloud;
A voice that soaked my senses and craving throat;
Maud but teased me and left me to that joke.

Where is but Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
Maud, the goth princess within my ancient poetry;
Who but remained symmetrical and biblical in her vain torments;
Who but stayed sturdy and silent; amidst her anger, and vain fellows’ arguments.

Listen to me. I am but full of hatred.
I am neither a gentleman nor a well-bred;
I, who is just a son of an infamous parson;
A malleable son; with a bleak aura of a putrid spring.

I, one who crafted ingenious jokes;
But interminable as they always are;
I made Maud sit still as I held my woodwork;
While she perched herself on yon bench, gazing at dispersed starry stars.

Maud the shadow in my pale mirror;
At times she ceased at morns, but retreated at night;
On her brother’s sight she fled in horror;
But on mine her smile turned me bright.

Maud was idle, sparkling, vibrant, and tedious;
Her heart was free and not marred by stupor.
She was the sun on my very bright days;
She made me startled; she always left me curious.

Maud the green of the farm, the red of the moon;
Without her everything would spring not and remain odious;
Everything would be bleak and stayed tedious;
Ah, but still I could not own her, though I was her saviour.

I was a farmer and perhaps still am;
Perhaps that’s why her mother ditched me with shame.
Maud said she had not places like home;
Her house was the mere shallow--and gratuitous throne.

Maud came often down and agitated;
Her mood shadowy, she cried and cried too aggravated;
I caressed her back, and placed my palms on her white knees;
She told me stories whenever no-one else would see.

She wanted not to mount the throne;
She giggled often, at our country escapade;
She loved my cottage, she sweetened my thin grass;
Even those apple trees had then her eyes, which sprayed tough, lonely seas of green.

Maud took to hymn and dear children’s little songs;
She was popular always among the talkative throngs.
She would love to dance and wiggle and turn around;
While village pupils gathered to sing a noble sound.

Ah, but when the mirthless prince arrived;
With white horses and swords of a knight;
Maud was swallowed every morning, all through day and night;
Maud was no more seen by my side.

I thought I was not alive, for dreams were unreal;
If they had been, then they I’d have want’d to ****;
But seeing Maud not gave me fretful chills;
I often woke up tensely, within a midnight’s shrills.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Maud my bumblebee and my delicate little honey.
I kept waiting for her behind the rustic brook;
I fetched my net and fished by my old nook.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
My eyes were still and my chest could no more speak.
I wearily fancied she had been kidnapped faraway;
She would be jailed in a sore realm, and would no more be back here.

Ah, for had she been lost, then I had lost my ultimate pearl;
For there would no more be magic, there would be no more of her;
No-one would so restore my original spring;
Perhaps there would be no spring at all, and I would suffer in summer.

And I would lose anyway--my lyrical, elusive demon;
For Maud had always been elusive herself.
She wore that evil smile and thin laugh;
As I told her tales of fairies that she loved.

As I am fond of magical poetry and dramas;
Maud too used to read them with genuine personas.
She was my epic fanatical little devil;
She liked tropical cold and a faithful Mephistopheles.

I should be Faust, as she once said;
For had I fair hair, yet a bald head;
She said like Faust, I was cleverly amusing;
But to me, like Mephistopheles--she was unusually entertaining.

She danced before me a beautiful ballet;
She was young and keen to levitate as a ballerina;
She crafted me limericks and such fair lines of sonnets;
She made earth my heaven, and my melodies a twin cantata.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
I need my butterfly amongst this wheezy curdling cold.
I need my lover to soothe my chained hysteria;
I need to get out of here, and feed my love with her charms.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud, is not she here?
I was then screaming in my solitude, could she but not hear?
I could speak not, no more--sore and wounded by this snowstorm;
I crept sick and weak like a dumb old worm.

She was not even heard of upstairs;
While I was dying here as a roaring beetle.
I hath almost lost all my creative flair;
I felt tormented and neglected and nearly feeble.

Ah, but a story like this is not such a fable;
So at that time I did shun sadness and seek a warm ending;
But indeed, to escape fate the poor were perhaps not able;
And the farmer’s son shall never be a king.

And ‘twas the nobles’ right to be idyllic;
To be deemed far then fairly righteous.
My charms were trivial, and so was then my wit;
My prayers were too parted and despaired; no matter how rigorous.

I kept my work along the countryside;
I toiled all night and behind fierce daylight.
I hoped Maud would see me back one day;
But what I found was to my dismay!

Ah, Maud, for she was now engaged;
To that pathetic creature the cursed morn brought about;
And parties arranged, voices too raised;
The union was now what people had in thought.

Onto my shoulders my head kept sinking;
I killed myself nearly, for my irksome defeat in this rivalry;
A rivalry that failed to transgress vital destiny;
A rivalry I could not even bear to think.

But again, this love had always been everything;
And thus Maud’s union would equal my death;
One night I crept out of my bed;
I had in hand a keychain and a net.

The soldier was infused by sound sleep;
And into Maud’s grand chamber I crept;
Everything was pink and quite neatly kept;
But woke I her not--as I heard her breast breath slowly.

She was tremendous still--in beauty;
Maud in her splendour; so young and free.
Ah, she was free but not free, I fathomed;
I looked at her over and over again.

I looked at her violet bed and comfort net;
Ah, my Maud too ****** and temptingly red.
She was too abundant in her young and chaste soul;
Ah, I could not imagine how she would soon be one else’s.

Long did I stand; ‘till morning streamed back again;
Still I remained unmoved; I stared at my darling in vain.
I jumped startled as the door opened;
And showed me the horror of the Queen!

‘Come, ye’ fool’, she voicelessly instructed;
Her face emotionless as these words emanated;
‘And embrace thy very fate’, to the handcuffs me she directed;
‘For daring look into my dame’s immaculately flawless chamber’.

She pointed thereof--a black gun at my chest;
It would soon burst out and tear my vest;
And even fly me straight to death;
So drifted I, without further haste nor breath.

Those poor soldiers imprisoned me there;
A cellar room at the top of filthy stairs;
I stayed awake only for grief and tears;
And most of the time I laid about sleepless and stared.

I grew skinless as my bones squinted;
And laughed at me with their sordid might;
Flies were about me, bending onto my rotten pies;
And slices of meat left out by sniggering guards.

I hit my head on witnessing Maud’s cold marriage;
‘Twas on a Saturday on the castle’s rain-wetted field.
I heaved myself onto the windowsill and saw;
How the couples were blessed and sent thereby back.

I could not see Maud’s face and fleshy cheeks;
But didst I feel her discarded tears;
Marred and defiled her lovely fits;
Though just those innate, and not out there.

I struck the lifeless paint with my bare palms;
Now the walls were tainted; they smelled like my blood.
Time passed and desire for Maud was never killed;
I’th missed her every day, since then, and perhaps always will.

But my love for Maud was never probable;
I was decent, honest, but indeed not preferable;
I was not even preferable by fate, as thou might see;
Fate who is neither truthful; nor frankly urges us to lie.

I often laid hopeless by the moonbeam;
Until night came and eyesight grew more and more vulnerable.
I waited ‘till it was dark and left to day no more gleam;
Then took my journal of Maud’s jests and read her affable poems.

I turned around--and would disgrace my bed still;
I was plain starved but had no desire to be properly fed;
Of a dream of death I grew instantly pertinacious;
And of my future tomb I grew fonder--and yet rapidly curious.

Ah, but my sweet Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
And deliriously she somehow became pregnant;
But remorse said she kept the souls of two;
And fatefully could not make them both perfect!

I indeed plain prayed for Maud’s survival;
I cared not whose sons they might be;
Ah, but the twins were still sinning babies--as I comprehended,
For they were formed not from cells of mine!

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
And during those last days she was cautiously ill;
And a drive of cholera had again grown widespread;
But she was not maddened; by it she was not marred.

She was sickened by temper still;
And the prince found dead, she grew more terrifyingly ill;
She had a pure heart, so she flourished not over the beast’s death;
Nonetheless, he remained the father of yon sickly offspring.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
I was duly growing perfectly anxious;
She was to give birth--ah, to those little ignoramuses;
And within a little chord in one or days of two--she would do so.

But without a father to care for her notorious sons;
And even I was locked away, and could not do so;
I was terrified, I was horribly undignified;
To learn this stern reality we were so sullenly faced with!

Ah, not now! I could not too believe my ears!
Maud and her children were dead--they’d been stillborn;
Before they left Maud alone to receive her fate;
Her locksmith would not come; he had another due in a nameless town.

By the time he arrived my darling had gone;
Perhaps she was now shimmering in heaven;
Enchanting her children with her enormous spells;
Narrating stories no plain human could ever tell.

Even in heaven my love would perhaps be famous;
Her tenderness would make other angels jealous;
And angered by envy, they would gather and complain to God;
How an earthly soul could be more vivacious than their heavenly were.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud and her chain of songs that were never to be broken;
Maud and her familiarity with gardens and blue lilies;
Maud and her immaculate pets of birds that still sweetly sing.

Ah, but where is my darling, my darling, my darling;
My eternal ocean, my hustling flowerbed, my immortal;
My poem, my enchanting lyric, my wedding ring;
My novelty, my merited charm, my eternal.

And now she was longing for her grave, as I’d been told;
For I’d been told by the dimmed torches and fuss and mirthless air outside;
By the endless wandering and the prince’s wails and wordless screams.
Ah, my Maud had now migrated from her life--but attained her freedom!

And he was thus unworthy of being in her heaven;
Her heaven where there would be me, her true love;
And thus he would be glad to greet his fires of hell;
He would marry an evil angel there--and make himself again full.

But I’d be with Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
I’d be again with my gem, indefatigable little darling;
Whose voice was unsure, whose poems were never known;
But ‘twas enough that they’d been known to me, her secret--ye’ dearest lover.

So took I, that spinning penchant and a circle of strings;
The edges I matched to the chains on my ceilings.
I braced myself for my very own fiery death;
But again, I’d be with Maud and death would no more, aye, be sad.

Thus the above poem was done by my spirit;
But with the same token and awe of genuineness and wit;
I feel tired--I shall close my eyes, and thus enjoy my heaven now;
For my wife and starlings are all waiting for me to-morrow.

It is now nighttime in heaven;
And there is indeed, no place on earth lovelier;
I gaze into my wife with a loving madness;
Her cheeks sweeter still, than any proudest swiftness.

I shall take my vow of marriage tomorrow;
My proud wife sitting in yon angelic chair by my side.
I shall cradle, then, those white little nuptial fairies;
They are Maud’s children’s, but lithe and gracious and bow to me in chaste mercies.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is but all mine now;
I am still surprised now, as sitting by this heaven riverside.
One even grander than the one I’d had beside the lake;
Which I often farmed when I had needs to bake.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is a ghost but as ever lively;
We are both dead but she boldly remaineth lovely;
I know she is worthier than serene jewels or mundane affairs;
And still she is worthier all the same, than any other terrific palace--or heir.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, and this war is but all over now;
Thus let us dream dead of the exciting tomorrow.
We shall see life and our children grow;
We shall witness delight--and miracles none ever knows.

I met him on the Amtrak line to Central Jersey. His name was Walker, and his surname Norris. I thought there was a certain charm to that. He was a Texas man, and he fell right into my image of what a Texas man should look like. Walker was tall, about 6’4”, with wide shoulders and blue eyes. He had semi-long hair, tied into a weak ponytail that hung down from the wide brim hat he wore on his head. As for the hat, you could tell it had seen better days, and the brim was starting to droop slightly from excessive wear. Walker had on a childish smile that he seemed to wear perpetually, as if he were entirely unmoved by the negative experiences of his own life. I have often thought back to this smile, and wondered if I would trade places with him, knowing that I could be so unaffected by my suffering. I always end up choosing despair, though, because I am a writer, and so despair to me is but a reservoir of creativity. Still, there is a certain romance to the way Walker braved the world’s slings and arrows, almost oblivious to the cruel intentions with which they were sent at him.
“I never think people are out to get me.” I remember him saying, in the thick, rich, southern drawl with which he spoke, “Some people just get confused sometimes. Ma’ momma always used to tell me, ‘There ain’t nothing wrong with trustin’ everyone, but soon as you don’t trust someone trustworthy, then you’ve got another problem on your hands.’”—He was full of little gems like that.
As it turns out, Walker had traveled all the way from his hometown in Texas, in pursuit of his runaway girlfriend, who in a fit of frenzy, had run off with his car…and his heart. The town that he lived in was a small rinky-**** miner’s village that had been abandoned for years and had recently begun to repopulate. It had no train station and no bus stop, and so when Walker’s girlfriend decided to leave with his car, he was left struggling for transportation. This did not phase Walker however, who set out to look for his runaway lover in the only place he thought she might go to—her mother’s house.
So Walker started walking, and with only a few prized possessions, he set out for the East Coast, where he knew his girlfriend’s family lived. On his back, Walker carried a canvas bag with a few clothes, some soap, water and his knife in it. In his pocket, he carried $300, or everything he had that Lisa (his girlfriend) hadn’t stolen. The first leg of Walker’s odyssey he described as “the easy part.” He set out on U.S. 87, the highway closest to his village, and started walking, looking for a ride. He walked about 40 or 50 miles south, without crossing a single car, and stopping only once to get some water. It was hot and dry, and the Texas sun beat down on Walker’s pale white skin, but he kept walking, without once complaining. After hours of trekking on U.S. 87, Walker reached the passage to Interstate 20, where he was picked up by a man in a rust-red pickup truck. The man was headed towards Dallas, and agreed o take Walker that far, an offer that Walker graciously accepted.
“We rode for **** near five and a half hours on the highway to Dallas,” Walker would later tell me. “We didn’t stop for food, or drink or nuthin’. At one point the driver had to stop for a pisscall, that is, to use the bathroom, or at least that’s why I reckon we stopped; he didn’t speak but maybe three words the whole ride. He just stopped at this roadside gas station, went in for a few minutes and then back into the car and back on the road we went again. Real funny character the driver was, big bearded fellow with a mean look on his brow, but I never would have made it to Dallas if not for him, so I guess he can’t have been all that mean, huh?”
Walker finally arrived in Dallas as the nighttime reached the peak of its darkness. The driver of the pickup truck dropped him off without a word, at a corner bus stop in the middle of the city. Walker had no place to stay, nobody to call, and worst of all, no idea where he was at all. He walked from the corner bus stop to a run-down inn on the side of the road, and got himself a room for the night for $5. The beds were hard and the sheets were *****, and the room itself had no bathroom, but it served its purpose and it kept Walker out of the streets for the night.
The next morning, Texas Walker Norris woke up to a growl. It was his stomach, and suddenly, Walker remembered that he hadn’t eaten in almost two days. He checked out of the inn he had slept in, and stepped into the streets of Dallas, wearing the same clothes as he wore the day before, and carrying the same canvas bag with the soap and the knife in it. After about an hour or so of walking around the city, Walker came up to a small ***** restaurant that served food within his price range. He ordered Chicken Fried Steak with a side of home fries, and devoured them in seconds flat. After that, Walker took a stroll around the city, so as to take in the sights before he left. Eventually, he found his way to the city bus station, where he boarded a Greyhound bus to Tallahassee. It took him 26 hours to get there, and at the end of everything he vowed to never take a bus like that again.
“See I’m from Texas, and in Texas, everything is real big and free and stuff. So I ain’t used to being cooped up in nothin’ for a stended period of time. I tell you, I came off that bus shaking, sweating, you name it. The poor woman sitting next to me thought I was gunna have a heart attack.” Walker laughed.
When Walker laughed, you understood why Texans are so proud of where they live. His was a low, rumbling bellow that built up into a thunderous, booming laugh, finally fizzling into the raspy chuckle of a man who had spent his whole life smoking, yet in perfect health. When Walker laughed, you felt something inside you shake and vibrate, both in fear and utter admiration of the giant Texan man in front of you. If men were measured by their laughs, Walker would certainly be hailed as king amongst men; but he wasn’t. No, he was just another man, a lowly man with a perpetual childish grin, despite the godliness of his bellowing laughter.
“When I finally got to Tallahassee I didn’t know what to do. I sure as hell didn’t have my wits about me, so I just stumbled all around the city like a chick without its head on. I swear, people must a thought I was a madman with the way I was walkin’, all wide-eyed and frazzled and stuff. One guy even tried to mug me, ‘till he saw I didn’t have no money on me. Well that and I got my knife out of my bag right on time.” Another laugh. “You know I knew one thing though, which was I needed to find a place to stay the night.”
So Walker found himself a little pub in Tallahassee, where he ordered one beer and a shot of tequila. To go with that, he got himself a burger, which he remembered as being one of the better burgers he’d ever had. Of course, this could have just been due to the fact that he hadn’t eaten a real meal in so long. At some point during this meal, Walker turned to the bartender, an Irish man with short red hair and muttonchops, and asked him if he knew where someone could find a place to spend the night in town.
“Well there are a few hotels in the downtown area but ah wouldn’t recommend stayin’ in them. That is unless ye got enough money to jus’ throw away like that, which ah know ye don’t because ah jus’ saw ye take yer money out to pay for the burger. That an’ the beer an’ shot. Anyway, ye could always stay in one of the cheap motels or inns in Tallahassee. That’ll only cost ye a few dollars for the night, but ye might end up with bug bites or worse. Frankly, I don’t see many an option for ye, less you wanna stay here for the night, which’ll only cost ye’, oh, about nine-dollars-whattaya-say?”
Walker was stunned by the quickness of the Irishman’s speech. He had never heard such a quick tongue in Texas, and everyone knew Texas was auction-ville. He didn’t know whether to trust the Irishman or not, but he didn’t have the energy or patience to do otherwise, and so Walker Norris paid nine dollars to spend the night in the back room of a Tallahassee pub.
As it turns out, the Irishman’s name was Jeremy O’Neill, and he had just come to America about a year and a half ago. He had left his hometown in Dublin, where he owned a bar very similar to the one he owned now, in search of a girl he had met that said she lived in Florida. As it turns out, Florida was a great deal larger than Jeremy had expected, and so he spent the better part of that first year working odd jobs and drinking his pay away. He had worked in over 25 different cities in Florida, and on well over 55 different jobs, before giving up his search and moving to Tallahassee. Jeremy wrote home to his brother, who had been manning his bar in Dublin the whole time Jeremy was away, and asked for some money to help start himself off. His brother sent him the money, and after working a while longer as a painter for a local construction company, he raised enough money to buy a small run down bar in central Tallahassee, the bar he now ran and operated. Unfortunately, the purchase had left him in terrible debt, and so Jeremy had set up a bed in the back room, where he often housed overly drunk customers for a price. This way, he could make back the money to pay for the rest of the bar.
Walker sympathized with the Irishman’s story. In Jeremy, he saw a bit of himself; the tired, broken traveler, in search of a runaway love. Jeremy’s story depressed Walker though, who was truly convinced his own would end differently. He knew, he felt, that he would find Lisa in the end.
Walker hardly slept that night, despite having paid nine dollars for a comfortable bed. Instead, he got drunk with Jeremy, as the two of them downed a bottle of whisky together, while sitting on the floor of the pub, talking. They talked about love, and life, and the existence of God. They discussed their childhoods and their respective journeys away from their homes. They laughed as they spoke of the women they loved and they cried as they listened to each other’s stories. By the time Walker had sobered up, it was already morning, and time for a brand new start. Jeremy gave Walker a free bottle of whiskey, which after serious protest, Walker put in his bag, next to his knife and the soap. In exchange, Walker tried to give Jeremy some money, but Jeremy stubbornly refused, like any Irishman would, instead telling Walker to go **** himself, and to send him a postcard when he got to New York. Walker thanked Jeremy for his hospitality, and left the bar, wishing deeply that he had slept, but not regretting a minute of the night.
Little time was spent in Tallahassee that day. As soon as Walker got out on the streets, he asked around to find out where the closest highway was. A kind old woman with a cane and bonnet told him where to go, and Walker made it out to the city limits in no time. He didn’t even stop to look around a single time.
Once at the city limits, Walker went into a small roadside gas station, where he had a microwavable burrito and a large 50-cent slushy for breakfast. He stocked up on chips and peanuts, knowing full well that this may have been his last meal that day, and set out once again, after filling up his water supply. Walker had no idea where to go from Tallahassee, but he knew that if he wanted to reach his girlfriend’s mother’s house, he had to go north. So Walker started walking north, on a road the gas station attendant called FL-61, or Thomasville Road. He walked for something like seven or eight miles, before a group of college kids driving a camper pulled up next to him. They were students at the University of Georgia and were heading back to Athens from a road trip they had taken to New Orleans. The students offered to take Walker that far, and Walker, knowing only that this took him north, agreed.
The students drove a large camper with a mini-bar built into it, which they had made themselves, and stacked with beer and water. They had been down in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras season, and were now returning, thought the party had hardly stopped for them. As they told Walker, they picked a new designated driver every day, and he was appointed the job of driving until he got bored, while all the others downed their beers in the back of the camper. Because their system relied on the driver’s patience, they had almost doubled the time they should have made on their trip, often stopping at roadside motels so that the driver could get his drink on too. These were their “pit-stops”, where they often made the decision to either eat or court some of the local girls drunkenly.
This leg of the trip Walker seemed to glaze over quickly. He didn’t talk much about the ride, the conversation, or the people, but from what I gathered, from his smile and the way his eyes wandered, I could tell it was a fun one. Basically, the college kids, of which I figure there were about five or six, got Walker drunk and drove him all the way to Athens, Georgia, where they took him to their campus and introduced him to all of their friends. The leader of the group, a tall, athletic boy with long brown hair and dimples, let him sleep in his dorm for the night, and set him up with a ride to the train station the next morning. There, Walker bought himself a ticket to Atlanta, and said his goodbyes. Apparently, the whole group of students followed him to the station, where they gave him some food and said goodbye to him. One student gave Walker his parent’s number, telling him to call them when he got to Atlanta, if he needed a place to sleep. Then, from one minute to the next, Walker was on the train and gone.
When Walker got to Atlanta, he did not call his friend’s family right away. Instead, he went to the first place he saw with food, which happened to be a small, rundown place that sold corndogs and coke for a dollar per item. Walker bought himself three corndogs and a coke, and strolled over to a nearby park, where, he sat down on a bench and ate. As Walker sat, dipping his corndogs into a paper plate covered in ketchup, an old woman took the seat directly next to him, and started writing in a paper notepad. He looked over at her, and tried to see what she was writing, but she covered up her pad and his efforts were wasted. Still, Walker kept trying, and eventually the woman got annoyed and mentioned it.
“Sir, I don’t mind if you are curious, but it is terribly, terribly rude to read over another person’s shoulder as they write.” The woman’s voice was rough and beautiful, changed by time, but bettered, like fine wine.
“I’m sorry ma’am, it’s just that I’ve been on the road for a while now, and I reckon I haven’t really read anything in, ****, probably longer than that. See I’m lookin’ to find my girlfriend up north, on account of she took my car and ran away from home and all.”
“Well that is certainly a shame, but I don’t see why that should rid you of your manners.” The woman scolded Walker.
“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry. What I meant to convey was that, I mean, I kind of just forgot I guess. I haven’t had too much time to exercise my manners and all, but I know my mother would have educated me better, so I apologize but I just wanted to read something, because I think that’s something important, you know? I’ll stop though, because I don’t want to annoy you, so sorry.”
The woman seemed amused by Walker, much as a parent finds amusement in the cuteness of another’s children. His childish, simple smile bore through her like a sword, and suddenly, her own smile softened, and she opened up to him.
“Oh, don’t be silly. All you had to do was ask, and not be so unnervingly discreet about it.” She replied, as she handed her pad over to Walker, so that he could read it. “I’m a poet, see, or rather, I like to write poetry, on my own time. It relaxes me, and makes me feel good about myself. Take a look.”
Walker took the pad from the woman’s hands. They were pale and wrinkly, but were held steady as a rock, almost as if the age displayed had not affected them at all. He opened the pad to a random page, and started reading one of the woman’s poems. I asked Walker to recite it for me, but he said he couldn’t remember it. He did, however, say that it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever read, a lyrical, flowing, ode to t

On a great mountainside, a beautiful river ran, reaching all creatures across the great expanse. Glowing crystal and clear as the fresh alpine air, the water ran, as yet undiscovered and unmarred by civilization. It knew not of the impurities that other waters knew, free from the grasp of humanity and completely pure in it's design. Each spring as the snow melted, the river would charge through the forges and ravines, reshaping the ground in it's wake, changing the surface of the mountain in it's path. Stones would tumble and trees would crack under the raw power of it's force, as it gained in size and speed over the spring months. This spring however, it met upon a larger rock, seemingly a boulder. "Ha," thought the river, as it began growing rapidly, the melting snow empowering it as it crashed into the boulder, slightly changing course and returning to it's usual path. "I will be back soon." The river promised. As summer grew nearer and the sun seemed to burst from it's cloudy shield of winter, it began to show more steadily and with a greater heat than it had in springtime past. The blazing sun caused avalanches as it bore into the icy crust of the mountain top. The river suddenly felt something new, something changing, it was surely larger and more powerful than it had been in previous months, and as it charged down the mountain, it was sure of it's victory upon the great boulder. "Surely now this rock will not remain unmoved!" exclaimed the river as it flooded down the ravine, in search of the unchanging obstruction of mineral. The sun's rays had created an avalanche, dumping hundreds of tons of ice into the rushing river, melting the snow and creating a great roar as the river grew abruptly to 3 and 4 times it's previous size. As the river grew it felt a giant to all the objects on the mountain, proud and sure of it's eminent victory over the great boulder in it's way. As the water gained momentum and seeming to contain all of it's new fury in the roaring flood just for the great rock. A sleeping rock awoke suddenly to a roar and a crack as it heard many smaller boulders tumbling into the trees nearby, and the rumbling river rushing straight for him. "Aww, thought the old stone, yawning. "This will surely be interesting." As the rushing water advanced upon the rock, it had no idea what was to become of it's proud and boastful ways. Rushing water carrying all types and sizes of large rock and debris smashed into the great stone with all of it's might. The rock was unmoved. Little did the river know, this stone was rooted deep, a branch of mineral deposit coming from the very core of the mountain itself. The river had no chance. At the impact the water and debris scattered, and the river, suddenly defeated, splashed against the side of the rock and continued its usual path of the many years before. As it continued on, it felt something moving, carrying itself somewhere else, like someone or thing was pulling part of it away from itself, and it roared in agony, sending more boulders to crack into the trees nearby. Alive and kicking, and carrying it's own cry came a beautiful new stream caressing the side of a great stone in it's beginning, almost as if to thank it for it's place in giving birth to the new life. "You are welcome." Spoke the stone, supporting the stream in it's new path, as the water began to run fresh and new across the bare ground. The stream seemed to caress everything it came across, the roots of the plants and trees feeling thankful for a new source of water. Although the smallest seedlings would be lost in the stream, it was a good sacrifice to make for a source of that precious water so generously given to the side of the mountain with the large river. As the stream carried on, moving pine cones and pine needles aside, it brought new nourishment to all the life of the dry side of the mountain. As a small child just learning to walk, running to meet new people and see all the new things, experience the new life, the river ran. It glanced upon the tall oaks and the thinner pines and the smaller saplings. It rushed to meet the squirrel, carrying with it acorns fallen on the ground higher on the hill. It ran to bring uprooted fresh seedlings to the young deer. It brought with it fallen nuts and berries and left them near the bear's den. It brought freshly dropped dry twigs and branches to the wary ******, hunting for a new home. It brought with it pine needles and dropped them next to the trees with sparrows and blue birds hopping about for new materials to strengthen their nests. The stream ran free, bringing gifts to all it met with and inviting all to join it in it's path. The young of the forest gathered together, foxes and rabbits and badgers alike, to join the small stream in its journey down the mountain. Never carrying too much water as to uproot or change the surface of it's new found paradise, the stream was grateful to be a part of the dry side of the mountain, and that side of the mountain was never so dry. That side of the mountain never knew the fear of falling rocks or boulders. It never knew the fear of the flood of spring. It flourished with new life and greenery as it became privy to the little stream's side of the mountain to live happily without fear of flood or the dangers it brought. Each new day more bushes and saplings followed the little stream . The animals began to move from the great river's side of the mountain to the little stream's side. The river became lonely in it's wrathful wake, having only the rocks and logs it carried along as it's companion. Even the trees were scared to grow near it's threatening wrath. Loved by all and continually becoming the renown of the mountain, the little stream never knew such hardships. Such is why a little stream can be more changing than a great roaring river. To be feared by all or to be loved by all, is in the makings of every gaining current. The little stream never grew much larger than a dear's jump or a squirrel's leap. Except in the hearts of the lives around it. May we all be as little streams, not hungering to change the surface of our world, or to be feared. May we all live as the one who embraces all the forms we meet, being grateful for our own place among them. Then may we know what it is to live among many and loved by all. Then may we never know fear, or lose ourselves to a great boulder. May we change with the small movements of the ground beneath our feet, and carry with us gifts to all those we meet. May we be mightier in the heart than in the mind, leaving our hunger behind. May the little stream meet us too, and may we hear it's message clearly.

i roamed into darkness
as the moonlight shed its light
in the dusty panes of the old
temple.

were the tombs of a thousand
pages unmoved,
of unseen things,
of obscure meanings
from his little grey cells.

and caressing the yellow plates,
fingers ran into deep vacuums to glean
the transcendent thoughts,
the laws of common sense
that he often uttered  
in this temple

a perpendicular impulse
hovering in the shadows,
laid still, holding on to his
immovable  designs,
unmoved.

We know not the times or the gifts that are ours specifically and unequally you see someone at a
Distance walking through a pastoral scene away and down a hill at first by voice recognition you
Know who he is this grandfatherly figure brings a flood of feelings and moods to brush your soul
With the telling of wonder of intimate days and moments you have shared so often you smile as
He naps quietly and then a night comes where for one reason or another you get involved and the
Whole night is used for this activity the next day being Saturday you relax and in the late afternoon
You at first just set for what you think is a moment but the previous night delightfully and pleasantly
Catches up with you sleep affords you this non cumbersome trip of ease and you awaken and it is dark
At first groggy disoriented just like in a dream this logical but off answer is provided then you finally
Figure out what is going on what surprise and pleasure to know you have been ambushed by a slight
Tiredness that robed you in sweet bliss then trimmed it in solace you stir yourself and do minor things
Until it’s the bed time hour but instead of the normal lights out its turn away from the computer shut off
The television **** all the lights but one and then just purposely luxuriate in the soft amber glow it
Provides set the rudder to take you to sweet wonder as you drift to unspoken destinations these are
Truly simple joys where the need to be careful comes in we know even creation and all its splendors are
Fragile a great rush of water with four feet of foam froth and power charges down it has a twin that is
Separated by this mass of rock that rises upwards of fifty feet the water falls over it in a different way
These strings of water that cover the face from one side to the other and they are accompanied with the
Sweetest mist so you have this forked water show on both sides of powerful water all this glory of white
Power rushing then falling and then the center piece contrasted to this sense such power and mass and
The water is shear as it tenderly descends the mist is truly natures kiss the sound is the embrace the
Engulfing privilege we possess and own as humans but this could be harmed and ruined in so many sad
Ways thats why we are extraordinarily careful we want to preserve it for all times as human beings my
Friends we also can by indifference and lack of understating can harm friends that in their own right
Are spiritual streams that come from great spiritual head waters that were pristine and then one greater
Than all of us caused such harm and destruction in the purist place a garden I wrote and posted Fertile
Ground the great mind of Lincoln said in his day and he meant it for all of our history a nation as great as
Ours can and must be sustained yes our armies and navy are a part but in his speech He says if
“Destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher as a nation of freemen we must
Must live through all time or die by suicide what constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and
Independence it is not our frowning battlements our bristling sea coasts the guns of our war steamers
Or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army these are not our reliance against the resumption of
Tyranny in our fair land all of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger
Or weaker for the struggle our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms our
Defense is in the preservation of the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands
Everywhere destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around you own doors
Familiarize yourselves with the chains of ******* and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them
Accustomed to trample on the right of those around you you become the fit subjects of the first cunning
Tyrant who rises” sound words of wisdom that benefit all men we can’t release our responsibility and
Expect a continuance of our freedom this is careful part of this piece Thomas Jefferson had this to say “I
Tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and his justice cannot sleep foe ever” what more
Prized possessions do you own than family and friends but if we deny and ignore our duty to be men
And women of righteousness how can we complain when civil authority in all manners deteriorates it
Can stand on no higher moral ground than we the people ourselves maintain we are the streaming
Waters of good or bad that flows through relationships ungodliness is a reproach to any nation by their
Fruits they will be known like it or not eat sins treats fine but know this the soul that sins it shall surely
Die it is a law an all living and loving father died to make sure no one could be a tyrant over you only
Yourselves hold that power every devil in hell can assault you but never can he claim victory until he
Sees the white flag of righteousness flying and it is saying I surrender my life of freedom bought by the
Pure sacrificial lamb God’s own son you could practically tell he was human they whipped him with a cat
Of nine tales with metal and bone he struggled down the Via Dolorosa each step declared your freedom
The song says He could have called ten thousand angels and it wasn’t nails that held your Savior to that
Cruel cross he had the ability to see everyone of us he knew how bitter and hard life would be if you
Walk it without him He said my burden is light and my yoke is easy it might sound obscure today but it is
Just as real walk beyond his love in disobedience and you will be punished by the god of this world and
Then he will take you to his fiery home as his subject I wrote before you are his greatest trophy he has
You on display in his lair because you are the greatest treasure God has not golden streets
You fist loved me and my brothers and sisters the tears that I cry in private it says this is doing the work
Of the savior increase my tears and sorrow because too many of them are hurting and know not your
Comfort lost in a savage world not any longer their own a usurper took them captive love replaced by
Cruelty is their lot if they could only see your painful longing as you look for them to come home every
Day they would truly break ties to this fallen world and fly to your presence they believe the lie that they
Have it figured out what sadness they are left with and they never have tasted your sweet spirit they
Mistake the boundless love they feel as if it were your spirit of intimacy outward love doesn’t reach
Inner depths satisfying to the point one person who cried stop no more I will die his love is truly deeper
Than the sea even the universe and Carl Sagan a man of science he was an American astronomer
Astrophysicist cosmologist author science popularizer science communicator sounds impressive but the
Reality he had an assistant and she had to be brilliant to a degree to be working with him but she was
More she was a born again Christian many were the years she loved and sought to help him not to just
Love the Cosmos but love the one who made them her persistence was to no avail you can make a god
Of many things even science how tragic he can be a warning guard your heart and you will preserve your
Soul

Going to include Fertile Ground that includes Streaks of Jefferson and Most Hated Twins I put on there
Lincoln said we should read such things

This important if you haven’t read it

Fertile Ground
O thou great Jefferson in whom dwelled the fidelity of a nation of free men.
Thy secretes can be viewed as we watch you live and breathe the life of a grand Virginia planter
When one is a student of nature and observes its subtle lessons becomes its master and ally. The next
Step of going to lead men is reasonable when taken into count the natural gifts that were refined in
Quiet fields and hills in lengthy times of treasured solitude that is not to say there won’t be difficulties
But to a merchandiser of lofty thoughts this is of little consequence. There are issues that must be
Divined through the protracted business of hard arduous study. Man’s soul drifts in and out of the valley
And hills taking unconsciously truths that exist they are everywhere but can be buried in life’s clamor.
To purposely walk across a field with your with your senses open will usher you into a place quiet
Unsettling if you are one who is uneasy in your own thoughts because the vistas will allow your mind to
Extend it to the far reaches ordinary thoughts will jump over conventional restraints and give you
Profound insights Jefferson graduated from this school of higher learning for this very important time
This man of stature arose he flung freedom’s door wide open walked through set down at his desk and
Masterfully penned immortal words, to this day time hasn’t diminished any of their importance or there
Revered excellence this document would go unparalleled in type and execution, in forming the basis for
Human conduct it would forever alter the landscape that that had existed before its grand arrival.
The stinginess of former centuries were at long last over the mind had finally
Liberated the body the willingness to do for one’s self had taken the lead there was no
Turning back, these actions would recommend them as a people. Their credentials intact now they were
Ready for the world stage a new birth of nobility walked into the human condition and it wasn’t
In the least bit hesitant to speak thoughts that had long been silenced.
The trouble today stems from the lack of understanding we have about the truth,
Of what oppression would be unleashed if our form of government would be allowed to be dissolved we
Love the dream but deplore the reality. That this system will only work when we are involved. It has a
Built in detection device, you can’t use its rewards without paying it back with service.
The results will be contagious you will be left with a weak sickly government.
The remedy simple everyone has to be its central guardian.
This does not mean that it is weak this was the way it was created it is as strong as you
Are willing to have it know this it will always be dependent on human involvement.
We might not like it but we are making a choice freedom will be loosed or bound by our decision.
The product that we deal with is very supple and ever changeable it becomes whatever form you pour it
Into this is in accordance with its nature it also is a gauge of those that handle its virtues and shows if
You have had reverence or contempt. You will be left with honor or disgrace did you carry forth the gift
Or allow it to waver the children of the next generation are watching.
Streaks of Jefferson
In freedom’s blessed glorified sky through streaks of immortal gold his visage we behold
He looks upon the fields of liberty that he and the founding fathers sowed he sees the
Richness America has become he also beheld her struggles catastrophic wars abroad
And the most painful the one that divided the nation marred it with southern and northern
Blood saw the affable the sad giant Lincoln take the reins of discontent hold them by
Shear will and with uncommon sagacity guided it back in line to fulfill its destiny as the
Powerful fount that would always pour forth waters of freedom for all of earths peoples
Total unconditional acceptance of liberty and all the fruit it bears to establish a
Government like no other this golden grain has waved under bluest skies and brightest
Sun light its rich harvest has gone to darkest prison cells Mandela was sustained by it
For twenty nine years and by its moral purity it fed the lives of those that over threw
Apartied and Mandela finally freed by principals it avows rose from prison clothes
To wear the mantle of president of his country and the honor of the man instilled
Quality that transcended political office Jefferson not to be disrespectful to his progeny
Whispers today’s politicians could do well to look on this African model of good
Stewardship of public trust with that Jefferson faded back into the mist pray that’s
Not the fate of this country
Most hated twins
Who are these two desperate characters revered but feared by all
To make their acutance few will volunteer those who know them well
All can tell by the drawn face and the tears that swell the pool where wisdom has her rule
Achievers welcome them as honored guest they withstood the test now they the richest blest
At mornings first blade of light they strike with all their might they the quickest to fight
Timorous to afraid how many have dwelt by waters undying well only to die unfulfilled
But others tried and they fell the well is to deep its where darkest shadows creep
We will be lost in these new surroundings the familiar there will be water there too
Yes stagnant unmoved guarded for naught its benefit was for the traveler going places
For you it will be your grave marker he talked and talked but venture on never
He said he was the clever one as his countenance slowly turned to stone killed by apathy
Green pastures call to find them in yourself health you will install
Few are they that were meant and born to reside in the same place you must go
If you stay rebuild the common and ordinary your monument then they will admire
Who stood to long and with all intention he gave it only words action was the wonder that was missing
Treading a narrow path in the end if you buried or squandered your talent divine wrath you will face
Cast your seed far and wide how can you not see the need sorrow has them tied
Push back the encircling darkness with the light in your heart that God did endow
Go and answer the door your guides are here I want you to meet two friends Pain and Adversity
Two finer companions you will never know Washington and his men befriended them at Valley Forge Concord, York town. Lincoln met them first at Bull Run Antietam I think he gave a little speech at Gettysburg. One birthed a nation the other saved a divided one.

A dads uniform
                          (Now my own)


           On any given day I saw the many faces of a man.
I watch him play his roles like they were well rehearsed scenes.
He was a star in his own actions, drama, thrillers and romance.

         He wore his soldiers uniform on sunday, torn jeans, white T-shirt with no sleeves and abrasions and scrapes gave stripes to his big arms.
He had oil on his hands and grease on his chin, barking orders as he worked on the car.
" Hand me that 3/4 standard and torque it to the 5th notch"
"What!? What the **** language was that?" I thought to myself as I awkwardly reached for the 1st thing my eyes spotted and held it up.
"That's a hammer Alex!" He said shaking his head as he smiled and walked toward me. He rarely had a disappointing tone. Later he explain the workings of a standard torque wrench Vs a metric wrench with converter. 10 years later I used that wrench to change my Edelbrock Electronic Carburetor 400 series twin stoker all by myself.

    I once saw him defend his honor. That day he wore  his heroes uniform as he leaped from person to person striking, grabbing, kicking, and throwing the 3 large men who underestimated his ferociousness. His tank top was ****** from the wound on his nose. His hat fell to the dirt next to the beaten, unconscious, and humiliated foes that once stood before him.
I could see that he intended to continue his lesson in respect but as he glanced over to see my wide open mouth and unmoved stare he quickly contained his aggression. He picked up his hat and shook it a few time to knock the dirt off. In that moment was another unexpected act. He help the worst of the men to a sitting position and asked him if he was ok. He was genuine in his concern that he may have been excessive in his judgment.
Later that night he explain to me that violence should never be the 1st choice for a solution and our actions should reflect the person we want people to see.
I would remember this 15 years later when sitting with the man I just choked unconscious, letting him drink my gatorade and catch his breath moments after he attempted to robbed me at knife point. In that few minutes I learned his life story. My friends said my actions were foolish.

            Duct tape and crazy glue are the tools of every street born medic.
T-shirt gauzes and boiled stones often made his grace when he wore his First aid uniform.
      
        As a kid I did DUMB very well, from gun powder soup, to a game of dart board hands. One of the more gruesome moments was my apple cutting malfunction. I severed my finger at the base pretty good. I cut right through the knuckle at the base of the index finger. It was the 1st time I fainted. Its still a debate weather it was the loss of blood or sight of it. Like a seasoned veteran he jumped into action. While most doctors would  use a coagulant like Lanxess, iodine and 22 gauge suture for this injury but not this man. He opted for all purpose flour, beer and duct tape to disinfect and seal the wound. Even though it was 3 hours before the emergency room would clean and repair the damage, I didn't shed another drop of blood while his homemade fix was in place.
I learned a lot of (what his friends called Ni**a rigging) first aid tips from him.
12 years later, while on a training exercise with  my CCC group in the forrest, a grade worker suffered a compound fracture from a slip and fall while hiking. I used a heated licorice root as antiseptic and 2 flat rock, my shoe in soles and a belt to mend and set his arm well enough to hike 2 miles back through the trail till we found help.

          When I write my poetry I never know what it is people see or interpret from it. I know the workings of romance and I know the power of its application. The day he wore his Casanova uniform I witnessed 1st hand the great reward a little effort can bring 2 people in love.
         On a normal day in the park us kids ran around yelling and screaming while him and mom sat on the grass watching us play. In the moments of a physical dilemma I sat next to him to catch my breath as he talk to her about random things. I knew my presence was interfering with whatever moment him and my mom were having but I was too intrigued by the task he was performing on the side to care.
On the reverse of a box top he drew a picture of a monkey sitting on a tree in the middle of the water. It was handing a flower to a mermaid sitting on a rock. I never forgot the joy on my moms face when he handed it to her and said "this is us."
I saw that picture everyday displayed on her mirror. Here I am 25 years later looking at my own art and words displayed across the walls of my home. My wife often looks at her description in the words and her name in the titles. Our own son invades our personal space as we sneak kisses and exchange affection through his predictable intrusions.

        My own uniforms hang in my closet waiting for interpretation from onlookers.
Suit up and be seen, or close your eyes and remember his many suits. Your in my thoughts. I hope this finds its way to you.
        Love
              -Alex J Meighan-

Words Studied For This Writing:
------------------------------------
English: Zoup, please.
What it sounds like in German: Die Zoup bitte "Or" The Zoup? Bitter.
English: Uh, the night tea is great!
Pronounced in German sounds like: Eww. Is nachte. It's Gros "Or" Eww! Is nasty! It's gross!
English: Here.
Pronounced in German: Here.
English: Ha! I see an icky Sir's downin' Zoup.
German: Huh? - Ick- Taste. -Sie - An Icky herran down en Zoup
English:Yes.
German: Ja "Or" yeah
English: Skinny rides here. Skinny? Hmm.. horseback.
German: Dunne fahrten hier, Dunne. Hmm?  Holtzit back! Or.. Do not **** in here; do not! Hmm?  Holds it back!
English: Oh! I beg!
German: Oh! Ich bitte "Or" Oh! It's better!
English: Come back, Father.....
German: Comeback, Vatter "Or" Come back, Fatter
English: Nexxinline
German: Next in line.


Let's make a story with this .

First Act

-Enter Customer 2 in an American diner. She orders a
unique zebra-flavored soup called Zoup, created on American soil, but it's claimed to have had its origins in a restaurant located in Worms, Germany; as per usual proud fashion.

Customer 2 to Rude Waitress: "Zoup, please."

She sipped the complimentary drink placed before her as she awaited her order. Iced tea, ***** glass. It was reportedly their best tea, brewed by the Barista on the night-shift, whom did only speak in broken English and Spanish. Therefore, when the customer enjoyed her tea, she was glad it was nightfall and privy to the better drink and expressed her approval.

Customer 2 to Night-Shift Barista in simplified language:

"Uh, the night tea is great!"

The Barista nods politely.

Rude Waitress, apparently jealous because she makes the Day-shift tea, is curt to Customer 2:


"Here." she growled, slamming the Zoup on the table.

Things get quiet.

Just then, Customer 2 recognizes a crusty man who claims to have been knighted in a former life before joining a Native American tribe. She addresses him sardonically.

Customer 2 to Crusty Man

:
"Ha!" " I see an icky Sir's downin' Zoup!"

Crusty Man responds, unmoved:

"Yes."

Customer 2 cautioned him that he was being tracked by the infamous international assassin, Skinny.

Customer 2 to Crusty Man in mock Native American tongue:


"Skinny rides here ...

Crusty Man: "Skinny?"


Customer 2 (deepening voice)

"Mmm, horseback."

She makes gestures with her hands of a man riding a horse.
And follows it up with mimicking a successful hit on Crusty Mans life, complete with tongue hanging out of mouth.

The rude waitress then pleads to a deceased priest aloud to return to save them whilst making holy gestures frantically.

Rude Waitress to a deceased Holy Man:

"Oh!" "I beg." "Come back, Father...
Father Nexxinline?"

End First Act


This Final Act was created using the same exact words used in the English language, those in  quotations that is, as were in the First Act: but then translating them into German, the conversation then became a bit more humorous. The Background was filled in to fit the context of the meaning of the words sonic qualities, as certain German words sound similar to English words, though they generally have different meanings. The German word sounds brought a whole new meaning to the English words spoken, and with this contrast I finished the Final Act. Since most do not know how to pronounce certain words and dialects of German language, I took the sounds created within the language and converted them to English words of phonetic similarity. These words were not translated back to English, as that would put the conversation exactly where it began -I rather made them easier to perceive.

Background Final Act/. Skinny from First Act is now in a diner in Worms, Germany, (pronounced like Vorms with  a V.)

We begin with Skinny's response to being asked how is the Zoup by the German Waiter.

Skinny dryly to German Waiter: "The Zoup?" "Bitter."

He takes another spoonful into his mouth.

Skinny: "Ewww!"  "Is nasty!" "It's gross!"

Skinny to German Waiter in disgust: "Here!"

And he pushes the bowl of Zoup into the waiters face.


German Waiter to Skinny expressing consternation

: "Huh?"

Skinny commands him: "Taste!"

The waiter does so reluctantly and winces in clear disgust.

Skinny:

"See?" " Icky heron down in Zoup!"

German Waiter to Skinny knowing German Zoup  is flavored with heron, not zebra, and failing to see the point retorts

: "Yeah?"

Skinny then crude and vengeful 'expresses' a good one from his basest dwelling silently; but deadly with a grin. It was a most foul smell.

The waiter is exasperated with this crudeness and makes commands of his own.

German Waiter to Skinny

:
"Do not **** in here!" 'Do not!"" Hmm?"  "Holds it back!"

The odor horrid reached culmination with another waft of steam from Skinny and  resulted in the excommunication of Skinny.
Skinny yet found himself vindicated and agreed to leave the establishment as was demanded. As he exits in self satisfaction, our waiter tells him not to forget his Zoup and the prideful waiter Stolz mocks him in jest by spooning a mouthful into his jabbering jowls, as he does, he turns pale and ill and silenced, reassuring Skinny he had a reason to be disappointed.

The German Waiter refusing to admit defeat tells him:


"Oh, it's better!" Referring to his bias to the Zoup from Worms, which should be renamed Houp, but the words don't translate that way.

THEN Stolz realized his best customer, Skinny's hefty brother, Fatter, was running out the door in an attempt to escape the stench which lingered and but grew in force, and the waiter pleaded with him to return.

German Waiter to Skinny's brother:

"Come back, Fatter!" but Fatter kept running and giggling sophomorically.

The German Waiter to a diner full of people gasping for fresh air and no desire for Zoup at this moment said in defeatist sheepishness, gulping before asking wishfully... pouting, whispering:


"Next in line?"

Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn
From his displeasure; in whose look serene,
When angry most he seemed and most severe,
What else but favour, grace, and mercy, shone?
So spake our father penitent; nor Eve
Felt less remorse: they, forthwith to the place
Repairing where he judged them, prostrate fell
Before him reverent; and both confessed
Humbly their faults, and pardon begged; with tears
Watering the ground, and with their sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek.
Thus they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood
Praying; for from the mercy-seat above
Prevenient grace descending had removed
The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh
Regenerate grow instead; that sighs now breathed
Unutterable; which the Spirit of prayer
Inspired, and winged for Heaven with speedier flight
Than loudest oratory:  Yet their port
Not of mean suitors; nor important less
Seemed their petition, than when the ancient pair
In fables old, less ancient yet than these,
Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, to restore
The race of mankind drowned, before the shrine
Of Themis stood devout.  To Heaven their prayers
Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious winds
Blown vagabond or frustrate: in they passed
Dimensionless through heavenly doors; then clad
With incense, where the golden altar fumed,
By their great intercessour, came in sight
Before the Father’s throne: them the glad Son
Presenting, thus to intercede began.
See$ Father, what first-fruits on earth are sprung
From thy implanted grace in Man; these sighs
And prayers, which in this golden censer mixed
With incense, I thy priest before thee bring;
Fruits of more pleasing savour, from thy seed
Sown with contrition in his heart, than those
Which, his own hand manuring, all the trees
Of Paradise could have produced, ere fallen
From innocence.  Now therefore, bend thine ear
To supplication; hear his sighs, though mute;
Unskilful with what words to pray, let me
Interpret for him; me, his advocate
And propitiation; all his works on me,
Good, or not good, ingraft; my merit those
Shall perfect, and for these my death shall pay.
Accept me; and, in me, from these receive
The smell of peace toward mankind: let him live
Before thee reconciled, at least his days
Numbered, though sad; till death, his doom, (which I
To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse,)
To better life shall yield him: where with me
All my redeemed may dwell in joy and bliss;
Made one with me, as I with thee am one.
To whom the Father, without cloud, serene.
All thy request for Man, accepted Son,
Obtain; all thy request was my decree:
But, longer in that Paradise to dwell,
The law I gave to Nature him forbids:
Those pure immortal elements, that know,
No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul,
Eject him, tainted now; and purge him off,
As a distemper, gross, to air as gross,
And mortal food; as may dispose him best
For dissolution wrought by sin, that first
Distempered all things, and of incorrupt
Corrupted.  I, at first, with two fair gifts
Created him endowed; with happiness,
And immortality: that fondly lost,
This other served but to eternize woe;
Till I provided death: so death becomes
His final remedy; and, after life,
Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined
By faith and faithful works, to second life,
Waked in the renovation of the just,
Resigns him up with Heaven and Earth renewed.
But let us call to synod all the Blest,
Through Heaven’s wide bounds: from them I will not hide
My judgements; how with mankind I proceed,
As how with peccant Angels late they saw,
And in their state, though firm, stood more confirmed.
He ended, and the Son gave signal high
To the bright minister that watched; he blew
His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps
When God descended, and perhaps once more
To sound at general doom.  The angelick blast
Filled all the regions: from their blisful bowers
Of amarantine shade, fountain or spring,
By the waters of life, where’er they sat
In fellowships of joy, the sons of light
Hasted, resorting to the summons high;
And took their seats; till from his throne supreme
The Almighty thus pronounced his sovran will.
O Sons, like one of us Man is become
To know both good and evil, since his taste
Of that defended fruit; but let him boast
His knowledge of good lost, and evil got;
Happier! had it sufficed him to have known
Good by itself, and evil not at all.
He sorrows now, repents, and prays contrite,
My motions in him; longer than they move,
His heart I know, how variable and vain,
Self-left.  Lest therefore his now bolder hand
Reach also of the tree of life, and eat,
And live for ever, dream at least to live
For ever, to remove him I decree,
And send him from the garden forth to till
The ground whence he was taken, fitter soil.
Michael, this my behest have thou in charge;
Take to thee from among the Cherubim
Thy choice of flaming warriours, lest the Fiend,
Or in behalf of Man, or to invade
Vacant possession, some new trouble raise:
Haste thee, and from the Paradise of God
Without remorse drive out the sinful pair;
From hallowed ground the unholy; and denounce
To them, and to their progeny, from thence
Perpetual banishment.  Yet, lest they faint
At the sad sentence rigorously urged,
(For I behold them softened, and with tears
Bewailing their excess,) all terrour hide.
If patiently thy bidding they obey,
Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveal
To Adam what shall come in future days,
As I shall thee enlighten; intermix
My covenant in the Woman’s seed renewed;
So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace:
And on the east side of the garden place,
Where entrance up from Eden easiest climbs,
Cherubick watch; and of a sword the flame
Wide-waving; all approach far off to fright,
And guard all passage to the tree of life:
Lest Paradise a receptacle prove
To Spirits foul, and all my trees their prey;
With whose stolen fruit Man once more to delude.
He ceased; and the arch-angelick Power prepared
For swift descent; with him the cohort bright
Of watchful Cherubim: four faces each
Had, like a double Janus; all their shape
Spangled with eyes more numerous than those
Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drouse,
Charmed with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed
Of Hermes, or his ****** rod.  Mean while,
To re-salute the world with sacred light,
Leucothea waked; and with fresh dews imbalmed
The earth; when Adam and first matron Eve
Had ended now their orisons, and found
Strength added from above; new hope to spring
Out of despair; joy, but with fear yet linked;
Which thus to Eve his welcome words renewed.
Eve, easily my faith admit, that all
The good which we enjoy from Heaven descends;
But, that from us aught should ascend to Heaven
So prevalent as to concern the mind
Of God high-blest, or to incline his will,
Hard to belief may seem; yet this will prayer
Or one short sigh of human breath, upborne
Even to the seat of God.  For since I sought
By prayer the offended Deity to appease;
Kneeled, and before him humbled all my heart;
Methought I saw him placable and mild,
Bending his ear; persuasion in me grew
That I was heard with favour; peace returned
Home to my breast, and to my memory
His promise, that thy seed shall bruise our foe;
Which, then not minded in dismay, yet now
Assures me that the bitterness of death
Is past, and we shall live.  Whence hail to thee,
Eve rightly called, mother of all mankind,
Mother of all things living, since by thee
Man is to live; and all things live for Man.
To whom thus Eve with sad demeanour meek.
Ill-worthy I such title should belong
To me transgressour; who, for thee ordained
A help, became thy snare; to me reproach
Rather belongs, distrust, and all dispraise:
But infinite in pardon was my Judge,
That I, who first brought death on all, am graced
The source of life; next favourable thou,
Who highly thus to entitle me vouchsaf’st,
Far other name deserving.  But the field
To labour calls us, now with sweat imposed,
Though after sleepless night; for see!the morn,
All unconcerned with our unrest, begins
Her rosy progress smiling: let us forth;
I never from thy side henceforth to stray,
Where’er our day’s work lies, though now enjoined
Laborious, till day droop; while here we dwell,
What can be toilsome in these pleasant walks?
Here let us live, though in fallen state, content.
So spake, so wished much humbled Eve; but Fate
Subscribed not:  Nature first gave signs, impressed
On bird, beast, air; air suddenly eclipsed,
After short blush of morn; nigh in her sight
The bird of Jove, stooped from his aery tour,
Two birds of gayest plume before him drove;
Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods,
First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace,
Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind;
Direct to the eastern gate was bent their flight.
Adam observed, and with his eye the chase
Pursuing, not unmoved, to Eve thus spake.
O Eve, some further change awaits us nigh,
Which Heaven, by these mute signs in Nature, shows
Forerunners of his purpose; or to warn
Us, haply too secure, of our discharge
From penalty, because from death released
Some days: how long, and what till then our life,
Who knows? or more than this, that we are dust,
And thither must return, and be no more?
Why else this double object in our sight
Of flight pursued in the air, and o’er the ground,
One way the self-same hour? why in the east
Darkness ere day’s mid-course, and morning-light
More orient in yon western cloud, that draws
O’er the blue firmament a radiant white,
And slow descends with something heavenly fraught?
He erred not; for by this the heavenly bands
Down from a sky of jasper lighted now
In Paradise, and on a hill made halt;
A glorious apparition, had not doubt
And carnal fear that day dimmed Adam’s eye.
Not that more glorious, when the Angels met
Jacob in Mahanaim, where he saw
The field pavilioned with his guardians bright;
Nor that, which on the flaming mount appeared
In Dothan, covered with a camp of fire,
Against the Syrian king, who to surprise
One man, assassin-like, had levied war,
War unproclaimed.  The princely Hierarch
In their bright stand there left his Powers, to seise
Possession of the garden; he alone,
To find where Adam sheltered, took his way,
Not unperceived of Adam; who to Eve,
While the great visitant approached, thus spake.
Eve$ now expect great tidings, which perhaps
Of us will soon determine, or impose
New laws to be observed; for I descry,
From yonder blazing cloud that veils the hill,
One of the heavenly host; and, by his gait,
None of the meanest; some great Potentate
Or of the Thrones above; such majesty
Invests him coming! yet not terrible,
That I should fear; nor sociably mild,
As Raphael, that I should much confide;
But solemn and sublime; whom not to offend,
With reverence I must meet, and thou retire.
He ended: and the Arch-Angel soon drew nigh,
Not in his shape celestial, but as man
Clad to meet man; over his lucid arms
A military vest of purple flowed,
Livelier than Meliboean, or the grain
Of Sarra, worn by kings and heroes old
In time of truce; Iris had dipt the woof;
His starry helm unbuckled showed him prime
In manhood where youth ended; by his side,
As in a glistering zodiack, hung the sword,
Satan’s dire dread; and in his hand the spear.
Adam bowed low; he, kingly, from his state
Inclined not, but his coming thus declared.
Adam, Heaven’s high behest no preface needs:
Sufficient that thy prayers are heard; and Death,
Then due by sentence when thou didst transgress,
Defeated of his seisure many days
Given thee of grace; wherein thou mayest repent,
And one bad act with many deeds well done
Mayest cover:  Well may then thy Lord, appeased,
Redeem thee quite from Death’s rapacious claim;
But longer in this Paradise to dwell
Permits not: to remove thee I am come,
And send thee from the garden forth to till
The ground whence thou wast taken, fitter soil.
He added not; for Adam at the news
Heart-struck with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discovered soon the place of her retire.
O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death!
Must I thus leave thee$ Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil! these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hope to spend,
Quiet though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both.  O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
;t even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names!
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee lastly, nuptial bower! by me adorned
With what to sight or smell was sweet! from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world; to this obscure
And wild? how shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?
Whom thus the Angel interrupted mild.
Lament not, Eve, but patiently resign
What justly thou hast lost, nor set thy heart,
Thus over-fond, on that which is not thine:
Thy going is not lonely; with thee goes
Thy husband; whom to follow thou art bound;
Where he abides, think there thy native soil.
Adam, by this from the cold sudden damp
Recovering, and his scattered spirits returned,
To Michael thus his humble words addressed.
Celestial, whether among the Thrones, or named
Of them the highest; for such of shape may seem
Prince above princes! gently hast thou told
Thy message, which might else in telling wound,
And in performing end us; what besides
Of sorrow, and dejection, and despair,
Our frailty can sustain, thy tidings bring,
Departure from this happy place, our sweet
Recess, and only consolation left
Familiar to our eyes! all places else
Inhospitable appear, and desolate;
Nor knowing us, nor known:  And, if by prayer
Incessant I could hope to change the will
Of Him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary him with my assiduous cries:
But prayer against his absolute decree
No more avails than breath against the wind,
Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth:
Therefore to his great bidding I submit.
This most afflicts me, that, departing hence,
As from his face I shall be hid, deprived
His blessed countenance:  Here I could frequent
With worship place by place where he vouchsafed
Presence Divine; and to my sons relate,
‘On this mount he appeared; under this tree
‘Stood visible; among these pines his voice
‘I heard; here with him at this fountain talked:
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory,
Or monument to ages; and theron
Offer sweet-smelling gums, and fruits, and flowers:
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or foot-step trace?
For though I fled him angry, yet recalled
To life prolonged and promised race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory; and far off his steps adore.
To whom thus Michael with regard benign.
Adam, thou knowest Heaven his, and all the Earth;
Not this rock only; his Omnipresence fills
Land, sea, and air, and every kind that lives,
Fomented by his virtual power and warmed:
All the earth he gave thee to possess and rule,
No despicable gift; surmise not then
His presence to these narrow bounds confined
Of Paradise, or Eden: this had been
Perhaps thy capital seat, from whence had spread
All generations; and had hither come
From all the ends of the earth, to celebrate
And reverence thee, their great progenitor.
But this pre-eminence thou hast lost, brought down
To dwell on even ground now with thy sons:
Yet doubt not but in valley, and in plain,
God is, as here; and will be found alike
Present; and of his presence many a sign
Still following thee, still compassing thee round
With goodness and paternal love, his face
Express, and of his steps the track divine.
Which that thou mayest believe, and be confirmed
Ere t

and what if I don’t care
what if, in spite of your efforts, I am unmoved
what if you failed
what if I am not alone
what if your greatest horrors are realized
what if not only the few, but the many reject you
and your fabricated truth
and you forget
and are forgotten
an empty shell of the best forgotten past
and you no longer behold the world from your ****** golden throne
but from the slums
in the dysentery and refuse that is a product of your empire
and in the putrid mire of your failure
you die
the end

Her shoes untouched unmoved
lay carelessly
in the middle of her room
the strings still tied
forever waiting to be
undone and redone
tightly around dainty feet.
a wet shiny black nose
rest atop the left shoe.
peering through the
wide door crack
he raises his golden head
paint splattered with gray
making eye contact
with a sorrowful wine,
questioning.
a moment.
the somber shake of the head
a whimper as he settles his snout
back on the left shoe
waiting…

1284

Had we our senses
But perhaps ’tis well they’re not at Home
So intimate with Madness
He’s liable with them

Had we the eyes without our Head—
How well that we are Blind—
We could not look upon the Earth—
So utterly unmoved—

I saw her
I saw her smile
Focus out through the sparkle
Reflecting from her danglers
And the ones in the atmosphere.
Turquoise sequinned with beige
Crackers, all around her
Our first new year
Where she took me by
My hand, entangling fingers
Lacing, when she thought she'd
Lost me,skipping between
White walls and brown floors
Finding a way out
Through the maze.

Low hung ceiling lamps.

Dragging me back through my memory doors
Remains the same
White walls and brown floors
While I wait outside.

Inside you're having your chemo.

Crackers
Inside my heart
Slithering through my mouth
I see her in between
Those flinging and swinging

Prayer flags, I recollect
Hanging them in the backyard
Of our home, you
Bargained them out
A flea market, before
That year's Diwali
You had inside of you
A life that would bless us
In three months.

A tangerine Georgette Saree
And rhyming with it,
Rani colored bangles
Sneaking up on the roof.

Crackers
White walls, wooden floors
You lie quiet, unmoved.

A skyrocket ups in a distance
As I light you up in flames.

Crackers
You'd always come back
Focusing, defocusing
My memories' pitaara
Sparkling, dangling
Skipping and lacing
Through all those crackers
Lighting me up

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.

303

The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—
To her divine Majority—
Present no more—

Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—
At her low Gate—
Unmoved—an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat—

I’ve known her—from an ample nation—
Choose One—
Then—close the Valves of her attention—
Like Stone—

Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.

A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor again.

In the twilight she gleams
with a festive light,
done with her trawlings,
ready to sleep . . .

Deep, deep, in delight
glide the creatures of night,
elusive and bright
as the poet’s dreams.

Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Angle, Poetry Porch and Poetry Life & Times. Keywords/Tags: Kevin Roberts, Kevin N. Roberts, Kevin Nicholas Roberts, Romantic, Poet, Romanticism, safe, harbor, night, dreams, imagination



These are poems I wrote for my friend Kevin Nicholas Roberts, who in addition to being a talented Romantic poet, was the founder and first editor of Romantics Quarterly.



Ophelia
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

Ophelia, madness suits you well,
as the ocean sounds in an empty shell,
as the moon shines brightest in a starless sky,
as suns supernova before they die ...

My "Ophelia" was inspired by Kevin's "Ophelia" and, of course, by Shakespeare's Ophelia in "Hamlet."



Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

“What will you conceive in me?”—
I asked her. But she
only smiled.

“Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled . . .
naked, and gladly.”

“What will become of me?”—
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.

Centuries later, I understand:
she whispered—“I Am.”

Published by Romantics Quarterly (the first poem in the first issue), Penny Dreadful, Unlikely Stories, Underground Poets, Poetically Speaking, Poetry Life & Times and Little Brown Poetry. Keywords: Muse, Goddess, Erato, Beloved, poetic, inspiration, lyric, poetry, divinity, Orpheus, Sappho



Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem—where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
    It will keep.
    Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.

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

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

"Talent" was a poem Kevin liked and requested more than once.



Too Gentle, Angelic
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

Too gentle, angelic for Nature, child,
too pure of heart for Religion’s vice . . .
Oh, charm us again, let us be beguiled!
With your passionate warmth melt men’s hearts of ice.

"Too Gentle, Angelic" was written shortly after Kevin's death. He died on December 10, 2008 and the poem was written on December 23, 2008, just before Christmas. 



Beloved
by Michael R. Burch

a prayer-poem for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

O, let me be the Beloved
and let the Longing be Yours;
but if You should “love” without Force,
how then shall I love—stone, unmoved?
But let me be the Beloved,
and let the Longing be Yours.

And as for the Saint, my dear friend,
tonight let his suffering end!,
and let him be your Beloved . . .
no longer be stone: Love unmoved!
But light on him now—Love, descend!
Tonight, let his suffering end.

For how can true Love be unmoved?
If he suffers for love, Love reproved,
I will never be your Beloved,
so love him instead, so behooved!
Yes, let him be your Beloved,
or let You be nothing, so proved.

Must this be our one and sole pact—
keep you ***** forever intact?

I wrote "Beloved" a few months before Kevin’s death.



Nightfall
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

Only the long dolor of dusk delights me now,
     as I await death.
The rain has ruined the unborn corn,
         and the wasting breath
of autumn has cruelly, savagely shorn
               each ear of its radiant health.
As the golden sun dims, so the dying land seems to relinquish its vanishing wealth.

Only a few erratic, trembling stalks still continue to stand,
     half upright,
and even these the winds have continually robbed of their once-plentiful,
          golden birthright.
I think of you and I sigh, forlorn, on edge
               with the rapidly encroaching night.
Ten thousand stillborn lilies lie limp, mixed with roses, unable to ignite.

Whatever became of the magical kernel, golden within
     at the winter solstice?
What of its promised kingdom, Amen!, meant to rise again
          from this balmless poultice,
this strange bottomland where one Scarecrow commands
               dark legions of ravens and mice?
And what of the Giant whose bellows demand our negligible lives, his black vice?

I find one bright grain here aglitter with rain, full of promise and purpose
     and drive.
Through lightning and hail and nightfalls and pale, cold sunless moons
         it will strive
to rise up from its “place” on a network of lace, to the glory
             of being alive.
Why does it bother, I wonder, my brother? O, am I unwise to believe?
                                    But Jack had his beanstalk
                              and you had your poems
                         and the sun seems intent to ascend
               and so I also must climb
          to the end of my time,
     however the story
may unwind
and
end.

I wrote "Nightfall" around a month after Kevin’s death.



Storied Lovers
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin and Janice Roberts

In your quest for the Beloved,
my brother, did you make
a near-fatal mistake?



Did you trust in the Enchantress,
La Belle Dame, as they say,
Sans Merci? Shall I pray
more kindly hands to gather you
to warmer *******, and hold
your Spirit there, enfold
your heart in love’s sweet blessedness?



No need! One Angel’s fond caress
was your sweet haven here.
None ever held more dear,
you harbored with your Anchoress
whenever storms drew near.



Whatever storms drew near,
however great the Flood,
she held you, kind and good,
no imperious savage Empress,
but as earthly Angels should.



In your quest for the Beloved
did the road take some strange fork
where ecstatic feys cavort
that led you to her hermitage
and her hearth, safe from that wood.
(Did La Belle Dame’s dark eyes hood?)



I am thankful for the marriage
two tender spirits shared.
When the raging waters glared
and the deadly bugles blared
like cruel Trumps of Doom, below
how strong death’s undertow!



But true spirits never sink.
Though he swam through hell’s fell stink
and a sea of putrid harms,
he swam back to your arms!

*

Life lived upon the brink
of death, man’s human fate,
can yet such Love create
that the hosts above, spellbound,
fall silent. So confound
the heavens with your Love
and fly, O tender Dove!,
to wherever hearts may rest
once having sweetly blessed
a heart like my dear brother’s
and be both storied lovers.

Amen

I wrote "Storied Lovers" on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2009.



You Were the One Who Talked to Angels
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

You were the one who talked to Angels
while I was the one who berated God,
calling him Tyrant, Infidel, Fool,
Killer, Clown, Brute, Sod, Despot, Clod.

But you were the one who talked to Angels—
who, bathed in celestial light,
stood unarmed, except for your pen
and your journal, ecstatic, to write.

How kind their baptisms, how gentle their voices!
Considering their nature the world rejoices,
and you were their gentle, their chosen one . . .
you, my kind friend, now unkindly gone.

But you were the one who talked to Angels,
in empathy, being their kind,
a child of compassion whose tender heart
burst beneath skin’s ruptured rind.

You sought the Beloved with a questing Heart;
once found, the heav’n-quickened Spirit must fly!
You mastered Man’s strange, fatalistic Art—
to live, to love, to laugh, then die.

But living here, Angel, you found the arms
of a human Angel and, living, you knew
the glories of temporal, mortal love
where one and one eclipses two.

And now she mourns you, as we all do.

But you were the one who talked to Angels,
as William Blake did, in his day,
and, childlike, felt their eclectic grace—
sweet warmth, illuminating clay.

Two kinds of Warmth—a Wife’s, and Theirs.
Two kinds of Love—Human, Divine.
Two kinds of Grace—the Angels’, Hers.
Two Planes within one Heart combine.

And so you brought far heaven near,
and so you elevated earth
and Human Love, to where the Cloud
of Witnesses might see man’s worth.

*

My Christlike brother, who talked to Angels,
where do you soar today, I wonder?
Do you fly on white percussive wings,
far, far beyond earth’s abyssal thunder,
and looking back, regard the earth
and its lightnings and their bellowed hymns
as the sparks and groans of a temporal Forge,
as merely momentary things?

There, looking up, do you see the Host
of those who ascended, of those who see
all things more clearly, having slipped
thin veils of flesh, for Eternity?

And will you, in your Joy, forget
the sufferings of mere serfs below,
or will you remember, cry “Relent!”
to those with the power to bestow
the gifts of spirit upon the many
rather than just the Chosen Few,
who sell bottled grace for a pretty penny
and break the hearts of doves like you?

Or will you be the Advocate
of those who live—the ***; the *****;
the homeless man; the indigent;
the waif who begs at the kirk’s barred door
and dares not enter, for her “sins”
which the rich-robed mannequins deplore
as they circle her and mind the store?

Will mercy, pity, peace conspire
to hold you in their gravity
so that, still Human, you aspire
to change earth’s dark trajectory?

I wrote this poem the day after Kevin died.

Keywords/Tags: poetry, poems, poet, Kevin Roberts, Kevin N. Roberts, Kevin Nicholas Roberts, romantic, Romantics Quarterly

Unmoved by your arrival from the west coast,
ten thousand little things are different.

It’s October and the trees are on fire:
a forge that you won't notice, 'til you're gold.

Your Kicks don’t leave footprints on these cobbled streets;
even the children have old, leathery hands.

Try to paddle-board the Eno and the bass go belly-up:
that river’s for scattering ashes and making moonshine.

All they sell at Aldi is ethnic shampoo,
so now your hair twists like the roots you’ve lacked

'til now, because all you’ll ever need is two hands:
for prayer, and work.

Life moves on like a cigarette’s drag,
while somewhere Hope’s fiddle strums;

Take off your headphones and
go put your ear to an oak.

O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!

Halloween Poetry: Dark, Eerie, Haunting and Scary poems about Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Reanimated Corpses and "Things that go Bump in the Night!"



Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch

Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?

Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound,
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?



The Witch
by Michael R. Burch

her fingers draw into claws
she cackles through rotting teeth...
u ask "are there witches?"
… pshaw! …
(yet she has my belief)



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross ― such common things.

Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

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

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



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

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

Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the River Styx to their eternal destination, has been portrayed by artists and poets as a vampiric figure.



Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch

The Halloween monsters, incensed,
keep howling, and may be UNFENCED!!!
They’re angry that children with treats
keep throwing their trash IN THE STREETS!!!

You can check it out on your computer:
Google says, “Please don’t be a POLLUTER!!!”
The Halloween monsters agree,
so if you’re a litterbug, FLEE!!!

Kids, if you’d like more treats this year
and don’t want to cower in FEAR,
please make all the mean monsters happy,
and they’ll hand out sweet treats like they’re sappy!

So if you eat treats on the drag
and don't want huge monsters to nag,
please put all loose trash in your BAG!!!

NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams

of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise

to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,

while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies...

it's Halloween!



Ghost
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.



All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term “banshee”) and, eventually, to the Druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgan le Fay and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil’s
fen...

if nevermore again.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

dreaming of blood,
her fangs ― white ― baring,

revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring...



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels ― winged,
shimmering, misunderstood ―
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.

Their eyes ― hypnotic, alluring ―
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather...
to see, to touch, to feel.

Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s ―
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and while I hear everything,
he says nothing I understand.

The moon shines ― maniacal, queer ― as he takes my hand whispering

Our time has come... And so we stroll together creaking docks
where the sea sends sickening things
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes.
He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine;
my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard, his face bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes ―
the pale dead.
After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
only half-remembered.
Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
blood-engorged, but never sated
since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.

Published by The HyperTexts



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

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

How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast ―
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.



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

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

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



Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

their skeletal love ― impossibility!



Dark Gothic
by Michael R. Burch

Her fingers are filed into talons;
she smiles with carnivorous teeth...
You ask, “Are there vampires?”
― Get real! ―
(Yet she has my belief.)



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.


Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)

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


Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
― Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus



Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
lifeless at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
― Michael R. Burch, after Simonides



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire―
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?


Reclamation
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.



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Duet
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Horror
by Michael R. Burch

What I ache to say is beyond saying―
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.

No, there are no words for the horror
as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...

What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.



Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch

We are all dying, haunted by life―
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.

With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.

We are the dying, enamored of “life”―
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.

We have only one thought―Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.

We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.



Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch

Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.

But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.

So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!

I lie, pallid vision of man―the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.

I love her beyond and despite even shame.



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone―unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ...



Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson,
the very color of blood,
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers,
men have forgotten it now,
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there,
four horrid dark creatures―chattering, bickering.
Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair;

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

“We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.”
As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm.

“Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
“Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.”

“There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .”

“But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.”
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . .
“Ah, but red is the color of blood!”

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

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

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



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

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

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and with tentacles about it squirming,
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh,
knowing man’s demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.

Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

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

I sought Her ...

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

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

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

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



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.

He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.

She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale―
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.



A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.



An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says―“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”



East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch

He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.

Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.

He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.

He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to *****,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch

Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.

At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.

It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause

between odd bites to sniff through the ****,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...

Evil, the rat.



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood . . .
we have that, at least, in common.
And it’s true that I found him,
shriveled with hunger,
shivering in the desert,
skeletal, emaciate,
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it’s true, I believe,
that I offered him something to eat―
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great “temptation”
of which I’m accused.

He was a likeable chap, really,
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God―
how hard He is to know,
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant,
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave,
imploring his “Master” on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade―
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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



Liar
by Michael R. Burch

Chiller than a winter day,
quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams,
eyes wilder than the crystal spray
of silver streams,
you fill my dying thoughts.

In moments drugged with sleep
I have heard your earnest voice
leaving me no choice
save heed your hushed demands
and meet you in the sands
of an ageless arctic world.

There I kiss your lifeless lips
as we quiver in the shoals
of a sea that endlessly rolls
to meet the shattered shore.

Wild waves weep, "Nevermore,"
as you bend to stroke my hair.

That land is harsh and drear,
and that sea is bleak and wild;
only your lips are mild
as you kiss my weary eyes,
whispering lovely lies
of what awaits us there
in a land so stark and bare,
beyond all hope . . . and care.

This is one of my early poems, written as a high school sophomore or junior.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



Keywords/Tags: Halloween, dark, supernatural, skeleton, witch, ghost, vampire, monsters, ghoul, werewolf, goblins, occult, mrbhalloween, mrbhallow, mrbdark

Published as the collection "Halloween Poems"

First they came for the Muslims
by Michael R. Burch

after Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.

Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.

Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?

"First they came for the Muslims" was published in Amnesty International’s "Words That Burn" anthology and is now being used as training material for budding human rights activists. My poem was inspired by and patterned after Martin Niemoller’s famous Holocaust poem. Niemoller, a German pastor, supported Adolph ****** in the early going, but ended up in a **** concentration camp and nearly lost his life. So his was a true poem based on his actual life experience. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, genocide, apartheid, racism, intolerance, Jew, Jews, Muslim, Muslims, homosexuals, feminists, apathy, sisters, brothers, Islam, Islamic, God, religion, intolerance, race, racism, racist, discrimination, feminist, feminists, feminism, sexuality, gay, homosexual, homosexuals, LGBT, mrbmuslim, mrbpal, mrbnakba



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.



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere tomorrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels’ white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness―as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now―
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness―time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?―insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask―

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?



I, too, have a Dream ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve their enmity.



My Nightmare ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.



For a Palestinian 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?

Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Victorian Violet Press (where it was nominated for a “Best of the Net”), The Contributor (a Nashville homeless newspaper), Siasat (Pakistan), and set to music as a part of the song cycle “The Children of Gaza” which has been performed in various European venues by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of 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 ...

Published by The Lyric, Promosaik (Germany), Setu (India) and Poetry Life & Times; translated into Arabic by Nizar Sartawi and into Italian by Mario Rigli

Note: The phrase "frail envelope of flesh" was one of my first encounters with the power of poetry, although I read it in a superhero comic book as a young boy (I forget which one). More than thirty years later, the line kept popping into my head, so I wrote this poem. I have dedicated it to the mothers and children of Gaza, who know all too well how fragile life and human happiness can be. What can I say, but that I hope, dream, wish and pray that one day ruthless men will no longer have power over the lives and happiness of innocents? Women, children and babies are not “terrorists” so why are they being punished collectively for the “crime” of having been born “wrong”? How can the government of Israel practice systematic racism and apartheid, and how can the government of the United States fund and support such a barbaric system?



who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

“who’s to blame?”

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



Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.  

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus



Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



Brother Iran
by Michael R. Burch

for the poets of Iran

Brother Iran, I feel your pain.
I feel it as when the Turk fled Spain.
As the Jew fled, too, that constricting span,
I feel your pain, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I know you are noble!
I too fear Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
But though my heart shudders, I have a plan,
and I know you are noble, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I salute your Poets!
your Mathematicians!, all your great Wits!
O, come join the earth's great Caravan.
We'll include your Poets, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I love your Verse!
Come take my hand now, let's rehearse
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
For I love your Verse, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, civilization's Flower!
How high flew your spires in man's early hours!
Let us build them yet higher, for that's my plan,
civilization's first flower, Brother Iran.



These are my translations of Holocaust poems by Ber Horvitz (also known as Ber Horowitz); his bio follows the poems. Poems about the Holocaust and Nakba often bear striking resemblances, especially when written from the perspective of a child.



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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



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


Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you—
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

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

eternally present
and Sovereign.



The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Published by Angle and Poem Today



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.

Published by The HyperTexts



US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)

Published by The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse and Poetry Life & Times

The Unisphere mentioned is a spherical stainless steel representation of the earth constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age and dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." The lines quoted in the epigraph are from W. H. Auden’s love poem “Lullaby.”



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. For years I thought I had written “Sea Dreams” around age 19 or 20, circa 1978. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about the poem in my freshman dorm, so the poem must have been started around age 18 or earlier. Dating my early poems has been a bit tricky, because I keep having little flashbacks that help me date them more accurately, but often I can only say, “I know this poem was written by about such-and-such a date, because ...”

The next poem, "Son," is a companion piece to “Sea Dreams” that was written around the same time and discussed in the same freshman dorm conversation. I remember showing this poem to a fellow student and he asked how on earth I came up with a poem about being a father who abandoned his son to live on an island! I think the meter is pretty good for the age at which it was written.

Son
by Michael R. Burch

An island is bathed in blues and greens
as a weary sun settles to rest,
and the memories singing
through the back of my mind
lull me to sleep as the tide flows in.

Here where the hours pass almost unnoticed,
my heart and my home will be till I die,
but where you are is where my thoughts go
when the tide is high.

[etc., see handwritten version, the father laments abandoning his son]

So there where the skylarks sing to the sun
as the rain sprinkles lightly around,
understand if you can
the mind of a man
whose conscience so long ago drowned.



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

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

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

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

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

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



Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.

Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.

Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require

the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.


Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway . . .

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

I believe I wrote the original version of this poem in my early twenties.



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.



You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Through the fields of solitude
by Hermann Allmers
translation by David B. Gosselin with Michael R. Burch

Peacefully, I rest in the tall green grass
For a long time only gazing as I lie,
Caught in the endless hymn of crickets,
And encircled by a wonderful blue sky.

And the lovely white clouds floating across
The depths of the heavens are like silky lace;
I feel as though my soul has long since fled,
Softly drifting with them through eternal space.



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky,
and the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some savage ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze,
blown high, upward yearning,
twin spirits returning
to the world of resplendence from which we were seized.

In the whispering night, when the mockingbird calls
while denuded vines barely cling to stone walls,
as the red-rocked rivers rush on to the sea,
like a bright Goddess calling
a meteor falling
may flare like desire through skeletal trees.

If you look to the east, you will see a reminder
of days that broke warmer and nights that fell kinder;
but you and I were not meant for this life,
a life of illusions
and painful delusions:
a life without meaning—unless it is life.

So turn from the east and look to the west,
to the stars—argent fire ablaze at God's breast—
but there you'll find nothing but dreams of lost days:
days lost forever,
departed, and never,
oh never, oh never shall they be regained.

So turn from those heavens—night’s pale host of stars—
to these scarred pitted mountains, these wild grotesque tors
which—looming in darkness—obscure lustrous seas.
We are men, we must sing
till enchanted vales ring;
we are men; though we wither, our spirits soar free.



and then i was made whole
by Michael R. Burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Bowery Boys
by Michael R. Burch

Male bowerbirds have learned
that much respect is earned
when optical illusions
inspire wild delusions.

And so they work for hours
to line their manly bowers
with stones arranged by size
to awe and mesmerize.

It’d take a great detective
to grok the false perspective
they use to lure in cuties
to smooch and fill with cooties.

Like human politicians,
they love impressive fictions
as they lie in their randy causes
with props like the Wizard of Oz’s.



THE KNIGHT IN THE PANTHER’S SKIN

***** Rustaveli (c. 1160-1250), often called simply Rustaveli, was a Georgian poet who is generally considered to be the preeminent poet of the Georgian Golden Age. “The Knight in the Panther's Skin” or “The Man in the Panther’s Skin” is considered to be Georgia’s national epic poem and until the 20th century it was part of every Georgian bride’s dowry. It is believed that Rustaveli served Queen Tamar as a treasurer or finance minister and that he may have traveled widely and been involved in military campaigns. Little else is known about his life except through folk tradition and legend.

The Knight in the Panther's Skin
by ***** Rustaveli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

excerpts from the PROLOGUE

I sing of the lion whose image adorns the lances, shields and swords
of our Queen of Queens: Tamar, the ruby-throated and ebon-haired.
How dare I not sing Her Excellency’s manifold praises
when those who attend her must bring her the sweets she craves?

My tears flow profusely like blood as I extol our Queen Tamar,
whose praises I sing in these not ill-chosen words.
For ink I have employed jet-black lakes and for a pen, a flexible reed.
Whoever hears will have his heart pierced by the sharpest spears!

She bade me laud her in stately, sweet-sounding verses,
to praise her eyebrows, her hair, her lips and her teeth:
those rubies and crystals arrayed in bright, even ranks!
A leaden anvil can shatter even the strongest stone.

Kindle my mind and tongue! Fill me with skill and eloquence!
Aid my understanding for this composition!
Thus Tariel will be tenderly remembered,
one of three star-like heroes who always remained faithful.

Come, let us mourn Tariel with undrying tears
because we are men born under similar stars.
I, Rustaveli, whose heart has been pierced through by many sorrows,
have threaded this tale like a necklace of pearls.

Keywords/Tags: ***** Rustaveli, Georgia, Georgian, epic, knight, panther, skin, queen, Tamar, praise, praises, Tariel, Avtandil, Nestan-Darejan



Final Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

Sleep peacefully—for now your suffering’s over.

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

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

Sleep peacefully—like clouds untouched by earthquakes.

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

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



don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

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



Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
by Michael R. Burch

“Evolution’s a Fishy Business!”

1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair
to swim among anemones’ pink frills.

2.
My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk,
a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s
sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk,
to take in this green land on which it gawks.

3.
No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt.
Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic―I’ll take such nice long naps!

The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt
to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.)

4.
I woke to find life teeming all around―
mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds.
And now I cringe at every sight and sound.
The water’s looking good! I look Absurd.

5.
The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap
wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep.
And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure
leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure.

Originally published by Lighten Up Online

Keywords/Tags: amphibian, amphibians, evolution, gills, water, air, lungs, fins, flippers, fish, fishy business


These are my modern English translations of poems by Dante Alighieri.

Little sparks may ignite great Infernos.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Beatrice I beheld the outer boundaries of blessedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She made my veins and even the pulses within them tremble.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Her sweetness left me intoxicated.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love commands me by dictating my desires.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Follow your own path and let bystanders gossip.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The devil is not as dark as depicted.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is no greater sorrow than to recall how we delighted in our own wretchedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As he, who with heaving lungs escaped the suffocating sea, turns to regard its perilous waters.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you nosedive in the mildest breeze?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you quail at the least breath of wind?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midway through my life’s journey
I awoke to find myself lost in a trackless wood,
for I had strayed far from the straight path.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

INSCRIPTION ON THE GATE OF HELL
Before me nothing created existed, to fear.
Eternal I am, eternal I endure.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Ladies of Modest Countenance” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You, who wear a modest countenance,
With eyelids weighed down by such heaviness,
How is it, that among you every face
Is haunted by the same pale troubled glance?

Have you seen in my lady's face, perchance,
the grief that Love provokes despite her grace?
Confirm this thing is so, then in her place,
Complete your grave and sorrowful advance.

And if, indeed, you match her heartfelt sighs
And mourn, as she does, for the heart's relief,
Then tell Love how it fares with her, to him.

Love knows how you have wept, seeing your eyes,
And is so grieved by gazing on your grief
His courage falters and his sight grows dim.



Paradiso, Canto III:1-33, The Revelation of Love and Truth
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That sun, which had inflamed my breast with love,
Had now revealed to me―as visions move―
The gentle and confounding face of Truth.

Thus I, by her sweet grace and love reproved,
Corrected, and to true confession moved,
Raised my bowed head and found myself behooved

To speak, as true admonishment required,
And thus to bless the One I so desired,
When I was awed to silence! This transpired:

As the outlines of men’s faces may amass
In mirrors of transparent, polished glass,
Or in shallow waters through which light beams pass

(Even so our eyes may easily be fooled
By pearls, or our own images, thus pooled):
I saw a host of faces, pale and lewd,

All poised to speak; but when I glanced around
There suddenly was no one to be found.
A pool, with no Narcissus to astound?

But then I turned my eyes to my sweet Guide.
With holy eyes aglow and smiling wide,
She said, “They are not here because they lied.”



Sonnet: A Vision of Love from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To every gentle heart which Love may move,
And unto which my words must now be brought
For true interpretation’s tender thought―
I greet you in our Lord's name, which is Love.

Through night’s last watch, as winking stars, above,
Kept their high vigil over us, distraught,
Love came to me, with such dark terrors fraught
As mortals may not casually absolve.
Love seemed a being of pure joy, and had
My heart held in his hand, while on his arm
My lady, wrapped in her fine mantle, slept.
He, having roused her from her sleep, then made
Her eat my heart; she did, in deep alarm.
He then departed; as he left, he wept.


Excerpts from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri

Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.
Here is a Deity, stronger than myself, who comes to dominate me.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra.
Your blessedness has now been manifested unto you.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps.
Alas, how often I will be restricted now!
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fili mi, tempus est ut prætermittantur simulata nostra.
My son, it is time to cease counterfeiting.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ partes: tu autem non sic.
Love said: “I am as the center of a harmonious circle; everything is equally near me. No so with you.”
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Love’s Thoroughfare” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“O voi che par la via”

All those who travel Love's worn tracks,
Pause here, awhile, and ask
Has there ever been a grief like mine?

Pause here, from that mad race;
Patiently hear my case:
Is it not a piteous marvel and a sign?

Love, not because I played a part,
But only due to his great heart,
Afforded me a provenance so sweet

That often others, as I went,
Asked what such unfair gladness meant:
They whispered things behind me in the street.

But now that easy gait is gone
Along with the wealth Love afforded me;
And so in time I’ve come to be

So poor that I dread to ponder thereon.
And thus I have become as one
Who hides his shame of his poverty

By pretending happiness outwardly,
While within I travail and moan.



Sonnet: “Cry for Pity” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts lie shattered in my memory:
When through the past I see your lovely face.
When you are near me, thus, Love fills all Space,
And often whispers, “Is death better? Flee!”

My face reflects my heart's blood-red dammed tide,
Which, fainting, seeks some shallow resting place;
Till, in the blushing shame of such disgrace,
The very earth seems to be shrieking, “Die!”

’Twould be a grievous sin, if one should not
Relay some comfort to my harried mind,
If only with some simple pitying
For this great anguish which fierce scorn has wrought
Through faltering sights of eyes grown nearly blind,
Which search for death now, like a blessed thing.



Excerpt from Paradiso
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

****** Mother, daughter of your Son,
Humble, yet exalted above creation,
And the eternal counsel’s apex shown,

You are the Pinnacle of human nature,
Your nobility instilled by its Creator,
Who did not, having you, disdain his creature.

Love was rekindled in your perfect womb
Where warmth and holy peace were given room
For this, Perfection’s Rose, once sown, to bloom.

Now unto us you are a Torch held high
Our noonday sun―the light of Charity,
Our wellspring of all Hope, a living sea.

Madonna, so pure, high and all-availing,
The man who desires grace of you, though failing,
Despite his grounded state, is given wing!

Your mercy does not fail, but, Ever-Blessed,
The one who asks finds oftentimes his quest
Unneeded: you foresaw his first request!

You are our Mercy; you are our Compassion;
you are Magnificence; in you creation
Unites whatever Goodness deems Salvation.



THE MUSE

by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My being hangs by a thread tonight
as I await a Muse no human pen can command.
The desires of my heart ― youth, liberty, glory ―
now depend on the Maid with the flute in her hand.

Look! Now she arrives; she flings back her veil;
I meet her grave eyes ― calm, implacable, pitiless.
“Temptress, confess!
Are you the one who gave Dante hell?”

She answers, “Yes.”



I have also translated this poem written by Marina Tsvetaeva for Anna Akhmatova:

Excerpt from “Poems for Akhmatova”
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You outshine everything, even the sun
at its zenith. The stars are yours!
If only I could sweep like the wind
through some unbarred door,
gratefully, to where you are ...
to hesitantly stammer, suddenly shy,
lowering my eyes before you, my lovely mistress,
petulant, chastened, overcome by tears,
as a child sobs to receive forgiveness ...


Dante Criticism by Michael R. Burch

Dante’s was a defensive reflex
against religion’s hex.
―Michael R. Burch


Dante, you Dunce!
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is hell, Dante, you Dunce!
Which you should have perceived―since you lived here once.

God is no Beatrice, gentle and clever.
Judas and Satan were wise to dissever
from false “messiahs” who cannot save.
Why flit like a bat through Plato’s cave
believing such shadowy illusions are real?
There is no "hell" but to live and feel!



How Dante Forgot Christ
by Michael R. Burch

Dante ****** the brightest and the fairest
for having loved―pale Helen, wild Achilles―
agreed with his Accuser in the spell
of hellish visions and eternal torments.
His only savior, Beatrice, was Love.

His only savior, Beatrice, was Love,
the fulcrum of his body’s, heart’s and mind’s
sole triumph, and their altogether conquest.
She led him to those heights where Love, enshrined,
blazed like a star beyond religion’s hells.

Once freed from Yahweh, in the arms of Love,
like Blake and Milton, Dante forgot Christ.

The Christian gospel is strangely lacking in Milton’s and Dante’s epics. Milton gave the “atonement” one embarrassed enjambed line. Dante ****** the Earth’s star-crossed lovers to his grotesque hell, while doing exactly what they did: pursing at all costs his vision of love, Beatrice. Blake made more sense to me, since he called the biblical god Nobodaddy and denied any need to be “saved” by third parties.



Dante’s Antes
by Michael R. Burch

There’s something glorious about man,
who lives because he can,
who dies because he must,
and in between’s a bust.

No god can reign him in:
he’s quite intent on sin
and likes it rather, really.
He likes *** touchy-feely.

He likes to eat too much.
He has the Midas touch
and paves hell’s ways with gold.
The things he’s bought and sold!

He’s sold his soul to Mammon
and also plays backgammon
and poker, with such antes
as still befuddle Dantes.

I wonder―can hell hold him?
His chances seem quite dim
because he’s rather puny
and also loopy-******.

And yet like Evel Knievel
he dances with the Devil
and seems so **** courageous,
good-natured and outrageous

some God might show him mercy
and call religion heresy.



Of Seabound Saints and Promised Lands
by Michael R. Burch

Judas sat on a wretched rock,
his head still sore from Satan’s gnawing.
Saint Brendan’s curragh caught his eye,
wildly geeing and hawing.

I’m on parole from Hell today!
Pale Judas cried from his lonely perch.
You’ve fasted forty days, good Saint!
Let this rock by my church,
my baptismal, these icy waves.
O, plead for me now with the One who saves!

Saint Brendan, full of mercy, stood
at the lurching prow of his flimsy bark,
and mightily prayed for the mangy man
whose flesh flashed pale and stark
in the golden dawn, beneath a sun
that seemed to halo his tonsured dome.
Then Saint Brendan sailed for the Promised Land
and Saint Judas headed Home.

O, behoove yourself, if ever your can,
of the fervent prayer of a righteous man!

In Dante’s Inferno, Satan gnaws on Judas Iscariot’s head. A curragh is a boat fashioned from wood and ox hides. Saint Brendan of Ireland is the patron saint of sailors and whales. According to legend, he sailed in search of the Promised Land and discovered America centuries before Columbus.



RE: Paradiso, Canto III
by Michael R. Burch

for the most “Christian” of poets

What did Dante do,
to earn Beatrice’s grace
(grace cannot be earned!)
but cast disgrace
on the whole human race,
on his peers and his betters,
as a man who wears cheap rayon suits
might disparage men who wear sweaters?

How conventionally “Christian” ― Poet! ― to ****
your fellow man
for being merely human,
then, like a contented clam,
to grandly claim
near-infinite “grace,”
as if your salvation was God’s only aim!
What a scam!

And what of the lovely Piccarda,
whom you placed in the lowest sphere of heaven
for neglecting her vows ―
She was forced!
Were you chaste?



Intimations V
by Michael R. Burch

We had not meditated upon sound
so much as drowned
in the inhuman ocean
when we imagined it broken
open
like a conch shell
whorled like the spiraling hell
of Dante’s Inferno.

Trapped between Nature
and God,
what is man
but an inquisitive,
acquisitive
sod?

And what is Nature
but odd,
or God
but a Clod,
and both of them horribly flawed?



Endgame
by Michael R. Burch

The honey has lost all its sweetness,
the hive―its completeness.

Now ambient dust, the drones lie dead.
The workers weep, their King long fled
(who always had been ****, invisible,
his “kingdom” atomic, divisible,
and pathetically risible).

The queen has flown,
long Dis-enthroned,
who would have given all she owned
for a promised white stone.

O, Love has fled, has fled, has fled ...
Religion is dead, is dead, is dead.



The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

Here I am, talking to myself again . . .

******* at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!

Still, I remember when . . .

planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity

worth a chuckle or two.

Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;

Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;

Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;

Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .

for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,

and they fill the world with their pale derision

of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,

reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all ******.

Keyword/Tags: Muslims, sonnet, Italian sonnet, crown of sonnets, rhyme, love, affinity and love, Rome, Italy, Florence

Published as the collection "First they came for the Muslims"

I look at you
In the photograph
I keep in the corner of my room.
I kiss your eye
As I remember the way you smile
And caress your cheeks
And imagine your heavy breathing.

I look at you
In the photograph
I kept in my back pocket
Like a map a navigator should have
To find himself
Every time he’s lost at sea
Knowing that there’s a
“You” that lies ahead
Knowing that there’s a
“We” to share a bed.

But circumstances aren’t like photographs.
They change.
And they will never be the same.
This photograph
In my hand
Our memories use to fade
Forgotten and unmoved

The world walks faster than me
Fear will sooner or later
Eat me.
Gulp me.
And as I ran ahead
Just to keep in line
I just can’t stay
Where you are all the time

The photograph
May fade
But not your smile
The photograph may fade
But I’m still wearing the same smile

Fondness for another,
      loved for its individuality.

Never moaning, complaining...

But nevertheless cold and unmoved.

My pet rock, my friend and guardian
against those who would do us harm.

A WOMAN IS CRYING

In the next room
a woman is crying

a moon
perches upon an hotel sign

unmoved

as a new millennium
dawns

as bright as neon

the woman
still crying

her unknown
despair

shifting silently
from one century to another

human grief
unchanged

from age
to age.

A woman is crying.

man who wears a hat sits still near the back unmoved by the world or the exposed breast of a statue (brain waves do not discharge through a fedora)

tag attached: bald is sanitary

oranges have more delicacy raw smelly and afterward singing allons enfants de patrie ding dang **** like that, all frog-ese so we don’t understand chanteused stiff basso profundo to excite to let us see with the clarity of a dream curled with hate set firm, firmer in the arms of a sleeveless girl then slung to sea level white as a leopard’s eye

remember its peroxide bathed, bleached inclined on the pillow just at the angle of expectancy without a hat sideward glance and the crippled heels of angels sparking down the hall

bulletin: young man willing to wear false beard to ease the pain for all

or trumpet blues broken played horizontal touched by seaweed hands in the light of boats (unfurled)

slowly

and the memory dies slowly half-forgotten, half-remembered

halved again

slowly

only
to begin
again

grim molecules of love

You are no black widow, you are far worse.
No remorse nor will to better your ways.
You bruise and contort, cast off and coerce
Until another, unshaped, gives their praise.
I am torn more by your guile, not regret.
To lie through teeth much sharper than what's there,
Is riddling and insulting, just bet
I won't be here when your guilt's made aware.
You shrink my worth with my name in your voice,
To be unmoved by poor, swayed lives that prove.
Alone, you roam and give in to poor choice,
And desert the ones who swore were unmoved.
I've never seen one's mind so strongly strung,
And one's paltering heart so wrongly flung.

I
FATHER AND CHILD
SHE hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.

II
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE

IF I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

III
A FIRST CONFESSION

I ADMIT the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.
I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.
Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

IV
HER TRIUMPH

I DID the dragon's will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

V

CONSOLATION

O BUT there is wisdom
In what the sages said;
But stretch that body for a while
And lay down that head
Till I have told the sages
Where man is comforted.
How could passion run so deep
Had I never thought
That the crime of being born
Blackens all our lot?
But where the crime's committed
The crime can be forgot.

VI
CHOSEN

THE lot of love is chosen.  I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.
Scarce did he my body touch,
Scarce sank he from the west
Or found a subtetranean rest
On the maternal midnight of my breast
Before I had marked him on his northern way,
And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.
I struggled with the horror of daybreak,
I chose it for my lot! If questioned on
My utmost pleasure with a man
By some new-married bride, I take
That stillness for a theme
Where his heart my heart did seem
And both adrift on the miraculous stream
Where -- wrote a learned astrologer --
The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.

VII
PARTING
He. Dear, I must be gone
While night Shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
She. No, night's bird and love's
Bids all true lovers rest,
While his loud song reproves
The murderous stealth of day.
He. Daylight already flies
From mountain crest to crest
She. That light is from the moom.
He. That bird...
She. Let him sing on,
I offer to love's play
My dark declivities.

VIII
HER VISION IN THE WOOD

DRY timber under that rich foliage,
At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,
Too old for a man's love I stood in rage
Imagining men.  Imagining that I could
A greater with a lesser pang assuage
Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,
I tore my body that its wine might cover
Whatever could rccall the lip of lover.
And after that I held my fingers up,
Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran
Down every withered finger from the top;
But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,
And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop
Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,
Or smote upon the string and to the sound
Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.
All stately women moving to a song
With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,
It seemed a Quattrocento painter's throng,
A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought --
Why should they think that are for ever young?
Till suddenly in grief's contagion caught,
I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast
And sang my malediction with the rest.
That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,
Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,
And, though love's bitter-sweet had all come back,
Those bodies from a picture or a coin
Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,
Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,
That they had brought no fabulous symbol there
But my heart's victim and its torturer.

IX
A LAST CONFESSION

WHAT lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved ******.
Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
I gave what other women gave
"That stepped out of their clothes.
But when this soul, its body off,
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,
And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
There's not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.

X
MEETING

HIDDEN by old age awhile
In masker's cloak and hood,
Each hating what the other loved,
Face to face we stood:
"That I have met with such,' said he,
"Bodes me little good.'
"Let others boast their fill,' said I,
"But never dare to boast
That such as I had such a man
For lover in the past;
Say that of living men I hate
Such a man the most.'
'A loony'd boast of such a love,'
He in his rage declared:
But such as he for such as me --
Could we both discard
This beggarly habiliment --
Had found a sweeter word.

XI
FROM THE 'ANTIGONE'

OVERCOME -- O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl --
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the Same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.
Pray I will and sing I must,
And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child
Descends into the loveless dust.

1624

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play—
In accidental power—
The blonde Assassin passes on—
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an Approving God.

Poems about the Moon and Stars

These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)



Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News



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


Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!

Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today



Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch

She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...

what do we know of love,
or duty?



Kindred
by Michael R. Burch

Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?

Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,

so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?

What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.

We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,

and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,

for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.


Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

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

Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?

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

I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.



Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...

Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.

The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.

Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.

Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.



Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes syphilitic craters
and veiled by ghostly willows, palely looms,
while we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue—
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise—
adagio, the music she now hears,
while we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars' bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

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

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

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



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. I believe this was my first attempt at blank verse.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool's gold.



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,

I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.

The end of every man's the same
and every god's as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on

to hope when there's no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

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



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon's illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

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

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

Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England). I believe I wrote the first version of "Listen" around age 17.

Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, sky, nightfall, tonight, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love

Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"

The cold prison bars, our legal boundary,
Now that you've left my character soaked in blood.
Critics, juries, invisible enemies,
Stomping words on my face as I ***** my pride.

Collecting flak coins in your pockets, truths they speak,
At least that's what you believe, and that's all you seek.
Hearing their loathe in your dark room's embrace,
Their laughs haunt more than nightmares, a chilling trace.

No guns and bullets, yet skilled to ****,
As you turn your back, they stab, you kneel.
With a knife of deception and treachery,
Wishing you'd die in a blink, yet they torture gradually.

"You always say you're such a prey, a dupe
Who would believe when you're the willing victim?"
Stay in your dark prison where you belong
Grasp your hands 'til it warms, you're safe for now

All they wanted to see is your shame penance
Cold prison bars, you were jailed for their crime
You died from all their stabs of criticisms and lies
Screaming, "Is this enough? Are you satisfied?"

Wish you could tell them you're not a culprit
Who takes the blame of their offense of no sense
But a lawbreaker of her own pity constitution
Who put her ordinance behind to lavish their pride

Thought restrictions would drive you wild
But dark walls were painted of a free hand
Thought solitude will lose your mind
Yet you found the old self, your true friend

You've never been the same, never been better
Like a spy with filters in hands sifting hurtful words
That no matter how they abuse, damage or ******
Love makes you brand new to go overboard

Walking past through the hall of deliverance
Found golden keys to release your handcuffs
Your uniform now glitters changing in white dress
Only pure hearts can recognize your new price

At the end of the spectrum love is patient and waiting
It blinds you the moment it swallows your dark sides
Echoing something you've never heard of,
"Without your death, you couldn't have been reborn this anew so gloriously indestructible"

Like a dying tree in front yard that is too sick to save
Left unmoved could **** other surrounding trees
So in your cold prison, they planted your roots to die
But from that safe place, your roots reached their soil of disgrace

Victims learn from mistakes but false altruism attracts you
They hunt you again this time now in your white dress
So jump high with your butterfly wings, soar in the sky
Above those hunters, above the cold prison bar

She stood still before the choas; unshaken.
The wind blew its mighty breath against Her core but to no avail; unmoved.
Her coffee'd skin warm like the sun that kisses the Earth's horizon.
Something within Her had risen without warning nor permission:
She was a Goddess, in Her own right.

Brown. The soft tone of the Earth.
Golden hue painted widely across the canvas of Her *****.
Her skin like caramelized silk, with the sunglow of Egypt itself.

She pressed Her face to the Earth's floor and moved mountains with Her prayers.
Queen of the meek, ambassador of the poor.
She was the perfect amalgam of beauty and brokenness.
~The Goddess of Humility.

Mind and body numb
Disbelief growing by leaps and bounds.
Everything I held dear gone overnight,
All because of jealousy.

There is no dealing with a jealous mind,
No hearing the truth with a jealous ear.
No other emotion is so destructive on earth
So subtle, but destroys from within.

Even when the accuser is guilty of the same,
A jealous eye cannot see.
Abuse heaped upon abuse is thrown
Until all is whirled in a heart wrenching cyclone of words.

Laid waste is my heart, my soul and my mind.
Destroyed is my love, my life and the us we had.
My objections not heard, my tears leave you unmoved.
The cyclone has taken another.

Winters can be tedious.
Sun dips into early dusk.
A dead fire refuses to ignite.

There's a quick repetition
of opening and closing blinds
over a barred window.

In need of reflection
I search a familiar face
in an unfamiliar landscape.

I have her in my grasp,
half illusion, half real,
a symbolic mask denies
her true face,

her glittering crown
divides us by its radiance.

Groping in darkness,
I stumble over objects
of wood and stone,
my unsteady tread tripping
over their contours.

I light a candle.

Bathed in amber light,
our shadows merge.

A new door opens,
stretching the perspective.
No formal borders here,
they wouldn't survive
the present climate.

In their place,
intricately carved
figureheads and totems-
a vision of the past.

My eye is a camera,
retinas branded with imagery
for the photographer's delight-
coloured pebbles, carved wooden animals,
tin cans, bones.....

....A Glass Sentinel
(though she isn't visible)
I can see right through her-
a vision of smokescreens
and subterfuge.

Past stumps of driftwood,
past the uncut grass,
a few flowers...

...to the fabricated backdrop
of a burning house, black smoke
rising
in
a
thin
stream.

At the open door -
The Guardian,
(I know her inside out)
unmoved,
(she didn't bat an eye)
defiant in a new skin,
a softer version-
The Mother protecting her children,
arms splayed, prepared
for fight or flight.

A russet flame
Licking her spine exhales
'Get out of my way!'
but she wasn't listening.

Smile fixed,
eyes of a phoenix,
a lion,
a raptor,
protector.
We all need feeding,
but not this way!

Throw me a cloth,
a napkin,
a man-size tissue
a lifeline!

She wanted this,
no, wished it-
this symbolism,
this burning of ironic portraits,
to clear the deck,
make way for new.

It shook the house,
its fate sealed behind closed doors.

I compose myself,
pull her back from the perilous edge,
gather her in my arms.

Fragments of shattered words
flutter in the ether.

What is real?
What is fiction?
A carbon copy of thousands?
A charred corner?

A forgotten candle?






WARNING:
'Eating fire' is a risky business
but can attract a large audience.

Relentless trav'lers
know not the peace of farmers'
ordinary life