”Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not comin' on.
I'm just payin' my rent every day in the Tower of Song”

Leonard Cohen lyric from The Tower of Song


§§§

this lyric hits, it’s a ten fingered cheeky ****** marking,
fits like a new white t-shirt, clean~perfect in every aspect,
I’ve just changed song to poetry, so nobody’s complaining

axiomatic, slept less a than three shambolic hours last nite,
don’t ask what I was doing or even a simple why, even the
vultures grew tired, helplessly hoping for solutions to start appearing

water pressure ok, poem spigot strong but the words desiccated,
it’s time to revisit roots, back to where I’ve come-begun, bury losses,
seek no consideration, write in isolation, a-quiet niche, a shhh! beach

my silent reverie owns me and the angels, biggest fans, just can’t
get enough, know their faith is strong, never proofing reads required,
content to wait till find my lost chords, comforts of only fresh truths

so arrivederci, until we meet again, when cadences have resumed,
rolling in unbroken, won’t need other’s words recirculating my blood,
till my slip sliding over, direction from arrows stabbing new openings

rented a storage unit in nearby woods, empty shelves greet ya with a
‘ready, willing, and able,’  many open arms looking for fulfilling, a job, that don’t even pay minimum wage, but the benefits are just fan-tastic

So:
should you spot a man ungainly wrought,
weighted down by a harpoon cross, resting,
‘pon on his cursed Cain-marked back, fingertips,
you need not move to the other side, or hide,
'tis only a make-believe poet, no longer believing,
with his recording device, seizing your rhapsodies
to rhyme with his own collected artifacts, your crinkly
smiles are his meat, his metier, his chosen career,
to be again a comfort caresser of your illusions into
a shapely sculpture of words be-loved, keeping-worthy,
tokens of a reexamined self worth, a new girth, leaner,
a celebration for the keeping, dug up with pail and shovel,
a best left hid on his treasured island, in a treasure chest, only his new-no-good-best-most-satisfying-new-no-good-best-mystifying-sati­sfying-cursing-muses-who-got-two-knee-on-my-soul-I’m-
howling...
­
Monday Jun 1, 2020

Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.

Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
blown to the lees
as fierce northern gales sever.

Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.

NOTE: I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone. Keywords/Tags: Harold Bloom, literary, critic, criticism, elitist, elitism, ivory, tower, heights, mountain, winter, cold, frigid



Rant: The Elite
by Michael R. Burch

When I heard Harold Bloom unsurprisingly say:
Poetry is necessarily difficult. It is our elitist art ...
I felt a small suspicious thrill. After all, sweetheart,
isn’t this who we are? Aren’t we obviously better,
and certainly fairer and taller, than they are?

Though once I found Ezra Pound
perhaps a smidgen too profound,
perhaps a bit over-fond of Benito
and the advantages of fascism
to be taken ad finem, like high tea
with a pure white spot of intellectualism
and an artificial sweetener, calorie-free.

I know! I know! Politics has nothing to do with art
And it tempts us so to be elite, to stand apart ...
but somehow the word just doesn’t ring true,
echoing effetely away—the distance from me to you.

Of course, politics has nothing to do with art,
but sometimes art has everything to do with becoming elite,
with climbing the cultural ladder, with being able to meet
someone more Exalted than you, who can demonstrate how to ****
so that everyone below claims one’s odor is sweet.
You had to be there! We were falling apart
with gratitude! We saw him! We wept at his feet!
Though someone will always be far, far above you, clouding your air,
gazing down at you with a look of wondering despair.

Whan the turuf is thy tour
anonymous Middle English poem, circa the 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
only sullen worms shall note.
What help unto you, then
was all your worldly hope?

*

Original Middle English text:

Whan the turuf is thy tour,
And thy pit is thy bour,
Thy fel and thy whitë throtë
Shullen wormës to notë.
What helpëth thee thennë
Al the worildë wennë?

“Whan the turuf is thy tour” may be one of the oldest carpe diem (“seize the day”) poems in the English language, and an ancestor of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” with its virginity-destroying worms. Keywords/Tags: Middle English, translation, medieval, anonymous, rhyme, rhyming, medieval, lament, complaint, lamentation, turf, tower, pit, bower, skin, throat, worms, note, help, worldly, hope