Blue sky, smooth sailing
Balancing neon lights of my mind's eye
(as glassy waves lap against my feet)
And the innocent sands of a white-gold beach fantasy,
Soft, warm, and as sure as the day.

Graying sky, persevering
Forging ahead through tempestuous waves
(growing faster in speed and height than a father's son)
I cling to the sample of that white sand,
Bottled up in a tiny plastic nip.

Blackened sky, capsizing
Plummeting into jet-black sea
(stained in the lights of my fallen Titan)
The nip shattering, without my notice
Icebergs visible on the horizon of her heart
My sand lost into the radiant black seas
Never to be seen again.

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the *****-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
   the sea!

And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
   comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's
   fathomless body.

And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the
   wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
   forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
   sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
   tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
   the beginning and the end.

And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.

Are you aware
of the music you make, Cricket?
Can the grass be ticklish to your toes?
Tickled like trapped foes.

Toads and toad bumps.
Frogs salted on salted Slugs.
Creamer for the chocolate night,
Are you alive?

Sentimental over fingerprints,
my wings wandered
three centuries ago.
Where they went nobody knows.

Three lights captured in my eye:
one is the bedroom
one is the trumpet
one is the theatre

Hip bones have red suns.
Flowers crawl on skyscrapers.
Barns and bugs with spotted bellies.

Cracked a mirror on my foot,
wish it stayed the evening
and for supper.

Could have gone home
but instead, harvested Winter
in Mexico.

Here the waves rise high and fall on the icy
seas and white caps chew the driftwood logs of
hemlock and toss them wildly upon sandy beaches.
The steep mountains rise straight from the sea
floor as the December sun shines through the dark
clouds that hang heavy with snow near the top peaks.
Blue icebergs drift slowly down the narrow channel.
This volcanic island is one of many that are scattered
along the coast of Southeastern Alaska.
On the South end of the island is another
tiny island and on it stands an old lighthouse,
a shambles. It has a curving staircase and an
old broken lamp that used to beckon to ships at
sea. Wild grasses and goosetongue cover the ground
and close by Sitka blacktail feed and gray gulls
circle. There is a mountain stream nearby and
in the fall the salmon spawn at its mouth. The
black bear and grizzly scoop them up with great
sweeps of their paws, their sharp claws gaffing
the silver bodies.
Walking North along the deer trail from the
South end of the island are remnants of the Treadwell
Mine. It was the largest gold mine in the world.
In the early 1900's the tunnel they were digging
underneath Gastineau Channel caved in and the sea
claimed her gold. The foundry still stands a rusty
red.
The dining halls are vacant, broken white
dishes are strewn inside. The tennis court that
was built for the employees is overgrown with hops
that have climbed over the high fence and grown
up between cracks in the cement floor. The flume
still carries water rushing in it half-hidden in
the rain-forest which is slowly reclaiming the
land. The beach here by the ocean is fine white
sand, full of mica, gold and pieces of white dishes.
Potsherds for future archeologists, washed clean,
smooth and round by the circular waves of this
deep, dark green water.
Down past the old gold mine is Cahill's house,
yellow and once magnificent. They managed the mine. The long staircase is boarded up and so
are the large windows. The gardens are wild, irises
bud in the spring at the end of the lawn, and in
the summer a huge rose path, full of dark crimson
blooms frames the edge of the sea; strawberries
grow nearby dark pink and succulent. Red raspberries
grow further down the path in a tangle of profusion;
close by is a pale pink rose path, full of those
small wild roses that smell fragrant. An iron-
barred swing stands tall on the edge of the beach.
I swing there and at high tide I can jump in the
ocean from high up in the air. There is an old
tetter-totter too. And, it is like finding the
emperor's palace abandoned.
There is a knoll behind the old house called
Grassy Hill. It is covered with a blanket of hard
crisp snow. In the spring it is covered with sweet
white clover and soft grasses. It is easy to find
four leaf clovers there, walking below the hill
toward the beach is a dell. It is a small clearing
in between the raspberry patch and tall cottonwood
trees. It is a good place for a picnic. It is
a short walk again to the beach and off to the
right is a small pond, Grassy Pond. It is frozen
solid and I skate on it. In the summer I swim
here because it is warmer than the ocean. In the
spring I wade out, stand very still and catch baby
flounders and bullheads with my hands; I am fast
and quick and have good eyes. Flounders are bottom
fish that look like sand.
Walking North again over a rise I come to
a field filled with snow; in the spring it is a
blaze of magenta fireweed. Often I will sit in
it surrounded by bright petals and sketch the mountains
beyond. Nearby are salmonberry bushes which have
cerise blossoms in early spring; by the end of
summer, golden-orange berries hang on their green
branches. The bears love to eat them and so do
I. But the wild strawberries are my first love,
then the tangy raspberries. I don't like the high-
bush cranberries, huckleberries, currants or the
sour gooseberries that grow in my mother's garden
and the blueberries are only good for pies, jams
and jellies. I like the little ligonberries that
grow close to the earth in the meadow, but they
are hard to find.
Looking across this island I see Mt. Jumbo,
the mountain that towers above the thick Tongass forest of pine, hemlock and spruce. It was a volcano
and is rugged and snow-covered. I hike up the
trail leading to the base of the mountain. The
trail starts out behind a patch of blueberry bushes
and winds lazily upwards crossing a stream where
I can stop and fish for trout and eat lunch; on
top is a meadow. Spring is my favorite season
here. The yellow water lilies bud on top of large
muskeg holes. The dark pink blueberry bushes form
a ring around the meadow with their delicate pink
blossoms. The purple and yellow violets are in
bloom and bright yellow skunk cabbage abounds, the
devil's club are turning green again and fields
of beige Alaskan cotton fan the air, slender stalks
that grow in the wet marshy places. Here and there
a wild columbine blooms. It is here in these meadows
that I find the lime-green bull pine, whose limbs
grow up instead of down. Walking along the trail
beside the meadow I soon come to an old wooden
cabin. It is owned by the mine and consists of
two rooms, a medium-sized kitchen with an eating
area and wood table and a large bedroom with four
World War II army cots and a cream colored dresser.
Nobody lives here anymore, but hikers, deer hunters,
and an occasional bear use the place. Next door
to the cabin is the well house which feeds the
flume. The flume flows from here down the mountain
side to the old mine and power plant. An old man
still takes care of the power plant. He lives
in a big dark green house with his family and the
power plant is all blue-gray metal. I can stand
outside and listen to the whirl of the generators.
I like to walk in the forest on top of the old
flume and listen to the sound of the water rushing
past under my bare feet.
In the winter the meadow is different: all
silent, still and snow-covered. The trees are
heavy with weighty branches and icicles dangle
off their limbs, long, elegant, shining. All the
birds are gone but the little brown snowbirds and
the white ptarmigan. The meadow is a field of
white and I can ski softly down towards the sea.
The trout stream is frozen and the waterfall quiet,
an ice palace behind crystal caves. The hard smooth-
ness of the ice feels good to my touch, this frozen
water, this winter.
Down below at the edge of the sea is yet another
type of ice. Salt water is treacherous; it doesn'tfreeze solid, it is unreliable and will break under
my weight. Here are the beached icebergs that
the high tide has left. Blue white treasures,
gigantic crystals tossed adrift by glaciers. Glisten-
ing, wet, gleaming in the winter sun, some still
half-buried in the sea, drifting slowly out again.
And it is noisy here, the gray gulls call to each
other, circling overhead. The ravens and crows
are walking, squawking along the beach. The Taku
wind is blowing down the channel, swirling, chill,
singing in my ear. Far out across the channel
humpback whales slap their tails against the water.
On the beach kelp whips are caught in wet clumps
of seaweed as the winter tide rises higher and
higher. The smell of salty spray permeates everything
and the dark clouds roll in from behind the steep
mountains.
Suddenly it snows. Soft, furry, thick flakes,
in front of me, behind, to the sides, holding me
in a blizzard of whiteness, light: snow.

Like autumn leaves upon the river
and icebergs in the spring
I'm a captive of the current
driven by anothers whim

It seems I am adrift again
once more carried by the wind
with no anchor chains to hold me
nor ropes to bind me in

Will there ever be stability
within this soul of mine
will I ever find the one
that becomes the tie that binds

eph you see kay etouffee if you see Kay tell her a catawampus catahoula hound hog dog crossed bayou levee last night all right what did you say if you see Kay tell her a catawampus catahoula hog dog crossed the levee last night all right i heard what you said the first time why you got to repeat eph you see kay you ******* ****** **** what? what did you say you ******* ****** **** heard you the first time you **** a **** a ***** a ***** hello stop end begin believe conceive create no thank you i already ate what? what did you say begin believe conceive create no thank you i already ate quit ******* repeating yourself  you ******* ******* hello stop end begin believe conceive create eph you see kay etouffee if you see Kay tell her a catawampus catahoula hog dog crossed the levee last night all right

the renown physicist dressed in brown wool suit brown leather laced shoes white shirt burgundy knitted tie wild curly graying hair climbed the stairs walked across the stage stood at the lectern adjusted narrow support pole height reached down into brown leather briefcase retrieved his thesis concerning the relative theory of everything tapped microphone composed his posture made a guttural sound clearing his throat looked out at packed full auditorium it became evident to the distinguished audience the renown physicist’s fly was open and his ***** hanging out it was unanimously dismissed as a case of professorial absent-mindedness

all the creatures of the earth (excluding humans) convened for an emergency session the bigger creatures talked first grizzly bears stood upright explaining demand for gallbladders bile paws make us more valuable dead than alive sharks testified Asian fisherman cut off our fins for soup then throw us back into the sea to die elephants thumping heavy feet stepped forward yeah poachers **** us for our tusks rhinos concurred yes they **** us for our horns wild Mustang horses neighed about violent round-ups then slaughtered processed for cat food whales complained of going deaf from submarine sonar tests then sold for meat many dolphins sea turtles tuna swordfish sea bass smaller fish swam forward pleading about getting caught in long line nets barbed baited hooks over-fished colonies chimpanzees described nightmares of being stolen from their mom’s when they are very young then used in research labs for horrible tests song birds chirped about loss of their habitats land tortoises spoke in gentle voices about being wiped out for housing developments saguaro cactuses dropped their arms in discouragement masses of penguins solemnly marched in suicidal unison to edge of melting icebergs polar bears and seals wept honey bees buzzed colony collapse disorder bats flapped about white nose syndrome coyotes and wolves howled lonesome prairie laments the session grew gloomy with heart-wrenching unbearable sadness sobbing crying then a black mutt dog spoke up my greyhound brothers and sisters and all my family of creatures i sympathize with your hurt but it is important to realize there are people who care love us want to protect us not all humans are ravenous carnivores or heartless profiteers a calico cat crept alongside black dog and rubbed her head against his chest an old gray mare admitted her love for a race horse jockey who died years ago a bluebird sang a song suddenly lots more creatures advanced with stories of human kindness Captain Paul Watson Madeleine Pickens Jane Goodall a redwood tree named Luna testified about Julia Butterfly Hill the winds clouds sky discussed concerns by Al Gore lots and lots of other names were mentioned and the whole tone of the meeting changed every one agreed they needed to wait and see what the next generation of people would do whether humans would acknowledge the cruelties threats of extinction and learn grow figure out ways to sustain mother earth father sky then the meeting let out just as the sun was rising on a new day

there is a cemetery in Paris named Père Lachaise buried there are the remains of Jim Morrison Oscar Wilde Richard Wright Karl Appel Guillaume Apollinaire Honoré de Balzac Sarah Bernhardt the empty urn of Maria Callas Frédéric Chopin Colette Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Nancy Clara Cunard Honoré Daumier Jacques-Louis David Eugène Delacroix Isadora Duncan Paul Éluard Max Ernst Suzanne Flon Loie Fuller Théodore Géricault Yvette Guilbert Jean Ingres Clarence Laughlin Pierre Levegh Jean-François Lyotard Marcel Marceau Amedeo Modigliani Molière Yves Montand Pascale Ogier Christine Pascal Édith Piaf Marcel Proust Georges Seurat Simone Signoret Gertrude Stein Louis Visconti Maria Countess Walewska and many other extraordinary souls it is rumored at late dusk their ghosts climb from graves gather drink fine brandy from costly crystal glasses smoke fragrant cigars and once a year on November 2 party hard all night culminating in deliriously promiscuous ****** **** it’s difficult to know what the truth is since the dead don’t talk or do they

The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded? when washbowl
maintains it has no more holy calling
than physical ablution, and the towel
dryly disclaims that fierce troll faces lurk
in its explicit folds? or when the window,
blind with steam, will not admit the dark
which shrouds our prospects in ambiguous shadow?

Twenty years ago, the familiar tub
bred an ample batch of omens; but now
water faucets spawn no danger; each crab
and octopus -- scrabbling just beyond the view,
waiting for some accidental break
in ritual, to strike -- is definitely gone;
the authentic sea denies them and will pluck
fantastic flesh down to the honest bone.

We take the plunge; under water our limbs
waver, faintly green, shuddering away
from the genuine color of skin; can our dreams
ever blur the intransigent lines which draw
the shape that shuts us in? absolute fact
intrudes even when the revolted eye
is closed; the tub exists behind our back;
its glittering surfaces are blank and true.

Yet always the ridiculous **** flanks urge
the fabrication of some cloth to cover
such starkness; accuracy must not stalk at large:
each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions; we mask our past
in the green of Eden, pretend future's shining fruit
can sprout from the navel of this present waste.
In this particular tub, two knees jut up
like icebergs, while minute brown hairs rise
on arms and legs in a fringe of kelp; green soap
navigates the tidal slosh of seas
breaking on legendary beaches; in faith
we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death
shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.

Bobo's kitchen

in the kitchen
icebergs rampage from the freezer
burying pizzas and waffles
in a glacier jungle
Bobo swings forks and knives
at the ice until the maintenance man
cusses in Polish
gallons of water
dripping downstairs
sizzling Bertalina's soul
the fiery bilingual single mom
living in fear
below his fear
of noise complaints
she sends tape recordings
to the landlord in her
cute red faced anger
loud people! and bongos!
guitars! stomping! laughter!
nightmares for her boys
who think they hear ghosts
her tight black spandex
drives Bobo mad when she runs
drifted scents of her food
sift in through his windows
knocking him out
in hungry frustration!
¿Como estás? he asks her
I speak ******* English! she barks back
back up the stairs Bobo goes
to his own kitchen where
the mice crawl out the stove tops
and potatoes grow tree roots
clear through the window
toward another life

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey

It's the being set aside
that makes me cry
It's the knowing
of being the other
makes the pain
thunder through my head

I left wishes wilted
on the bedside
viewing them from distances
as my heart shut

down

down

down

You couldn't know the affect
unless you lived it

You couldn't know the loss
unless you've given it

There is water
and icebergs
waiting to reserve my soul

until I learn to
stop leaving it in
un-receptive spaces

v.k

Spanish

    –Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?
Se dirían crisálidas de piedra
De yo no sé qué formidable raza
En una eterna espera inenarrable.
Los cráteres dormidos de sus bocas
Dan la ceniza negra del Silencio,
Mana de las columnas de sus hombros
La mortaja copiosa de la Calma
Y fluye de sus órbitas la noche;
Victimas del Futuro o del Misterio,
En capullos terribles y magníficos
Esperan a la Vida o a la Muerte.
Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?–
    Piedad para las vidas
Que no doran a fuego tus bonanzas
Ni riegan o desgajan tus tormentas;
Piedad para los cuerpos revestidos
Del armiño solemne de la Calma,
Y las frentes en luz que sobrellevan
Grandes lirios marmóreos de pureza,
Pesados y glaciales como témpanos;
Piedad para las manos enguantadas
De hielo, que no arrancan
Los frutos deleitosos de la Carne
Ni las flores fantásticas del alma;
Piedad para los ojos que aletean
Espirituales párpados:
Escamas de misterio,
Negros telones de visiones rosas…
Nunca ven nada por mirar tan lejos!
    Piedad para las pulcras cabelleras
–Misticas aureolas–
Peinadas como lagos
Que nunca airea el abanico *****,
***** y enorme de la tempestad;
Piedad para los ínclitos espiritus
Tallados en diamante,
Altos, claros, extáticos
Pararrayos de cúpulas morales;
Piedad para los labios como engarces
Celestes donde fulge
Invisible la perla de la Hostia;
–Labios que nunca fueron,
Que no apresaron nunca
Un vampiro de fuego
Con más sed y más hambre que un abismo.–
Piedad para los sexos sacrosantos
Que acoraza de una
Hoja de viña astral la Castidad;
Piedad para las plantas imantadas
De eternidad que arrastran
Por el eterno azur
Las sandalias quemantes de sus llagas;
Piedad, piedad, piedad
Para todas las vidas que defiende
De tus maravillosas intemperies
El mirador enhiesto del Orgullo;

Apuntales tus soles o tus rayos!

Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?…

              English

    –Eros: have you never felt
Piety for the statues?
These chrysalides of stone,
Some formidable race
In an eternal, unutterable hope.
The sleeping craters of their mouths
Utter the black ash of silence;
A copious shroud of Calm
Falls from the columns of their arms,
And night flows from their eyesockets;
Victims of Destiny or Mystery,
In magnificent and terrible cocoons,
They wait for Life or Death.
Eros: have you never perhaps felt
Piety for the statues?
    Piety for the lives
That will not strew nor rend your battles
Nor gild your fiery truces;
Piety for the bodies clothed
In the solemn ermine of Calm,
The luminous foreheads that endure
Their marble wreaths, grand and pure,
Weighty and glacial as icebergs;
Piety for the gloved hands of ice
That cannot uproot
The delicious fruits of the Flesh,
The fantastic flowers of the soul;
Piety for the eyes that flutter
Their spiritual eyelids:
Mysterious fish scales,
Dark curtains on rose visions…
For looking so far, they never see!
    Piety for the tidy heads of hair
–Mystical haloes–
Gently combed like lakes
Which the storm’s black fan,
Black and enormous, never thrashes;
Piety for the spirits, illustrious,
Carved of diamonds,
High, clear, ecstatic
Lightning rods on pious domes;
Piety for the lips like celestial settings
Where the invisible pearls of the Host gleam;
–Lips that never existed,
Never seized anything,
A fiery vampire
With more thirst and hunger than an abyss.
Piety for the sacrosanct sexes
That armor themselves with sheaths
From the astral vineyards of Chastity;
Piety for the magnetized footsoles
Who eternally drag
Sandals burning with sores
Through the eternal azure;
Piety, piety, pity
For all the lives defended
By the lighthouse of Pride
From your marvelous raw weathers:

Aim your suns and rays at them!

Eros: have you never perhaps felt
Pity for the statues?

These are poems about Adam and Eve, Lucifer aka Satan aka Mephistopheles, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the forbidden fruit, "original sin," the Fall and its bitter aftermath...



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...

Why did the biblical god want to keep Adam and Eve in an animal state, not knowing good from evil and running around naked like animals? Good parents want their children to seek knowledge, so why did Yahweh ****** Adam and Eve for seeking knowledge? And why did Yahweh tell them it was evil to eat the forbidden fruit when he had denied them the ability to know good from evil? It was like putting poisoned milk before two cats and saying, "It's evil to drink the milk!" Of course cats have no concept of "evil" and just do what comes naturally. So, too, with Adam and Eve. If there was a fall, they were obviously set up to fall, by a terrible father.



Outcasts of Eden
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) 



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) 



lust!
by michael r. burch

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

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

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

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

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

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.



You! 
by Michael R. Burch

For forty years You have not spoken to me; 
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though strange communion between us.

For forty years You would not open to me; 
You remained closed, hard and tense, 
like a clenched fist.

For forty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways, 
prevarications and distance.

Like a child dismissed, 
I have watched You prey upon the hope in me, 
knowing "mercy" is chance

and "heaven"—a list.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 

I call mercy "chance" and heaven a "list" because the bible says its "god" predestines some people to be "vessels of mercy" and others to be "vessels of destruction." Thus mercy is reduced to the chance of birth and heaven is a precompiled list of the lucky chosen few. Of course there is no reason to believe in such a diabolical "god" or such an unjust "heaven"... but billions have, and do.



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .

I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .

But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,

thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .

How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah

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

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

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



Adam Lay Ybounden
(anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD) 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Adam lay bound, bound in a bond; 
Four thousand winters, he thought, were not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took, 
As clerics now find written in their book.
But had the apple not been taken, or had it never been, 
We'd never have had our Lady, heaven's queen.
So blesséd be the time the apple was taken thus; 
Therefore we sing, "God is gracious!"



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.



Exile
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We have often heard of Adam's banishment from Eden, 
but with far greater humiliation, I abandon your garden.



Where We Dwell
by Michael R. Burch

Night within me.
Never morning.
Stars uncounted.
Shadows forming.
Wind arising
where we dwell
reaches Heaven, 
reeks of Hell.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast? 

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer? 

What brings them here?
pale, tearful congregations, 
knowing all Hope is past, 
faithfully, year upon year? 

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask: 

why is it God that they fear? 

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



Double Cross
by Michael R. Burch

Come to the cross;
contemplate all loss
and how little was gained
by those who remained
uncrucified.



Dabble Dactyls
by Michael R. Burch

Sniggledy-Wriggledy
Jesus Christ’s enterprise
leaves me in awe of
the rich men he loathed!

But should a Sadducee
settle for trifles?
His disciples now rip off
the Lord they betrothed.



I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse—a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard—a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.



The beauty of the flower fades,
its petals wither to charades...
—Michael R. Burch



the U-turn poem
by michael r. burch

Life so defaulty,
Life so unfair,
why do wee prize U,
what do U care?

LORD who lets unborns
drown in a flood,
CELESTIAL ABORTIONIST,
r U sure Ur understood?



Hellion
by michael r. burch

cold as stone,
cold to the bone,
so cold inside even icebergs moan,
such is ur Gaud on hiss icy throne.

lines written for a luverly Gaud who cant be bothered to save pisspot peeple who guess wrong about which ire-ational re-ligion to believe.

“Hellion” is a pun on “he-lion” as in the “Lion of Judah” and “hell-lion.”



yet another ode to a graceless faceless Creator albeit with thoughts of possibly rescinding prior compliments
by michael r. burch

who created this graceless universe?
why praise its Creator? who could be worse?
why praise man’s Berater with obsequious verse?
job’s wife was right: he’s nobody’s nurse.



ur-Gent prayer request
by michael r. burch

where did ur Gaud originate?
in the minds of men so full of hate
they commanded moms to stone their kids,
which u believe (brains on the skids)
was “the word of Gaud”!
                     debate?
too late & of course it’s useless:
please pray to be less clueless.

The title involves a pun, since the “ur-Gent” would be the biblical “god.”



Religion is regarded by fools as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Non-Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

The wise will never cry, “Save!”
The wise desire a quiet grave.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense/nunsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to “believe”?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their no’s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud’s a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of sh-t.



We Know It All
by Michael R. Burch

We rile. We gall. We know it all
because we’ve read the Bible,
which tells us genocide’s “God’s will”
along with bashing in kids’ skulls
and other forms of libel.

The earth is flat, our Book says so!
The Lord will torture our rational foe!
(We lack the compassion to tell the fiend “No!”)

God’s on his throne, the Angels are winking,
applauding our lack of critical thinking.
We’re drowning in crap. We’re stinking and sinking.

Eve once petted friendly T-Rexes!
A “witch” should be ****** for unprovable hexes!
It’s a “sin” to make love if one’s lover has exes!

Girls were enslaved and ***** by their “masters”!
Our Book is the source of so many disasters!
The earth’s overheating? Let’s burn it up faster!



Yet Another Sh-tty Ditty
by Michael R. Burch

Here’s my ditty:
Life is sh-tty,
Then you get old
And more’s the pity.

Truth be told,
We’re bought and sold,
Sheep in the fold
Sheared lickety-splitty.

But chin’s up,
What’s the use of crying?
We’ve a certain escape:
Welcome to dying!


Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some distant “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

“... so let your light shine before men ...”

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but — immaculate — shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity —
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time — an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you’d convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I’m already below!



Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be ******,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me—
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.

Published by Nisqually Delta Review



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.

Published by Katrina Anthology



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.

Published by Katrina Anthology



Ave Maria
by Michael R. Burch

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
listen to my earnest prayer.
Listen, O, and be beguiled.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
be Mother now to every child
beset by earth’s thorned briars wild.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
embrace us with your Love and Grace.
Let us look upon your Face.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
please attend to our earnest call—
When will Love be All in All?
Ave Maria.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch



A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember–we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death—
Gethsemane in every breath.



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,

Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;

come dwell again,
happy child among men—

men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger’s cool

sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,

with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love

in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land

planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe

in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.

Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright—

just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope’s long-departed star!



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day . . .

learning to fly—
away, away . . .

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination—

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.



The Gardener’s Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least . . .

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies . . .

Faint scent of roses, then—a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true?"

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call—ecstatic crew!—
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."



Come Spring
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Come spring we return, innocent and hopeful, to the ******,
beseeching Her to bestow
Her blessings upon us.

Pitiable sinners, we bow before Her,
nay, grovel,
as She looms above us, aglow
in Her Purity.

We know
all will change in an instant; therefore
in the morning we will call her,
an untouched maiden no more,
“*****.”

The so-called Religious Right prizes virginity in women and damns them for doing what men do. I have long been a fan of women like Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, who decided what’s good for the gander is equally good for the goose.



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of “morality” around me.
Surround me,

not with law’s restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Everlasting
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

then let me sleep,
think of me no more.

Still ...

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



Keywords/Tags: Adam, Eve, Eden, Lucifer, fall, sin, temptation, heaven, hell, salvation, God, Yahweh, Jehovah, creation, Jesus, Cain, Abel

There is a girl you will see at 8 a.m.
Drinking her morning coffee.
She will wear flowers in her hair
And never stop smiling.
Happy.
She will be happy.

Did you know,
Only one-tenth of an iceberg can be seen.
All the rest is under the water.
Hidden.

Did you know,
This is the girl
At 8 a.m.
Happy.
Only one-tenth.
Hidden.

Because
There is a girl you will not see at 1 a.m.
Choking down her sleeping pills.
She will hold a razor blade in her hand
And never stop crying.
Sad.
She will be sad.

But you will never see sad,
For sad hides in the dresser
With the razor blades and pills.

And she will struggle to be awake at 8 a.m.,
Dissolve her pills in her morning coffee.
She will pick daisies and put them behind her ear
Because they were her mother's favorites.
And she will smile
Because she does not know what else to do.
She will force the word into her mind,
Happy.
Happy.
You will be happy.

Today we all gather to listen to the merits(?) of mining the Iron Range
Not for iron, but for copper and nickel and other precious metals.
Are these metals more precious than clean water?
Are these metals more precious than our pristine wilderness?
Are these metals a legacy of what is to become of our planet Earth?
We have taken the oil and turned it into plastic that cannot be broken down and turned back into nature.
We have burned the coal to perpetuate our desire for more and more comfort via air conditioning and heat.
We have polluted our atmosphere, melted our icebergs and glaciers
Destroyed our coral reefs
And now we want to risk the pure waters of our northern wilderness
Reaching out to Lake Superior, Hudson Bay, the Mighty Mississippi
And our entire planet.
Why not keep a tiny part of our planet clean so that our children can say-
Look, this is what we once had, this was Eden in our parents' time.

Celebrate our anniversary – can’t you see
tonight the snowy night of our first winter
comes back again in every road and tree -
that winter night of diamantine splendour.

Steam is pouring out of yellow stables,
the Moika river’s sinking under snow,
the moonlight’s misted as it is in fables,
and where we are heading – I don’t know.

There are icebergs on the Marsovo Pole.
The Lebyazh’ya’s crazed with crystal art.....
Whose soul can compare with my soul,
if joy and fear are in my heart? -

And if your voice, a marvellous bird’s,
quivers at my shoulder, in the night,
and the snow shines with a silver light,
warmed by a sudden ray, by your words?

Save these pristine words
that spin from the mind
of this clairvoyant writer.
Cherish the candour
of his truthfulness
that is blazing inside.
His copious devotion
now falling here as
blue rays, a myriad
of his endless imagination.
This is only the beginning
of his roaring and firey
sea waves, that hides
many icebergs, to
sink and bury these
Titanic writers
once again, forever....

Her eyes are deep pools of cool blue.
Open but empty, staring blankly
Into infinite space.

Her smile - formed by wax-like lips -
Is stiff, emotionless, almost as if concealed.
but her mouth trembles as it traces
the letters of an irrelevant name.

Her scent moves through the crowd
and permeates your consciousness.
It shoves and pushes aside thoughts,
Making its way into your awareness.

A sound slithers into your ear:
A whisper transcending the noise around.
Despite the ruckus of chaotic discourse,
Her endearing voice is the only sound.

The night slowly grows old
Whilst more stories are told.
Histories fail to unfold
as endless lies are bought and sold.

(presumptions of non-existent subtleties
has claimed its fair share of casualties)

More is said, but less is revealed
Meandering timelines of hurt
Kept hidden beneath the scars
of wounds that have seemingly healed.

Gray-faced eyes are burnt out
and our flames are gone so I
am resting my heart.
Frozen hearts grow colder
with every touch and like
icebergs we are drifting
apart.

~
Storms make grey the sea
And erode the surface of the shore

Cold resentful icebergs
Outside my window
A field of sinking liquid caskets
Closing in on me

I hear the sound
Of toy pianos underwater
Remnants of their music keep
Washing up on achromatic beaches

Songs that made love shine
Have fallen into shipwreck
A missing charter's rusted hull
Casts the one color heaven allows

Storms make grey the sea
And erode the stages of the sun
~

i miss the way fingertips felt against my cold skin
the soft touch that only a lover can provide
the kind of touch that can melt icebergs and start wildfires
i miss the sweet sound of whispered words that could start a revolution and the goosebumps that came with each mumbled "i love you"
i miss the feeling of drifting off in a pair of arms that transformed an embrace into a home and made a safety net around me as if protection could only exist within this space between fingertips and other ligaments
i miss the feeling that you provided
i miss the feeling of being wanted
i miss loving something, someone
i feel as if i have lost all sense of direction

O secret voice of hidden love!
O bleating without wool! O wound!
O dry camellia, bitter needle!
O sea-less current, wall-less city!

O night immense with sharpened profile,
heavenly mountain, narrow valley!
O dig inside the heart, voice going,
endless silence, full-blown iris!

Let me be, hot voice of icebergs,
and do nto ask me to vanish
in weeds, where sky and flesh are fruitless.

Leave my hard ivory skull forever,
have pity on me. Stop the torture!
O I am loev, O I am nature!

When the world is slowly dying
Bears on icebergs, melting, crying.
When you refuse to reduce or reuse,
Think of the people and animals you abuse.
All the talk of apocalypse
But zombies don’t compare to this.
The universe’s suicide
The struggle, the difficulty to stay alive
The problems we face, that we cannot erase
Someday we could lose this place.
So walk to school, ride your unicycle
Reduce, reuse, and finally, Recycle

world is changing fast changing for the worse
typhoons and hurricanes have now become a curse
icebergs they melting in the climate change
weather as gone mad acting very strange
a global warming planet as made act this way
changing for the worse every single day

What if we were
translating Jerusalem
the walls and the holy men
following who,what and the why and when
then
translating Jerusalem.