Incendiary Words
There are words that sear themselves into our hearts, minds and souls ... or should ...
"Poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn." — Thomas Gray
These are poems of conscience and consciousness, poems in which our hearts, minds and souls can hopefully intersect…
My most-read poem isn’t one of my best, artistically, and it isn’t one of my most original, being an “update” of a famous Holocaust poem, but it is one of my most meaningful poems. “First They Came for the Muslims” was published by Amnesty International in its Words That Burn anthology, was later quoted in the Hindu with its massive circulation, and according to Google once appeared on a truly staggering 823K web pages. Sometimes what we say is more important than how we say it, even in poetry.
First They Came for the Muslims
by Michael R. Burch
after Martin Niemöller
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?
Amnesty International’s Words That Burn anthology is a free online resource for students and educators. Not only is the cause good―a stated goal is to teach students about human rights through poetry―but the poetry published seems quite good to me. My poem appears beneath the famous Holocaust poem that inspired it, "First They Came" by Martin Niemöller.
My second-most-read poem is also deeply meaningful to me…
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.
Over the years this epigram has been published with various titles. It debuted as "Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust." When I became a peace activist and the author of a peace plan for Israel/Palestine, I published versions titled "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" and "Epitaph for a Child of the Nakba." There have also been versions dedicated to the children of Gaza, Ukraine, Darfur, Haiti, Hiroshima and Sandy Hook. “Epitaph” in its various forms has become one of my most popular poems on the Internet, with 92K Google results at one time. A peace activist said reading the poem was like a ghost touching her. Students have said the poem touched them and make them think. I can ask no more.
Speechless
by Ko Un
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
At Auschwitz
piles of glasses,
mountains of shoes ...
returning, we stared out different windows.
Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Unfortunately, Tursun was "disappeared" into a Chinese "reeducation" concentration camp where extreme psychological torture is the norm. According to a disturbing report he was later "hospitalized." Apparently no one knows his present whereabouts or condition, if he has one. According to John Bolton, when Donald Trump learned of these "reeducation" camps, he told Chinese President Xi Jinping it was "exactly the right thing to do." Trump’s excuse? "Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal."
Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
"Your soul is the entire world."
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Asylum seekers, will you recognize me among the mountain passes' frozen corpses?
Can you identify me here among our Exodus's exiled brothers?
We begged for shelter but they lashed us bare; consider our naked corpses.
When they compel us to accept their massacres, do you know that I am with you?
Three centuries later they resurrect, not recognizing each other,
Their former greatness forgotten.
I happily ingested poison, like a fine wine.
When they search the streets and cannot locate our corpses, do you know that I am with you?
In that tower constructed of skulls you will find my dome as well:
They removed my head to more accurately test their swords' temper.
When before their swords our relationship flees like a flighty lover,
Do you know that I am with you?
When men in fur hats are used for target practice in the marketplace
Where a dying man's face expresses his agony as a bullet cleaves his brain
While the executioner's eyes fail to comprehend why his victim vanishes, ...
Seeing my form reflected in that bullet-pierced brain's erratic thoughts,
Do you know that I am with you?
In those days when drinking wine was considered worse than drinking blood,
did you taste the flour ground out in that blood-turned churning mill?
Now, when you sip the wine Ali-Shir Nava'i imagined to be my blood
In that mystical tavern's dark abyssal chambers,
Do you know that I am with you?
Death in the Halls
Death
loomed at the end of the hall
in the long shadows
― Watanabe Hakusen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
This poem makes me think of terror-stricken school children facing assault weapons; it was published as “Sandy Hook Hallways Haiku.”
Childless
by Michael R. Burch
How can she bear her grief?
Mightier than Atlas, she shoulders the weight
of one fallen star.
I wrote “Childless” thinking of mothers who are once again childless in Gaza and Ukraine, and as a result of school shootings at Sandy Hook, Parkland, Nashville Covenant and so many other American schools.
Stripped
Stripped of her stripling, if asked, she’d confess:
“I am now less than nothingness.”
—Michael R. Burch, after Diotimus
Stormfront
by Michael R. Burch
Our distance is frightening:
a distance like the abyss between heaven and earth
interrupted by bizarre and terrible lightning.
Low Barometer
Dark-bosomed clouds
pregnant with heavy thunder ...
the water breaks
―original haiku by Michael R. Burch
Modern Charon
by Michael R. Burch
I, too, have stood—paralyzed at the helm
watching onrushing, inevitable disaster.
I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster
damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film
becomes mucous-insulate. Always, thereafter
living in darkness, bright things overwhelm.
Grasses Wilt
Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
― Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
American Eagle, Grounded
by Michael R. Burch
Her predatory eye,
the single feral iris,
scans.
Her raptor beak,
all jagged sharp-edged thrust,
juts.
Her hard talon,
clenched in pinched expectation,
waits.
Her clipped wings,
preened against reality,
tremble.
A Kinder Sea
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
Great is his Monument
Here he lies in state tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet Ares cares not, neither does War relent.
― Michael R. Burch, after Anacreon
Be Ashamed
Be ashamed, O mountains and seas,
that these valorous men lack breath.
Assume, like pale chattels,
an ashen silence at death.
—Michael R. Burch, after Parmenio
Fallen!
Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Winter
Winter nears:
my neighbor,
how does he fare? ...
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Oh, bitter winter wind,
why bellow so
when there's no leaves to fell?
― Natsume Sôseki, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The bitter winter wind
ends here
with the frozen sea
― Ikenishi Gonsui, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
No sky,
no land:
just snow eternally falling ...
― Kajiwara Hashin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
How Long the Night
(Anonymous Old English Lyric, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation 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.
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters,
deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way,
or will.
I wrote “Styx” as a teenager and still find it increasingly relevant as I confront my own mortality. “Styx” is my seventh-most-popular poem according to Google.
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?
This is one of my less-well-known poems. Has anyone ever read it? I believe I’ve had only a single comment about “Completing the Pattern.” But I like the poem myself. When I wrote it, I was thinking of completing the pattern of the endless cycle of war and violence: “He who lives by the sword.” But in a larger sense we are all completing the pattern ordained by nature and its Creator, if such an unlikely being exists.
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 “The Leveler” in my late teens or perhaps around age 20. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.
Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch
. . . qui laetificat juventutem meam . . .
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone
. . . . requiescat in pace . . .
May she rest in peace
. . . . amen . . .
Amen.
I was touched by this Latin prayer, which I discovered while sneak-reading one of my sister’s steamy historical romance novels as a teenager. I later decided to incorporate it into a poem, which I wrote in high school. It was my first translation. This little elegy once had 21K Google results.
Pain
Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.
―Sappho, fragment 156, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch
There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon's, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her, and is not the same.
I still love her and enlist this sacred fire
to keep her memory's exalted flame
unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.
On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles;
they sleep alike—diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the "surgeons."
Sleeping, all.
Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
if accidents of coloration, gall
my heart no less.
Amid thick weeds and muck
there lies a rose man's crackling lightning struck:
the only Rose I ever longed to pluck.
Soon I'll bed there and bid the world "Good Luck."
I believe “Auschwitz Rose” was the first original Holocaust poem that I wrote after working with Holocaust survivors and other Jewish poets to publish translations of Polish and Yiddish Holocaust poems via The HyperTexts.
Cleansings
by Michael R. Burch
Walk here among the walking specters. Learn
inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave
to bone this tightly if their hearts believe
that God is good, and never mind the Urn.
A lentil and a bean might plump their skin
with mothers’ bounteous, soft-dimpled fat
(and call it “health”), might quickly build again
the muscles of dead menfolk. Dream, like that,
and call it courage. Cry, and be deceived,
and so endure. Or burn, made wholly pure.
If one prayer is answered,
“G-d” must be believed.
No holy pyre this—death’s hissing chamber.
Two thousand years ago—a starlit manger,
weird Herod’s cries for vengeance on the meek,
the children slaughtered. Fear, when angels speak,
the prophesies of man.
Do what you "can,"
not what you must, or should.
They call you “good,”
dead eyes devoid of tears; how shall they speak
except in blankness? Fear, then, how they weep.
Escape the gentle clutching stickfolk. Creep
away in shame to retch and flush away
your vomit from their ashes. Learn to pray.
“Cleansings” is my 24th-most-popular poem according to Google. It has been published by Other Voices International, Promosaik (Germany), Inspirational Stories, Ulita (Russia), The Neovictorian/Cochlea and Trinacria.
Something
by Michael R. Burch
―for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.
Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.
Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which finality has swept into a corner ... where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.
“Something” is my third-most-popular poem according to Google. It was my first poem that didn't rhyme. This was not a conscious decision on my part; the poem came to me “out of blue nothing” to quote my friend the Maltese poet Joe Ruggier. I wrote “Something” in my late teens. At the height of its popularity, “Something” had 1.5K Google results.
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 tied up
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!
After all, your intentions were ineluctably pure.
And what the hell does THE LORD care about palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were correct about negroes and indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.
For a Homeless 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?
This poem has been published with various titles and at one time had 1.3K Google results.
Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.
She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.
Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.
The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.
She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.
“Because Her Heart is Tender” is my fifth-most-popular poem according to Google. It’s a true poem about what my wife Beth did on the first anniversary of 9-11. This is the sort of unabashedly sentimental poem that no self-respecting “major journal” would publish ... but then what do any of them know about poetry, much less human hearts? I love this villanelle because it captures Beth in all her fury and all her love. It may not be a great poem, but I think readers will grok Beth, so hopefully the poem accomplishes its purpose.
Momentum! Momentum!
by Michael R. Burch
for the neo-Cons
Crossing the Rubicon, we come!
Momentum! Momentum! Furious hooves!
The Gauls we have slaughtered, no man disapproves.
War’s hawks shrieking-strident, white doves stricken dumb.
Coo us no cooings of pale-breasted peace!
Momentum! Momentum! Imperious hooves!
The blood of barbarians brightens our greaves.
Pompey’s head in a basket? We slumber at ease.
Seduce us again, great Bellona, dark queen!
Momentum! Momentum! Curious hooves
Now pound out strange questions, but what can they mean
As the great stallions rear and their riders careen?
Bellona was the Roman goddess of war. The name "Bellona" derives from the Latin word for "war" (bellum), and is linguistically related to the English word "belligerent" (literally, "war-waging"). In earlier times she was called Duellona, that name being derived from a more ancient word for "battle."
Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch
for Trump
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.
Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch
a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born
on September 11, 2001 and died at the age of nine,
shot to death ...
Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm — I hope you hear it.
Much love I bring — I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.
Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the vicious things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.
And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.
Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short ... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here ...
I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bear them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.
"Child of 9-11" had 1.9K Google results early in 2024.
At Wilfred Owen's Grave
by Michael R. Burch
A week before the Armistice, you died.
They did not keep your heart like Livingstone's,
then plant your bones near Shakespeare's. So you lie
between two privates, sacrificed like Christ
to politics, your poetry unknown
except for one brief flurry: thirteen months
with Gaukroger beside you in the trench,
dismembered, as you babbled, as the stench
of gangrene filled your nostrils, till you clenched
your broken heart together and the fist
began to pulse with life, so close to death.
Or was it at Craiglockhart, in the care
of "ergotherapists" that you sensed life
is only in the work, and made despair
a thing that Yeats despised, but also breath,
a mouthful's merest air, inspired less
than wrested from you, and which we confess
we only vaguely breathe: the troubled air
that even Sassoon failed to share, because
a man in pieces is not healed by gauze,
and breath's transparent, unless we believe
the words are true despite their lack of weight
and float to us like chlorine—scalding eyes,
and lungs, and hearts. Your words revealed the fate
of boys who retched up life here, gagged on lies.
Observance
by Michael R. Burch
Here the hills are old and rolling
casually in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . .
By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have known the years to pass
almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . .
For here the valleys fill with sunlight
to the brim, then empty again,
and it seems that only I notice
how the years flood out, and in . . .
“Observance” was the first early poems that made me feel like a real poet. I remember writing it in the break room of the McDonald's where I worked as a high school student. I believe that was in 1975, at age 17. The poem was originally titled "Reckoning," a title I still like and may return to one day. As a young poet with high aspirations, I felt that “Infinity” and “Reckoning/Observance” were my two best poems, so I didn't publish them in my high school or college literary journals. I decided to hang onto them and use them to get my foot in the door elsewhere. And the plan worked pretty well. “Observance” was originally published by Nebo as “Reckoning.” It was later published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Verses, Romantics Quarterly, the anthology There is Something in the Autumn, and Poetry Life & Times.
Infinity
by Michael R. Burch
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your heart sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue.
“Infinity” is my eighth-most-popular poem according to Google. I believe I wrote “Infinity” around age 18. But I wasn't happy with some of the stanzas in the longer initial version, and over time I pared the poem down to the version above. “Infinity” was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses (for a whopping $10, my first cash payment) then subsequently by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Setu (India), Better Than Starbucks, Borderless Journal (Singapore), Poetry Life & Times, Formal Verse (Potcake Poet’s Choice) and The Chained Muse. Not too shabby for a teenage poet still testing his wings.
Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch
for the mothers and children of the Holocaust and Gaza
Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...
Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...
Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...
“Frail envelope of flesh” is my 14th-most-popular poem according to Google. I read the phrase “Frail envelope of flesh!” in a comic book as a boy and never forgot it. That was my introduction to the power of poetry. Eventually, it occurred to me to write a poem with that title and theme, which I did circa age 20. When I published the poem online, probably around 2002 after it had been published by The Lyric, I scoured the Internet for the phrase "frail envelope of flesh" trying to find the comic where I had read it as a boy, but the phrase was unknown to Google. But today other writers are using it, so I suspect that I gave it a second life. At the height of its popularity, "Frail Envelope of Flesh" had 1.4K Google results. It has been set to music by the composer Eduard de Boer and performed in Europe by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab. It has been translated into Arabic by Nizar Sartawi, into Italian by Mario Rigli, and into Vietnamese by Ngu Yen. It is being taught in online courseware by Course Hero. "Frail Envelope of Flesh" has been published by The Lyric, Promosaik (Germany), Setu (India), Sindhu News (India), Tho Tru Tinh (in a Vietnamese translation by Ngu Yen), Sejak Sajak Di (Indonesia), Orphans of Gaza, Irish Blog, Alarshef, ArtVilla, Borderless Journal (Singapore), Daily Motion, Poetry Life & Times, Generations Shall Call Them Blessed (a Holocaust book by Dan Paulos) and Academia.edu.
“Great is his Monument” could easily be a poem about Putin or Netanyahu in times to come. And some war or other will still be raging. The only thing we can be certain of is man’s ability to learn little from all the killing.
"Great is his Monument"
Here he lies in state tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet Ares cares not, neither does War relent.
― Michael R. Burch