The Composition of Shadows
These are poems about writing poems at night, burning the midnight oil, and other dark arts...
Insurrection
by Michael R. Burch
She has become as the night—listening
for rumors of dawn—while the dew, glistening,
reminds me of her, and the wind, whistling,
lashes my cheeks with its soft chastening.
She has become as the lights—flickering
in the distance—till memories old and troubling
rise up again and demand remembering…
like peasants rebelling against a mad king.
Originally published by The Chained Muse
The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch
I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme …
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Happily Never After
by Michael R. Burch
Happily never after, we lived unmerrily
(write it!—like disaster) in Our Kingdom by the See
as the man from Porlock’s laughter drowned out love’s threnody.
We ditched the red wheelbarrow in slovenly Tennessee,
then made a picturebook of poems, a postcard for Tse-Tse,
a list of resolutions we knew we couldn’t keep,
and asylum decorations for the King in his dark sleep.
We made it new so often, strange newness, wearing old,
peeled off, and something rotten gleamed—dull yellow, not like gold—
like carelessness, or cowardice, and redolent of pee.
We stumbled off, our awkwardness—new Keystone comedy.
Huge cloudy symbols blocked the sun; onlookers strained to see.
We said We were the only One. Our gaseous Melody
had made us Joshuas, and so—the Bible, new-rewrit,
with god removed, replaced by Show and Glyphics and Sanskrit,
seemed marvelous to Us, although King Ezra said, “It’s Sh-t.”
We spent unhappy hours in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
drunk on such Awesome Power only Emperors can See.
We were Imagists and Vorticists, Projectivists, a Dunce,
Anarchists and Antarcticists and anti-Christs, and once
We’d made the world Our oyster and stowed away the pearl
of Our too-, too-polished wisdom, unanchored of the world,
We sailed away to Lilliput, to Our Kingdom by the See
and piped the rats to join Us, to live unmerrily
hereever and hereafter, in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
in the miniature ship Disaster in a jar in Tennessee.
The Board
by Michael R. Burch
Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood—
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the Muse
with reprimands of Dr. Seuss.
The best book of the age sold two,
or three, or four (but not to you),
strange copies of the ones before,
misreadings that delight the board.
They sit and clap; their revenues
fall trillions short of Mother Goose.
The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On ...)
by Michael R. Burch
for an over-regular formalist
Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts
at “meter,” I crossly concluded
I’d use each iamb
in lieu of a lamb,
bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded.
Originally published by Grand Little Things
Less than Impressed
by Michael R. Burch
for the Keystone Scops
Their volume’s impressive, it’s true ...
but somehow it all seems “much ado.”
Drones
by Michael R. Burch
Professor poets remind me of drones
chasing the Classical queen's aging bones.
With bottle-thick glasses they still see to write,
droning on, endlessly buzzing all night.
Yet still in our classrooms their tomes are decreed …
Perhaps they're too busy with buzzing to breed.
At the other end of the poetic spectrum, we have Lord Byron, who probably spent a lot of time brooding while burning the midnight oil, albeit much more melodically than the professor poets. When I visited Byron's residence at Newstead Abbey, there were peacocks running around the grounds, which I thought appropriate, and they inspired this haiku-like poem of mine:
Byron
was not a shy one,
as peacocks run.
—Michael R. Burch
Virginia Woolf was another writer who wrestled with darkness and severe depression. I wrote this poem thinking of the very difficult method of suicide she chose…
Sinking
by Michael R. Burch
for Virginia Woolf
Weigh me down with stones ...
fill all the pockets of my gown ...
I’m going down,
mad as the world
that can’t recover,
to where even mermaids drown.
While I do write free verse, most of my poems are rhythmic and, I like to think, have musical qualities…
Currents
by Michael R. Burch
How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the motion creation stirs within?
Originally published by The Lyric
In a Stolen Moment
by Kim Cherub, an anagram of Mike Burch
In a stolen moment,
when the clock’s hands complete their inevitable course
and sleep is the night’s dark spell,
I call it a curse,
seeking the force,
the font of candescent words, the electric thrill
tingling from brain to spine
to incessant quill—
the fever, the chill.
I know it as well as I know myself.
Time’s second hand stirs; not I; in my cell,
words spill.
State of the Art
by Michael R. Burch
Reason without rhyme?
Poets lacking time?
Silence, claims the Mime,
is our true Art, and sublime.
Show, but never tell!
Shakespeare knew this well.
Lear just spoke in pictures.
Hamlet voiced no strictures.
Ideas must be in things!
Sappho, mute your strings!
Silence, claims the Mime,
is the True Art of our time.
Art for Art’s sake only!
Keats was far too moan-ly.
Shelley, far too weepy.
And Byron? Much too creepy.
Poets, Was ist los?
Write more like William Carlos!
Or best, write not at all.
Don’t run or leap. Just crawl.
Forget the Pierian rose.
Let every poem be prose.
Silence, the Mime informs us,
is the Black Hole that centers and warms us.
Skalded
by Michael R. Burch
Fierce ancient skalds summoned verse from their guts;
today’s genteel poets prefer modern ruts.
The Better Man
by Michael R. Burch
Dear Ed: I don’t understand why
you will publish this other guy—
when I’m brilliant, devoted,
one hell of a poet!
Yet you publish Anonymous. Fie!
Fie! A pox on your head if you favor
this poet who’s dubious, unsavor
y, inconsistent in texts,
no address (I checked!):
since he’s plagiarized Unknown, I’ll wager!
The Po' Biz Explained
by Michael R. Burch
Poets may labor from sun to sun,
but their editors' work is never done.
The editor’s work is never done.
The critic adjusts his cummerbund.
While the critic adjusts his cummerbund,
the audience exits to mingle and slum.
As the audience exits to mingle and slum,
the anthologist rules, a pale jury of one.
Goddess
by Michael R. Burch
"What will you conceive in me?"
I asked her. But she
only smiled.
"Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled …
naked, and gladly."
"What will become of me?"
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.
Centuries later, I understand;
she whispered, "I Am."
“Goddess” was the first poem to appear in the first issue of Romantics Quarterly.
BeMused
by Michael R. Burch
You will find in her hair
a fragrance more severe
than camphor.
You will find in her dress
no hint of a sweet
distractedness.
You will find in her eyes
horn-owlish and wise
no metaphors
of love, but only reflections
of books, books, books.
If you like Her looks,
meet me in the long rows,
between Poetry and Prose,
where we’ll win Her favor
with jousts, and savor
the wine of Her hair,
the shimmery wantonness
of Her rich-satined dress;
where we’ll press
our good deeds upon Her, save Her
from every distress,
for the lovingkindness
of Her matchless eyes
and all the suns of Her tongues.
We were young,
once,
unlearned and unwise …
but, O, to be young
when love comes disguised
with the whisper of silks
and idolatry,
and even the childish tongue claims
the intimacy of Poetry.
Originally published by Formal Verse
Performing Art
by Michael R. Burch
Who teaches the wren
in its drab existence
to explode into song?
What parodies of irony
does the jay espouse
with its sharp-edged tongue?
What instinctual memories
lend stunning brightness
to the strange dreams
of the dull gray slug
—spinning its chrysalis,
gluing rough seams—
abiding in darkness
its transformation,
till, waving damp wings,
it applauds its performance?
I am done with irony.
Life itself sings.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!
What Works
by Michael R. Burch
for David Gosselin
What works—
hewn stone;
the blush the iris shows the sun;
the lilac’s pale-remembered bloom.
The frenzied fly: mad-lively, gay,
as seconds tick his time away,
his sentence—one brief day in May,
a period. And then decay.
A frenzied rhyme’s mad tip-toed time,
a ballad’s languid as the sea,
seek, striving—immortality.
When gloss peels off, what works will shine.
When polish fades, what works will gleam.
When intellectual prattle pales,
the dying buzzing in the hive
of tedious incessant bees,
what works will soar and wheel and dive
and milk all honey, leap and thrive,
and teach the pallid poem to seethe.
Originally published by The Chained Muse
To Please The Poet
by Michael R. Burch
To please the poet, words must dance—
staccato, brisk, a two-step:
so!
Or waltz in elegance to time
of music—mild,
adagio.
To please the poet, words must chance
emotion in catharsis—
flame.
Or splash into salt seas, descend
in sheets of silver-shining
rain.
To please the poet, words must prance
and gallop, gambol, revel,
rail.
Or muse upon a moment—mute,
obscure, unsure, imperfect,
pale.
To please the poet, words must sing,
or croak, wart-tongued, imagining.
Originally published by The Lyric
The Composition of Shadows (I)
by Michael R. Burch
“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”—W. B. Yeats
We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.
And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,
sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze
that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.
Originally published by The Lyric
Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch
A poem should be a wild, unearthly cry
against the thought of lying in the dark,
doomed—never having seen bright sparks leap high,
without a word for flame, none for the mark
an ember might emblaze on lesioned skin.
A poet is no crafty artisan—
the maker of some crock. He dreams of flame
he never touched, but—fakir’s courtesan—
must dance obedience, once called by name.
Thin wand, divine!, this world is too the same—
all watery ooze and flesh. Let fire cure
and quickly harden here what can endure.
Originally published by The Lyric then by New Lyre. Ancient English scops were considered to be makers: for instance, in William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makiris.” But in some modern literary circles poets are considered to be fakers, with lies being as good as the truth where art is concerned. Hence, this poem puns on “fakirs” and dancing snakes. But according to Shakespeare the object is to leave something lasting, that will stand test of time. Hence, the idea of poems being cured in order to endure. The “thin wand” is the poet’s pen, divining the elixir—the magical fountain of youth—that makes poems live forever.
The Composition of Shadows (II)
by Michael R. Burch
We breathe and so we write;
the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn;
the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.
And what we mean
we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight,
the blood’s debate
within the heart. Here, resonant,
sounds’ shadows mass
against bright glass,
within the white Labyrinthian maze.
Through simple grace,
I touch your face,
ah words! And I would gaze
the night’s dark length
in waning strength
to find the words to feel
such light again.
O, for a pen
to spell love so ethereal.
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty ...
what do we know of love,
or duty?
Instruction
by Michael R. Burch
Toss this poem aside
to the filigreed and the prettified tide
of sunset.
Strike my name,
and still it is all the same.
The onset
of night is in the despairing skies;
each hut shuts its bright bewildered eyes.
The wind sighs
and my heart sighs with her—
my only companion, O Lovely Drifter!
Still, men are not wise.
The moon appears; the arms of the wind lift her,
pooling the light of her silver portent,
while men, impatient,
are beings of hurried and harried despair.
Now willows entangle their fragrant hair.
Men sleep.
Cornsilk tassels the moonbright air.
Deep is the sea; the stars are fair.
I reap.
Originally published by Contemporary Rhyme
In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch
The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.
If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax—their circumstance
as humble as it is?—or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?
Originally published by The Eclectic Muse, then by The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003.
Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch
The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed—
why should such tattered artistry be banned?
I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs …
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."
Originally published by The Chariton Review
The Forge
by Michael R. Burch
after Seamus Heaney
To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,
then bend this way and that, and slowly cool
at arms-length, something irreducible
drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool
of water so contrary just a hiss
escapes it—water instantly a mist.
It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ...
And then the driven hammer falls and falls.
The horses prick their ears in nearby stalls.
A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles.
A sound of ancient import, with the ring
of honest labor, sings of fashioning.
Originally published by The Chariton Review
US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch
“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”
Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)
The Unisphere was a large stainless steel representation of the earth; it was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age for the 1964 New York World's Fair.
What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch
What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer underwater,
watching the shoreline blur,
sees through his breath's weightless bubbles:
both worlds grow obscure.
Originally published by Mandrake Poetry Review
In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch
for George King
In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some famished ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze:
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.
Published by Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly, The Chained Muse, New Lyre and Poetry Life & Times
Chit Chat: In the Poetry Chat Room
by Michael R. Burch
WHY SHULD I LERN TO SPELL?
HELL,
NO ONE REEDS WHAT I SAY
ANYWAY!!! :(
Sing for the cool night,
whispers of constellations.
Sing for the supple grass,
the tall grass, gently whispering.
Sing of infinities, multitudes,
of all that lies beyond us now,
whispers begetting whispers.
And i am glad to also whisper...
I WUS HURT IN LUV I’M DYIN’
FER TH’ TEARS I BEEN A-CRYIN’!!!
i abide beyond serenities
and realms of grace,
above love’s misdirected earth,
i lift my face.
i am beyond finding now...
I WAS IN, LOVE, AND HE SCREWED ME!!!
THE JERK!!! TOTALLY!!!
i loved her once, before, when i
was mortal too, and sometimes i
would listen and distinctly hear
her laughter from the juniper,
but did not go...
I JUST DON’T GET POETRY, SOMETIMES.
IT’S OKAY, I GUESS.
I REALLY DON’T READ THAT MUCH AT ALL,
I MUST CONFESS!!! ;-)
Travail, inherent to all flesh,
i do not know, nor how to feel.
Although i sing them nighttimes still:
the bitter woes, that do not heal...
POETRY IS BORING.
SEE, IT SUCKS!!!, I’M SNORING!!! ZZZZZZZ!!!
The words like breath, i find them here,
among the fragrant juniper,
and conifers amid the snow,
old loves imagined long ago...
WHY DON’T YOU LIKE MY PERFICKT WORDS
YOU USELESS UN-AMERIC’N TURDS?!!!
What use is love, to me, or Thou?
O Words, my awe, to fly so smooth
above the anguished hearts of men
to heights unknown, Thy bare remove...
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
for Richard Moore
1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss—
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here …
2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves you famished;
earthly tides
soon call you back—
one long, descending glide …
3.
Disgruntledly you grope dirt shores for orts
you pull like mucous ropes
from shells’ bright forts …
You eye the teeming world
with nervous darts—
this way and that …
Contentious, shrewd, you scan—
the sky, in hope,
the earth, distrusting man.
Originally published by Able Muse
Impotent
by Michael R. Burch
Tonight my pen
is barren
of passion, spent of poetry.
I hear your name
upon the rain
and yet it cannot comfort me.
I feel the pain
of dreams that wane,
of poems that falter, losing force.
I write again
words without end,
but I cannot control their course …
Tonight my pen
is sullen
and wants no more of poetry.
I hear your voice
as if a choice,
but how can I respond, or flee?
I feel a flame
I cannot name
that sends me searching for a word,
but there is none
not over-done,
unless it's one I never heard.
I believe “Impotent” was written in my late teens or early twenties, probably after wrestling with an uncooperative poem into the wee hours.
An Obscenity Trial
by Michael R. Burch
The defendant was a poet held in many iron restraints
against whom several critics cited numerous complaints.
They accused him of trying to reach the "common crowd,"
and they said his poems incited recitals far too loud.
The prosecutor alleged himself most stylish and best-dressed;
it seems he’d never lost a case, nor really once been pressed.
He was known far and wide for intensely hating clarity;
twelve dilettantes at once declared the defendant another fatality.
The judge was an intellectual well-known for his great mind,
though not for being merciful, honest, sane or kind.
Clerks loved the "Hanging Judge" and the critics were his kin.
Bystanders said, "They'll crucify him!" The public was not let in.
The prosecutor began his case
by spitting in the poet's face,
knowing the trial would be a farce.
"It is obscene,"
he screamed,
"to expose the naked heart!"
The recorder (bewildered Society)
greeted this statement with applause.
"This man is no poet.
Just look—his Hallmark shows it.
Why, see, he utilizes rhyme, symmetry and grammar!
He speaks without a stammer!
His sense of rhythm is too fine!
He does not use recondite words
or conjure ancient Latin verbs.
This man is an imposter!
I ask that his sentence be
the almost perceptible indignity
of removal from the Post-Modernistic roster."
The jury left in tears of joy, literally sequestered.
The defendant sighed in mild despair,
"Please, let me answer to my peers."
But how His Honor giggled then,
seeing no poets were let in.
Later, the clashing symbols of their pronouncements drove him mad
and he admitted both rhyme and reason were bad.
Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea and Poetry Life & Times. A well-known formalist criticized this poem for being "journalistic." But then the poem is written from the point of view of a journalist covering the trial of a poet about to be burned at the stake by his peers. The poem was completed by the end of my sophomore year in college because it appears in my 1978 poetry contest folder. But I believe I wrote the original version a bit earlier, probably around age 18 or 19.
Righteous
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Come to me tonight
in the twilight, O, and the full moon rising,
spectral and ancient, will mutter a prayer.
Gather your hair
and pin it up, knowing
I will release it a moment anon.
We are not one,
nor is there a scripture
to sanctify nights you might spend in my arms,
but the swarms
of stars revolving above us
revel tonight, the most ardent of lovers.
Mingled Air
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Ephemeral as breath, still words consume
the substance of our hearts; the very air
that fuels us is subsumed; sometimes the hair
that veils your eyes is lifted and the room
seems hackles-raised: a spring all tension wound
upon a word. At night I feel the care
evaporate—a vapor everywhere
more enervate than sighs: a mournful sound
grown blissful. In the silences between
I hear your heart, forget to breathe, and glow
somehow. And though the words subside, we know
the hearth light and the comfort embers gleam
upon our dreaming consciousness. We share
so much so common: sighs, breath, mingled air.
Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)
Duet, Minor Key
by Michael R. Burch
Without the drama of cymbals
or the fanfare and snares of drums,
I present my case
stripped of its fine veneer:
Behold, thy instrument.
Play, for the night is long.
Originally published by Brief Poems
Double Trouble
by Michael R. Burch
The villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re on the bubble
of beginning to see double.
It’s like you’re on the Hubble
when the lens begins to wobble:
the villanelle is trouble.
It’s like you’re Barney Rubble
scratching itchy beer-stained stubble
because you’re seeing double.
Then your lines begin to gobble
up the good rhymes, and you hobble.
The villanelle is trouble
and like drinking in the pub’ll
begin to make you babble
because you’re seeing double.
Because the form is flubbable
and is really not that loveable,
the villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re seeing double.
Ars Brevis
by Michael R. Burch
Better not to live, than live too long:
this is my theme, my purpose and desire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.
My will to live was never all that strong.
Eternal life? Find some poor fool to hire!
Better not to live, than live too long.
Granny panties or a flosslike thong?
The latter rock, the former feed the fire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.
Let briefs be brief: the short can do no wrong,
since David slew Goliath, who stood higher.
Better not to live, than live too long.
A long recital gets a sudden gong.
Quick death’s preferred to drowning in the mire.
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.
A wee bikini or a long sarong?
French Riviera or some dull old Shire?
Better not to live, than live too long:
The world prefers a brief three-minute song.
The People Loved What They Had Loved Before
by Michael R. Burch
We did not worship at the shrine of tears;
we knew not to believe, not to confess.
And so, ahemming victors, to false cheers,
we wrote off love, we gave a stern address
to bards whose methods irked us, greats of yore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.
We did not build stone monuments to stand
six hundred years and grow more strong and arch
like bridges from the people to the Land
beyond their reach. Instead, we played a march,
pale Neros, sparking flames from door to door.
And the people loved what they had loved before.
We could not pipe of cheer, or even woe.
We played a minor air of Ire (in E).
The sheep chose to ignore us, even though,
long destitute, we plied our songs for free.
We wrote, rewrote and warbled one same score.
And the people loved what they had loved before.
At last outlandish wailing, we confess,
ensued, because no listeners were left.
We built a shrine to tears: our goddess less
divine than man, and, like us, long bereft.
We stooped to love too late, too Learned to whore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.
Poetry
by Michael R. Burch
Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found you—shivering, bare.
They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both your eyes
which, once cerulean as Gogh's skies,
had leapt at dawn to wild surmise
of what was waiting there.
Your back was bent with untold care;
there savage whips had left cruel scars
as though the wounds of countless wars;
your bones were broken with the force
with which they'd lashed your flesh so fair.
You once were loveliest of all.
So many nights you held in thrall
a scrawny lad who heard your call
from where dawn’s milling showers fall—
pale meteors through sapphire air.
I learned the eagerness of youth
to temper for a lover’s touch;
I felt you, tremulant, reprove
each time I fumbled over-much.
Your merest word became my prayer.
You took me gently by the hand
and led my steps from child to man;
now I look back, remember when
you shone, and cannot understand
why now, tonight, you bear their brand.
***
I will take and cradle you in my arms,
remindful of the gentle charms
you showed me once, of yore;
and I will lead you from your cell tonight
back into that incandescent light
which flows out of the core
of a sun whose robes you wore.
And I will wash your feet with tears
for all those blissful years …
my love, whom I adore.
Originally published by The Lyric
I consider "Poetry" to be my Ars Poetica. However, the poem has been misinterpreted to mean the poet is claiming to be the "savior" of Poetry. The poem never claims the poet is a savior or hero. The poem only says that when Poetry is finally freed, in some unspecified way, the poet will be there to take her hand and watch her glory be revealed once again to the world. The poet expresses love for Poetry, and gratitude, but never claims to have done anything himself. This is a poem of love, compassion and reverence. Poetry is the Messiah, not the poet. The poet washes his Messiah’s feet with his tears, like Mary Magdalene.
My Life Story, in a Nutshell
by Michael R. Burch
a trinelle and sequel to my ars poetica “Poetry”
He flew under their radar,
a talented evader,
until he became Darth Vader.
Born at his Muse’s nadir
and fated to be her Fakir,
he flew under their radar.
They insisted he'd never go far,
this Genie they crammed in a jar,
until he became Darth Vader.
His Muse? They continued to raid Her,
to blade, shade, dissuade and upbraid Her,
as he flew under their radar.
Through the long friendless nights he’d spar
by the light of a vagabond Star,
until he became Darth Vader.
At last the final daytrader
fell to his dazzling sabre.
He flew under their radar,
until he became Darth Vader.
Are poets allowed to engage in exaggeration? I hope so! But there is some truth to this poem, as I have been repeatedly blackballed by poetry publishers —I call them the poetry professors — for not playing by their absurd, petty, counterproductive rules.
You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened …
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching …
You paid love no notice,
though she lay in my arms
as the stars rose in swarms
like a legion of poets,
as the lightning recited
its opus before us,
and the hills boomed the chorus,
all strangely delighted …
The Toast
by Michael R. Burch
For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak and scarred and lone,
for seas reflecting distant suns
and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown,
for waltzes ending in a hush,
for rhymes that fade as pages close,
for flames' exhausted, drifting ash,
and petals falling from the rose, …
I raise my cup before I drink,
saluting ghosts of loves long dead,
and silently propose a toast—
to joys set free, and those I fled.
Abide
by Michael R. Burch
after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"
It is hard to understand or accept mortality—
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea
boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle
than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists
simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.
And so we abide …
even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink,
it is best not to drink
(or, drinking, certainly not to think).
Originally published by Light Quarterly
Kindred
by Michael R. Burch
Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?
Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,
so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?
What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.
We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,
and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,
for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.
Shadows
by Michael R. Burch
Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.
Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge … then drown.
We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,
tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low
for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men …
when we were men, or almost so.
The poem above was written either in high school or during my first two years of college because it appeared in the 1979 issue of my college literary journal, Homespun.
Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch
“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” — W. B. Yeats
For all that we professed of love, we knew
this night would come, that we would bend alone
to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
an eerie presence on encrusted logs
we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.
The books that line these close, familiar shelves
loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.
I do not know the words for easy bliss
and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark,
long-unenamored pen and will it: Move.
I loved you more than words, so let words prove.
Belated Canonization
by Michael R. Burch
I loved you for the best.
I loved you through the worst.
I loved you fully dressed,
even when the water pipes burst.
But the gods were not impressed
and so they took you first.
I loved you nonetheless,
even when the earth seemed cursed.
I loved you at the prom.
I loved you in the hearse.
I still think of you as blessed.
Please excuse this morbid verse.
Haunted
by Michael R. Burch
Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.
Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.
Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.
Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.
Published by Romantics Quarterly
Nothing Returns
by Michael R. Burch
A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks …
this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear …
you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur:
telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,
here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.
Regret
by Michael R. Burch
Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear …
once starlight
languished
in your hair …
a shining there
as brief
as rare.
Regret …
a pain
I chose to bear …
unleash
the torrent
of your hair …
and show me
once again—
how rare.
This Distance Between Us
by Michael R. Burch
This distance between us,
this vast gulf of remembrance
void of understanding,
sets us apart.
You are so far,
lost child,
weeping for consolation,
so dear to my heart.
Once near to my heart,
though seldom to touch,
now you are foreign,
now you grow faint …
like the wayward light of a vagabond star—
obscure, enigmatic.
Is the reveling gypsy
becoming a saint?
Now loneliness,
a broad expanse
—barren, forbidding—
whispers my name.
I, too, am a traveler
down this dark path,
unsure of the footing,
cursing the rain.
I, too, have felt pain,
pain and the ache of passion unfulfilled,
remorse, grief, and all the terrors
of the night.
And how very black
and how bleak my despair …
O, where are you, where are you
shining tonight?
Distances
by Michael R. Burch
There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.
She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.
She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something …
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.
At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.
Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch
I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps …
How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
breasts daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded …
They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover’s ease idly tracing flesh …
They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the erect pen …
Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda …
Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.
Mongrel Dreams
by Michael R. Burch
for Thomas Rain Crowe
I squat in my Cherokee lodge, this crude wooden hutch of dry branches and leaf-thatch
as the embers smolder and burn,
hearing always the distant tom-toms of your rain dance.
I relax in my rustic shack on the heroned shores of Gwynedd,
slandering the English in the amulet gleam of the North Atlantic,
hearing your troubadour’s songs, remembering Dylan.
I stand in my rough woolen kilt in the tall highland heather
feeling the freezing winds through the trees leaning sideways,
hearing your bagpipes’ lament, dreaming of Burns.
I slave in my drab English hovel, tabulating rents
while dreaming of Blake and burning your poems like incense.
I abide in my pale mongrel flesh, writing in Nashville
as the thunderbolts flash and the spring rains spill,
till the quill gently bleeds and the white page fills,
dreaming of Whitman, calling you brother.
Resurrecting Passion
by Michael R. Burch
Last night, while dawn was far away
and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies,
as thunder boomed and lightning railed,
I conjured words, where passion failed …
But, oh, that you were mine tonight,
sprawled in this bed, held in these arms,
your breasts pale baubles in my hands,
our bodies bent to old demands …
Such passions we might resurrect,
if only time and distance waned
and brought us back together; now
I pray that this might be, somehow.
But time has left us twisted, torn,
and we are more apart than miles.
How have you come to be so far—
as distant as an unseen star?
So that, while dawn is far away,
my thoughts might not return to you,
I feed your portrait to the flames,
but as they feast, I burn for you.
Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch
Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow …
leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed …
such are the things we are unable to know
that once intrigued us so.
Come then, let us quickly repent
of whatever truths we’d once determined to learn:
for whatever is left, we are unable to discern.
There’s nothing left of us; it’s time to go.
In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch
In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.
Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.
I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun
and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.
R.I.P.
by Michael R. Burch
When I am lain to rest
and my soul is no longer intact,
but dissolving, like a sunset
diminishing to the west …
and when at last
before His throne my past
is put to test
and the demons and the Beast
await to feast
on any morsel downward cast,
while the vapors of impermanence
cling, smelling of damask …
then let me go, and do not weep
if I am left to sleep,
to sleep and never dream, or dream, perhaps,
only a little longer and more deep.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly. This is a poem from my "Romantic Period" that was written in my late teens.
Medusa
by Michael R. Burch
Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair—
long, ravenblack & melancholy.
Many suitors drowned there—
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.
Originally published by Grand Little Things
Charon 2001
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.
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
Defenses
by Michael R. Burch
Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.
Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.
Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch
I never touched you—
that was my mistake.
Deep within,
I still feel the ache.
Can an unformed thing
eternally break?
Now, from a great distance,
I see you again
not as you are now,
but as you were then—
eternally present
and Sovereign.
Distances
by Michael R. Burch
Moonbeams on water —
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night…
So your memories are.
Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter…
So near, yet so far.
Elemental
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
There is within her a welling forth
of love unfathomable.
She is not comfortable
with the thought of merely loving:
but she must give all.
At night, she heeds the storm's calamitous call;
nay, longs for it. Why?
O, if a man understood, he might understand her.
But that never would do!
Beth, as you embrace the storm,
so I embrace elemental you.
Radiance
by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.
The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface …
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.
Belatedly he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.
Downdraft
by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
We feel rather than understand what he meant
as he reveals a shattered firmament
which before him never existed.
Here, there are no images gnarled and twisted
out of too many words,
but only flocks of white birds
wheeling and flying.
Here, as Time spins, reeling and dying,
the voice of a last gull
or perhaps some spirit no longer whole,
echoes its lonely madrigal
and we feel its strange pull
on the astonished soul.
O My Prodigal!
The vents of the sky, ripped asunder,
echo this wild, primal thunder—
now dying into undulations of vanishing wings …
and this voice which in haggard bleak rapture still somehow downward sings.
Sunset, at Laugharne
by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
At Laugharne, in his thirty-fifth year,
he watched the starkeyed hawk career;
he felt the vested heron bless,
and larks and finches everywhere
sank with the sun, their missives west—
where faith is light; his nightjarred breast
watched passion dovetail to its rest.
*
He watched the gulls above green shires
flock shrieking, fleeing priested shores
with silver fishes stilled on spears.
He felt the pressing weight of years
in ways he never had before—
that gravity no brightness spares
from sunken hills to unseen stars.
He saw his father’s face in waves
which gently lapped Wales’ gulled green bays.
He wrote as passion swelled to rage—
the dying light, the unturned page,
the unburned soul’s devoured sage.
*
The words he gathered clung together
till night—the jetted raven’s feather—
fell, fell … and all was as before …
till silence lapped Laugharne’s dark shore
diminished, where his footsteps shone
in pools of fading light—no more.
Floating
by Michael R. Burch
Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.
Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.
Memories of ghostly white limbs …
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.
We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.
Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.
Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.
Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm breasts,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.
And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea …
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;
bright waves throw back your reflection at me.
This is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one. I believe I wrote this one around age 18-19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem may have had a different title when it was originally published, but it escapes me … ah, yes, "Entanglements."
The Monarch’s Rose or The Hedgerow Rose
by Michael R. Burch
I lead you here to pluck this florid rose
still tethered to its post, a dreary mass
propped up to stiff attention, winsome-thorned
(what hand was ever daunted less to touch
such flame, in blatant disregard of all
but atavistic beauty)? Does this rose
not symbolize our love? But as I place
its emblem to your breast, how can this poem,
long centuries deflowered, not debase
all art, if merely genuine, but not
“original”? Love, how can reused words
though frailer than all petals, bent by air
to lovelier contortions, still persist,
defying even gravity? For here
beat Monarch’s wings: they rise on emptiness!
Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)
Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch
for Anaïs Vionet
Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather’s house—
actually his third new wife’s,
in her daughter’s bedroom
—one interminable summer
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas …
Lacking the words to describe
ah!, those pearl-luminous estuaries—
strange omens, incoherent nights.
Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendors.
Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser’s fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and “civilization.”
Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander’s corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey.
Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant.
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.
To Flower
by Michael R. Burch
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch
Where you have gone are the shadows falling …
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
… do you not hear me calling?
Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen …
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
… is silence at last your anthem?
The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch
for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife and fellow poet June Kysilko Kraeft
Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of wanting her himself, so much the lie
that she was meant for him—obscene illusion!—
made him seem a monarch throned like God on high,
when he was less than nothing; when to die
meant many stultifying, pained embraces.
She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces
that tied her to the earth: then she was his.
Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces
and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness—
her ghost beyond perfection—for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.
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.
The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch
(for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric,
who was a friend and mentor to many poets, and
a fine poet in his own right)
The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true …
but came almost as static—background noise,
a song out of the cosmos no one hears,
or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys,
lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared.
They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks
electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke
of words poured from their overheated hearts.
The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope …
You will not find them here; they blew away—
in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung
by fingertips to satellites. They strayed
too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young,
their words are with us still. Devout and fey,
they wink at us whenever skies are gray.
Originally published by The Lyric
To The Singer
by Michael R. Burch
for Leslie Mellichamp
The sun that swoons at dusk
and seems a vanished grace
breaks over distant shores
as a child’s uplifted face
takes up a song like yours.
We listen, and embrace
its warmth with dawning trust.
Originally published by The Lyric
Dawn, to the Singer
by Michael R. Burch
for Leslie Mellichamp
“O singer, sing to me—
I know the world’s awry—
I know how piteously
the hungry children cry.”
We hear you even now—
your voice is with us yet.
Your song did not desert us,
nor can our hearts forget.
“But I bleed warm and near,
And come another dawn
The world will still be here
When home and hearth are gone.”
Although the world seems colder,
your words will warm it yet.
Lie untroubled, still its compass
and guiding instrument.
Originally published by The Lyric
POSTSCRIPTS
Nightingale or Gale in the Night?
by Michael R. Burch
Write me some gorgeous rhythm
about the gently falling night
in words with similar cadences
and a moon as occultly bright,
and if your lullaby pleases
and if your charms persist,
then I will gladly add you
to my bookmarked favorites list.
But as for pay or hire
and as for fortune and fame —
they seem unlikely, minstrel,
and while that might seem a shame,
are nightingales “rewarded”
for their sweetly pensive songs?
Your poems are too damn expensive —
add that to your warbled wrongs!
Come Down
by Michael R. Burch
for Harold Bloom
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
now brittle and brown
as fierce northern gales sever.
Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.
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.
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 fart
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.
beMused
by Michael R. Burch
Perhaps at three
you'll come to tea,
to have a cuppa here?
You'll just stop in
to sip dry gin?
I only have a beer.
To name the “greats”:
Pope, Dryden, mates?
The whole world knows their names.
Discuss the “songs”
of Emerson?
But these are children's games.
Give me rhythms
wild as Dylan’s!
Give me Bobbie Burns!
Give me Psalms,
or Hopkins’ poems,
Hart Crane’s, if he returns!
Or Langston railing!
Blake assailing!
Few others I desire.
Or go away,
yes, leave today:
your tepid poets tire.
I Learned Too Late
by Michael R. Burch
“Show, don’t tell!”
I learned too late that poetry has rules,
although they may be rules for greater fools.
In any case, by dodging rules and schools,
I avoided useless duels.
I learned too late that sentiment is bad—
that Blake and Keats and Plath had all been had.
In any case, by following my heart,
I learned to walk apart.
I learned too late that “telling” is a crime.
Did Shakespeare know? Is Milton doing time?
In any case, by telling, I admit:
I think such rules are shit.
The Poet's Condition
by Michael R. Burch
The poet's condition
(bother tradition)
is whining contrition.
Supposedly sage,
his editor knows
his brain's in his toes
though he would suppose
to soon be the rage.
His readers are sure
his work's premature
or merely manure,
insipidly trite.
His mother alone
will answer the phone
(perhaps with a moan)
to hear him recite.
I have heard rumors of poetry saving the world with some sort of civilizing effect, but I have my doubts:
After the Poetry Recital
by Michael R. Burch
Later there’ll be talk of saving whales
over racks of lamb and flambéed snails.
Can poetry even save itself from nonsensical theories? It seems unlikely to me. Anything readers are likely to like has to go!
The State of the Art (?)
by Michael R. Burch
Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?
Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has passion been coerced?
Shall poetry fade slowly,
like Latin, to past tense?
Are the bards too high and holy,
or their readers merely dense?
Published by Tucumcari Literary Review
Will poets go the way of the dinosaurs? And this is not my Keatsian moment: I know dinosaurs weren’t lizards.
Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch
I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.
A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright.
Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling;
here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead.
Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling,
simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed,
his tongue flicking rhythms,
the sun—throbbing, spilling.
Revision
by Michael R. Burch
I found a stone
ablaze in a streambed,
honed to a flickering jewel
by all the clear,
swiftly-flowing
millennia of water...
and as I kneeled
to do it obeisance,
the homage of retrieval,
it occurred to me
that perhaps its muddied
underbelly
rooted precariously
in the muck
and excrescence
of its slow loosening
upward...
might not be finished,
like a poem
brilliantly faceted
but only half revised,
which sparkles
seductively
but is not yet worth
ecstatic digging.
“Revision” has been translated into Chinese by Chen Bolai.
Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch
We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each face—
a carnival-like mirror. In the space
between the silver backing and the glass,
we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass
who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed
to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed
for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee
to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key.
We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung.
In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.
To the Post-Modern Muse, Floundering
by Michael R. Burch
The anachronism in your poetry
is that it lacks a future history.
The line that rings, the forward-sounding bell,
tolls death for you, for drowning victims tell
of insignificance, of eerie shoals,
of voices underwater. Lichen grows
to mute the lips of those men paid no heed,
and though you cling by fingertips, and bleed,
there is no lifeline now, for what has slipped
lies far beyond your grasp. Iron fittings, stripped,
have left the hull unsound, bright cargo lost.
The argosy of all your toil is rust.
The anchor that you flung did not take hold
in any harbor where repair is sold.
Originally published by Ironwood
The Trouble with Poets
by Michael R. Burch
This morning the neighborhood girls were helping their mothers with chores, but one odd little girl went out picking roses by herself, looking very small and lonely.
Suddenly the odd one refused to pick roses anymore because it occurred to her that being plucked might “hurt” them. Now she just sits beside the bushes, rocking gently back and forth, weeping and consoling the vegetation!
Now she’s lost all interest in nature, which she finds “appalling.” She dresses in black “like Rilke” and murmurs that she prefers the “roses of the imagination”! Intermittently she mumbles something about being “pricked in conscience” and being “pricked to death.” What on earth can she mean? Does she plan to have sex until she dies?
For chrissake, now she’s locked herself in her room and refuses to come out until she “conjures” the “perfect rose of the imagination”! We haven’t seen her for days. Her only communications are texts punctuated liberally with dashes. They appear to be badly-rhymed poems. She signs them “starving artist” in lower-case. What on earth can she mean? Is she anorexic, or bulimic, or is this just another phase she’ll outgrow?
The Century’s Wake
by Michael R. Burch
lines written at the close of the 20th century
Take me home. The party is over,
the century passed—no time for a lover.
And my heart grew heavy
as the fireworks hissed through the dark
over Central Park,
past high-towering spires to some backwoods levee,
hurtling banner-hung docks to the torchlit seas.
And my heart grew heavy;
I felt its disease—
its apathy,
wanting the bright, rhapsodic display
to last more than a single day.
If decay was its rite,
now it has learned to long
for something with more intensity,
more gaudy passion, more song—
like the huddled gay masses,
the wildly-cheering throng.
You ask me—
How can this be?
A little more flair,
or perhaps just a little more clarity.
I leave her tonight to the century’s wake;
she disappoints me.
Originally published by The Centrifugal Eye
Alien Nation
by Michael R. Burch
for a "Christian" poet who believes in "hell"
On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices “speech”
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.
And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro —
far colder than Jesus’s words
over the “fortunate” sparrow.
And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.
Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.
Sweenies (or Swine-ies) Among the Nightingales
by Michael R. Burch
for the Corseted Ones and the Erratics
Open yourself to words, and if they come,
be glad the stone-tongued apes are stricken dumb
by anything like music; they believe
in petrified dry meaning. Love conceives
wild harmonies,
while lumberjacks fell trees.
Sweet, unifying music, a cappella ...
but apeneck Sweeny’s not the brightest fella.
He has no interest in celestial brightness;
he’d distill Love to chivalry, politeness,
yet longs to be acclaimed, like those before him
who (should the truth be told) confuse and bore him.
For Sweeney is himself a piggish boor —
the kind pale pearl-less swine claim to adore.
Reason Without Rhyme
by Michael R. Burch
for the Keystone Scops
I once was averse
to free verse,
but now freely admit
that YOUR rhyming is WORSE!
But alas, in the end,
it’s a losing game:
all verse is unpaid
and a crying shame.
Your e-Verse
by Michael R. Burch
for the posters and posers on www.fillintheblank.com
I cannot understand a word you’ve said
(and this despite an adequate I.Q.);
it must be some exotic new haiku
combined with Latin suddenly undead.
It must be hieroglyphics mixed with Greek.
Have Pound and T. S. Eliot been cloned?
Perhaps you wrote it on the pot, so stoned
you spelled it backwards, just to be oblique.
I think you’re very funny—so, “Yuk! Yuk!”
I know you must be kidding; didn’t we
write crap like this and call it “poetry,”
a form of verbal exercise, P.E.,
in kindergarten, when we ran “amuck?”
Oh, sorry, I forgot to “make it new.”
Perhaps I still can learn a thing or two
from someone tres original, like you.
Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch
I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.
Mine must be art-official—zenlike Art—
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile becomes mock porcelain.
Till in the end, the smile alone remains:
titanium-based alloys undestroyed
with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains
of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed
us most about the corpses rectified
to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.
Caveat
by Michael R. Burch
If only we were not so eloquent,
we might sing, and only sing, not to impress,
but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed.
We might inundate the earth with thankfulness
for light, although it dies, and make a song
of night descending on the earth like bliss,
with other lights beyond—not to be known—
but only to be welcomed and enjoyed,
before all worlds and stars are overthrown ...
as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face
and find it beautiful for emptiness
of all but joy. There is no thought to love
but love itself. How senseless to redress,
in darkness, such becoming nakedness ...
Originally published by Clementine Unbound
The Rut
by Michael R. Burch
How fickle love was once! (We think—“Not now!”—
because the sun is fading to the west
and we’ve grown older, wiser.) Yet, somehow,
the sun will rise and we’ve a human breast.
But somehow love is fickle, in that we
don’t really know quite what we mean by it.
It can’t be bought, and yet it isn’t free.
It wanders off the more we calmly sit
and don’t pursue it wildly, like the stag
who crashes through green forests, sick with lust,
who hones his antlers sharply, whose points brag
he’d rather die than not roll in the dust
to recreate himself: his poetry
is lustful yes, but lusty, hard-won, free.
Rant: Inevitability
by Michael R. Burch
There is change in the wind; there is change in the sea
preternaturally strange with her myriad eyes—
stars mirrored in waves. Compelled by the moon,
whipped to foam, she is drawn into restive tides
rising and cresting as kestrels flee
shrieking, “Passion is all!” You are nothing to me.
What will be, will be.
There are words to arrange; there are tongues to employ;
there are songs to engrave on each vellum leaf.
But the gold will not hold lacking passion or joy
and the gilt ink fades without rage or grief.
All your high Latin hymnals bind spineless belief,
and your mild incantations mean nothing to me.
What will be, will be.
Emotionless arrows impale no meat,
leave no prey blood-splattered, no white bone staring,
no pale breast shattered, no lamb’s soft bleat ...
but a table barren, an ear uncaring.
And your listless denouements mean nothing to me.
What will be, will be.
There are souls’ riven screams, there are blind eyes staring—
imploring the sun or the moon or the sea
for an inkling of meaning, a morsel, a shaving ...
and your pallid dispassion means nothing to me.
What will be, will be.
There is much that is lost, and yet much to be gained
from each dark starless night, each advance of the sun.
We have so little time to wrestle your meaning.
Stars trestle the heavens. Wind haunts. You are done.
And your temple bells’ tinklings mean nothing to me.
What will be, will be.
All my cruel Celtic henchmen, my bold Nordic bards,
will shatter the canes of your cripples to shards,
impaling pale corpses on blood-slickened staves,
tossing leprous white limbs to the wild-drooling waves.
For your steaming viscera are manna to me.
What will be, will be.
No Iscariot kiss, but a Jubilant Hiss
you will get from me. What will be, now is.
Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin N. Roberts
The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.
A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor again.
In the twilight she gleams
with a festive light,
done with her trawlings,
ready to sleep …
Deep, deep, in delight
glide the creatures of night,
elusive and bright
as the poet’s dreams.
This poem was written in 2001 after a discussion about Romanticism in the late 20th century. Kevin N. Roberts was the founder and first editor of the literary journal Romantics Quarterly, and a talented and accomplished poet, writer and philosopher.
A Passing Observation about Thinking Outside the Box
by Michael R. Burch
William Blake had no public, and yet he’s still read.
His critics are dead.
Orpheus, or, William Blake's Whistle
by Michael R. Burch
for and after William Blake
I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.
I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked
nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.
II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,
the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.
III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,
I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,
were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild
I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.
Eras Poetica II
by Michael R. Burch
“... poetry makes nothing happen ...”—W. H. Auden
Poetry is the art of words: beautiful words.
So that we who are destitute of all other beauties exist
in worlds of our own making; where, if we persist,
the unicorns gather in phantomlike herds,
whinnying to see us; where dark flocks of birds,
hooting, screeching and cawing, all madly insist:
“We too are wild migrants lost in this pale mist
which strangeness allows us, which beauty affords!”
We stormproof our windows with duct tape and boards.
We stockpile provisions. We cull the small list
of possessions worth keeping. Our listless lips, kissed,
mouth pointless enigmas. Time’s bare pantry hoards
dust motes of past grandeurs. Yet here Mars’s sword
lies shattered on the anvil of the enduring Word.
This is my first time reading ‘Currents’, and what a little gem it is, with some marvellously memorable lines that mimic the sounds an motions of creation!