Vacuum

"Vacuum" is a poem about a cold day in college when I felt out of sorts. These are poems about walls that don't work and other things that keep us artificially apart and distant from each other...

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 here; it’s time to go.

Stormfront
by Michael R. Burch

Our distance is frightening:
a distance like the abyss between heaven and earth
interrupted by bizarre and terrible lightning.



Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” may be the most misunderstood and misquoted poem of all time. Frost did not agree with his neighbor, whom Frost considered a stone-armed savage mindlessly parroting his father’s saying, that “good fences make good neighbors.” And yet Frost’s famous poem has been used to praise apartheid barriers!

These are poems about walls and other divisions that keep us apart and distant from each other…

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.



Not Elves, Exactly
by Michael R. Burch

Something there is that likes a wall,
that likes it spiked and likes it tall,

that likes its pikes’ sharp rows of teeth
and doesn’t mind its victims’ grief

(wherever they come from, far or wide)
as long as they fall on the other side.

I wrote “Not Elves, Exactly” thinking of Trump’s border wall and Robert Frost’s mischievous elves in “Mending Wall.”



I Know The Truth
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I know the truth—abandon lesser truths!
There's no need for anyone living to struggle!
See? Evening falls, night quickly descends!
So why the useless disputes—generals, poets, lovers?

The wind is calming now; the earth is bathed in dew;
the stars' infernos will soon freeze in the heavens.
And soon we'll sleep together, under the earth,
we who never gave each other a moment's rest above it.



Unfortunately, religion is one of our greatest dividers, at least until we lie in the same common ground at last…

faith(less)
by Michael R. Burch

Those who believed
and Those who misled
lie together at last
in the same narrow bed

and if god loved Them more
for Their strange lack of doubt,
he kept it well hidden
till he snuffed Them out.



Trump makes me think of the Wizard of Oz with his megaphone and of male bowerbirds with their optical illusions. This is a much-rejected poem but I continue to like it nonetheless…

Bowery Boys
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



All too often we’re divided by culture and incompatible ways of seeing the world…

Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed Vijay.

“My family is relatively heavy,
too big even for a pig-barn Chevy;
we need more space,”
spat What’s His Face.

“What does it matter,
dirge or mantra,”
sighed Serge.

“The world will wobble
in Hubble’s lens
till the tempest ends,”
wailed Mercedes.

“The world is going to hell in a bucket.
So fuck it and get outta my face!
We own this place!
Me and my friends got more guns than ISIS,
so what’s the crisis?”
cried Bubba Billy Joe Bob Puckett.



War is one of the greatest and most relentless dividers, and once a war starts, who remembers the role one’s side played in starting it? Millions of Americans seem to have forgotten, or perhaps never cared to know, the real reasons for terrorist attacks against the United States that resulted in two unwinnable wars.

Recursion
by Michael R. Burch

In a dream I saw boys lying
under banners gaily flying
and I heard their mothers sighing
from some dark distant shore.

For I saw their sons essaying
into fields—gleeful, braying—
their bright armaments displaying;
such manly oaths they swore!

From their playfields, boys returning
full of honor’s white-hot burning
and desire’s restless yearning
sired new kids for the corps.

In a dream I saw boys dying
under banners gaily lying
and I heard their mothers crying
from some dark distant shore.



Poets are often divided by nonsensical “rules” and “theories” …

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.



I have a theory that religion can drive human beings mad. I wrote the following strange poem after reading an article about a mother who tried to “save” her children by drowning them. At one time I titled the poem “Fall Well” in homage to everyone’s favorite TV evANGLEist, Jerry Falwell.

Life Sentence
by Michael R. Burch

. . . I swim, my Daddy’s princess, newly crowned,
toward a gurgly Maelstrom . . . if I drown
will Mommy stick the Toilet Plunger down

to suck me up? . . . She sits upon Her Throne,
Imperious (denying we were one),
and gazes down and whispers “precious son” . . .

. . . the Plunger worked; i’m two, and, if not blessed,
still Mommy got the Worst Stuff off Her Chest;
a Vacuum Pump, They say, will do the rest . . .

. . . i’m three; yay! whee! oh good! it’s time to play!
(oh no, I think there’s Others on the way;
i’d better pray) . . .

. . . i’m four; at night I hear the Banging Door;
She screams; sometimes there’s Puddles on the Floor;
She wants to kill us, or, She wants some More . . .

. . . it’s great to be alive if you are five (unless you’re me);
my Mommy says: “you’re WRONG! don’t disagree!
don’t make this HURT ME!” . . .

. . . i’m six; They say i’m tall, yet Time grows Short;
we have a thriving Family; Abort!;
a tadpole’s ripping Mommy’s Room apart . . .

. . . i’m seven; i’m in heaven; it feels strange;
I saw my life go gurgling down the Drain;
another Noah built a Mighty Ark;
God smiled, appeased, a Rainbow split the Dark;

. . . I saw Bright Colors also, when She slammed
my head against the Tub, and then I swam
toward the magic tunnel . . . last, I heard . . .

is that She feels Weird.



I’m not sure what inspired this oddity, perhaps reading poems written by younger poets about cutting and other forms of self-harm…

Mending Glass
by Michael R. Burch

In the cobwebbed house—
lost in shadows
by the jagged mirror,
in the intricate silver face
cracked ten thousand times,
silently he watches,
and in the twisted light
sometimes he catches there
a familiar glimpse of revealing lace,
white stockings and garters,
a pale face pressed indiscreetly near
with a predatory leer,
the sheer flash of nylon,
an embrace, or a sharp slap,

. . . a sudden lurch of terror.

He finds bright slivers
—the hard sharp brittle shards,
the silver jags of memory
starkly impressed there—

and mends his error.



These are random poems about various peeves of mine…

Caveat Spender
by Michael R. Burch

It’s better not to speculate
"continually" on who is great.
Though relentless awe’s
a Célèbre Cause,
please reserve some time for the contemplation
of the perils of EXAGGERATION.

Caveat Spender II
by Michael R. Burch

It’s better not to speculate
“continually” on who is great:
it makes the mediocre fuss
(and others less than great, like us).

Caveat Spender III
by Michael R. Burch

It’s better not to speculate
“continually” on who is great:
it makes the language purists fuss,
and poets less than great, like us.

Caveat Spender IV
by Michael R. Burch

It’s better not to speculate
“continually” on who is great:
or those your musings aggravate
will say your poems exaggerate
and that your logic’s second rate.

Caveat Spender V
by Michael R. Burch

It’s better not to speculate
“continually” on who is great:
this leaves no time for opuses
and makes you sound pretentious; thus,
because your poem’s so serious,
we find it quite ridiculous.



Plastic Art or Night Stand
by Michael R. Burch

Disclaimer: This is a poem about artificial poetry, not love dolls! The victim is the Muse.

We never questioned why “love” seemed less real
the more we touched her, and forgot her face.
Absorbed in molestation’s sticky feel,
we failed to see her staring into space,
her doll-like features frozen in a smile.
She held us in her marionette’s embrace,
her plastic flesh grown wet and slick and vile.
We groaned to feel our urgent fingers trace
her undemanding body. All the while,
she lay and gaily bore her brief disgrace.
We loved her echoed passion’s squeaky air,
her tongueless kisses’ artificial taste,
the way she matched, then raised our reckless pace,
the heart that seemed to pound, but was not there.