The HyperTexts
Song Lyrics
by Michael R. Burch
Over the years my poetry has been set to music 57 times by 31 composers, from
swamp blues to opera, and my poems have also
been used in various ways by bands, songwriters, musicians, videographers, painters and
other visual artists. I am always honored when other creative types want to collaborate with me. If there are
no revenues or profits, I will be happy with credit for my authorship. If there
are revenues and profits, I will be happy with a reasonable royalty to be
negotiated. But in any case, it never hurts to talk, so if you have any interest
in the lyrics on this page, or anything else that I've written or translated,
please feel free to contact me by email at
mikerburch@gmail.com or on
Facebook. This invitation is open to composers,
songwriters, singers, musicians and artists of all stripes.
I am willing to adapt my poems as necessary and have done so in the past, with
good success. These lyrics are copyrighted and most have been published as poems,
but they are available for musical collaborations (often at no charge when there
are no profits).
There are several Trump parodies at the bottom of this page, all set to
the tunes of popular songs.
Ophelia
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin N. Roberts
Ophelia, madness suits you well,
as the ocean sounds in an empty shell,
as the moon shines brightest in a starless sky,
as suns supernova before they die ...
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Ophélie (“Ophelia”)
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
... while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by ...
Here, tangled in her veils, she floats on the tide ...
Far-off, in the woods, we hear the strident bugle’s cry.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
This albescent phantom, has rocked here, to and fro.
For a thousand years, or more, in her gentle folly,
Ophelia has rocked here when the night breezes blow.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
Has passed, an albescent phantom, down this long black river.
For a thousand years, or more, in her sweet madness
Ophelia has made this river shiver.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael R. Burch
Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?
And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?
And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?
Copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Burch
Published by The Word (UK), The Chained Muse, Famous Poets and Poems,
Inspirational Stories, Jenion, Starlight
Archives, TALESetc, Writ in Water, Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Webring
Where Does the Butterfly Go?
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?
Copyright © 2012 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times, Victorian Violet Press (where it was nominated for a “Best of the Net”), The Contributor
(a Nashville homeless newspaper) and Siasat (Pakistan)
I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch
(The music is initially melancholy.)
I pray tonight
the starry Light
might
surround you.
(The music remains melancholy.)
I pray
by day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.
(With the last two lines, the music becomes brighter, more hopeful, and if possible, heavenly.)
I pray ere the morrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.
Copyright © 2006 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Kritya (India)
Indestructible, for Johnny Cash
by Michael R. Burch
What is a mountain, but stone?
Or a spire, but a trinket of steel?
Johnny Cash is gone,
black from his hair to his bootheels.
Can a man out-endure mountains’ stone
if his songs lift us closer to heaven?
Can the steel in his voice vibrate on
till his words are our manna and leaven?
Then sing, all you mountains of stone,
with the rasp of his voice, and the gravel.
Let the twang of thumbed steel lead us home
through these weary dark ways all men travel.
For what is a mountain, but stone?
Or a spire, but a trinket of steel?
Johnny Cash lives on—
black from his hair to his bootheels.
Copyright © 2006 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Strong Verse
i wrote a giddy little song
by michael r. burch
i wrote a giddy little song,
which u can dance to, all night long;
i wrote a giddy little poem,
it’ll tempt a smile, like sea foam;
i wrote a giddy nonsense rhyme,
it’ll tease a laugh, like a dandelion;
i wrote a song and took the trouble,
it’ll make u smile, like a soap bubble;
i wrote this giddy bit of fluff,
now dance to it, get off ur duff!
Copyright © 2023 by Michael R. Burch
Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch
Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark . . .
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?
Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?
Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Copyright © 1976 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
Tomb Lake
by Michael R. Burch
Go down to the valley
where mockingbirds cry,
alone, ever lonely . . .
yes, go down to die.
And dream in your dying
you never shall wake.
Go down to the valley;
go down to Tomb Lake.
Tomb Lake is a cauldron
of souls such as yours —
mad souls without meaning,
frail souls without force.
Tomb Lake is a graveyard
reserved for the dead.
They lie in her shallows
and sleep in her bed.
I believe this poem and "Moon Lake" were companion poems, written around my
senior year in high school, in 1976.
Copyright © 1976 by Michael R. Burch
Faithless Lover
by Michael R. Burch
Well I met you darlin’ on a night like this;
the stars were fallin’ as I stole a kiss.
And I fell in love that ecstatic night,
as the moon above blessed us with its light.
But the moon was false, and your heart was, too.
Oh, I never dreamed you would be untrue.
'Cause you're a faithless lover, with a heart of stone.
One day you'll discover yourself all alone.
Well, we found a preacher and we said some words.
I should have noticed yours were well-rehearsed.
When I looked above, I saw the pale moon frown;
the sky burst open; I began to drown.
'Cause you're a faithless lover, with a heart of stone.
One day you'll discover yourself all alone.
Now, since that day, how you've run around.
You’ve been with every boy in town.
Well, I learned my lesson, and I learned it well:
how one night aflame left me cold as hell,
till my heart grew hard in its icy shell.
Now, I'm a faithless lover with a heart of stone.
I seek faceless lovers who leave with the dawn.
Copyright © 1991 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Ave Maria
by Michael R. Burch
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
listen to my earnest prayer.
Listen, O, and be beguiled.
Ave Maria.
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
be Mother now to every child
beset by earth’s thorned briars wild.
Ave Maria.
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
embrace us with your Love and Grace.
Let us look upon your Face.
Ave Maria.
Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
please attend to our earnest call—
When will Love be All in All?
Ave Maria.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch
Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.
Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.
Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.
Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.
Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.
Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.
Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require
the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Ali’s Song
by Michael R. Burch
They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river, child.
I flung their medal to the river, child.
They hung their coin around my neck; they made
my name a bridle, “called a spade a spade.”
They say their gold is pure. I say defiled.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
Ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong
that never called me nigger, did me wrong.
A man can’t be lukewarm, ’cause God hates mild.
I flung their notice to the river, child.
I flung their notice to the river, child.
They said, “Now here’s your bullet and your gun,
and there’s your cell: we’re waiting, you choose one.”
At first I groaned aloud, but then I smiled.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.
My face reflected up, more bronze than gold,
a coin God stamped in His own image—Bold.
My blood boiled like that river—strange and wild.
I died to hate in that dark river, child.
Come, be reborn in this bright river, child.
Copyright © 2002 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Black Medina, Bashgah (Iran, in a Farsi translation), Other Voices International, Thanal Online (India) and Freshet; also published as a YouTube video by
Lillian Y. Wong
Note: Cassius Clay, who converted to Islam and changed his “slave name” to
Muhammad Ali, said that he threw his Olympic boxing gold medal into the Ohio
River. When drafted during the Vietnamese War, Ali refused to serve, reputedly
saying, “I ain't got no quarrel with those Viet Cong; no Vietnamese ever called
me a nigger.”
The Pain of Love
by Michael R. Burch
for T. M.
The pain of love is this:
the parting after the kiss;
the train steaming from the station
whistling abnegation;
every highways’ broken white bar
that vanishes under your car;
each hour and flower and friend
that cannot be saved in the end;
dear things of immeasurable cost ...
now all irretrievably lost.
Copyright © 2013 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Note: The title “The Pain of Love” was suggested by an interview with Little
Richard, then eighty years old, in Rolling Stone. He said that someone should
create a song called “The Pain of Love.” I've written the lyrics,
now can someone provide the music?
Earthbound
by Michael R. Burch
Tashunka Witko, better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed
hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a
floating and crazily-dancing spirit horse through a storm as the hawk flew above
him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.
Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.
Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay—
the sheep,
the earthbound.
I believe I wrote this poem circa age 19-20. I did not know about the vision and naming of Crazy Horse
at the time. But when I learned about the vision that gave Crazy Horse his name,
it seemed to explain my poem and I changed the second line from "and yet I would
fly" to "and yet I now fly." I believe that is the only revision I ever made to
this poem.
Copyright © 1977 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Rounds
by Michael R. Burch
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.
Now agony still hounds me
though elsewhere mirth abounds;
hidebound I stand and try to think,
not sink still further down,
spellbound.
Their ecstasy astounds me,
though drunkenness compounds
resounding laughter into joy;
alloy such glee with beer and see
bliss found.
Keywords/Tags: rounds, drink, drinking, drunk, drunkenness, beer, laughter, joy, bliss, glee
Unlikely Mike
by Michael R. Burch
for Michael Jackson
I married someone else’s fantasy;
she admired me despite my mutilations.
I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine.
I hid my face and changed its connotations.
And in the dark I danced—slight, Chaplinesque—
a metaphor myself. How could they know,
the undiscerning ones, that in the glow
of spotlights, sometimes love becomes burlesque?
Disfigured to my soul, I could not lose
or choose or name myself; I came to be
another of life’s odd dichotomies,
like Dickey’s Sheep Boy, Pan, or David Cruse:
as pale, as enigmatic. White, or black?
My color was a song, a changing track.
Copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Bewildering Stories and selected as one of four short poems for the Review of issues 885-895
Rehearsal Reversal
by Michael R. Burch
The wonder of a first kiss
is:
the next will be better,
if less memorable...
and what’s unforgettable’s
this:
that, somehow,
although you just met her,
in the exchange of eclectic eyes
love came, an electric surmise,
with the smell of cordite hair
on a warm wool sweater
more than amply bosomed.
Use
any excess static to light
the fuse.
Fumble-fingered, her bra strap’s cinch
refuses to budge an inch
in either direction.
Who’s
ever prepared to be so stymied?
Smile,
lean back, drag, “relax” awhile
from practice imperfect. I’ll
leave you two jaybirds alone.
Yes, tomorrow she’ll
answer the phone,
show up for your first real date:
late, breathless, and braless!
(WAIT —
before you celebrate:
still celibate).
We Came Together
by Michael R. Burch
We came together – people of two lands
so unalike, at first, we hardly knew
how to be friends. We went to war, and drew
lines in the sand. And yet the sky was blue
for everyone, and big enough to share.
We came together, and our friendships grew.
We had to learn to share the selfsame air,
to find the rock-strewn paths to harmony –
to find some common ground and let peace bloom.
We came together and we gave hope room
to blossom in our hearts. We learned to be
together, in our common destiny.
We came together – people of many lands
so unalike, at first ... but now we know
how to be friends.
Dancer
by Michael R. Burch
for Michael Jackson
From the calyx of your change, you range
investing passion in the night,
pirouetting through a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.
Do not despair or wonder where
the others of your race have fled;
they left you here to sculpt a tear
and won't return till you are bled
of fantasy and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,
of storming through without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.
They left. You laughed, but now you sigh
for ages, stages slipping by.
You pause; applause is all you hear.
You dance, askance, as rednecks cheer.
Copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Burch
Midnight Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
I.
A measureless rhythm rules the night—
few have heard it,
but I have shared it,
and its secret is mine.
To put it into words
is as to extract the sweetness from honey
and must be done as gently
as a butterfly cleans its wings.
But when it is captured, it is gone again;
its usefulness is only
that it lulls to sleep.
II.
So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night,
to the moans of the moonlit hills'
bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill
with the nightjar’s shrill, cryptic trills.
But I will not sleep this night, nor any . . .
how can I—when my dreams
are always of your perfect face
ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace,
framed by your tear-drenched pillowcase?
Copyright © 2021 by Michael R. Burch
Just Yesterday
by Michael R. Burch
Yesterday
she went a-way
and now I don’t know what to sa-ay,
'cause I loved her more than life
just yesterday.
[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]
Yesterday
she held me tight
and our love lit up the night,
but then our flame was not as bright,
just yesterday.
[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]
Yesterday
she left me a-lone
and now I don’t know what I wa-ant ...
I just listen to a song
called “Yesterday” ...
[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]
Yesterday, oh Yesterday,
Yesterday, oh Yesterday,
I loved her more than life
just yesterday.
[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Stay With Me Tonight
by Michael R. Burch
Stay with me tonight;
be gentle with me as the leaves are gentle
falling to the earth.
And whisper, O my love,
how that every bright thing, though scattered afar,
retains yet its worth.
Stay with me tonight;
be as a petal long-awaited blooming in my hand.
Lift your face to mine
and touch me with your lips
till I feel the warm benevolence of your breath’s
heady fragrance like wine.
That which we had
when pale and waning as the dying moon at dawn,
outshone the sun.
And so lead me back tonight
through bright waterfalls of light
to where we shine as one.
Copyright © 2019 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Lyric
This Train
by Michael R. Burch
To be sung to the melody of "This Train is Bound For Glory" up-tempo.
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way,
gonna take me back
to my baby,
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’,
and my heart is cryin’,
cryin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is chuggin’ on down the tracks now.
This train is chuggin’ on down the tracks now.
This train’s chuggin’ down the tracks
and it’s gonna have to
take me back now.
This train is chuggin’ on down the tracks now.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’,
and my heart is dyin’,
dyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way,
gonna take me back
to my baby,
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train must run a little longer.
Oh, this train must run a little longer.
And although I did her wrong, her
love is only gettin’ stronger.
This train must run a little longer.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
The Vision of the Overseer’s Right Hand
by Michael R. Burch
“Dust to dust ...”
I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color . . .
There a skeletal figure
groped through blonde sand
for a rigid right hand
lost long, long ago . . .
A hand now more white
than he had wielded before.
But he paused there, unsure,
for he could not tell
without the whip’s frenetic hiss
which savage white hand was his.
Copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Poetry Porch
When I Think of You, I Think of Love
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
When I think of you, I think of Love.
Oh, when I think of you, I think of Love
as magical as the moon and stars above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.
When I think of you, I start to cry.
Yes, when I think of you, I start to cry.
And I think you know the reason why.
For when I think of you, I think of Love.
When I think of you, I start to smile.
Oh, when I think of you, I start to smile.
I think of you and, dreaming all the while,
when I think of you, I start to smile.
When I think of you, I have to laugh.
Yes, when I think of you, I have to laugh
because it’s certain: you’re my better half!
So when I think of you, I have to laugh.
I think of you as Eve, and at your feet
blooms everything that’s equally as sweet,
as magical as the moon and stars above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.
I think of you with babies at your breast,
and does and fawns that come at your behest,
as magical as the moon and starts above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.
I think of you and find myself at peace.
I feed the ducks, the turtles and the geese,
all as magical as the moon and stars above,
and when I think of you, I think of Love.
I think of you as Love, a Love that heals ...
the gentlest Dove that soars and flies and wheels
then looks down on the earth from high above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Hill Down the Road
by Michael R. Burch
I imagine this song being sung to an upbeat tune like “Afternoon Delight”
with an emphasis on the last word in each line. The song would come out as a
sort of breathless rush — one long, run-on sentence.
There’s a hill down the road
where my babe and me would go
when the sun was sinking low
where the sparkling waters flow
and we’d sit there in the grass
and we’d watch the sunsets pass
and then I’d walk her home,
but we’d never walk too fast
and we’d sit there in the summer
when the sun was in the sky
and we’d talk of our tomorrows
and we’d watch the butterflies
and I loved her even then
although I was so young
and I’ll love her till the time
that my time on earth is done
I wrote this poem as an aspiring songwriter, around age 14. But alas, I was too
shy to show my compositions to anyone!
Copyright © 1974 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
How Long the Night
(Anonymous Old English/Middle 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.
Copyright © 2013 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Measure, Setu (India), Poet’s Corner, Glass Facets of
Poetry, Better Than Starbucks, Chanticleer, Poetry Brevet and Deviant
Art
Sappho’s Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy
Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call
while the dew-laden lilies lie
listening,
glistening . . .
this is their night, the first night of fall.
Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone . . .
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.
Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I’m alone . . .
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The
HyperTexts
Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy
Cherubic laugh; sly, impish grin;
Angelic face; wild chimp within.
It does not matter; sleep awhile
As soft mirth tickles forth a smile.
Gray moths will hum a lullaby
Of feathery wings, then you and I
Will wake together, by and by.
Life’s not long; those days are best
Spent snuggled to a loving breast.
The earth will wait; a sun-filled sky
Will bronze lean muscle, by and by.
Soon you will sing, and I will sigh,
But sleep here, now, for you and I
Know nothing but this lullaby.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Let me sing you a lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy (written from his mother’s perspective)
Oh, let me sing you a lullaby
of a love that shall come to you by and by.
Oh, let me sing you a lullaby
of a love that shall come to you by and by.
Oh, my dear son, how you’re growing up!
You’re taller than me, now I’m looking up!
You’re a long tall drink and I’m half a cup!
And so let me sing you this lullaby.
Oh, my sweet son, as I watch you grow,
there are so many things that I want you to know.
Most importantly this: that I love you so.
And so let me sing you this lullaby.
Soon a tender bud will thrust forth and grow
after the winter’s long virgin snow;
and because there are things that you have to know ...
Oh, let me sing you this lullaby.
Soon, in a green garden a new rose will bloom
and fill all the world with its wild perfume.
And though it’s hard for me, I must give it room.
And so let me sing you this lullaby.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
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 bodies to some famished ocean
and laugh as they vanish, 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.
Copyright © 1977 by Michael R. Burch
Published BY Songs of Innocence,
Romantics Quarterly and
Poetry Life & Times
This is my translation of one of my favorite Dimash Kudaibergen songs, the
French song "S.O.S." ...
S.O.S.
by Michel Berger
loose
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Why do I live, why do I die?
Why do I laugh, why do I cry?
Voicing the S.O.S.
of an earthling in distress ...
I have never felt at home on the ground.
I'd rather be a bird;
this skin feels weird.
I'd like to see the world turned upside down.
It ever was more beautiful
seen from up above,
seen from up above.
I've always confused life with cartoons,
wishing to transform.
I feel something that draws me,
that draws me,
that draws me
UP!
In the great lotto of the universe
I didn't draw the right numbers.
I feel unwell in my own skin,
I don't want to be a machine
eating, working, sleeping.
Why do I live, why do I die?
Why do I laugh, why do I cry?
I feel I'm catching waves from another world.
I've never had both feet on the ground.
This skin feels weird.
I'd like to see the world turned upside down.
I'd rather be a bird.
Sleep, child, sleep ...
"Late Autumn" aka "Autumn Strong"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
based on the version sung by Dimash Kudaibergen
Autumn ...
The feeling of late autumn ...
It feels like golden leaves falling
to those who are parting ...
A glass of wine
has stirred
so many emotions swirling in my mind ...
Such sad farewells ...
With the season's falling leaves,
so many sad farewells.
To see you so dispirited pains me more than I can say.
Holding your hands so tightly to my heart ...
... Remembering ...
I implore you to remember our unspoken vows ...
I dare bear this bitterness,
but not to see you broken-hearted!
All contentment vanishes like leaves in an autumn wind.
Meeting or parting, that's not up to me.
We can blame the wind for our destiny.
I do not fear my own despair
but your sorrow haunts me.
No one will know of our desolation.
Photographs
by Michael R. Burch
Here are the effects of a life
and they might tell us a tale
(if only we had time to listen)
of how each imperiled tear would glisten,
remembered as brightness in her eyes,
and how each dawn’s dramatic skies
could never match such pale azure.
Like dreams of her, these ghosts endure
and
they tell us a tale of impatient glory . . .
till a line appears—a trace of worry?—
or the wayward track of a wandering smile
which even now can charm, beguile?
We might find good cause to wonder
as we see her pause (to frown?, to ponder?):
what vexed her in her loveliness . . .
what weight, what crushing heaviness
turned her auburn hair a frazzled gray,
and stole her youth before her day?
We might ask ourselves: did Time devour
the passion with the ravaged flower?
But here and there a smile will bloom
to light the leaden, shadowed gloom
that always seems to linger near . . .
And here we find a single tear:
it shimmers like translucent dew
and tells us Anguish touched her too,
and did not spare her for her hair's
burnt copper, or her eyes' soft hue.
Published in Tucumcari Literary Review (the first poem in its issue)
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by
Romantics Quarterly
Once
by Michael R. Burch
Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name . . .
Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist . . .
Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant . . .
Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed—
this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.
Copyright © 2002 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Lyric
Twice
by Michael R. Burch
Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days
when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with
the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.
But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:
rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.
Copyright © 2002 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Lyric
Mare Clausum (Latin for "Closed Sea")
by Michael R. Burch
These are the narrows of my soul—
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.
Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.
Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the damned
who lingered long past morning, till they learned
why it is named:
Mare Clausum.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Penny Dreadful
She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch
There’s a light about her
like the moon through a mist:
a bright incandescence
with which she is blessed
and my heart to her light
like the tide now is pulled ...
she is fair, O, and bright
like the moon silver-veiled.
There’s a fire within her
like the sun’s leaping forth
to lap up the darkness
of night from earth’s hearth
and my eyes to her flame
like twin moths now are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The
HyperTexts
If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch
If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...
You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your breasts ...
Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...
Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,
held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Romantics
Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and
Muddy River Poetry Review
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Penny
Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and
Poetry Life & Times
Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch
May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leave us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but its thorn.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Lyric
Mother’s Smile
by Michael R. Burch
There never was a fonder smile
than mother’s smile, no softer touch
than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than “much.”
So more than “much,” much more than “all.”
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother’s there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.
There never was a stronger back
than father’s back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,
then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother’s tender smile
will leap and follow after you!
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by TALESetc
Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch
Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.
Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and—spent of flame—
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.
You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies—
imprisonment your sense denies.
You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None—winsome, bright or rare—
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.
But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew—
each moonless night the nettles grew
and strangled hope, where love dies too.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Penny
Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Carnelian, Grassroots Poetry
and Poetry Life & Times
Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch
Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.
There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times
Willy Nilly
by Michael R. Burch
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by The New
Formalist, Poet’s Corner, The Road Not Taken and
Charlie Hebdo Poetry
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Able Muse
After the Deluge
by Michael R. Burch
She was kinder than light
to an up-reaching flower
and sweeter than rain
to the bees in their bower
where anemones blush
at the affections they shower,
and love’s shocking power.
She shocked me to life,
but soon left me to wither.
I was listless without her,
nor could I be with her.
I fell under the spell
of her absence’s power.
in that calamitous hour.
Like blithe showers that fled
repealing spring’s sweetness;
like suns’ warming rays sped
away, with such fleetness ...
she has taken my heart—
alas, our completeness!
I now wilt in pale beams
of her occult remembrance.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Redolence
by Michael R. Burch
Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.
Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.
And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by The Eclectic Muse and The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
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?
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Lyric
Righteous
by Michael R. Burch
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
that 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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Writer’s
Gazette, The Chained Muse and
Tucumcari Literary Review
Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .
Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .
Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.
Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .
And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway . . .
For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by The Lyric
and Poetry Life & Times
If
by Michael R. Burch
If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.
If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.
If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.
If I should burn—one moment less brightly,
one instant less true—
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The
HyperTexts
Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch
for Vicki
Time unfolds ...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering ...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.
Night and day ...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close ...
You were lovely;
I was lonely.
... a virgin yields herself, but no one knows.
Now time goes on ...
I have not seen you.
... within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged ...
A fire rages;
no one sees it.
... a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain.
Seasons flow ...
A dream is dying.
... within parched clusters, life is taking form ...
You were honest;
I was angry.
... petals fling themselves before the storm.
Time is slowing ...
I am older.
... blossoms wither, closing one last time ...
I'd love to see you
and to touch you.
... a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry.
Time contracts ...
I cannot touch you.
... a solitary flower cries for warmth ...
Life goes on as
dreams lose meaning.
... the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts
The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch
There was a moment
without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
felt more than seen.
I was eighteen,
my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.
There was an instant . . .
without words, but with a deeper communion,
as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
liquidly our lips met
—feverish, wet—
forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.
Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Grassroots
Poetry and
Poetry Webring
The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch
Yesterday I saw you
as the snow flurries died,
spent winds becalmed.
When I saw your solemn face
alone in the crowd,
I felt my heart, so long embalmed,
begin to beat aloud.
Was it another winter,
another day like this?
Was it so long ago?
Where you the rose-cheeked girl
who slapped my face, then stole a kiss?
Was the sky this gray with snow,
my heart so all a-whirl?
How is it in one moment
it was twenty years ago,
lost worlds remade anew?
When your eyes met mine, I knew
you felt it too, as though
we heard the robin's song
and the sky was turning blue.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The
HyperTexts
Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch
Take this geode with its rough exterior—
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...
a diode of amethyst—wild, electric;
its sequined cavity—parted, revealing.
Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.
Each spire inward—a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails—fractured light,
the heart ice breaking.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Poet Lore
Huntress
by Michael R. Burch
after Baudelaire
Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep
across a crevice dropping deep
into a dark and doomed domain.
Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane.
Rain falls upon your path, and pain
pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause
and heed the oft-lamented laws
which bid you not begin again
till night returns. You wail like wind,
the sighing of a soul for sin,
and give up hunting for a heart.
Till sunset falls again, depart,
though hate and hunger urge you—"On!"
Heed, hearts, your hope—the break of dawn.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by
Sonnetto Poesia
Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch
There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were cannon shots’ soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise . . .
and then . . . annihilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were nights our hearts conceived
untruths reborn as sighs.
To dream was our consolation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood’s salt libations . . .
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The
HyperTexts
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Moments
by Michael R. Burch
There were moments
full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall
of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms
and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.
There are moments
strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you
is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Observance
by Michael R. Burch
Here the hills are old and rolling
carefully 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 . . .
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Les Bijoux ("The Jewels")
by Charles Baudelaire
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
My lover nude and knowing my heart's whims
Wore nothing more than a few bright-flashing gems;
Her art was saving men despite their sins—
She ruled like harem girls crowned with diadems!
She danced for me with a gay but mocking air,
My world of stone and metal sparking bright;
I discovered in her the rapture of everything fair—
Nay, an excess of joy where the spirit and flesh unite!
Naked she lay and offered herself to me,
Parting her legs and smiling receptively,
As gentle and yet profound as the rising sea—
Till her surging tide encountered my cliff, abruptly.
A tigress tamed, her eyes met mine, intent ...
Intent on lust, content to purr and please!
Her breath, both languid and lascivious, lent
An odd charm to her metamorphoses.
Her limbs, her loins, her abdomen, her thighs,
Oiled alabaster, sinuous as a swan,
Writhed pale before my calm clairvoyant eyes;
Like clustered grapes her breasts and belly shone.
Skilled in more spells than evil imps can muster,
To break the peace which had possessed my heart,
She flashed her crystal rocks’ hypnotic luster
Till my quietude was shattered, blown apart.
Her waist awrithe, her breasts enormously
Out-thrust, and yet ... and yet, somehow, still coy ...
As if stout haunches of Antiope
Had been grafted to a boy ...
The room grew dark, the lamp had flickered out.
Mute firelight, alone, lit each glowing stud;
Each time the fire sighed, as if in doubt,
It steeped her pale, rouged flesh in pools of blood.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
The pros seem to like my Baudelaire translations, since it's been used by porn stars and escort sites!
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?
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Eclectic Muse, then by The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003
Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch
Desire glides in on calico wings,
a breath of a moth
seeking a companionable light,
where it hovers, unsure,
sullen, shy or demure,
in the margins of night,
a soft blur.
With a frantic dry rattle
of alien wings,
it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato
then flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.
And yet it returns
to the flame, its delight,
as long as it burns.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch
There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.
We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.
We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.
You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!
The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.)
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
NOTE: The Unisphere mentioned is 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.
Playmates
by Michael R. Burch
WHEN you were my playmate and I was yours,
we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and the sorrows and cares of our indentured days
were uncomprehended . . . far, far away . . .
for the temptations and trials we had yet to face
were lost in the shadows of an unventured maze.
Then simple pleasures were easy to find
and if they cost us a little, we didn't mind;
for even a penny in a pocket back then
was one penny too many, a penny to spend.
Then feelings were feelings and love was just love,
not a strange, complex mystery to be understood;
while "sin" and "damnation" meant little to us,
since forbidden cookies were our only lusts!
Then we never worried about what we had,
and we were both sure—what was good, what was bad.
And we sometimes quarreled, but we didn't hate;
we seldom gave thought to the uncertainties of fate.
Hell, we seldom thought about the next day,
when tomorrow seemed hidden—adventures away.
Though sometimes we dreamed of adventures past,
and wondered, at times, why things couldn't last.
Still, we never worried about getting by,
and we didn't know that we were to die . . .
when we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and I was your playmate, and we were boys.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
This is probably the poem that "made" me, because my high
school English teacher called it "beautiful" and I took that to mean I was
surely the Second Coming of Percy Bysshe Shelley! "Playmates" is the second poem
I remember writing; I believe I was around 13 or 14 at the time. It was
originally published by The Lyric.
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.”
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’
by Michael R. Burch
Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’
the bees rise
in a dizzy circle of two.
Oh, when I’m with you,
I feel like kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’ too.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Myth
by Michael R. Burch
Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.
And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf—
full of faith, full of grief.
Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain—
golden and humble in all its weary worth.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Radiance
by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch
This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?
How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?
Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?
Now I am truly lost!
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Peace Prayer
by Michael R. Burch
for Jim Dunlap
Be calm.
Be still.
Be silent, content.
Be one with the buffalo cropping the grass to a safer height.
Seek the composure of the great depths, barely moved by exterior storms.
Lift your face to the dawning light; feel how it warms.
And be calm.
Be still.
Be silent, content.
All the More Human, for Eve Pandora
by Michael R. Burch
a lullaby for the first human Clone
God provide the soul, and let her sleep
be natural as ours, unplagued by dreams
of being someone else, lost in the deep
wild swells of grieving all that human means ...
and do not let her come to doubt herself—
that she is as we are, so much alike
in frailty, in the books that line the shelf
that tell us who we are—a rickety dike
against the flood of doubt—that we are more
than cells and chance, that love, perhaps, exists
because of someone else who would endure
such pain because some part of her persists
in us, and calls us blesséd by her bed,
become a saint at last, in whose frail arms
we see ourselves—the gray won out of red,
the ash of blonde—till love is safe from harm
and all that human means is that we live
in doubt, and die in doubt, and only love
the more because together we must strive
against an end we loathe and fear. What of?—
we cannot say, imagining the Night
as some weird darkened structure caving in
to cold enormous pressure. Lacking sight,
we lie unbreathing, thinking breath a sin ...
and that is to be human. You are us—
true mortal, child of doubt, hopeful and curious.
Swan Song
by Michael R. Burch
The breast you seek reserves all its compassion
for a child unborn. Soon meagerly she’ll ration
soft kisses and caresses—not for Him,
but you.
Soon in the night, bright lights she’ll dim
and croon a soothing love hymn (not for you)
and vow to Him that she’ll always be true,
and never falter in her love.
But now
she whispers falsehoods, meaning them, somehow,
still unable to foresee the fateful Wall
whose meaning’s clear: such words strange gods might scrawl
revealing what must come, stark-chiseled there:
Gaze on them, weep, ye mighty, and despair!
There’ll be no Jericho, no trumpet blast
imploding walls womb-strong; this song’s your last.
Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch
Beth, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I’m with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy ...
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch
u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly alarming
since all my resolve
dissolved!
u
are
chic
as a sheikh's
harem girl in the sheets
but my castle’s no longer my own
and my kingdom's been overthrown!
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Brief Poems
Sappho, fragment 22
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess
in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
A certain girl in a certain outfit can stop the heart, or start it racing. This
translation has the recommendation of dating websites that have used it!
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty ...
what do we know of love,
or duty?
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Smoke
by Michael R. Burch
The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in) my mind, and I can't say
if what we had was good or bad, or where it is today.
The endless days of summer's haze I still recall today;
she spoke and smoky skies stood still as summer slipped away . . .
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
This poem appeared in my high school journal, the Lantern, in 1976. It also appeared in my college literary journal, Homespun,
in 1977. I believe I had The
Summer of '42 in mind when I wrote the poem. Ironically, I didn't see the movie
until many years later, but something about its advertisement touched me. Am I
the only poet who ever wrote a love poem for Jennifer O'Neil after seeing her
fleeting image in a blurb? At least in that respect, I may be unique! In any
case, the movie came out in 1971 or 1972, so I was probably around 14 when
I wrote the poem.
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
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters,
deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way,
or will.
Copyright © 1976 by Michael R. Burch; written circa age 18; set to music by the Russian composer
Ekaterina Steppe aka Kotik Ptic; published by The Raintown
Review, Blue Unicorn and Poezii, where it was translated
into Romanian by Petru Dimofte.
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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?
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
The Stake
by Michael R. Burch
Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Lyric
The One and Only
by Michael R. Burch
If anyone ever loved me,
It was you.
If anyone ever cared
beyond mere things declared;
if anyone ever knew ...
My darling, it was you.
If anyone ever touched
my beating heart as it flew,
it was you,
and only you.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Precipice
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy
They will teach you to scoff at love
from the highest, windiest precipice of reason.
Do not believe them.
There is no place safe for you to fall
save into the arms of love.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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."
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Chariton Review
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch
Oh, Lancelot, my truest friend,
how time has thinned your ragged mane
and pinched your features; still you seem
though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged.
Your sword hand is, as ever, ready,
although the time for swords has passed.
Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady
meeting mine . . . you must not ask.
The time is not, nor ever shall be,
for Merlyn’s words were only words;
and now his last enchantment wanes,
and we must put aside our swords . . .
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch
She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.
And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...
that a little more darning may gather loose seams.
She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; ...
only the nervously pecking needle
pricks her to motion, again and again.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
escape!
by michael r. burch
for anaïs vionet
to live among the daffodil folk . . .
slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . .
suddenly pop out
the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . .
minuscule as alice, shout
yippee-yi-yee!
in wee exultant glee
to be leaving behind the
LARGE
THREE-DENALI GARAGE.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
The Composition of Shadows
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
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?
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.
Sunset
by Michael R. Burch
Between the prophecies of morning
and twilight’s revelations of wonder,
the sky is ripped asunder.
The moon lurks in the clouds,
waiting, as if to plunder
the dusk of its lilac iridescence,
and in the bright-tentacled sunset
we imagine a presence
full of the fury of lost innocence.
What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame,
brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim,
we recognize at once, but cannot name.
Roses for a Lover, Idealized
by Michael R. Burch
When you have become to me
as roses bloom, in memory,
exquisite, each sharp thorn forgot,
will I recall—yours made me bleed?
When winter makes me think of you—
whorls petrified in frozen dew,
bright promises blithe spring forsook,
will I recall your words—barbed, cruel?
Bubble
by Michael R. Burch
Love—
fragile, elusive—
if held too closely
cannot withstand
the inter ruption
of its bright,
unmalleable tension
and breaks, disintegrates,
at the touch of
an undiscerning
hand.
I believe this is my only "shape" or "shaped" poem.
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.
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.
Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad)
by Michael R. Burch
He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.
Breakings
by Michael R. Burch
I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for my shattered psyche’s sake?
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.
The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch
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.
Chloe
by Michael R. Burch
There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
undressing tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.
Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.
Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.
What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.
The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch
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.
The Shape of
Mourning
by Michael R. Burch
The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,
the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,
the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,
the face in the photograph
no longer dissolving under scrutiny,
becoming a keepsake,
the useless mower
lying forgotten
in weeds,
rings and crosses and
all the paraphernalia
the soul no longer needs.
The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch
There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,
when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,
when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.
There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...
There is no gruesomer time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears
beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.
These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch
a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .
I.
A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber
of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone,
not untouched.
And I am as they were
unsure
for the days
stretch out ahead,
a bewildering maze.
II.
Ah, faithless lover—
that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart that has vaulted the Pinnacle of Love,
and the result of each such infatuation—
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.
III.
A solitary clock chimes the hour
from far above the campus,
but my peers,
returning from their dances,
heed it not.
And so it is
that we seldom gauge Time’s speed
because He moves so unobtrusively
about His task.
Still, when at last
we reckon His mark upon our lives,
we may well be surprised
at His thoroughness.
IV.
Ungentle maiden—
when Time has etched His little lines
so carelessly across your brow,
perhaps I will love you less than now.
And when cruel Time has stolen
your youth, as He certainly shall in course,
perhaps you will wish you had taken me
along with my broken heart,
even as He will take you with yours.
V.
A measureless rhythm rules the night—
few have heard it,
but I have shared it,
and its secret is mine.
To put it into words
is as to extract the sweetness from honey
and must be done as gently
as a butterfly cleans its wings.
But when it is captured, it is gone again;
its usefulness is only
that it lulls to sleep.
VI.
So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night,
to the moans of the moonlit hills'
bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill
with the nightjar’s shrill, cryptic trills.
But I will not sleep this night, nor any . . .
how can I—when my dreams
are always of your perfect face
ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace,
framed by your perfect pillowcase?
VII.
If I had been born when knights roamed the earth
and mad kings ruled savage lands,
I might have turned to the ministry,
to the solitude of a monastery.
But there are no monks or hermits today—
theirs is a lost occupation
carried on, if at all,
merely for sake of tradition.
For today man abhors solitude—
he craves companions, song and drink,
seldom seeking a quiet moment,
to sit alone, by himself, to think.
VIII.
And so I cannot shut myself
off from the rest of the world,
to spend my days in philosophy
and my nights in tears of self-sympathy.
No, I must continue as best I can,
and learn to keep my thoughts away
from those glorious, uproarious moments of youth,
centuries past though lost but a day.
IX.
Yes, I must discipline myself
and adjust to these lackluster days
when men display no chivalry
and romance is the "old-fashioned" way.
X.
A single stereo flares into song
and the first faint light of morning
has pierced the sky's black awning
once again.
XI.
This is a sacred place,
for those who leave,
leave better than they came.
But those who stay, while they are here,
add, with their sleepless nights and tears,
quaint sprigs of ivy to the walls
of these hallowed halls.
Incompatibles
by Michael R. Burch
Reason’s
treason!
cries the Heart.
Love’s
insane,
replies the Brain.
Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch
This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between
me and all flesh.—Yahweh
You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.
This is a poem about a couple committing suicide together. The “eerie pact” refers to
a Bible verse about the rainbow being a “covenant,” when the only covenant
human beings can depend on is the original one that condemned us to suffer and die. That covenant is always kept perfectly.
I AM
by Michael R. Burch
I am not one of ten billion—I—
sunblackened Icarus, chary fly,
staring at God with a quizzical eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I.
I am not one life has left unsquashed—
scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched,
pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache.
I am not one life has left unsquashed.
I am not one without spots of disease,
laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees
from begging and praying and girls sighing “Please!”
I am not one without spots of disease.
I am not one of ten billion—I—
scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly
staring at God with a sedulous eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!
Kindred (II)
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.
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 . . .
Premonition
by Michael R. Burch
Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.
They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their bright laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...
and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...
and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.
And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their words are unreadable runes
unlikely to stand in this waterlogged land
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...
You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it’s something to be loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, outshining the night
and all the stars ringed high above ...
and you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.
I rather vividly remember writing this poem after an office party the year I
co-oped with AT&T (at that time the largest company in the world, with
presumably a lot of office parties). This would have been after my sophomore
year in college, making me around 20 years old. The poem is “true” except that I
was not the host because the party was at the house of one of the upper-level
managers. Nor was I dating anyone seriously at the time.
Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray
by Michael R. Burch
It was not so much dream, as error;
I lay and felt the creeping terror
of what I had become take hold . . .
The moon watched, silent, palest gold;
the picture by the mantle watched;
the clock upon the mantle talked,
in halting voice, of minute things . . .
Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings
scored anthems to my loneliness,
but I have dreamed of what is best,
and I have promised to be good . . .
Dismembered limbs in vats of wood,
foul acids, and a strangled cry!
I did not care, I watched him die . . .
Each lovely rose has thorns we miss;
they prick our lips, should we once kiss
their mangled limbs, or think to clasp
their violent beauty. Dream, aghast,
the flower of my loveliness,
this ageless face (for who could guess?),
and I will kiss you when I rise . . .
The patterns of our lives comprise
strange portraits. Mine, I fear,
proved dear indeed . . . Adieu!
The knife’s for you.
Another strange one, written after reading Wilde's macabre novella.
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.
First and Last
by Michael R. Burch
You are the last arcane rose
of my aching,
my longing,
or the first yellowed leaves—
vagrant spirals of gold
forming huddled bright sheaves;
you are passion forsaking
dark skies, as though sunsets no winds might enclose.
And still in my arms
you are gentle and fragrant—
demesne of my vigor,
spent rigor,
lost power,
fallen musculature of youth,
leaves clinging and hanging,
nameless joys of my youth to this last lingering hour.
Remembrance
by Michael R. Burch
Remembrance like a river rises;
the rain of recollection falls;
frail memories, like vines, entangled,
cling to Time's collapsing walls.
The past is like a distant mist,
the future like a far-off haze,
the present half-distinct an hour
before it blurs with unseen days.
What Works
by Michael R. Burch
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.
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.
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.
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.
Winter
by Michael R. Burch
The rose of love's bright promise
lies torn by her own thorn;
her scent was sweet
but at her feet
the pallid aphids mourn.
The lilac of devotion
has felt the winter hoar
and shed her dress;
companionless,
she shivers—nude, forlorn.
Besieged
by Michael R. Burch
Life—the disintegration of the flesh
before the fitful elevation of the soul
upon improbable wings?
Life—it is all we know,
the travail one bright season brings ...
Now the fruit hangs,
impendent, pregnant with death,
as the hurricane builds and flings
its white columns and banners of snow
and the rout begins.
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.
Children
by Michael R. Burch
There was a moment
suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall,
impendent, pregnant with possibility ...
when we might have made ...
anything,
anything we dreamed,
almost anything at all,
coalescing dreams into reality.
Oh, the love we might have fashioned
out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos
and the rhythms of evening!
But we were young,
and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss
and what is left is not worth saving.
But, oh, you were lovely,
child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars,
and for a day,
what little we partook
of all that lay before us seemed so much,
and passion but a force
with which to play.
Stump
by Michael R. Burch
This used to be a poplar, oak or elm . . .
we forget the names of trees, but still its helm,
green-plumed, like some Greek warrior’s, nobly fringed,
with blossoms almond-white, but verdant-tinged,
this massive helm . . . this massive, nodding head
here contemplated life, and now is dead . . .
Perhaps it saw its future, furrow-browed,
and flung its limbs about, dejectedly.
Perhaps it only dreamed as, cloud by cloud,
the sun plod through the sky. Heroically,
perhaps it stood against the mindless plots
of concrete that replaced each flowered bed.
Perhaps it heard thick loggers draw odd lots
and could not flee, and so could only dread . . .
The last of all its kind? They left its stump
with timeworn strange inscriptions no one reads
(because a language lost is just a bump
impeding someone’s progress at mall speeds).
We leveled all such “speed bumps” long ago
just as our quainter cousins leveled trees.
Shall we, too, be consumed by what we know?
Once gods were merely warriors; august trees
were merely twigs, and man the least divine . . .
mere fables now, dust, compost, turpentine.
Your Pull
by
Michael R. Burch
You were like sunshine and rain—
begetting rainbows,
full of contradictions, like the intervals
between light and shadow.
That within you which I most opposed
drew me closer still,
as a magnet exerts its unyielding pull
on insensate steel.
Love Is Not Love
by Michael R. Burch
Love is not love that never looked
within itself and questioned all,
curled up like a zygote in a ball,
throbbed, sobbed and shook.
(Or went on a binge at a nearby mall,
then would not cook.)
Love is not love that never winced,
then smiled, convinced
that soar’s the prerequisite of fall.
When all
its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed,
where does Love find the wherewithal
to try again,
endeavor, when
all that it knows
is: O, because!
Tonight, Let’s Remember
by Michael R. Burch
July 7, 2007 (7-7-7)
Tonight, let’s remember the fond ways
our fingers engendered new methods to praise
the gray at my temples, your thinning hair.
Tonight, let’s remember, and let us draw near ...
Tonight, let’s remember, as mortals do,
how cutely we chortled when work was through,
society sated, all gods put to rest,
and you in my arms, and I at your breast ...
Tonight, let’s remember how daring, how free
the Madeira made us, recumbently.
Our inhibitions?—we laid them to rest.
Earth, heaven or hell—we knew we were blessed.
Tonight, let’s remember the dwindling days
we’ve spent here together—the sun’s rays
spending their power beyond somber hills.
Soon we’ll rest together; there’ll be no more bills.
Tonight, let’s remember: we’ve paid all our dues,
we’ve suffered our sorrows, we’ve learned how to lose.
What’s left now to take, only God can tell.
Be with me in heaven, or “bliss” will be hell!
I do not want God; I want to see you
free from all sorrow, your labor through,
a song on your tongue, a smile on your lips,
sweet, sultry and vagrant, a child at your hips,
laughing and beaming and ready to frolic
in a world free from cancer and gout and colic.
For you were courageous, and kind, and true.
There must be a heaven for someone like you.
Her Grace Flows Freely
by Michael R. Burch
July 7, 2007
Her love is always chaste, and pure.
This I vow. This I aver.
If she shows me her grace, I will honor her.
This I vow. This I aver.
Her grace flows freely, like her hair.
This I vow. This I aver.
For her generousness, I would worship her.
This I vow. This I aver.
I will not damn her for what I bear
This I vow. This I aver.
like a most precious incense–desire for her,
This I vow. This I aver.
nor call her “whore” where I seek to repair.
This I vow. This I aver.
I will not wink, nor smirk, nor stare
This I vow. This I aver.
like a foolish child at the foot of a stair
This I vow. This I aver.
where I long to go, should another be there.
This I vow. This I aver.
I’ll rejoice in her freedom, and always dare
This I vow. This I aver.
the chance that she’ll flee me–my starling rare.
This I vow. This I aver.
And then, if she stays, without stays, I swear
This I vow. This I aver.
that I will joy in her grace beyond compare.
This I vow. This I aver.
Her Grace Flows Freely
by Michael R. Burch
Italian translation by Comasia Aquaro
La sua grazia vola libera
7 luglio 2007
Il suo amore è sempre casto, e puro.
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Se mi mostra la sua grazia, le farò onore.
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
La sua grazia vola libera, come i suoi capelli.
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Per la sua generosità, la venererò.
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Non la maledirò per ciò che soffro
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
come il più prezioso desiderio d’incenso per lei,
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
non chiamarla “sgualdrina” laddove io cerco di aggiustare.
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Io non strizzerò l’occhio, non riderò soddisfatto, non fisserò lo sguardo
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Come un bambino sciocco ai piedi di una scala
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Laddove io desidero andare, ci sarebbe forse un altro.
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Mi rallegrerò nella sua libertà, e sempre sfiderò
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
la sorte che lei mi sfuggirà—il mio raro storno
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
E dopo, se lei resta, senza stare, io lo garantisco
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Gioirò nella sua grazia al di là del confrontare.
Lo giuro. Lo prometto.
Laughter from Another Room
by Michael R. Burch
Laughter from another room
mocks the anguish that I feel;
as I sit alone and brood,
only you and I are real.
Only you and I are real.
Only you and I exist.
Only burns that blister heal.
Only dreams denied persist.
Only dreams denied persist.
Only hope that lingers dies.
Only love that lessens lives.
Only lovers ever cry.
Only lovers ever cry.
Only sinners ever pray.
Only saints are crucified.
The crucified are always saints.
The crucified are always saints.
The maddest men control the world.
The dumb man knows what he would say;
the poet never finds the words.
The poet never finds the words.
The minstrel never finds the notes.
The minister would love to curse.
The warrior never knows his foe.
The warrior never knows his foe.
The scholar never learns the truth.
The actors never see the show.
The hangman longs to feel the noose.
The hangman longs to feel the noose.
The artist longs to feel the flame.
The proudest men are not aloof;
the guiltiest are not to blame.
The guiltiest are not to blame.
The merriest are prone to brood.
If we go outside, it rains.
If we stay inside, it floods.
If we stay inside, it floods.
If we dare to love, we fear.
Blind men never see the sun;
other men observe through tears.
Other men observe through tears
the passage of these days of doom;
now I listen and I hear
laughter from another room.
Laughter from another room
mocks the anguish that I feel.
As I sit alone and brood,
only you and I are real.
Dancer
by Michael R. Burch
You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,
waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.
Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.
They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled
of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,
of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.
They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh
for ages,
stages
slipping by.
You pause;
applause
is all you hear.
You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.
Love Unfolded Like a Flower
by Michael R. Burch
Love unfolded
like a flower;
Pale petals pinked and blushed to see the sky.
I came to know you
and to trust you
in moments lost to springtime slipping by.
Then love burst outward,
leaping skyward,
and untamed blossoms danced against the wind.
All I wanted
was to hold you;
though passion tempted once, we never sinned.
Now love's gay petals
fade and wither,
and winter beckons, whispering a lie.
We were friends,
but friendships end . . .
yes, friendships end and even roses die.
Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch
The night is full of stars. Which still exist?
Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know.
For now I hold your fingers to my lips
and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow ...
once slow to match this reckless spark in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame ...
for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie
in dawning recognition is enough ...
enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.
All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch
Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.
[Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.]
Come Down
by Michael R. Burch
Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...
and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.
Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
blown to the lees
as fierce northern gales sever.
Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.
Each Color a Scar
by Michael R. Burch
What she left here,
upon my cheek,
is a tear.
She did not speak,
but her intention
was clear,
and I was meek,
far too meek, and, I fear,
too sincere.
What she can never take
from my heart
is its ache;
for now we, apart,
are like leaves
without weight,
scattered afar
by love, or by hate,
each color a scar.
The Tender Weight of Her Sighs
by Michael R. Burch
The tender weight of her sighs
lies heavily upon my heart;
apart from her, full of doubt,
without her presence to revolve around,
found wanting direction or course,
cursed with the thought of her grief,
believing true love is a myth,
with hope as elusive as tears,
hers and mine, unable to lie,
I sigh ...
NOTE: This poem has an unusual rhyme scheme, with the last word of each line
rhyming with the first word of the next line. The final line is a “closing
couplet” in which both words rhyme with the last word of the preceding line.
I believe I invented this nonce form and will dub it the "End-First Curtal
Sonnet."
Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch
In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.
Great pyramids, the looted tombs
—how still and desolate their wombs!—
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.
Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?
Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?
or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”
Album
by Michael R. Burch
I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...
And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like insects’ wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never changed, remaining two ...
And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on feral claws
as It scratched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...
and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.
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!
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
Enough!
by Michael R. Burch
It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!
Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.
But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.
Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch
A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.
We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.
Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams ...
and masturbating limply, screams and screams.
Originally published by Sonnet Scroll
Oasis
by Michael R. Burch
I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.
I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew
in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you
to a nomad who
has only known drought.
Melting
by
Michael R. Burch
Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools, whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous, so bright, so beautiful ...
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.
hey pete
by Michael R. Burch
for Pete Rose
hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy's dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then you'll be a Superstar.
When I was a boy,Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar."
Doppelgänger
by Michael R. Burch
Here the only anguish
is the bedraggled vetch lying strangled in weeds,
the customary sorrows of the wild persimmons,
the whispered complaints of the stately willow trees
disentangling their fine lank hair,
and what is past.
I find you here, one of many things lost,
that, if we do not recover, will undoubtedly vanish forever ...
now only this unfortunate stone,
this pale, disintegrate mass,
this destiny, this unexpected shiver,
this name we share.
The One True Poem
by Michael R. Burch
Love was not meaningless ...
nor your embrace, nor your kiss.
And though every god proved a phantom,
still you were divine to your last dying atom ...
So that when you are gone
and, yea, not a word remains of this poem,
even so,
We were One.
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
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.
Beckoning
by Michael R. Burch
Yesterday the wind whispered my name
while the blazing locks
of her rampant mane
lay heavy on mine.
And yesterday
I saw the way
the wind caressed tall pines
in forests laced by glinting streams
and thick with tangled vines.
And though she reached
for me in her sleep,
the touch I felt was Time's.
Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch
A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."
Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.
Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."
Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.
This road is neither long nor wide . . .
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.
Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch
“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke
Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imaging watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.
Explicit sex was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.
I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue:
adultery, fornication, masturbation, sodomy.
Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush
of her unrouged cheeks,
by her pale lips
accented only by a slight quiver,
a trepidation.
What did those lustrous folds foretell
of our uncommon desire?
Why did she cross and uncross her legs
lovely and long in their taupe sheaths?
Why did her breasts rise pointedly,
as if indicating a direction?
“Come unto me,
(unto me),”
together, we sang,
cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,
my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:
all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.
Sex 101
by Michael R. Burch
That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina ...
Where we sat exhausted
from the day’s skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity ...
Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ...
The most unlikely coupling—
Lambert, 18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ...
Beside him, Wanda, 13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving ...
And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew ...
that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.
A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch
Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the darkening autumn, how swiftly life goes—
as I fled before love ...
Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.
I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the specter of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.
O, where are you now?—I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.
Published by Chrysanthemum and Tucumcari Literary Review
There’s a Stirring and Awakening in the World
by Michael R. Burch
There’s a stirring and awakening in the world,
and even so my spirit stirs within,
imagining some Power beckoning—
the Force which through the stamen gently whirrs,
unlocking tumblers deftly, even mine.
The grape grows wild-entangled on the vine,
and here, close by, the honeysuckle shines.
And of such life, at last there comes there comes the Wine.
And so it is with spirits’ fruitful yield—
the growth comes first, Green Vagrance, then the Bloom.
The world somehow must give the spirit room
to blossom, till its light shines—wild, revealed.
And then at last the earth receives its store
of blessings, as glad hearts cry—More! More! More!
We Come Together, Holding Hands (I)
by Michael R. Burch
We come together, holding hands,
the children of so many lands;
it’s what the day demands.
We come together, seeking peace,
intent of love, our hearts at ease.
We come together, seeking peace;
it’s what the day decrees.
The time is right. The time is now.
We come together, knowing how
the world depends on us to know
the only time to love is now.
We come together, holding hands,
the children of so many lands;
it’s what the day demands.
We come together, seeking peace,
intent of love, our hearts at ease.
We come together, seeking peace;
it’s what the day decrees.
We Come Together, Holding Hands (II)
by Michael R. Burch
We come together, holding hands,
the children of so many lands;
it's what the day demands.
We come together, seeking peace,
intent of love, our hearts at ease.
We come together, seeking peace;
it's what the day decrees.
Earthbound,
and yet we fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that all our songs
that
echo where mountains stand lifting
the sky…
can be heard.
The time is right. The time is now.
We come together, knowing how
the world depends on us to know
the only time to love is now.
Earthbound,
and yet we fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that all our songs
that
echo where mountains stand lifting
the sky…
can be heard.
We sing together, holding hands,
the children of so many lands;
it's what the day demands.
We sing together, seeking peace,
intent of love, our hearts at ease.
We sing together, seeking peace;
it's what the day decrees.
The Ballad of King Henry the Great
(aka Derrick Henry)
by Michael R. Burch
Long live the King!
Send him victorious,
happy and glorious,
long to reign over
us:
Long live the King!
Long live the King!
Send him like Sherman tanks
Mowing down cornerbacks,
Stiff-arming tiny ants:
Long live the King!
An Innocent Yam
by Michael R. Burch
on behalf of Donald J. Trump
apologies to Billy Joel
After Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in his hush money trial, he
insisted, "I am a very innocent man."
Some people stay far away from the door
If there’s a chance of it opening up.
They hear a siren while they’re stealing
And hope that it isn’t a cop.
But I am
An innocent yam!
(Oh yes, I am
An innocent yam!)
Some people live with the fear of being conned
And the anger of having been a fool.
Others will listen to anyone
Like me, and I use them like a tool!
But I am
An innocent yam!
(Oh yes, I am
An innocent yam!)
I know you’re only protecting yourself
in a game that’s too often push and shove.
Don’t let your guard down – ’cause you I’m not above
groping genitals for “love.”
But I am
An innocent yam!
(Oh yes, I am
An innocent yam!)
You’ve been denying you could vote for me
Because I’m a con man on the lam.
People with discernment see right through me,
While others seem to fall for every scam.
But I’ll never change my plea to “guilty”
Because I am an innocent yam.
(Oh yes, I am
an innocent yam!)
(Oh yes, I am
an innocent yam!)
Some people say they will never believe
The lies that I tell them, left and right.
But when it comes to lying, you know I can’t be beat:
I’m rich. I’m white. Thus lying is my right!
I know you don’t want to hear what I say.
I know you’re gonna keep turning away.
I know you don’t believe in my brand.
So if you reject me, sure I’ll understand.
But I am
An innocent yam!
(Oh yes, I am
An innocent yam!)
Some people run from a possible fight.
Some people see the law and scram.
But although this is a fight that I just lost,
The accused is an innocent yam!
(Oh yes, I am
an innocent yam!)
(Oh yes, I am
an innocent yam!)
I know I only conned you out of spite.
I know I’ll be a martyr tonight.
Prison’s your decision:
There’ll be no revision.
Such is my plight!
I’m not above going back to the start,
To fall asleep in court and let loose an awesome fart!
Some people hope for a miracle cure.
Some people seethe at me and damn.
But I’m not willing to lay down and die,
Because I am an innocent yam.
I am an innocent yam.
Oh yes I am
An innocent yam.
The Orange Devil went down to Georgia
by Michael R. Burch
apologies to Charlie Daniels
The orange Devil went down to Georgia, he was lookin’ for votes to steal.
He was in a bind ’cause he was way behind
An’ Joe Biden was makin’ him squeal.
Then he came across some ‘lawyers’ who claimed to be red hot.
The Devil jumped up on a lynchin’ stump
And cried, “Boys, let me tell ya what!”
“I guess you didn’t know it, but I’m a legal ‘genius’ too,
And if you care to take my dare, I’ll make a bet with you!
Now you lie real good, but it’s understood
You must give the Devil his due:
I’ll bet a toilet of gold against your souls,
’Cause I think I'm dumber than you!”
The ‘lawyers’ said, “We’re willing, and it might be a sin,
But we’ll take your bet, we’re gonna regret,
Let the treasonous acts begin!”
Lawyers, plan your best defense and practice lyin’ hard,
’Cause Hell’s broke loose in Georgia, and the Devil deals the cards.
And if you win, you get this slimy toilet plated gold,
But if you lose, the Devil gets your soul!
The Devil opened up his case and said, “I guess I'll start this show!”
He put his mug on a coffee mug and kissed it to and fro.
Then he pulled the strings of his lawyers
Till they made an evil hiss.
Next, a band of demons joined in
And it sounded something like this:
[The sound of fiddles hissing like cobras.]
But when the Devil finished, the lawmen said, “What fun!
Now sit down there in that ’lectric chair
And let us show you how it’s done!”
Fire on the Mountain, run boys, run!
Devil's in the House of the Setting Sun!
Rudy’s in the outhouse, run out of dough!
Spillin’ his guts to the Law, oh no!
The Devil bowed his head because he knew that he'd been beat
And he laid that golden toilet on the ground at Fani’s feet.
Fani said, “Trump, just come on back if ya wanna go to jail again;
We done told you once, you son of a bitch, no FOX gonna steal this hen!”
Fire on the Mountain, run boys, run!
Devil's in the House of the Setting Sun!
Rudy’s in the outhouse, run out of dough!
Spillin’ his guts to the Law, oh no!
The Ballad of the Brooklyn Hillbullies
by Michael R. Burch
to be sung to the tune of the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies”
Come ’n listen to a story ’bout a man named Don.
He claimed to be the “president,” but he was just a con.
And then one day Melania was slappin’ at his hand ...
She slapped so hard she missed the mark, and Don became unmanned.
The little guy took a dive, disappeared.
Well, the next thing you know, Don’s fingers shriveled too;
He couldn’t grope gal’s genitals, so what was he to do?
With his tiny shriveled organ and his tiny shriveled paws,
How could he prove to women that he still had claws?
Big guy, tiny digits. So sad!
Don thought about it bleakly, then came up with a plan:
He’d lie about a virus and kill his fellow man!
His plan worked to perfection and we’re pleased as punch to say
The Hillbullies are killers in the grand old Nazi way!
Zylkon B, insecticides, bio warfare.
The Ballad of Herman Cain
by Michael R. Burch
to be sung to the tune of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
Herman Cain was his name
and he drove on the Tulsa train
till so much Corona came
and laid down its smack again.
In the summer of 2020
in a nation of former plenty,
he took the train to Tulsa and fell.
It’s a time we remember, oh so well.
The House of the Rising Con
by Michael R. Burch
to be sung to the tune of “The House of the Rising Sun”
There is a house in Washington
They call the Rising Con
And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl
He groped; God knows I'm one
His mother was a refugee;
His father was one too;
His grandfather ran a brothel;
Yet he thinks he's “better” than you!
Now the only thing a con man needs
Is a lie and someone to scam
And the only time he's ever satisfied
Is when he's on the lam
[Organ Solo]
Oh mothers, tell your children
Not to do what Don has done –
To spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Con!
He's got one foot on the platform
Of the lyin’ RNC
And one hand up the tattered skirt
Of Lady Liberty
Oh, there is a house in Washington
They call the Rising Con
And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl
He groped; God knows I'm one
Christmas is Coming
alternate lyrics
by Michael R. Burch
Christmas is coming; Trump’s goose is getting plucked.
Please put the Ukraine in his pocketbook.
If you haven’t got the Ukraine, some bartered Kurds will do.
But if you’re short on blackmail, well, the yoke’s on you!
Christmas is coming and Rudy can’t make bail.
Please send large donations or the Cause may fail.
If you haven’t got a billion, five hundred mil will do.
But if you’re short on cash, the lash will fall on you!
We Three Spies
by Michael R. Burch
to be sung to the tune of “We Three Kings”
We three spies of a pale Russian Tsar,
Bearing gifts, have traversed afar:
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following Trump's brazen star!
O star of blunder, star of night,
Star with disloyal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to Trump Tower's height!
Born to deceive, with great disdain,
Gold I bring to bribe Him again:
Dupe forever, ceasing never
To let Comrade Putin reign!
O star of blunder, star of night,
Star with disloyal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to Trump Tower's height!
Embattled Him of the Re-Flub-Lick
alt-right lyrics
by Michael R. Burch
to be sung to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
Our ears have heard the glory of a self-professed Great Lord;
He is purging healthcare rolls of kids the rich cannot afford;
And yet there’s mega-billions for the Makers of the Sword!
His troupe is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Trump’ll rue ya!
Glory! Glory! Trump’ll screw ya!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His dupes are marching on.
We have seen Trump by the watch-fires of a hundred clannish camps;
They have builded Him an altar out of repoed handicapped ramps;
We have read each garbled sentence by the White Supremacists’ lamps!
His rubes are marching on.
[chorus]
We have read His fiery gospel writ in brands of gilded steal:
“As ye deal with My detractors, so with you My goons shall deal!
Let the orange-tufted Troll crush liberal sissies with his heel,
Since a God is marching on!”
[chorus]
He has sounded forth the Trump-et that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the darker kids before His judgment-seat;
Oh, be swift, our soles, to follow Him! Look smart, goose-stepping feet!
Our God is marching on!
[chorus]
In the beauty of the penthouse Trump was born above the sea,
With a glory in His ego that belittles you and me.
As He lives to plate his toilets, let us die to lick them. Whee!
While our God is marching on.
Bio:
Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth, their son Jeremy, and three outrageously spoiled puppies. His poems,
epigrams, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories and letters have appeared more than 5,000 times in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Hindu, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, The Washington
Post, Light Quarterly, The Lyric, Measure, Writer's Digest—The Year's Best Writing, The Best of the Eclectic Muse and hundreds of other literary journals, websites and blogs. Mike Burch is also the founder and
editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper, a former editor of International Poetry and Translations for the literary journal Better Than Starbucks, and a
translator of poems about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Trail of Tears, Gaza and the Palestinian Nakba. He has two published books, Violets for
Beth (White Violet Press, 2012) and O, Terrible Angel (Ancient Cypress Press, 2013). A third book, Auschwitz Rose, is
still in the chute but long delayed. Burch's poetry has been translated into fourteen languages and set to music by the composers Mark Buller, Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. His poem "First They Came for the
Muslims" has been adopted by Amnesty International for its Words That Burn anthology, a free online resource for students and educators.
For an expanded bio, circum vitae and career timeline of the author, please click here:
Michael R. Burch Expanded Bio.
Michael R. Burch related pages:
Early Poems,
Rejection Slips,
Epigrams and Quotes,
Epitaphs,
Romantic Poems,
Song Lyrics,
Sonnets,
Animal Poems,
Free Verse,
Free Love Poems by Michael R. Burch,
Michael R. Burch: Porn Poet? Sorry Mom!
Individual poems and collections by Michael R. Burch: "Jessamyn's Song"
The HyperTexts