Karlie Kloss



Come As You Are

***

Iman

***

Daria Zhemkova

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?

***

Mary Anderson [1859-1940]



Mary Anderson was an accomplished Southern actress and the star of many a Shakespearean play.

Love Has a Southern Flavor
by Michael R. Burch

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...

Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations’ dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ...

Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

***

Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show



Show me your most intimate items of apparel;
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip ...
—Michael R. Burch, "Negligibles"

***

Christina Aguilera

Ava Gardner [1922-1990]

Gene Tierney [1920-1991]

***

Ginger Rogers [1911-1995]

Lana Turner [1921-1995]

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.

***

Grace Kelly [1929-1982]



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?




Grace Kelly was an actress before she married into royalty and became Princess Grace of Monaco.

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!

***

Vivien Leigh [1913-1967]



Violets
by Michael R. Burch

Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to an indiscreet height

and you laughed,
abruptly demure,
outblushing shocked violets:

suddenly,
I knew:
everything had changed

and as you braided your hair
into long bluish plaits
the shadows empurpled,

the dragonflies’
last darting feints
dissolving mid-air,

we watched the sun’s long glide
into evening,
knowing and unknowing.

O, how the illusions of love
await us in the commonplace
and rare

then haunt our small remainder of hours.

"Violets" is one of my most popular poems according to Google and was the title poem of my poetry collection Violets for Beth.

***

Veronica Lake [1919-1973]



don’t forget
by michael r. burch

for Beth

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved (like your Heart)
and that even Light
is bent by your Gravity.

The opening lines of my poem were inspired by and taken from a famous love poem by e. e. cummings. I like my poem, but most of the credit is due to mr. cummings. — MRB



Veronica Lake was breathtakingly beautiful. As a teenager, she was expelled from an all-girls Catholic boarding school, so she may have been a bit naughty in her youth (but then who wasn't?). As an adult she was arrested for public drunkenness more than once. With art perhaps imitating life, she became known for playing notorious femme fatales in film noirs. Born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, she took the last name "Lake" because Paramount producer Arthur Hornblow thought it matched her blue eyes, and the first name "Veronica" because he admired her classic beauty. Her best-known movies include The Blue Dahlia (1946), This Gun for Hire (1942), I Married a Witch (1942), Sullivan's Travels (1941) and So Proudly We Hail (1943). She was also a popular pin-up model. Her famous "peek-a-boo" bangs became so imitated that during World War II the U.S. government asked her to wear her hair back, out of fear that female factory workers would have accidents!

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.

***

Gypsy Rose Lee [1911-1970]





Gypsy Rose Lee, born Rose Louise Hovick, was a famous burlesque performer known far and wide for her stripteases. But she was also a dancer, actress, producer, author, and playwright whose 1957 memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy. She also wrote a mystery novel called The G-String Murders and co-produced a musical revue called Star and Garter. It is said that her first striptease was accidental, occurring when the strap of her gown broke, causing it to fall to the floor during one of her acts. She went on to develop a more casual style of striptease, emphasizing the "tease" and incorporating humor. She was frequently arrested during police raids on her performances, which would be considered quite tame and in good taste today.

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?

***

Dorothy Dandridge [1922-1965]



Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an African-American film and theatre actress, singer and dancer. She was the first black actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1954 film Carmen Jones. In 1959, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess. Dandridge also performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater.

The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh ...

our soft cries, like regret,

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...

now that I have forgotten her face.

***

Greta Garbo [1905-1990]



"There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them." — Greta Garbo

Enigma
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night, or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior.

Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?

Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love, this—our reclamation;
fallen wren,
you must strive to fly though your heart is shaken;
weary pilgrim,
you must not give up though your feet are aching;
lonely child,
lie here still in my arms; you must soon be waking.

***

Audrey Hepburn [1929-1993]



Audrey Hepburn was a real-life daredevil and war hero who played cat-and-mouse reconnaissance games with the Nazis during World War II as a petite member of the Belgian Resistance. She helped downed Allied pilots evade the Nazis and work their way back to freedom. That was a very dangerous job for anyone, and especially a very attractive slip of a girl.

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.

***

Lauren Bacall [1924-2014]



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.

***

Brooke Shields



She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful
by Michael R. Burch

She was very strange, and beautiful,
like a violet mist enshrouding hills
before night falls
when the hoot owl calls
and the cricket trills
and the envapored moon hangs low and full.

She was very strange, in her pleasant way,
as the hummingbird
flies madly still, ...
so I drank my fill
of her every word.
What she knew of love, she demurred to say.

She was meant to leave, as the wind must blow,
as the sun must set,
as the rain must fall.
Though she gave her all,
I had nothing left ...
yet I smiled, bereft, in her receding glow.

***

Elizabeth Taylor [1932-2011]



Warming her pearls,
her breasts gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund . . .
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.
—Michael R. Burch

***

Brigitte Bardot





Brigitte Bardot was a ballet dancer nicknamed "Little Doe" by her colleagues. One of her classmates at ballet school was Leslie Caron. She later became a model, then an actress after fortuitously babysitting for the movie director Roger Vadim, whom she later married. She was frequently cast as ingénue or siren, in varying states of undress.

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.

***

Bette Davis [1908-1989]



"She's got Bette Davis eyes ..."

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.

***

Doris Eaton Travis [1904-2010] was the last living Ziegfeld Girl



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.

Norma Jean Baker [1926-1962], better known as Marilyn Monroe









"Goodbye Norma Jean, we never knew you at all ..."

Princess Diana [1961-1997]



Diana Spencer became world-famous as Princess Diana when she married England's heir to the throne, Prince Charles.

Fairest Diana
by Michael R. Burch

Fairest Diana, princess of dreams,
born to be loved and yet distant and lone,
why did you linger—so solemn, so lovely—
an orchid ablaze in a crevice of stone?

Was not your heart meant for tenderest passions?
Surely your lips—for wild kisses, not vows!
Why then did you languish, though lustrous, becoming
a pearl of enchantment cast before sows?

Fairest Diana, fragile as lilac,
as willful as rainfall, as true as the rose;
how did a stanza of silver-bright verse
come to be bound in a book of dull prose?

I believe this poem was written in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, around the time it became apparent that the lovely Diana Spencer was going to marry into the British royal family. It really did seem like an orchid being placed in a crevice of stone. My mother is English and our family had considerable interest in the courtship. I believe I wrote the poem before the wedding, but I'm not sure. I will guess around 1980 at age 22. — MRB

Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace;

Tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.

***

Bar Rafaeli



For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.

***

Mila Jovovich



Floating
by Michael R. Burch

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs . . .
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.

Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm breasts,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea . . .
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem may have had a different title when it was originally published, but it escapes me . . . ah, yes, "Entanglements."

***


Amy Adams



You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.
—Michael R. Burch, "Water and Gold"

***

Kate Winslet



Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that "love" has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest; originally published by Romantics Quarterly where it was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

***

Liv Tyler



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.

***

Jennifer Aniston



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.

***

Rihanna



Once
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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.

***

Christina Applegate



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.

"Distances" is in the process of being set to music by the award-winning New Zealand composer David Hamilton. In the first stanza the "halcyon star" is the sun, which has dropped below the horizon and is thus "drowning in night." But its light strikes the moon, creating moonbeams which are reflected by the water. Sometimes memories seem that distant, that faint, that elusive. Footprints are being washed away, a heart is missing from its ribcage, and even things close at hand can seem infinitely beyond our reach.

Bettie Page [1923-2008]

Bettie Page was one of the first Playboy "playmates" and she was so notorious for doing bondage stills and films that the movie made about her life was titled The Notorious Bettie Page. In 1958, she retired to become a Christian evangelist, after which she returned to live in her Bible belt hometown, Nashville, and went on to do full-time work with Billy Graham. Ironically, after her conversion she had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized as insane for eight years.

Sex Hex
by Michael R. Burch

Love’s full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes).

Katy Perry as the second coming of Bettie Page



Sharon
by Michael R. Burch

apologies to Byron

I.
Flamingo-minted, pink, pink cheeks,
dark hair streaked with a lisp of dawnlight;
I have seen your shadow creep
through eerie webs spun out of twilight...

And I have longed to kiss your lips,
as sweet as the honeysuckle blooms;
to hold your pale albescent body,
more curvaceous than the moon...

II.
Black-haired beauty, like the night,
stay with me till morning's light.
In shadows, Sharon, become love
until the sun lights our alcove.

Red, red lips reveal white stone:
whet my own, my passions hone.
My all in all I give to you,
in our tongues' exchange of dew.

Now all I ever ask of you
is: do with me what now you do.
In shadows, Sharon, shed your gown;
let all night's walls come tumbling down.

III.

Now I will love you long, Sharon,
as long as longing may be.

The first and third sections are all I can remember of a "Sharon" poem that I destroyed in a fit of frustration about my writing, around age 15. The middle section was a separate poem written around age 17. My "Sharon" poems were influenced by Lord Byron's famous poem "She Walks in Beauty (Like the Night)."

***

Kim Novak



While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
― Ō no Yasumaro, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
― Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

***

Rita Hayworth [1918-1987]



"Rita Hayworth gave good face ..."

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.

***

Raquel Welch



Almost
by Michael R. Burch

We had—almost—an affair.
You almost ran your fingers through my hair.
I almost kissed the almonds of your toes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

You almost contemplated using Nair
and adding henna highlights to your hair,
while I considered plucking you a Rose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

I almost found the words to say, “I care.”
We almost kissed, and yet you didn’t dare.
I heard coarse stubble grate against your hose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

You almost called me suave and debonair
(perhaps because my chest is pale and bare?).
I almost bought you edible underclothes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

I almost asked you where you kept your lair
and if by chance I might seduce you there.
You almost tweezed the redwoods from my nose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

We almost danced like Rogers and Astaire
on gliding feet; we almost waltzed on air …
until I mashed your plain, unpolished toes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

I almost was strange Sonny to your Cher.
We almost sat in love’s electric chair
to be enlightninged, till our hearts unfroze.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.

Originally published by Lighten Up Online

***

Lynda Carter



The Love Song of Shu-Sin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Darling of my heart, my belovèd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey!
Darling of my heart, my belovèd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey!

You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!
You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!

Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things for you!
This crevice you'll caress is far sweeter than honey!
In the bedchamber, dripping love’s honey,
let us enjoy the sweetest thing.
Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things for you!
This crevice you'll caress is far sweeter than honey!

Bridegroom, you will have your pleasure with me!
Speak to my mother and she will reward you;
speak to my father and he will give you gifts.
I know how to give your body pleasure—
then sleep easily, my darling, until the sun dawns.

To prove that you love me,
give me your caresses,
my Lord God, my guardian Angel and protector,
my Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil’s heart,
give me your caresses!

My place like sticky honey, touch it with your hand!
Place your hand over it like a honey-pot lid!
Cup your hand over it like a honey cup!

This is a balbale-song of Inanna.

This may be earth’s oldest love poem. It may have been written around 2000 BC, long before the Bible’s “Song of Solomon,” which had been considered to be the oldest extant love poem by some experts. My translation of "The Love Song of Shu-Sin" is one of the 10 best ancient love poems according to Literary Devices and was the first poem listed. — MRB

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.

***

Angelina Jolie



Leave Taking
by Michael R. Burch

Brilliant leaves abandon battered limbs
to waltz upon ecstatic winds
until they die.

But the barren and embittered trees,
lament the frolic of the leaves
and curse the bleak November sky ...

Now, as I watch the leaves' high flight
before the fading autumn light,
I think that, perhaps, at last I may

have learned what it means to say—
goodbye.

Several of my early poems were about aging, loss and death. Young poets can be so morbid! This poem started out as a stanza in a much longer poem, "Jessamyn's Song," that dates to around age 14-16. "Leave Taking" has been published by The Lyric, Mindful of Poetry, Silver Stork Magazine and There is Something in the Autumn (an anthology). — MRB

***

Kim Basinger



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.

This is one of my early poems but I can’t remember exactly when I wrote it. Due to the romantic style, I believe it was probably written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time. — MRB

***

Sherry Britton [1918-2008]



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys? Mere wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.



Sherry Britton was said to have "a figure to die for," and who can possibly disagree? She was a dancer who stripped to classical music, wearing tiaras and crowns, during the golden age of burlesque. If there was ever a more perfect female figure, I certainly haven't seen it and can't imagine it. Britton spent much of her time during WWII entertaining troops, for which she was made an honorary Brigadier General by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After retiring, she attended Fordham and graduated magna cum laude at the age of 63.

Squall
by Michael R. Burch

There, in that sunny arbor,
in the aureate light
filtering through the waxy leaves
of a stunted banana tree,

I felt the sudden monsoon of your wrath,
the clattery implosions
and copper-bright bursts
of the bottoms of pots and pans.

I saw your swollen goddess’s belly
wobble and heave
in pregnant indignation,
turned tail, and ran.

***

Elle Macpherson "the Body"



Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt, I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.

***

Victoria Pendleton, Cycling Champion



Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.
―Sappho, fragment 42, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

***

Kelly LeBrock



This day of chrysanthemums
I shake and comb my wet hair,
as their petals shed rain
― Hisajo Sugita, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

***

Jennifer Lawrence



The moon has long since set;
The Pleiades are gone;
Now half the night is spent,
Yet here I lie ... alone.
―Sappho, fragment 156, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

***

Jessica Alba



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.

I believe I wrote this poem around 1978 to 1980, in my late teens or early twenties. It's not based on a real experience, to my recollection. I may have been thinking about Rapunzel.

***

Megan Fox



She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.
―Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

***

Stephanie Seymour



Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch

Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows.
And there you go, skipping your way to school.
And here we are, drifting apart
like untethered balloons.

Here I am, creating "art,"
chanting in shadows,
pale as the crinoline moon,
ignoring your face.

There you go,
in diaphanous lace,
making another man’s heart swoon.
Suddenly, unthinkably, here he is,
taking my place.

***

Adriana Lima



A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!
―Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

***

Cindy Crawford



After the Deluge
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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.

***

Alicia Whitten



How Long the Night
(Anonymous Old English Lyric, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast—
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.

***

Gillian Anderson



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.

***

Brigitte Bardot



Isolde's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation—all but one:
we felt the night's deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring's urgency, midsummer's heat, fall's lash,
wild winter's ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life's great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold.
And you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.

Originally published by The Raintown Review, where it was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

***

Lola Albright



The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...

Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...

"O, let down your hair!"—we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...

was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.

***

Connie Stevens



Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets' wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:
to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,—
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs
seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun's pale tourmaline.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly

***

Myriam Fares



Myriam Fares is a Lebanese siren known as the "Queen of the Stage."

To Flower
by Michael R. Burch

When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the bacchae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.

We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?

US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)

The Unisphere 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.

Sunset
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt, who died April 4, 1998.

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.

I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for everyone

I pray tonight
the starry Light
might
surround you.

I pray
by day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere the morrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.

By clicking the hyperlinks below you can find other Visions of Beauty such as Hanaa Ben Abdesslem, Burnu Acquanetta, Isabelle Adjani, Princess Deena Al Juhani Adbulaziz of Saudi Arabia, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Nina Agdal, Malin Akerman, Hind al-Fayez, Kirstie Alley, Amal Alamuddin, Alessandra Ambrosio, Eva Amurri, Fiona Apple, Lucille Ball, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Madge Bellamy, Camilla Belle, Halle Berry, Valerie Bertinelli, Asifa Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, Juliet Binoche, Betty Blythe, Nazanin Boniadi, Candice Boucher, Carole Bouquet, Toni Braxton, Charlotte Brontë, Kelly Brook, Betty Brosmer, Florence Brudenel Bruce, Elisabetta Canalis, Claudia Cardinale, Belinda Carlisle, Phoebe Cates, Arianny Celeste, Lacey Chabert, Cyd Charisse, Helena Christensen, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Corinne Clery, Amal Ramzi Alamuddin Clooney, Susan Coffey, Jennifer Connelly, Millie Corretjer, Lotta Crabtree, Dani Crayne, Penelope Cruz, Kaley Cuoco, Miley Cyrus, Brooklyn Decker, Dorian Dennis, Ruby Dhalla, Princess Diana, Yamila Diaz-Rahi, Dido, Celine Dion, Diana Dors, Geraldine Doyle aka "Rosie the Riveter," Mackenzie Drazan, Isadora Duncan, Eliza Dushku, Anita Eckberg, Queen Elizabeth I, Tara Emad, Linda Evangelista, Alice Eve, Hoda Fadel, Dakota Fanning, Frances Farmer, Isla Fisher, Leyrn Franco, Sarah Gadon, Sara Galimberti, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau (aka Madame X), Sethrida Geagea, Meriam George, Yasmeen Ghauri, Louise Glaum, Maud Gonne, Arwa Gouda, Eva Green, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gigi Hadid, Lisa Halaby (Queen Noor of Jordan), Imaan Hammam, Mona Abou Hamze, Anne Hathaway, Alyson Hannigan, Salma Hayek, Anaya Hayes, Helene Anna Held, Tricia Helfer, Christina Hendricks, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Faith Hill, Ellen Hoog, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bianca Jagger, Michelle Jenneke, Amy Johnson, January Jones, Ashley Judd, Iris Kavka, Fanny Kemble, Miranda Kerr, Nicole Kidman, Keira Knightley, Joanna Krupa, Mila Kunis, Hedy Lamarr, Lillie Langtry, Ali Larter, Orly Levy, Soong Ching Ling, Blake Lively, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Courtney Love, Myrna Loy, Elle Macpherson, Madonna, Alma Mahler, Ayla Malik, Shlomit Malka, Jayne Mansfield, Ghislaine Maxwell, Rachel McAdams, Rose McGowan, Katherine McPhee, Leighton Meester, Marta Menegatti, Roanne Mgbemere, Alyssa Milano, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marissa Miller, Siena Miller, Antonija Misura, Kelly Monaco, Alex Morgan, Huda Naccache, Yara Naoum, Evelyn Nesbit, Olivia Newton-John, Stevie Nicks, Brigitte Nielsen, Florence Nightingale, Annie Oakley, Maureen O'Hara, Ann-Margret Olsson, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Zsa Zsa Padilla, Grace Park, Candace Parker, Dorothy Parker, Eleanor Parker, Danica Patrick, Victoria Pendleton, Sasha Pivovarova, Laura Prepon, Priscilla Pressley, Lisa Marie Pressley, Behati Prinsloo, Molly C. Quinn, Charlotte Rampling, Dorothy Revier, Christina Ricci, Molly Ringwald, Virginia Roberts, Isabella Rossellini, Lillian Russell, Sade, Eve Marie Saint, Nicole Scherzinger, Jean Seberg, Jane Seymour, Lizabeth Scott, Anne Sexton, Shanina Shaik, Shakira, Maria Sharpova, Johanna Sjoberg, Hope Solo, Belle Starr, Jan Sterling, Sharon Stone, Madeline Stowe, Candace Swanepoel, Taylor Swift, Sharon Tate, Princess Amira Al Taweel of Saudi Arabia, Dita Von Teese, Uma Thurman, Christy Turlington, Shania Twain, Kate Upton, Meryem Uzerli, Gloria Vanderbilt, Natalia Vodianova, Anne Vyalitsyna, Martha Washington, Haifa Wehbe, Mae West, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Olivia Wilde, Katarina Witt, Esther Williams, Vanessa Williams, Rachel Hurd Wood, Deborah Ann Woll, Natalie Wood, Virginia Woolf, Kim Yuna, Asifa Zardari, Zhang Ziyi

Coming soon to these pages: Casey Eastham, Julie Andrews, Adrienne Barbeau, Monica Belluci, Penelope Cruz, Linda Darnell, Doris Day, Sandra Dee, Zoey Deschanel, Francoise Dorleac, Farrah Fawcett, Jane Fonda, Olivia de Haviland, Goldie Hawn, Trippi Hendren, Lena Horne, Grace Jones, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Jones, Diane Keaton, Anna Kendric, Diane Lane, Jackie Kennedy Onasis, Deborah Kerr, Heidi Klum, Helen Mirren, Virna Lisi, Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy, Demi Moore, Debra Paget, P!nk, Jane Russell, Romy Schneider, Norma Shearer, Mallika Sherawat, Britney Spears, Charlize Theron, Sofia Vergara