These are Romantic poems by Michael R. Burch. These poems are not necessarily about romance, although some are, but they were influenced by the Romanticism of poets like William Blake, Robert Burns, e. e. cummings, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Also by Sappho of Lesbos, who in my opinion was the first great Romantic poet and the first modern poet, a mere 2,500 years ahead of her time!
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.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Tucumcari Literary Review, Poezii (in a Romanian translation by Petru Dimofte), Borderless Journal (Singapore), The Chained Muse, Lone Stars, Grassroots Poetry, in a Soundcloud reading by Vex Darkly, and in YouTube readings by Ben W. Smith and Jasper Sole
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.
Published by The Lyric, Contemporary Sonnet, The Eclectic Muse, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Setu (India) , Victorian Violet Press and Trinacria
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 …
This is the first early poem that made me feel like a real poet. I remember writing it in the break room of the McDonald's where I worked as a high school student. I believe that was in 1975, at age 17.
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 soul 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.
I wrote "Infinity" as a teenager, around age 18. It was the second early poem that made me feel like a "real" poet. "Infinity" was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses. I was paid a whopping $10, my first cash payment.
Insurrection
by Michael R. Burch
She has become as the night—listening
for rumors of dawn—while the dew, glistening,
reminds me of her, and the wind, whistling,
lashes my cheeks with its soft chastening.
She has become as the lights—flickering
in the distance—till memories old and troubling
rise up again and demand remembering…
like peasants rebelling against a mad king.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Medusa
by Michael R. Burch
Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair—
long, ravenblack & melancholy.
Many suitors drowned there—
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.
Originally published by Grand Little Things
She bathes in silver
by Michael R. Burch
She bathes in silver,
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections…
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.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
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.”
This was the very first poem to appear in the first issue of Romantics Quarterly
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 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize
Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch
It’s not that every leaf must finally fall,
it’s just that we can never catch them all.
Piercing the Shell
by Michael R. Burch
If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we’ll discover what the heart is for.
The Peripheries of Love
by Michael R. Burch
Through waning afternoons we glide
the watery peripheries of love.
A silence, a quietude falls.
Above us—the sagging pavilions of clouds.
Below us—rough pebbles slowly worn smooth
grate in the gentle turbulence
of yesterday’s forgotten rains.
Later, the moon like a virgin
lifts her stricken white face
and the waters rise
toward some unfathomable shore.
We sway gently in the wake
of what stirs beneath us,
yet leaves us unmoved…
curiously motionless,
as though twilight might blur
the effects of proximity and distance,
as though love might be near—
as near
as a single cupped tear of resilient dew
or a long-awaited face.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
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
as 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 written around age 18 or 19. "The Communion of Sighs" has also been published as "Corona," a title I used during the coronavirus pandemic.
In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch
for George King
In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some savage ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze:
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.
Written at age 18 and published in Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly and Poetry Life & Times.
Adrift
by Michael R. Burch
I helplessly loved you
although I was lost
in the veils of your eyes,
grown blind to the cost
of my ignorant folly
—your unreadable rune—
as leashed tides obey
an indecipherable moon.
Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch
These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star …
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes—the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air—
too thin to grasp, to breathe. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure …
two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other—fumbling at love’s tether …
now separate, now distant, now together.
Originally published by Sonnet Scroll
Sex Hex
by Michael R. Burch
Love’s full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes).
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.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
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 a 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.
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
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 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
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.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Currents
by Michael R. Burch
How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the motion creation stirs within?
Originally published by The Lyric
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.
Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch
Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance …
Quiescent unions … thoughts of bliss, of hope …
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars …
like childhood’s long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions … slip and bra …
Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.
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.
Passionate One
by Michael R. Burch
Love of my life,
light of my morning―
arise, brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.
Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven―
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.
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.
Published by The Eclectic Muse and The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003
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.
The pros seem to like my Baudelaire translations, since it's been used by porn and escort sites!
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.
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?
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 …
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.
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters,
deep and dark and still …
all men have passed this way,
or will.
Charon 2001
by Michael R. Burch
I, too, have stood—paralyzed at the helm
watching onrushing, inevitable disaster.
I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster
damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film
becomes mucous-insulate. Always, thereafter
living in darkness, bright things overwhelm.
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
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.
Originally published by The Lyric
In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch
The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.
If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax—their circumstance
as humble as it is?—or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?
Originally published by The Eclectic Muse, then by The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003
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.
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.
Defenses
by Michael R. Burch
Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.
Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.
Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch
I never touched you—
that was my mistake.
Deep within,
I still feel the ache.
Can an unformed thing
eternally break?
Now, from a great distance,
I see you again
not as you are now,
but as you were then—
eternally present
and Sovereign.
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.
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."
To Flower
by Michael R. Burch
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
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.)
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.
R.I.P.
by Michael R. Burch
When I am lain to rest
and my soul is no longer intact,
but dissolving, like a sunset
diminishing to the west …
and when at last
before His throne my past
is put to test
and the demons and the Beast
await to feast
on any morsel downward cast,
while the vapors of impermanence
cling, smelling of damask …
then let me go, and do not weep
if I am left to sleep,
to sleep and never dream, or dream, perhaps,
only a little longer and more deep.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly. This is a poem from my "Romantic Period" that was written in my late teens.
The Octopi Jars
by Michael R. Burch
Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels'…
you are beyond all hope
of salvage now…
and yet I would pause,
no fear!,
to once touch
your arcane beaks…
I, more alien than you
to this imprismed world,
notice, most of all,
the scratches on the inside surfaces
of your hermetic cells …
and I remember documentaries
of albino Houdinis
slipping like wraiths
over the walls of shipboard aquariums,
slipping down decks'
brine-lubricated planks,
spilling jubilantly into the dark sea,
parachuting through clouds of pallid ammonia…
and I know now in life you were unlike me:
your imprisonment was never voluntary.
Published by Triplopia and The Poetic Musings of Sam Hudson
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.
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.
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?
I believe I wrote this poem in my late teens, during my "Romantic Period."
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. In addition to having similar titles, they have similar "staircase" indention styles. According to my notes, I modified "Moon Lake" two years later in 1978, at which time the poem was substantially finished. I then modified "Tomb Lake" in 1981, but must have forgotten about it, because I don't show that I ever submitted the poem for publication or did anything with it for more than 40 years.
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?
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.
The Stake
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
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.
Originally published by The Lyric
The One and Only
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
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.
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.
Originally published by The Lyric
Sappho’s Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth and 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.
I wrote this page around age 21 and later dedicated it to my wife Beth and son Jeremy, as if the poem had been written for him, from her perspective.
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.
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
for Richard Moore
1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss—
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here …
2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves you famished;
earthly tides
soon call you back—
one long, descending glide …
3.
Disgruntledly you grope dirt shores for orts
you pull like mucous ropes
from shells’ bright forts …
You eye the teeming world
with nervous darts—
this way and that …
Contentious, shrewd, you scan—
the sky, in hope,
the earth, distrusting man.
Originally published by Able Muse
Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch
The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed—
why should such tattered artistry be banned?
I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs …
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."
Originally published by The Chariton Review
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.
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.
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.
Righteous
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Come to me tonight
in the twilight, O, and the full moon rising,
spectral and ancient, will mutter a prayer.
Gather your hair
and pin it up, knowing
I will release it a moment anon.
We are not one,
nor is there a scripture
to sanctify nights you might spend in my arms,
but the swarms
of stars revolving above us
revel tonight, the most ardent of lovers.
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!
I believe I wrote the original version of this poem in my early twenties.
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.
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.
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 …
I wrote this poem as a teenager, circa age 18 in 1976, then revised it slightly in 1982 and 1984. It was originally published by Trinacria, then set to music in a Martins Garden SoundCloud musical interpretation. Trinacria editor Joe Salemi called it a "lovely poem."
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.
Haunted
by Michael R. Burch
Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.
Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.
Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.
Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.
Published by Romantics Quarterly
Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch
for Anaïs Vionet
Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather’s house—
actually his third new wife’s,
in her daughter’s bedroom
—one interminable summer
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas …
Lacking the words to describe
ah!, those pearl-luminous estuaries—
strange omens, incoherent nights.
Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendors.
Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser’s fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and “civilization.”
Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander’s corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey.
Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant.
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.
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.
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.
And if her heirloom flesh grows increasingly frayed;
if the patchwork quilt seems increasingly ragged;
if she wakes to each pale, blotched dawn, haggard and afraid,
with thin red threads of dry spittle blood clinging to her like webbing,
while her huddled child, betrayed, lies sobbing in a corner …
She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; …
only the nervously pecking needle
pricks her to "life," again and again.
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.
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.
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.
Regret
by Michael R. Burch
Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear …
once starlight
languished
in your hair …
a shining there
as brief
as rare.
Regret …
a pain
I chose to bear …
unleash
the torrent
of your hair …
and show me
once again—
how rare.
This Distance Between Us
by Michael R. Burch
This distance between us,
this vast gulf of remembrance
void of understanding,
sets us apart.
You are so far,
lost child,
weeping for consolation,
so dear to my heart.
Once near to my heart,
though seldom to touch,
now you are foreign,
now you grow faint …
like the wayward light of a vagabond star—
obscure, enigmatic.
Is the reveling gypsy
becoming a saint?
Now loneliness,
a broad expanse
—barren, forbidding—
whispers my name.
I, too, am a traveler
down this dark path,
unsure of the footing,
cursing the rain.
I, too, have felt pain,
pain and the ache of passion unfulfilled,
remorse, grief, and all the terrors
of the night.
And how very black
and how bleak my despair …
O, where are you, where are you
shining tonight?
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
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.
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.
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?
Published by The Lyric, La Luce Che Non Moure (Italy), The Chained Muse, Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), Glass Facets of Poetry, Better Than Starbucks and Trinacria
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.
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.
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.
BeMused
by Michael R. Burch
You will find in her hair
a fragrance more severe
than camphor.
You will find in her dress
no hint of a sweet
distractedness.
You will find in her eyes
horn-owlish and wise
no metaphors
of love, but only reflections
of books, books, books.
If you like Her looks,
meet me in the long rows,
between Poetry and Prose,
where we’ll win Her favor
with jousts, and savor
the wine of Her hair,
the shimmery wantonness
of Her rich-satined dress;
where we’ll press
our good deeds upon Her, save Her
from every distress,
for the lovingkindness
of Her matchless eyes
and all the suns of Her tongues.
We were young,
once,
unlearned and unwise …
but, O, to be young
when love comes disguised
with the whisper of silks
and idolatry,
and even the childish tongue claims
the intimacy of Poetry.
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
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
(for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric,
who was a friend and mentor to many poets, and
a fine poet in his own right)
The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true …
but came almost as static—background noise,
a song out of the cosmos no one hears,
or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys,
lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared.
They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks
electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke
of words poured from their overheated hearts.
The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope …
You will not find them here; they blew away—
in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung
by fingertips to satellites. They strayed
too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young,
their words are with us still. Devout and fey,
they wink at us whenever skies are gray.
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 fail to 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!
This is another heretical poem. It sort of reverses my childhood poem "Am I."
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 …
First and Last
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
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.
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.
Originally published by Poet Lore
What Works
by Michael R. Burch
for David Gosselin
What works—
hewn stone;
the blush the iris shows the sun;
the lilac’s pale-remembered bloom.
The frenzied fly: mad-lively, gay,
as seconds tick his time away,
his sentence—one brief day in May,
a period. And then decay.
A frenzied rhyme’s mad tip-toed time,
a ballad’s languid as the sea,
seek, striving—immortality.
When gloss peels off, what works will shine.
When polish fades, what works will gleam.
When intellectual prattle pales,
the dying buzzing in the hive
of tedious incessant bees,
what works will soar and wheel and dive
and milk all honey, leap and thrive,
and teach the pallid poem to seethe.
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.
NOTE: The poem above was written either in high school or my first two years of college because it appeared in the 1979 issue of my college literary journal, Homespun.
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.
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.
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!
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
for Christy
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.
This is a love poem I wrote in my late teens for a girl I had a serious crush on.
Mare Clausum
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.
Originally published by Penny Dreadful
NOTE: Mare Clausum is Latin for "Closed Sea."
Come Down
by Michael R. Burch
for Harold Bloom
Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour …
and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.
Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
now brittle and brown
as fierce northern gales sever.
Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.
NOTE: I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone.
Rant: The Elite
by Michael R. Burch
When I heard Harold Bloom unsurprisingly say:
Poetry is necessarily difficult. It is our elitist art …
I felt a small suspicious thrill. After all, sweetheart,
isn’t this who we are? Aren’t we obviously better,
and certainly fairer and taller, than they are?
Though once I found Ezra Pound
perhaps a smidgen too profound,
perhaps a bit over-fond of Benito
and the advantages of fascism
to be taken ad finem, like high tea
with a pure white spot of intellectualism
and an artificial sweetener, calorie-free.
I know! I know! Politics has nothing to do with art
And it tempts us so to be elite, to stand apart …
but somehow the word just doesn’t ring true,
echoing effetely away—the distance from me to you.
Of course, politics has nothing to do with art,
but sometimes art has everything to do with becoming elite,
with climbing the cultural ladder, with being able to meet
someone more Exalted than you, who can demonstrate how to fart
so that everyone below claims one’s odor is sweet.
You had to be there! We were falling apart
with gratitude! We saw him! We wept at his feet!
Though someone will always be far, far above you, clouding your air,
gazing down at you with a look of wondering despair.
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 Nabokov's wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two …
And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched 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.
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
Currents
by Michael R. Burch
How can I write and not be true
to the rhythms welling within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not rock with the clockwork shock of tide,
the motion creation stirs within?
How shall I know, or soon decide
if rhythm has meaning, if heartbeats ring true?
Should I lie like impostors, elide?
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.
She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
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 the sphingid's are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.
The sphingid gets its name from the Sphinx and is commonly called the sphinx moth.
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
Poetry
by Michael R. Burch
Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found you—shivering, bare.
They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both your eyes
which, once cerulean as Gogh's skies,
had leapt at dawn to wild surmise
of what was waiting there.
Your back was bent with untold care;
there savage whips had left cruel scars
as though the wounds of countless wars;
your bones were broken with the force
with which they'd lashed your flesh so fair.
You once were loveliest of all.
So many nights you held in thrall
a scrawny lad who heard your call
from where dawn’s milling showers fall—
pale meteors through sapphire air.
I learned the eagerness of youth
to temper for a lover’s touch;
I felt you, tremulant, reprove
each time I fumbled over-much.
Your merest word became my prayer.
You took me gently by the hand
and led my steps from child to man;
now I look back, remember when
you shone, and cannot understand
why now, tonight, you bear their brand.
***
I will take and cradle you in my arms,
remindful of the gentle charms
you showed me once, of yore;
and I will lead you from your cell tonight
back into that incandescent light
which flows out of the core
of a sun whose robes you wore.
And I will wash your feet with tears
for all those blissful years …
my love, whom I adore.
Originally published by The Lyric
I consider "Poetry" to be my Ars Poetica. However, the poem has been misinterpreted to mean that the poet is claiming to be the "savior" of Poetry. The poem never claims that the poet is a savior or hero. The poem only says that when Poetry is finally freed, in some unspecified way, the poet will be there to take her hand and watch her glory be revealed once again to the world. The poet expresses love for Poetry, and gratitude, but never claims to have done anything himself. This is a poem of love, compassion and reverence. Poetry is the Messiah, not the poet. The poet washes her feet with his tears, like Mary Magdalene.
Warming Her Pearls
for Beth
Warming her pearls, her breasts
gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund …
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.
Originally published by Erosha
She Spoke
for Beth
She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.
She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.
And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
Let Me Give Her Diamonds
for Beth
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.
Are You the Thief
for Beth
When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,
when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath …
tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?
Originally published as "Baring Pale Flesh" by Poetic License/Monumental Moments