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.
NOTE: These are poems I have written for, or after, other poets. Keywords/Tags: poet, poets, poetry, writing, art, work, works, rhyme, ballad, immortality, passion, emotion, desire
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.
Autumn Day by Rainer Maria Rilke translation by Michael R. Burch
Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go. Lay your long shadows over the sundials and over the meadows, let the free winds blow. Command the late fruits to fatten and shine; O, grant them another Mediterranean hour! Urge them to completion, and with power convey final sweetness to the heavy wine. Who has no house now, never will build one. Who's alone now, shall continue alone; he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends, and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down, restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.
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.
I have not come for the harvest of roses― the poets' mad visions, their railing at rhyme ... for I have discerned what their writing discloses: weak words wanting meaning, beat torsioning time.
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer― images weak, too forced not to fail; gathered by poets who worship their luster, they shimmer, impendent, resplendently pale.
Originally published by The Raintown Review when Harvey Stanbrough was the editor
It is hard to understand or accept mortality― such an alien concept: not to be. Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion, or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea
boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.
And so we abide . . . even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink, it is best not to drink (or, drinking, certainly not to think).
A week before the Armistice, you died. They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s, then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie between two privates, sacrificed like Christ to politics, your poetry unknown except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months with Gaukroger beside you in the trench, dismembered, as you babbled, as the stench of gangrene filled your nostrils, till you clenched your broken heart together and the fist began to pulse with life, so close to death. Or was it at Craiglockhart, in the care of “ergotherapists” that you sensed life is only in the work, and made despair a thing that Yeats despised, but also breath, a mouthful’s merest air, inspired less than wrested from you, and which we confess we only vaguely breathe: the troubled air that even Sassoon failed to share, because a man in pieces is not healed by gauze, and breath’s transparent, unless we believe the words are true despite their lack of weight and float to us like chlorine―scalding eyes, and lungs, and hearts. Your words revealed the fate of boys who retched up life here, gagged on lies.
Published by The Chariton Review, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Rogue Scholars, Romantics Quarterly, Mindful of Poetry, Famous Poets and Poems, Poetry Life & Times, Other Voices International
I liked the first passage of her poem―where it led
(though not nearly enough to retract what I said.) Now the book propped up here flutters, scarcely half read. It will keep. Before sleep, let me read yours instead.
There's something like love in the rhythms of night ―in the throb of streets where the late workers drone, in the sounds that attend each day’s sad, squalid end― that reminds us: till death we are never alone.
So we write from the hearts that will fail us anon, words in red truly bled though they cannot reveal whence they came, who they're for. And the tap at the door goes unanswered. We write, for there is nothing more than a verse, than a song, than this chant of the blessed: If these words be my sins, let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant; I rescind all my vows! Write till sleep: it’s the leap only Talent allows.
(for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric, who was a friend and mentor to many poets, and a fine poet in his own right)
The stars were always there, too-bright cliches: scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew as baffled poets winged keyed kites�"amazed, in dream of shocks that suddenly came true . . .
but came almost as static�"background noise, a song out of the cosmos no one hears, or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys, lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared.
They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke of words poured from their overheated hearts. The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope . . .
You will not find them here; they blew away�" in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung by fingertips to satellites. They strayed too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young,
their words are with us still. Devout and fey, they wink at us whenever skies are gray.
Originally published by The Lyric
The Pain of Love
by Michael R. Burch
for T.M.
The pain of love is this: the parting after the kiss;
the train steaming from the station whistling abnegation;
each interstate’s bleak white bar that vanishes under your car;
every hour and flower and friend that cannot be saved in the end;
dear things of immeasurable cost ... now all irretrievably lost.
Note: The title “The Pain of Love” was suggested by an interview with Little Richard, then eighty years old, in Rolling Stone. He said that someone should create a song called “The Pain of Love.” I have always found the departure platforms of railway stations and the vanishing broken white bars of highway dividing lines depressing.
Lean Harvests by Michael R. Burch
for T.M.
the trees are shedding their leaves again: another summer is over. the Christians are praising their Maker again, but not the disconsolate plover: i hear him berate the fate of his mate; he claims God is no body’s lover.
Published by The Rotary Dial and Angle
The Heimlich Limerick by Michael R. Burch
for T. M.
The sanest of poets once wrote: "Friend, why be a sheep or a goat? Why follow the leader or be a blind breeder?" But almost no one took note.
Peace Prayer by Michael R. Burch
for Jim Dunlap
Be calm. Be still. Be silent, content.
Be one with the buffalo cropping the grass to a safer height.
Seek the composure of the great depths, barely moved by exterior storms.
Lift your face to the dawning light; feel how it warms.
And be calm. Be still. Be silent, content.
Published by Hibiscus (India), Ethos Literary Journal and Mad Hatter
Songstress by Michael R. Burch
for Nadia Anjuman
Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart must flutter wildly, O, and always sing against the pressing darkness: all it knows until at last it feels the numbing sting of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes, imposing night on one who clearly saw. Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw― envenomed, fanged―could swallow, whole, your Awe.
And yet it was not death so much as you who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing! But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren! Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.
A poet like Nadia Anjuman can be likened to a caged bird, deprived of flight, who somehow finds it within herself to sing of love and beauty. But when the world robs her of both flight and song, what is left for her but to leave, bereaving it and us of herself and her song?
Hearthside by Michael R. Burch
“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” ― W. B. Yeats
For all that we professed of love, we knew this night would come, that we would bend alone to tend wan fires’ dimming bars―the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew an eerie presence on encrusted logs we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.
The books that line these close, familiar shelves loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs, too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park, as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.
I do not know the words for easy bliss and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark, long-unenamored pen and will it: Move. I loved you more than words, so let words prove.
This sonnet is written from the perspective of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats in his loose translation or interpretation of the Pierre de Ronsard sonnet “When You Are Old.” The aging Yeats thinks of his Muse and the love of his life, the fiery Irish revolutionary Maude Gonne. As he seeks to warm himself by a fire conjured from ice-encrusted logs, he imagines her doing the same. Although Yeats had insisted that he wasn’t happy without Gonne, she said otherwise: “Oh yes, you are, because you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you!”
Ali’s Song by Michael R. Burch
They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so. They say it has a wild, unearthly glow. A man can be more beautiful, more wild. I flung their medal to the river, child. I flung their medal to the river, child.
They hung their coin around my neck; they made my name a bridle, “called a spade a spade.” They say their gold is pure. I say defiled. I flung their slave’s name to the river, child. I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
Ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong that never called me n****r, did me wrong. A man can’t be lukewarm, ’cause God hates mild. I flung their notice to the river, child. I flung their notice to the river, child.
They said, “Now here’s your bullet and your gun, and there’s your cell: we’re waiting, you choose one.” At first I groaned aloud, but then I smiled. I gave their “future” to the river, child. I gave their “future” to the river, child.
My face reflected up, dark bronze like gold, a coin God stamped in His own image―BOLD.
My blood boiled like that river―strange and wild.
I died to hate in that dark river, child, Come, be reborn in this bright river, child.
Originally published by Black Medina
NOTE: Cassius Clay, who converted to Islam and changed his “slave name” to Muhammad Ali, said that he threw his Olympic boxing gold medal into the Ohio River. Confirming his account, the medal was recovered by Robert Bradbury and his wife Pattie in 2014 during the Annual Ohio River Sweep, and the Ali family paid them $200,000 to regain possession of the medal. When drafted during the Vietnamese War, Ali refused to serve, reputedly saying: “I ain't got no quarrel with those Viet Cong; no Vietnamese ever called me a n****r.” The notice mentioned in my poem is Ali's draft notice, which metaphorically gets tossed into the river along with his slave name. I was told through the grapevine that this poem appeared in Farsi in an Iranian publication called Bashgah. ―Michael R. Burch
Sweet Rose of Virtue by William Dunbar [1460-1525] loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness, delightful lily of youthful wantonness, richest in bounty and in beauty clear and in every virtue that is held most dear― except only that death is merciless.
Into your garden, today, I followed you; there I saw flowers of freshest hue, both white and red, delightful to see, and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently― yet everywhere, no odor but rue.
I fear that March with his last arctic blast has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast, whose piteous death does my heart such pain that, if I could, I would compose her roots again― so comforting her bowering leaves have been.
Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor by Michael R. Burch
After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs, Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs: “Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!” (His name, let’s assume, was, er . . . Percival Queemly.)
“Expel me! Expel me!”―She flashes her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise, for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name . . . Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!”
“Continue to live here―carouse as you please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees. Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose: “I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.” (Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.)
The Poet by Michael R. Burch
He walks to the sink, takes out his teeth, rubs his gums. He tries not to think.
In the mirror, on the mantle, Time―the silver measure―
does not stare or blink, but in a wrinkle flutters, in a hand upon the brink of a second, hovers.
Through a mousehole, something scuttles on restless incessant feet.
There is no link
between life and death or from a fading past to a more tenuous present that a word uncovers in the great wink.
The white foam lathers at his thin pink stretched neck like a tightening noose. He tries not to think.
Ah! Sunflower by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake
O little yellow flower like a star ... how beautiful, how wonderful we are!
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Subscribe
Flag Writing