Zz4 Miscellanea Zz4 Poem by Michael Burch

Mayflies
by Michael R. Burch

These standing stones have stood the test of time
but who are you -and what are you -and why?
As brief as mist, as transient, as pale...
Inconsequential mayfly!

Perhaps the thought of love inspired hope?
Do midges love? Do stars bend down to see?
Do gods commend the kindnesses of ants
to aphids? Does one eel impress the sea?

Are mayflies missed by mountains? Do the stars
regret the glowworm's stellar mimicry
the day it dies? Does not the world grind on
as if it's no great matter, not to be?

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.
And yet somehow you're everything to me.

Originally published by Clementine Unbound. Keywords/Tags: mayflies, time, life, death, mist, transient, transience, pale, stars, sea, inconsequential, everything, A. E. Housman quote



Ivy
by Michael R. Burch

'Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.' - Pablo Neruda
'They climb on my old suffering like ivy.'

Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.

Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.

Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.

Keywords/Tags: past, memory, memories, remembrance, regret, regrets, time, loss, age, aging, grief



Memento Mori
by Michael R. Burch

I found among the elms
something like the sound of your voice,
something like the aftermath of love itself
after the lightning strikes,
when the startled wind shrieks...

a gored-out wound in wood,
love's pale memento mori—
that white scar
in that first heart,
forever unhealed...

and a burled, thick knot incised
with six initials pledged
against all possible futures,
and penknife-notched below,
six edged, chipped words
that once cut deep and said...

WILL U B MINE
4 EVER?

... which now, so disconsolately answer:

- - - - - N
- EVER.



Nuclear Winter: Solo Restart
by Michael R. Burch

Out of the ashes
a flower emerges
and trembling bright sunshine
bathes its scorched stem,
but how will this flower
endure for an hour
the rigors of winter
eternal and grim
without men?

Keywords/Tags: nuclear, winter, radiation, ashes, life, reemerges, without, men, Armageddon, Apocalypse, extinction, event



My Forty-Ninth Year
by Michael R. Burch

My forty-ninth year
and the dew remembers
how brightly it glistened
encrusting September,
one frozen September
when hawks ruled the sky
and death fell on wings
with a shrill, keening cry.

My forty-ninth year,
and still I recall
the weavings and windings
of childhood, of fall...
of fall enigmatic,
resplendent, yet sere, ...
though vibrant the herald
of death drawing near.

My forty-ninth year
and often I've thought on
the course of a lifetime,
the meaning of autumn,
the cycle of autumn
with winter to come,
of aging and death
and rebirth... on and on.

Keywords/Tags: time, age, aging, seasons, autumn, winter, death, life, rebirth, cycle, resurrection, reincarnation



Joy in the Morning
by Michael R. Burch

for my grandparents George Edwin Hurt and Christine Ena Hurt

There will be joy in the morning
now this long twilight is over
and their separation has ended.
For fourteen years, he had not seen her
whom he first befriended,
then courted and married.
Let there be joy, and no mourning,
for now in his arms she is carried
over a threshold vastly sweeter.
He never lost her; she only tarried
until he was able to meet her.



Grave Thoughts
by Michael R. Burch

as a poet i'm rather subVerse-ive;
as a writer i much prefer Curse-ive.
and why not be brave
on my way to the grave
since i doubt that i'll end up reHearse-ive?

NOTE: 'Subversive, ' 'cursive' and 'rehearse-ive' are double entendres: subversive/below verse, cursive/curse, rehearsed/recited and re-hearsed (reincarnated to end up in a hearse again) .



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.



15 Seconds
by Michael R. Burch aka 'The Loyal Opposition'

Our president's sex life―atrocious!
His 'briefings'―bizarre hocus-pocus!
Politics―'a shell game.
My brief moment of fame?
It flashed by before Oprah could notice!



Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds!
by Michael R. Burch

'Bury St. Edmonds—Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, files or surf the Web, absolutely free.'—Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.)

Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let
you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet,
commune with nature, interact with hackers,
design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers.

Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs—
four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs,
so your privacy's assured (a threesome's fine)
while invited friends can scan the party line:

for Internet alerts on new positions,
the randier exploits of politicians,
exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!) .
The cybersex is great, it's guaranteed

to leave you breathless—flushed, free of disease
and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees,
the birds, the bench—this product of Our pen.
We won in with an ode to MSN.



Editor's Notes
by Michael R. Burch

Eat, drink and be merry
(tomorrow, be contrary) .

(Bitch and complain
in bad refrain,
but please—not till I'm on the plane.)

Write no poem before its time
(in your case, this means never) .
Linger over every word
(by which, I mean forever) .

By all means, read your verse aloud.
I'm sure you'll be a star
(and just as distant, when I'm gone) :
your poems are beauteous (afar) .

Keywords/Tags: editor, notes, refrain, recite, distance, distant, afar, star, poet, poems



Life Sentence
Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

is that She feels Weird.



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.)

Originally published by Lucid Rhythms



Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth's detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels' lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface...
then squanders years imagining love's the same.

Belatedly he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death's sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.

Keywords/Tags: poet, words, delving, farming, sea, moon, tides, love, metaphor, earth, roots, plot, radiance, pitchblende, uranium



Come!
by Michael R. Burch

Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?

When my womb has conformed to the chastity
your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,
will you finally be pleased that my sex was thus rendered
unpalatable, disengendered?

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so
have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow
with the approval of God that I ended a maid—
thanks to a spade?

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?



Retro
by Michael R. Burch

Now, once again,
love's a redundant pleasure,
as we laugh
at my childish fumblings
through the acres of your dress,
past your wily-wired brassiere,
through your panties' pink billows
of thrill-piqued frills...

Till I lay once again—panting redfaced
at your gayest lack of resistance,
and, later, at your milktongued
mewlings in the dark...

When you were virginal,
sweet as eucalyptus,
we did not understand
the miracle of repentance,
and I took for granted
your obsessive distance...

But now I am happily unbuttoning
that chaste dress,
unhitching that firm-latched bra,
tugging at those parachute-like panties—
the ones you would have gladly forgotten
had I not bought them in this year's size.

Originally published by Erosha



Old Pantaloons, a Chiasmus
by Michael R. Burch

Old pantaloons are soft and white,
prudent days, imprudent nights
when fingers slip through drawers to feel
that which they long most to steal.

Old panty loons are soft and white,
prudent days, imprudent nights
when fingers slip through drawers to steal
that which they long most to feel.