Epigrams 4 Poem by Michael Burch

EPIGRAMS IV

Sex Hex
by Michael R. Burch

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



Love
by Michael R. Burch

Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.



Dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, Laura and all good mothers

Bring your particular strength
to the strange nightmarish fray:
wrap up your cherished ones
in the golden light of day.



Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch

Abbesses'
recesses
are not for excesses!



Here and Hereafter
by Michael R. Burch

Life's saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...
what do we know of love,
or duty?

Originally published by The HyperTexts



Housman was right...
by Michael R. Burch

It's true that life's not much to lose,
so why not hang out on a cloud?
It's just that the passage is hard
and the objections loud.



Not Elves, Exactly
by Michael R. Burch

Something there is that likes a wall,
that likes it spiked and likes it tall,
that likes its pikes' sharp rows of teeth
and doesn't mind its victims' grief
(wherever they come from, far or wide)
as long as they fall on the other side.



Self-ish
by Michael R. Burch

Let's not pretend we 'understand' other elves
As long as we remain mysteries to ourselves.



Long Division
by Michael R. Burch

All things become one
Through death's long division
And perfect precision.



Laughter's Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.
Because death is a mystery, we cry
when one is gone, our numbering thrown awry.



Piecemeal
by Michael R. Burch

And so it begins—the ending.
The narrowing veins, the soft tissues rending.
Your final solution is pending.



Meal Deal
by Michael R. Burch

Love is a splendid ideal
(at least till it costs us a meal) .



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd! …
Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Why the Kid Gloves Came Off
by Michael R. Burch
for Lemuel Ibbotson

It's hard to be a man of taste
in such a waste:
hence the lambaste.



Redefinitions

Faith: falling into the same old claptrap.—Michael R. Burch
Religion: the ties that blind.—Michael R. Burch
Trickle down economics: an especially pungent golden shower.—Michael R. Burch
Baseball: lots of spittin' mixed with some hittin'.—Michael R. Burch



Early Warning System
by Michael R. Burch

A hairy thick troglodyte, Mary,
squinched dingles excessively airy.
To her family's deep shame,
their condo became
the first cave to employ a canary!



Descent
by Michael R. Burch

I have listened to the rain all this morning
and it has a certain gravity,
as if it knows its destination,
perhaps even its particular destiny.
I do not believe mine is to be uplifted,
although I, too, may be flung precipitously
and from a great height.



Reading between the lines
by Michael R. Burch

Who could have read so much, as we?
Having the time, but not the inclination,
TV has become our philosophy,
sheer boredom, our recreation.



Two-Liners

Fierce ancient skalds summoned verse from their guts;
today's genteel poets prefer modern ruts.
—Michael R. Burch

Q: What do you call it when a Man-Baby takes over the American government?
A: Coup d'Tot.
—Michael R. Burch



Fleet Tweet: Apologies to Shakespeare
—@mikerburch

a tweet
by any other name
would be as fleet!

Fleet Tweet II: Further Apologies to Shakespeare
—@mikerburch

Remember, doggonit,
heroic verse crowns the Shakespearean sonnet!
So if you intend to write a couplet,
please do it on the doublet!



faith(less) a coronavirus poem
by Michael R. Burch

Those who believed
and Those who misled
lie together at last
in the same narrow bed

and if god loved Them more
for Their strange lack of doubt,
he kept it well hidden
till he snuffed Them out.



Habeas Corpus
by Michael R. Burch

from 'Songs of the Antinatalist'

I have the results of your DNA analysis.
If you want to have children, this may induce paralysis.
I wish I had good news, but how can I lie?
Any offspring you have are guaranteed to die.
It wouldn't be fair—I'm sure you'll agree—
to sentence kids to death, so I'll waive my fee.



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.



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!




Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch

after William Blake

O little yellow flower
like a star...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!



The State of the Art (?)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has passion been coerced?

Shall poetry fade slowly,
like Latin, to past tense?
Are the bards too high and holy,
or their readers merely dense?



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.



Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

'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.'



Twice
by Michael R. Burch

Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days

when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.

But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:

rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.



fog
by Michael R. Burch

ur just a bit of fluff
drifting out over the ocean,
unleashing an atom of rain,
causing a minor commotion,
for which u expect awesome GODS
to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION!
... but ur just a smidgen of mist
unlikely to be missed...
where did u get the notion?



Your e-Verse
by Michael R. Burch


I cannot understand a word you've said
(and this despite an adequate I.Q.) :
it must be some exotic new haiku
combined with Latin suddenly undead.

It must be hieroglyphics mixed with Greek.
Have Pound and T. S. Eliot been cloned?
Perhaps you wrote it on the pot, so stoned
you spelled it backwards, just to be oblique.

I think you're very funny—so, 'Yuk! Yuk! '
I know you must be kidding; didn't we
write crap like this and call it 'poetry, '
a form of verbal exercise, P.E.,
in kindergarten, when we ran 'amuck? '

Oh, sorry, I forgot to 'make it new.'
Perhaps I still can learn a thing or two
from someone tres original, like you.



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! '



Starting from Scratch with Ol' Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don't bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all tied up
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I'm quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You're one of the Devil's minions.



Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch

for and after William Blake

I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.

I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked

nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.

II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,

the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.

III.
Among the children's
daisy faces
and in the women's
frowsy laces,

I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,

were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild

I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.



Published as the collection 'Epigrams IV'

Keywords/Tags: Epigram, Epigrams, life, death, grave, funeral, sex, sexuality, relationships, god, religion, Christianity, Bible, faith, tweet, tweets