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Poems about Poems VI The Board by Michael R. Burch Accessible rhyme is never good. The penalty is understood? soft titters from dark board rooms where the businessmen paste on their hair and, Walter Mitties, woo the Muse with reprimands of Dr. Seuss. The best book of the age sold two, or three, or four (but not to you), strange copies of the ones before, misreadings that delight the board. They sit and clap; their revenues fall trillions short of Mother Goose. Confession by Michael R. Burch What shall I say to you, to confess, words? Words that can never express anything close to what I feel? For words that seem tangible, real, when I think them become vaguely surreal when I put ink to them. And words that I thought that I knew, like "love" and "devotion" never ring true. While "passion" sounds strangely like the latest fashion or a perfume. Revision by Michael R. Burch I found a stone ablaze in a streambed, honed to a flickering jewel by all the clear, swiftly-flowing millennia of water... and as I kneeled to do it obeisance, the homage of retrieval, it occurred to me that perhaps its muddied underbelly rooted precariously in the muck and excrescence of its slow loosening upward... might not be finished, like a poem brilliantly faceted but only half revised, which sparkles seductively but is not yet worth ecstatic digging. Impotent by Michael R. Burch Tonight my pen is barren of passion, spent of poetry. I hear your name upon the rain and yet it cannot comfort me. I feel the pain of dreams that wane, of poems that falter, losing force. I write again words without end, but I cannot control their course... Tonight my pen is sullen and wants no more of poetry. I hear your voice as if a choice, but how can I respond, or flee? I feel a flame I cannot name that sends me searching for a word, but there is none not over-done, unless it's one I never heard. 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? Pointed Art by Michael R. Burch The point of art is that there is no point. (A grinning, quick-dissolving cat from Cheshire must have told you that.) The point of art is this? the hiss of Cupid’s bright bolt, should it miss, is bliss compared to Truth’s neurotic kiss. Editor's Notes by Michael R. Burch Eat, drink and be merry (tomorrow, be contrary). ( 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). The Poet's Condition by Michael R. Burch The poet's condition (bother tradition) is whining contrition. Supposedly sage, his editor knows his brain's in his toes though he would suppose to soon be the rage. His readers are sure his work's premature or merely manure, insipidly trite. His mother alone will answer the phone (perhaps with a moan) to hear him recite. 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. Artificial Smile by Michael R. Burch I’m waiting for my artificial teeth to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub between clenched molars, and yank out the grief. Mine must be art-official?zenlike Art? a disembodied, white-enameled grin of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part, the human smile becomes mock porcelain. Till in the end, the smile alone remains: titanium-based alloys undestroyed with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed us most about the corpses rectified to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified. Pity Clarity by Michael R. Burch Pity Clarity, and, if you should find her, release her from the tangled webs of dusty verse that bind her. And as for Brevity, once the soul of wit? she feels the gravity of ironic chains and massive rhetoric. And Poetry, before you may adore her, must first be freed from those who for her loveliness would whore her. Wonderland by Michael R. Burch We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test the beatific anthems of the blessed, the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s sincere religion. Magnified, the lens shot back absurd reflections of each face? a carnival-like mirror. In the space between the silver backing and the glass, we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key. We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung. In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one. Alien Nation by Michael R. Burch for J. S. S., a "Christian" poet who believes in "hell" On a lonely outpost on Mars the astronaut practices “speech” as alien to primates below as mute stars winking high, out of reach. And his words fall as bright and as chill as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro? far colder than Jesus’s words over the “fortunate” sparrow. And I understand how gentle Emily felt, when all comfort had flown, gazing into those inhuman eyes, feeling zero at the bone. Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought? For if he is human, I am not. Published as the collection “Poems about Poems VI”
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