Poems About Poems Vi
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”
Copyright © Michael Burch | Year Posted 2020
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