Prose Poems Ii

Prose Poems II by Michael R. Burch These are prose poems (is that an oxymoron?) and experimental poems... briefling by Michael R. Burch manishatched, hopsintotheMix, cavorts, hassex (quick!, spawnanewBrood!); then, likeamayfly, he’s suddenly gone: plantfood. bachelorhoodwinked by Michael R. Burch u are charming & disarming, but mostly !!!ALARMING!!! since all my resolve dissolved! u are chic as a sheikh's harem girl in the sheets, but now my bed’s not my own and my kingdom's been overthrown! escape! by michael r. burch to live among the daffodil folk . . . slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . . suddenly pop out the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . . minuscule as alice, shout yippee-yi-yee! in wee exultant glee to be leaving behind the LARGE THREE-DENALI GARAGE. escape!! u are too beautiful, too innocent, too inherently lovely to merely reflect the sun’s splendor ... too full of irresistible candor to remain silent, too delicately fawnlike for a world so violent ... come, my beautiful bambi and i will protect you ... but of course u have already been lured away by the dew-laden roses ... Fake News, Probably by Michael R. Burch The elusive Orange-Tufted Fitz-Gibbon is the rarest of creatures?rarer by far than Sasquatch and the Abominable Snowman (although they are very similar in temperament and destructive capabilities). While the common gibbon is not all that uncommon, the orange-tufted genus has been found less frequently in the fossil record than hobbits and unicorns. The Fitz-Gibbon sub-genus is all the more remarkable because it apparently believes itself to be human, and royalty, no less! Now there are rumors?admittedly hard to believe?that an Orange-Tufted Fitz-Gibbon resides in the White House and has been spotted playing with the nuclear codes while chattering incessantly about attacking China, Mexico, Iran and North Korea. We find it very hard to credit such reports. Surely American voters would not elect an oddly-colored ape with self-destructive tendencies president! Writing Verse for Free, Versus Programs for a Fee by Michael R. Burch How is writing a program like writing a poem? You start with an idea, something fresh. Almost a wish. Something effervescent, like foam flailing itself against the rocks of a lost tropical coast . . . After the idea, of course, there are complications and trepidations, as with the poem or even the foam. Who will see it, appreciate it, understand it? What will it do? Is it worth the effort, all the mad dashing and crashing about, the vortex?all that? And to what effect? Next comes the real labor, the travail, the scouring hail of things that simply don’t fit or make sense. Of course, with programming you have the density of users to fix, which is never a problem with poetry, since the users have already had their fix (this we know because they are still reading and think everything makes sense); but this is the only difference. Anyway, what’s left is the debugging, or, if you’re a poet, the hugging yourself and crying, hoping someone will hear you, so that you can shame them into reading your poem, which they will refuse, but which your mother will do if you phone, perhaps with only the tiniest little mother-of-the-poet, harried, self-righteous moan. The biggest difference between writing a program and writing a poem is simply this: if your program works, or seems to work, or almost works, or doesn’t work at all, you’re set and hugely overpaid. Made-in-the-shade-have-a-pink-lemonade-and-ticker-tape-parade OVERPAID. If your poem is about your lover and sucks up quite nicely, perhaps you’ll get laid. Perhaps. Regardless, you’ll probably see someone repossessing your furniture and TV to bring them posthaste to someone like me. The moral is this: write programs first, then whatever passes for poetry. DO YOUR SHARE; HELP END POVERTY TODAY! Veiled by Michael R. Burch She has belief without comprehension, and in her crutchwork shack she is much like us . . . Tamping the bread into edible forms, regarding her children at play with something akin to relief . . . Ignoring the towers ablaze in the distance because they are not revelations but things of glass, easily shattered . . . Aand if you were to ask her, she might say?sometimes God visits his wrath upon an impious nation for its leaders’ sins ... And we might agree: seeing her mutilations. The Evolution of Love by Michael R. Burch Love among the infinitesimal flotillas of amoebas is a dance of transient appendages, wild sails that gather in warm brine and then express one headstream as two small, divergent wakes. Minuscule voyage?love! Upon false feet, the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep toward self-immolation: two nee one. We cannot photosynthesize the sun, and so we love in darkness, till we come at last to understand: man’s spineless heart is alien to any land. We part to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears, amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ... and still we sink. The night is full of stars we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours. Have we such cells within us, bent on love to ever-changingness, so that to part is not to be the same, or even one? Is love our evolution, or a scream against the thought of separateness?a cry of strangled recognition? Love, or die, or love and die a little. Hopeful death! Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath. chrysalis by Michael R. Burch these are the days of doom u seldom leave ur room u live in perpetual gloom yet also the days of hope how to cope? u pray and u grope toward self illumination ... becoming an angel (pure love) and yet You must love Your Self If you know someone who is very caring and loving, but struggles with self worth, this may be a poem to consider. Keywords/Tags: prose poem, experimental, free verse, freedom, expression, silence, void, modern, modern psalm, rose, roses, roses are red, write, writing, world, poems, poetry