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No Mark by Michael R. Burch A wave implodes, impaled upon impassive rocks... this evening the thunder of the sea is a wild music filling my ear... you are leaving and the ungrieving winds demur... telling me that nothing returns as it was before... here where you have left no mark upon this dark Heraclitean shore. Heraclitus said we can't step in the same river twice, because it won't be the same river and we won't be the same either. Everything is in a constant state of flux, thus "nothing returns / as it was before." Keywords/Tags: Sea, Ocean, Rivers, River, Heraclitus, Change, Changes, Flux, Transformation, Philosophy, Philosophical, Divorce, Parting, Separation, Break Up, Farewell, Goodbye, Water, Waves, Flow, Mark, Impression, Rocks, Beach, Shore, Tide, Tides, Thunder, Music, Wind, Winds, Emptiness, Loneliness, Alienation, Relationship, Relationships Discrimination by Michael R. Burch The meter I had sought to find, perplexed, was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose. I found it in sheet music, in long rows of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed half-centuries by archivists, unscanned. I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed— why should such tattered artistry be banned? I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads, the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ... A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks are all I’ve found this late to sell to those who’d classify free verse "expensive prose." The Harvest of Roses by Michael R. Burch I have not come for the harvest of roses? the poets' mad visions, their railing at rhyme ... for I have discerned what their writing discloses: weak words wanting meaning, beat torsioning time. Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer? images weak, too forced not to fail; gathered by poets who worship their luster, they shimmer, impendent, resplendently pale. The Forge by Michael R. Burch To at last be indestructible, a poem must first glow, almost flammable, upon a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone, then bend this way and that, and slowly cool at arms-length, something irreducible drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool of water so contrary just a hiss escapes it?water instantly a mist. It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ... And then the driven hammer falls and falls. The horses prick their ears in nearby stalls. A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles. A sound of ancient import, with the ring of honest labor, sings of fashioning. Goddess by Michael R. Burch "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." ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones, like yesteryear’s fading souvenirs, I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows. Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers, packed tightly here despite once repellent hate? Here weaponless, they stand, in this gentled state. These arms and hands, they once were so delicate! How articulately they moved! Ah me! What athletes once paced about on these padded feet? Still there’s no hope of rest for you, lost souls! Deprived of graves, forced here like slaves to occupy this overworld, unlamented ghouls! Now who’s to know who loved one orb here detained? Except for me; reader, hear my plea: I know the grandeur of the mind it contained! Yes, and I know the impulse true love would stir here, where I stand in this alien land surrounded by these husks, like a treasurer! Even in this cold, in this dust and mould I am startled by an a strange, ancient reverie, … as if this shrine to death could quicken me! One shape out of the past keeps calling me with its mystery! Still retaining its former angelic grace! And at that ecstatic sight, I am back at sea ... Swept by that current to where immortals race. O secret vessel, you gave Life its truth. It falls on me now to recall your expressive face. I turn away, abashed here by what I see: this mould was worth more than all the earth. Let me breathe fresh air and let my wild thoughts run free! What is there better in this dark Life than he who gives us a sense of man’s divinity, of his place in the universe? A man who’s both flesh and spirit—living verse! Keywords/Tags: Goethe, Schiller, German, Germany, translation, skull, bones, charnel, house, grave, funeral, souls, ghosts, spirit, flesh, dead, death, shrine, divinity, universe Shadows by Michael R. Burch Alone again as evening falls, I join gaunt shadows and we crawl up and down my room's dark walls. Up and down and up and down, against starlight?strange, mirthless clowns? we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown. We drown in shadows starker still, shadows of the somber hills, shadows of sad selves we spill, tumbling, to the ground below. There, caked in grimy, clinging snow, we flutter feebly, moaning low for days dreamed once an age ago when we weren't shadows, but were men . . . when we were men, or almost so. Ode to the Sun by Michael R. Burch Day is done... on, swift sun. Follow still your silent course. Follow your unyielding course. On, swift sun. Leave no trace of where you've been; give no hint of what you've seen. But, ever as you onward flee, touch me, O sun, touch me. Now day is done... on, swift sun. Go touch my love about her face and warm her now for my embrace, for though she sleeps so far away, where she is not, I shall not stay. Go tell her now I, too, shall come. Go on, swift sun, go on. Published by The Tucumcari Literary Review. I wrote this poem around age 18. Keywords/Tags: Ode, Romantic, Love, Sun, Time, Night, Sleep, Dreams
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