Best Editions Poems

The room is still,
Quiet but for wind and rain
Making music on the windows.
Empty but for endless shelves
Of leather-bound volumes -
The first editions you loved so much.
The desk is weathered, coated
In a film of dust.
The chair is old and worn,
Tucked in just where you left it.
I...

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BANISH ME TO THE BOOKSHOP

Chain me, so I can roam. Lock me away in this bower.
Banish me to the bookshop - i’ll enjoy this affair for hours!

First editions recline behind smudge-proof glass.
Lock-and-key lick of lips, but I can’t afford the brass

ring, the covet of unopened...

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Ah, the glorious damned winter
and the inviting  
gray chill in the air.
I meander 
ever 
so
slowly 
past lawns
strewn 
with a cluttered array
of pagan snow zombies -
staring blankly,
as I obliterate pint-sized
snow angels 
failing to don halos
that could have easily been
brush stroked with 
da Vinci's golden teardrops.

(Impoverished...

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Verbum Caro, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s Verbum Caro by T. Wignesan

Glory to the resuscitated Lord
Incarnate cry of the Flesh becoming Verb
The body is not the place of death
Where the soul feels alright despite revulsion

He who holds his nose
While passing his house full of droppings
Whatever be...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s A Faithful Private 7 with excerpts from “Notes on Poetics” by T. Wignesan

(Note: With this post, I bring to a close EM’s pamphlet collection: Faithful Private, GENERA editions by Colin Simms, issue 13 (Place:?), 1976, n.p. Translation of No. 6: “Courbet,...

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Epigrams by Michael R. Burch

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity 
are the whole of it.
—Michael R. Burch

To write an epigram, cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
—Michael R. Burch

Conformists of a feather
flock together.
—Michael R. Burch

If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde,...

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Epigrams

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.

Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael...

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We came to your home
Jack
Hidden amongst bosom 
hills and armies of trees 
past the State gates 
who finally admitted 
us entry to your tomb
they keep you here 
Jack 
in memory, first editions 
your wife spent years 
here alone, your phantom 
haunting the halls 
the woods
her...

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The Big Bang Theory and others devised.
Professors armed with latest editions.
Soon, teach as facts; oh, faith of youth revised.
Inspired, common suppositions.
Biblical creation too soon capsized.
Unaware, youth accepts false traditions.
Half-truths and questions upon young minds flay. 
It irks me;  I saw my faithfulness stray.

Had God...

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upstairs window
the fields looking as
covered with snow in the night
thinking of all and nothing
but the moonlit fields

my zen books,
peter pauper press editions,
yellow with age now
showing my steadfast love
for no-mind even now...

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Oh, my faces and image of mine,
They aren’t having some likeness of yours
I’m not prince I’m not master of mine
with the oil or gold, it’s not loss.
I won’t freeze on the pictures of glance
in editions of fashion and vogue 
Royal parties won’t take off the...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s A Faithful Private - 1 by T. Wignesan

                                ...

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          Corpus

                     in words 
designs 
          ...

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State of the Art (IV)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



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...

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A second hand book shop watches the Sunday rain
beat against a resentful pavement. Its second hand
door opens up its second hand world to second
hand people, carrying first class money.

The newly welcomed, carrying in second hand rain,
congeal into groups of mildly interested beings.
And a dedicated few...

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