Long Formless Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems IX

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school student and during my first two years of college.

Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of...

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Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the...

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Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within,...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand...

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This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on...

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Grey Bane and the Dark Lord


Perched on a stalagmite jutting up from the floor
Hugo was staring at length across the cave
My eyes accustomed to the glow followed his gaze
Frozen in ice was my Love whom...

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My continuing impatience problem
with smug fundamentalists
self-asserting holier than thou moral positions,
is that Christ's main point is not
Holier Than Others, like Chosen People
but Holier With Thou,
as one interdependent EarthBound BodyMind.

British King James monotheistic readers
digest at AntiLiteraturist...

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For old Star-Gazer Master Khayyam – a name like Shakespeare’s for « some » other giants - Part One

                ...

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There is an author, a creator, a maker of the LIGHT                        ...

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15.7
“You are That in which the universe appears 
like waves appearing in the ocean
You are Consciousness itself
No need to worry”


The concept being that the world is nothing but thought
Transient and therefore necessarily unreal like a...

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This is my modern English translation of Paul Valéry's poem “Le cimetière marin” (“The graveyard by the sea”). Valéry was buried in the seaside cemetery evoked in his best-known poem. From the vantage of the...

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(21st century pearly white prosthetics,
restored jaw bar wah key) 

Aye noel hunger bristle,
and when false teeth soak at night 
     in tandem with stubby facial gristle
har reckon noah kisses
 
 ...

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Silence, 
We define it as the complete absence of sound but this definition fails to capture the profundity of the subject.
As humans, our earliest existence is shrouded in obscurity and silence. 
Sperm penetrates ovum and...

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He crafted word ...
all plucked delicately
like the petals pulled for a vinok
precious and pink and pulpy
wove them, giv'n a similar grace
not for vanity, mind you ... or even title
but to stir the cockles
a soul-or-two ......

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Heart, tempestuous and wild
Delights in the dance of contrast
Although knowing it will not last
Frolics about like a playful child

Mother and Father join the play
Name of the game is separation 
Hide and seek, before their union
Foiled...

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mind that thinks
heart that feels
senses five

reflect

thoughts vary
emotions differ
senses too can ebb

yet

we are alive
in the waking state
but what of dreamless sleep

where are we then
we recall it not
yet awake from it nevertheless 

so

are we not the screen...

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“I am not the body, nor is the body my possession— 
I am Awareness itself.”

One who realizes this for certain
has no memory of things done or left undone.
There is only the Absolute.”


We now enter still...

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Insomniac attack is back or Animalistical (I'm not even sure that is a real word but F.I.(that is an anachronism that means fudge it( unless you’re an adult then you know which word fudge is...

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"50 Words for Poe: Sibylline"




Hush your mind



In ancient Persia 
Her sands
drift through your divination hands
Through Her dark mirrors,dethroned now 
Xerxes,you stand before Her naked 
Clairsentient seeps Her ancient wisdom 
Her opium gift to you



Elusive, Her...

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Hundreds quizzed and all perplexed
Not even one understood
for my answer to their only question
who is your source?

Nonetheless iam not afraid and
dared to think beyond the surreal truth
But to tell the truth of truth; when
my positron...

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The past is made of ashes stoked by the warm fires from what was once the present. They lay before me in the fireplace—heaped together, delicate and formless—with a bittersweet taste, soft color, and caustic...

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POEMS ABOUT SCIENCE: COMPUTERS

The AI Poets
by Michael R. Burch

The computer-poets stand hushed
except for the faint hum
of their efficient fans,
waiting for inspiration.

It is years now
since they were first ground
out of refurbished silicon
into rack-mounted encoders of sound.

They...

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"Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles." - Iliad, Line 1

Western dreams were born in wrath,
Overmastering all the noble aims of reason.
The bloom of youth, cut from its proper path,
Fallen wasted in full...

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Embrace this torso decaying in the wardrobe I wake up those skeletons laying in the warzone 
I make up the rules as I go along you all know so get ready ya better be set...

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The formless spider, shaking 
            coins of mourning dew off her back, 
           ...

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