Long Furnaces Poems

oh youth in all its callow shades
               is from our hope, precisely made
        ...

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They are conflicted haunted images from black and white photos of America 1933, when there was no place left to run. 

It was the hunger of people lined up, scraps of food ladled out, the...

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(Apropos of Black Poetic Griots)

We may not be deemed apostolic recorders
But we poets, guided with divine wisdom, are
The lay scribes thereof in the chronicling of
Our life’s sojourn in the shadowing times
we spend here on this...

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Life is precious , therefore he cultivates it
     it's vastness among all his compositions
   they flow like an aria from many instruments
       ...

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Khatia Buniatishvili's Tour de Force of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto N° 1 in B-flat minor on Zubin Mehta's 80th Birthday*

… the caged-beast terrified defying the donderbus blasts vollies of muskets and cannons heralding the charge cavernous...

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When your befuddled mind
Forsakes upon the ragged edge
Of swirling darkness;
Where eternal night awaits
To sate upon purest innocence
Besides an open grave!
When the gravity of your perils
Be foully whispered within
Dismayed
And abject earshot;
Where salvation for despairing souls
Be so...

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Speak!
by Faiz Ahmad Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Speak, while your lips are still free.
Speak, while your tongue remains yours.
Speak, while you're still standing upright.
Speak, while your spirit has force.

See how, in the bright-sparking forge,...

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K167 and K168 of CANTO XVII of the THIRUK-KURAL with Translations and Commentary

[Here, again, in these two couplets Thiru-Valluvar is having the time of his life making his followers dread the consequences of what he...

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In the twilight of my melancholy existence, love savors its bravery, like a vulture allergic to the suspicious aspects of ephemeral glamour, in a final macabre choreography.
 On the edge of the precipice of my...

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Dear sister I have been mistreated but surely not defeated
The fit are unruly and those who rule unfit to wear their minds along their brow

Pitted and fallen are we claimed she
Uproot all the timid, surely...

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At the cradle of my nightmares,
My future is a horror film,
I track my ghosts,
Like a junkie in withdrawal.
I am a true clandestine calamity,
A mass grave of silent suffering,
A candelabra of pain soothed by dirty money,
I...

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Years P.M. (Pre-MacDonald's).
Woolworths.  Huge chain.  (Chains break with age.)
Elevated trains.  All over New York.
Five and Dimes.  That was what you paid.
Ceaserian birth.  In Rome?
10 cent comic books.
10 cent ice cream...

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It’s the fourth - fireworks; the fizzle of stars.
The colorful display of power of the people —
waving of the red, white and blue; freedom
rings, slowly, building to a crescendo
to include all the melting pot called...

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The din of darkness,
 The cacophony of impostors,
 The symphony of ignorance,
 The decadence of progress,
 Colonial heritage,
 The empire of the pharaohs,
 The agony of the pyramids,
 The ordeal of free men,
 The heat...

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All things you have made fine      in their season
the tendernesses of Love   the razor of our reason
hollowed out the canyons    where the waters fall
celestial lights...

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Peace is though difficult 
Yet not impossible to uphold,
All the kings of the states 
Must remain self-concerned,
Without poking noses 
Into the affairs of others,
Curbing cupidity 
To expand the territories,
Subjugate the nations of the world,
Enforce the...

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My life is a nightmare that fate embellishes with scenes of horror.
I was born in the bowels of misery, my heart crushed by rage and terror.
I know the stench of battlefields, the taste of a...

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If I had luck with a guitar
I would pluck you a gentle tune 
If I had been blessed with a soothing voice
I would play you the sweetest melody

I would carve you an effigy of love
If...

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it is one of those dinners
leaning in the doorway, she is working
to her, this is a simple one
spaghetti ala Carbonara
she explains it to me as she processes
pancetta is meat from pork belly 
salt-cured in black...

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Strong are her hands,
Darkened by summer’s touch,
Now pale like ghosts in twilight's hush.

Could these be her hands?
Did they dip in scented creams
By tranquil pleasure pools?
Did they bathe in moonlit beams
In serenity’s quiet rules?

Did they drink...

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from his rock he  sends out a deadly summons
  that calls  
                    ...

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Deep in the woods, nearly three miles back,
far from New York with its tall glass and steel,
on a low ridge that has no proper name,
I stumble on something that feels surreal.

An old-growth forest grove, somehow...

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Fire And Rain
                            
Fire and rain - two...

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I've wandered many islands,
    Seen countless shades of blue.
But none compare, my friends, to where
    The glass and lace ring true.
Let me paint you a picture,
   ...

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In the dirty hands of poverty,
 Scavengers of the Republic of Enlightenment
 Quench their thirst under the eyelids of the proletarians.
 A sinecure of hard drugs
 To silence the lamentations of these birds of ill...

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