Long Postcards Poems

Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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The waters trickling under the
crossing bridge grows ever dormant

And on the one and only discernable
route into this village languishing beneath
there is a old rickety swinging sign that says

" Welcome to Eden "

We trust you enjoy...

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I was seventeen, had one year left of high school and a boyfriend I didn't even love. It was the end of summer, and I was on the verge of a night indelible
because it was...

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I am the girl who loves too much.
The one who bakes brownies instead of saying,
"I miss you,"
because sometimes sugar feels safer than truth.
The one who writes long birthday cards
and sends postcards filled with drawings,
because my...

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No winter postcards of deep snow and bliss
No winter postcards of mistletoe kiss
Winter was cold, winter was tough
Winter was long and we all had it rough
No Father Christmas, no presents for us
No wide eyed kitten...

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Letter to My Wife
by Miklos Radnoti
translated by Michael R. Burch

A poem written during the Holocaust in Lager Heidenau, in the mountains above Zagubica, August-September, 1944

Deep down in the darkness hell awaits--silent, mute.
Silence screams in my...

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We found the smoking gun but we wouldn’t tell a soul
The you that I would tell everything to 
Left me sinning and spinning in my own cave of exulansis, 
on my own island of impending...

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Another son is dead, until five he lived.
For his long life at Shah-Hamdan he had threads tied
“Shehij ninder yee nai. Gahas Kormakh Khudayas Hawale”, his mother cries.
No news can penetrate across the mountains. Satellites work...

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*****************************
Poems written on a trip to Prague
in 2009
*****************************

=============================
Sailing Neath the Charles Bridge
=============================

Such history flows beneath this bridge
And all that have walked on it
So many pass its statues walk
And think so little of it.

Germans, Russians ...

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one thread
                      unravels
           ...

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Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they’d crawled (with others that they’d brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities...

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No winter postcards of deep snow and bliss
No winter postcards of mistletoe kiss
Winter was cold, winter was tough
Winter was long and we all had it rough

No Father Christmas, no Saint Nicholas 
No bright blue, glass...

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Slowing Down 

Electricity runs through my veins. 
It courses in waves,
from my head to my feet, 
and back. 
Why? 
Because I am ever, 
waiting for the other shoe to drop. 
I heard the first one,...

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we were young and dumb,
but not reckless,
two boys skimming the edge of fear,
a twenty-year-old shadow
and his seventeen-year-old brother,
riding the spine of Interstate Ten,
from Tallahassee to San Diego,
then back to Florida—
outlaws without blood on our hands.

the...

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My clawed nails hover over library setups,
one is circumspect and so guarded,
where I quake  eyeball entrapment mode,
with desktop oozing clever poly functions,
that limitless latitude bespoke of,
glowing  brochure reference point,
as I adjust the red...

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Flesh on show and sun tan lotion
bodies laid on towels or sun lounges 
By the ocean
Salty air wind blown hair
Music streaming from the near by fair
Baby screaming nappies full
Cool guys looking for babes on the...

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Winter with you snows proposals.
Promises crunch under foot in autumn
bursts of colour on park pathways, 
orange into red into yellow.

Summer with you spouts kisses, wet with spit 
on a teenage first date - there’s no...

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~*~*~*~*~


A little girl with dark brown braids.
White blouse, gold-colored wool skirt 
and patent leather Mary Janes.
An only child with a wired haired fox 
terrier that lived with Grandpa,
Mother and Father.

Her Mother, sweet, who saw to...

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I

when the world had no headsets
the sunbathing crowd
fell asleep to the sounds of
transistors played loud
while the deckchairs and windbreaks
kites, beach balls and more
formed the stripes, lines and circles
that painted the shore
and the longer I walked
on...

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P.O.E.m 2012

I.
---

Peitro is barely three years old
Eleonora, his great-grandmother, eighty-three
And yet, they are the closest of friends
Carrying on and laughing in the library but
Even the studious patrons don't stare in scold

Over in the children's section...

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“Expressions of the heart are like a fine wine.  The taste is always better when it's shared”


My father was a private man.  Not given easily to praise.  Even so, I always wanted...

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Entered to take part
In Robert James Liguori
A noteworthy ship poetry Contest
Wednesday
27th October 2021


From Liverpool 
The Port of Empire

He came was born and wanted
away and out from that moment 
on

And at the tender age of 16
he...

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Outside a quaint town in fair Vermont,
by my family’s vacation home,
is a small field with fences and sign,
in the warm month’s it’s a place to go.

They have a flea market on weekends,
rows of tents pitched...

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We rode into Nacogdoches, with our pistols and our Bowie knives,
Volunteers for Texas—we came to risk our lives.
Some of us had families, and others, just the memory,
And some of us they didn’t hardly miss in...

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Vagabond Reveries

I awoke one apple-ripe autumn afternoon, 
While shifting my necessity to care, dreaming,
To gaze upon the twisting trail in reveries of untethered reality 
A quest for halcyon enigmas that chased me into cloudy castles.

And...

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