Long Shopworn Poems

The Heights of Machu Picchu, Canto VIII
by Pablo Neruda
translation by Michael R. Burch

Ascend with me, my American love!

Let’s kiss these mysterious stones together!

The Urubamba’s torrential silver
lures pollen to fly from its golden chalice
while above this...

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Countless instances submitting poems
finds me racking
quite a hefty collection of rejections,
the responses lacking
disappointing voluminous vicious
venomous vitriolic backing
quite the contrary,
the prefabricated responses

unsuccessful at hijacking
my "FAKE" toothy gumption
(since I wear dentures) lip smacking
bite size packing
not exceptionally appetizing,
but...

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Dust rises thick with grim, sweat drips from rims
of drug-store eyes he wears to spy. 
A parting of the slats, which dangle by twin hooks
This Moses at the sea
will look, and count, to see who's...

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My eyes are platinum, an abyss
They reflect the midday sky, a blue relic
I blink back molten metal tears

These garments are loose bleeding petals
They hang like rolls of skin, peeling and shedding
Billowing and sagging a Gothic...

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Four Cafes

Winter mists swirl up from puddles on the cobblestones blurring the names of the four cafes facing the narrow boulevard.  Townspeople and visitors walk briskly with their heads down, collars up, against January’s...

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Lined face and hands of leather
   Her body punished by blazing-hot weather
She'd worked the fields for 50-plus years
   Her energy drained, along with the swamps
      ~For...

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Spring Beauty and the Beast 

Tenderly Spring sends harbingers of beauty,
Knights errant of crocus and snowdrops,
To warm winter’s shopworn heart
And soothe his brittle bones of barren boughs
With balms of long jonquil sunbeams
Melting the grumpy curmudgeon’s...

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A Simple Story 

Little child finds upon a heap of rubbish
Favored threadbare rabbit of tawny velveteen
One eye missing
Cloth rubbed to shiny by little hands.

Beloved bunny, 
Shopworn keepsake from babyhood,
Languishing in forgotten jungles of junk,
Broken teacups...

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So let me know that you are a shopworn
Me thee rises like the sun galore but sometimes
Deflated, downplayed and torn
The surrealism of us bestowed much mold. 
So let me know if your truly a writer?
I...

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Hope forewarned
 Such was Jeremiah's call:
 Go, tell my people what I'm going to do;
 Know that they will not listen to you.

 Hope forlorn
 determining the odds on a bet:
 You choose this or...

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