Long Silvered Poems

"Oak" 

The guardians
stood around and 
shook their heads

great thoughts 
quivering 
from the ground, roots up, 

as if to walk 
confidently 
with great armies

yet hesitation 
was witnessed
in their waving gestures

perplexed 
and touching 
green crowns, 

there they...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems V - Ber Horvitz, Yitzkhak Viner, Franta Bass

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes....

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Dear John,

All day
yesterday
I loaded up with a cascading river
of mixed anxiety and anticipation
about what to safely and kindly,
transparently and vulnerably
compassionately, so non-violently, share,
what to communicate;

Which narrative tributaries to choose
within this vast spacetime stream
of choices
directions
felt depressions...

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"The Crow Bar"

she said,
here I bury my dead,
you can hear them sleeping
somnulent forget-me-nots,
snoring blithely unaware,
in neat rows between 
the thick,
ink injected lines,
their soiled lives
ploughed and 
turned over 
replanted
sunnyside down
expunged and 
wrung out

eventually,
not totally oblivious, 
they...

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Stood I there, that last day,
On an iron bridge...
An aqueduct by design,
Where, looking dreamily out over
The Ernes Lower Lough,
My compressed shadow 
Momentarily paused -
To contently recline:
Amidst coy Junes radiant beams 
of sweet benign!
All was stilled,...

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Dear Neighbors,
community co-investors,
sharing an outdoor green riverside Commons
and an indoor
historical CommonSpace

Both, and all, sacred
to panentheistic me
and probably more mundanely secular
to monoculturing LeftBrain dominant
verbally rationalistic
you

And yet, co-relational lives of thought
and feeling always matter
to cooperative
effective communication resilience
through...

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Turning my back on typhoon skies, 
a pestilent past, I pitch my mistakes 
into a forgiving wind. Standing barefoot 
at the edge of apologies, 
coastal tides carry hope, tomorrows stir
on a mariner’s horizon. I search...

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Shallow-pitched tiled rooftops sparkle vividly
 When lavishly sprinkled with needle-shaped grains  
Of shattered mutton-fat nephrite; 
    There, clinging forlornly against the hanging grey   
  Smoke, tinged with barely...

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Brackish-gurgling days that
Unobtrusively slid along
Past tussock grass and curled up 
Balls of Fern...
Glued tightly onto structured vanes
Of outstretched frond.
Venerable Mosses reciting epic tales,
Measured throughout Metronomical 
Strains,
Chanting methodically in harmonious
Downturn - 
Wherein contained: 
Foreboding dialects delivered...

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In Ouachita's murmurs, where pine needles sigh,
I trace the mountains' ancient, weathered crown.
Silvered river forgotten secrets float by,
And fills my heart, a sonorous chamber now.

A flame ignites, dispelling shadows deep,
A beacon for lost souls on...

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Dad looking at that weatherboard house, Old Tooters home,
A thrifty man.. us to him did his brother send,
Saying that the place could do with a mend;
The roof had red patches of pitted rust, the cost...

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Soaring Hawk poised high
Back drop a deep sapphire sky 
Winds in attendance

Mighty wings unfold
Caressing the Wind Spirits
They lift and support

Circling Hawk perceives
Rainbow circle on a cloud
Framed is his shadow

On oceans of blue
Snow hills of clouds...

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               In the glade of sallowed comparisons
           as told by the...

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Spartan are the white walls were once hung draperies
And things papered, paneled, plastered...
Yet, 'tis so no more. 
Now all is white and wan and sickly, 
And the ghostly shadows of the accoutrements and impedimenta that...

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Bottle of tears is my first version of this poetic legacy series
Skeleton of tears is which the venerated versatility carries.
This might be called as a sequel of alacrity or prolongation
But best before this is a...

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From mine chamber, breathless and perspiring upon the bed,
I spy you there, out my window, looming overhead.
Your gaze, a silent arbiter in the night,
I cloak my naked shame, to veil my plight.
 
Reigning atop her...

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HE: I felt so alive for a minute there. 
The moonlight struck your face.
Beauty fired my senses, arousing.
SHE: Tell me, I need to know you care.
HE: What will that tell you, what will it mean?...

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Once upon a stranger
A girl A well intentioned woman
With open and adorned soul
Askance behind silvered eyes and sighs,

Revealing her concealed seraphic smiles
In an unending sequence.
Yielded in gleams in day dreams,
With folklores and odes chronicling her...

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Lingering Hearts

It will start on a golden summer's eve, 
when you see her playing with her hair. 
A breeze will blow black locks against her face, 
and her eyes will raise in bemused surprise.
And past...

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Lament of a Traveler

So far ahead the shattered break
With drifting light through limbs that ache
So far behind left to hesitate
On raven wings broke the key of dreams

And so many footprints spent traceless
Along sundown’s passage
As they...

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I sat with a reluctant story teller
my legs crossed
holding my breath
The fabric of her mind 
was tightly folded
tucked in carefully at her edges

I reached for a thread
gave it a gentle tug
hoping that it would come...

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In the mirror,
When I look,
I see the son of thousands.
I see the son of the foragers,
The wanderers who hunted the world,
The agrarians who farmed the fields,
The ones driven by famine to strange lands,
The ones taken...

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Belief: an escape from disappointments

Heart desires what it wants,Heart desires it all
Heart desires not to forgive,heart screams when you have nothing at all,
Heart cries the pain of loss , the agony of loss cannot be...

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See where I started,
in the garden of my childhood.
Fenced around with parents
hedged in with strict convention.

Walk with me.

The bare hills of ambition from my youth
lead upward, onward, overlooking
crowds and earthbound throngs.
Climb the eroding pathway to...

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Before the dark obscures the sky,
I sat gloomily looking out of the window, wondering why
wishing one of the stars tonight will glide and send you smiles
right here in my heart: a feeling that cannot deny
creeping...

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