All Poems

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She Gathered Lilacs, for Beth

© Michael Burch

She gathered lilacs
and arrayed them in her hair;
tonight, she taught the wind to be free.

Fountainhead

© Michael Burch

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs
seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the suns pale tourmaline.

Memory

© Michael Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember

Water and Gold

© Michael Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy is an illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

Tremble

© Michael Burch

Her predatory eye,
the single feral iris,
scans.

Because Her Heart Is Tender, for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her cars window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

The Forge

© Michael Burch

To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,

The Octopi Jars

© Michael Burch

Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels ...

Rainbow (II)

© Michael Burch

You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope
when every lovely Rainbow bright and chill
reflects your Will?

Auschwitz Rose

© Michael Burch

On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles;
they sleep alike--diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the "surgeons."
Sleeping, all.

Discrimination

© Michael Burch

I heard the sleigh bells jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels babble, Seusss books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all Ive found this late to sell to those
whod classify free verse "expensive prose."

To Flower

© Michael Burch

We are not long for this earth, I know
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?

Cleansings

© Michael Burch

Walk here among the walking scepters. Learn
inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave
to bone this tightly if their hearts believe
that G-d is good, and never mind the Urn.

In Flight Convergence

© Michael Burch

Serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city attend
upon lumbering behemoths
shrilly screeching displeasure;

The City Is A Garment

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,
the city is a garment stretched so thin
her festive colors bleed into the night,
and everywhere bright seams, unraveling,

Excerpts from "Poetry"

Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found youshivering, bare.

Charon 2004

I, too, have stood
paralyzed at the helm
watching onrushing, inevitable disaster.
I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster

The Peripheries of Love

Through waning afternoons we glide
the watery peripheries of love.
A silence, a quietude falls.

Will There Be Starlight

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

Fahr an Ice, Apologies to Robert Frost

From what I know of death, Ill side with those
whod like to have a say in how it goes:
just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker),
and real fahr off, instead of quicker.