Rejection Slips 2
Rejection Slips 2
The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch
The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,
the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,
the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,
the face in the photograph
no longer dissolving under scrutiny,
becoming a keepsake,
the useless mower
lying forgotten
in weeds,
rings and crosses and
all the paraphernalia
the soul no longer needs.
Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch
Love unfolded
like a flower;
Pale petals pinked and blushed to see the sky.
I came to know you
and to trust you
in moments lost to springtime slipping by.
Then love burst outward,
leaping skyward,
and untamed blossoms danced against the wind.
All I wanted
was to hold you;
though passion tempted once, we never sinned.
Now love's gay petals
fade and wither,
and winter beckons, whispering a lie.
We were friends,
but friendships end...
yes, friendships end and even roses die.
Dancer
by Michael R. Burch
You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,
waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.
Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.
They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled
of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,
of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.
They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh
for ages,
stages
slipping by.
You pause;
applause
is all you hear.
You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.
Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray
by Michael R. Burch
It was not so much dream, as error;
I lay and felt the creeping terror
of what I had become take hold...
The moon watched, silent, palest gold;
the picture by the mantle watched;
the clock upon the mantle talked,
in halting voice, of minute things...
Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings
scored anthems to my loneliness,
but I have dreamed of what is best,
and I have promised to be good...
Dismembered limbs in vats of wood,
foul acids, and a strangled cry!
I did not care, I watched him die...
Each lovely rose has thorns we miss;
they prick our lips, should we once kiss
their mangled limbs, or think to clasp
their violent beauty. Dream, aghast,
the flower of my loveliness,
this ageless face (for who could guess?),
and I will kiss you when I rise...
The patterns of our lives comprise
strange portraits. Mine, I fear,
proved dear indeed...Adieu!
The knife’s for you.
Doppelgänger
by Michael R. Burch
Here the only anguish
is the bedraggled vetch lying strangled in weeds,
the customary sorrows of the wild persimmons,
the whispered complaints of the stately willow trees
disentangling their fine lank hair,
and what is past.
I find you here, one of many things lost,
that, if we do not recover, will undoubtedly vanish forever ...
now only this unfortunate stone,
this pale, disintegrate mass,
this destiny, this unexpected shiver,
this name we share.
Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch
In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.
Great pyramids, the looted tombs
?how still and desolate their wombs!?
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.
Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?
Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?
or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”
The Poet's Condition
by Michael R. Burch
The poet's condition
(bother tradition)
is whining contrition.
Supposedly sage,
his editor knows
his brain's in his toes
though he would suppose
to soon be the rage.
His readers are sure
his work's premature
or merely manure,
insipidly trite.
His mother alone
will answer the phone
(perhaps with a moan)
to hear him recite.
Cycles
by Michael R. Burch
I see his eyes caress my daughter’s breasts
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe...
And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers...
and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again?hard, staring, and silent?
though long-ago forgotten...
And I remember conjectures of panty lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares...
Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard?
with a long, ineffectual stare
that years from now, he may suddenly remember.
The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch
Love among the infinitesimal
flotillas of amoebas is a dance
of transient appendages, wild sails
that gather in warm brine and then express
one headstream as two small, divergent wakes.
Minuscule voyage?love! Upon false feet,
the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep
toward self-immolation: two nee one.
We cannot photosynthesize the sun,
and so we love in darkness, till we come
at last to understand: man’s spineless heart
is alien to any land. We part
to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears,
amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ...
and still we sink.
The night is full of stars
we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours.
Have we such cells within us, bent on love
to ever-changingness, so that to part
is not to be the same, or even one?
Is love our evolution, or a scream
against the thought of separateness?a cry
of strangled recognition? Love, or die,
or love and die a little. Hopeful death!
Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.
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