Poems of Michael
R. Burch
by Michael R.
Burch
STUPID CUPID
Nun
Fun Undone
Abbesses’
recesses
are not for excesses!
*~*~*~*~*~*
Sex
Hex
Love’s full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes).
Published
by Asses of Parnassus,
Lighten Up Online and Poem
Today
*~*~*~*~*~*
Incompatibles
Reason’s
treason!
cries the Heart.
Love’s
insane,
replies the Brain.
Originally
published by Light
*~*~*~*~*~*
Options
Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
“Evolution’s
a Fishy Business!”
1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find
fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I
despair
to swim among anemones’ pink frills.
2.
My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can
walk,
a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s
sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a
stalk,
to take in this green land on which it gawks.
3.
No predators have made it here, so I need not
adapt.
Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic—I’ll take
such nice long naps!
The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite
apt
to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.)
4.
I woke to find life teeming all around—
mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds.
And now I cringe at every sight and sound.
The water’s looking good! I look Absurd.
5.
The moral of my story’s this: don’t
leap
wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep.
And never burn your bridges, till you’re
sure
leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure.
Originally
published by Lighten Up
Online and very
popular according to editor Jerome Betts.
*~*~*~*~*~*
HUMOROUS HAIKU
I'm trying to sleep!
Please swat the flies
lightly.
—Masaoka Shiki, translation by Michael R.
Burch
Unaware of these degenerate times,
cherry blossoms abound!
—Kobayashi Issa, translation by Michael R.
Burch
Composed like the Thinker, he sits
contemplating the mountains:
the sagacious frog!
—Kobayashi Issa, translation by Michael R.
Burch
An enormous frog!
We stare at each other,
both petrified.
—Kobayashi Issa, translation by Michael R.
Burch
Skinny frog,
hang on ...
Issa to the rescue!
—Kobayashi Issa, translation by Michael R.
Burch
I toss in my sleep,
so watch out,
cricket!
—Kobayashi Issa, translation by Michael R.
Burch
In a better world
I'd leave you my rice bowl,
little fly!
—Kobayashi Issa, translation by Michael R.
Burch
*~*~*~*~*~*
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT
Anti-Vegan Manifesto
Let us
avoid lettuce,
sincerely,
and also celery!
*~*~*~*~*~*
Woeful
Waffles
I think it’s woeful
and should be unlawful
to eat those awful
tofu
waffles!
Published
by Lighten Up Online
*~*~*~*~*~*
Nonsense
Ode to Chicken Soup
Chicken soup
is fragrant goop
in which swims
the noodle’s loop,
sometimes in the shape
of a hula hoop!
So when you’re sick,
don’t be a dupe:
get out your spoon,
extract a scoop.
Quick, down the chute
and you’ll soon recoup!
*~*~*~*~*~*
THE WRITE STUFF
Fleet Tweet: Apologies to Shakespeare
A tweet
by any other name
would be as fleet.
@mikerburch
*~*~*~*~*~*
Attention
Span Gap
What if a poet, Shakespeare,
were still living to tweet to us here?
He couldn’t write sonnets,
just couplets, doggonit,
and we wouldn’t have Hamlet or Lear!
Yes, a sonnet may end in a couplet,
which mod poets can write in a doublet,
in a flash, like a tweet.
Does that make it complete?
Should a poem be reduced to a stublet?
Oh, for that Grand Era when men
had attention spans long as their pens,
or rather the quills
of the monsieurs and fils
who gave us the Dress, not its hem!
*~*~*~*~*~*
Stage
(F)right
To be or not to be?
In the end Hamlet
opted for naught.
*~*~*~*~*~*
The
State of the Art
Poets may labor from sun to sun,
but their editor's work is never done.
The editor’s work is never done.
The critic adjusts his cummerbund.
While the critic adjusts his cummerbund,
the audience exits to mingle and slum.
As the audience exits to mingle and slum,
the anthologist rules, a pale jury of one.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Questionable
Credentials
Poet? Critic? Dilettante?
Do you know what’s good, or do you merely
flaunt?
Published
by Asses of Parnassus (the
first poem in the April 2017 issue)
*~*~*~*~*~*
STUPID CUPID, PART II
Negotiables
Love should be more than the sum of its parts—
of its potions and pills and subterranean arts.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Mate
Check
Love is an ache hearts willingly secure
then break the bank to cure.
Published
by Asses of Parnassus
*~*~*~*~*~*
Midnight
Stairclimber
Procreation
is at first great sweaty recreation,
then—long, long after the sex dies—
the source of endless exercise.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Liquidity
Crisis
And so I have loved you, and so I have lost,
accrued disappointment, ledgered its cost,
debited wisdom, credited pain . . .
My assets remaining are liquid again.
Published
by Asses of Parnassus and Borderless
Journal (Singapore)
*~*~*~*~*~*
Sweet
Tarts
Love, beautiful but fatal
to many bewildered hearts,
commands us to be faithful,
then tempts us with sweets and tarts.
*~*~*~*~*~*
honeybee
love was a little treble thing—
prone to sing
and (sometimes) to sting
*~*~*~*~*~*
Golden
Rue
Love has the value
of gold, if it’s true;
if not, of rue.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Less
Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Cover
Girl
Cunning
at sunning
and dunning,
the stunning
young woman’s in the running
to be found nude on the cover
of some patronizing lover.
In this case the cover is a bed cover, where the
enterprising young mistress is about to be
covered herself.
*~*~*~*~*~*
MODERNITY
Down Time
Quora is down!
I frown:
how long can the universe suffice
without its ad-vice?
*~*~*~*~*~*
Road
to Recovery
It’s time to get up and at ’em
and out of this rut that I’m sat in.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Parting
is such sweet sorrow
The universe is flying apart.
Hush, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s vexed heart!
Repeat, repeat.
Don’t skip a beat.
Perhaps some new Big Bang will spark?
Neil deGrasse Tyson told Stephen Colbert that
what keeps him awake at night is the fear that
expansion will cause most of the universe to
become invisible to us.
*~*~*~*~*~*
VARIOUS HERESIES
Multiplication, Tabled
for the
Religious Right
“Be
fruitful and multiply”—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, “WHEN!”
*~*~*~*~*~*
Less
Heroic Couplets: Murder Most Fowl!
by Michael R. Burch
“Murder most foul!”
cried the mouse to the owl.
“Friend, I’m no sinner;
you’re merely my dinner.
As you fall on my sword,
take it up with the LORD!”
the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.
Published
by Lighten Up Online
*~*~*~*~*~*
Less
Heroic Couplets: Meal Deal
Love is a splendid ideal ...
at least till it costs us a meal.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Saving
Graces
for the
Religious Right
Life’s
saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter
(wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter).
Published
by Shot Glass Journal
*~*~*~*~*~*
Long
Division
after
Laura Riding Jackson
All things
become one
Through death’s long division
And perfect precision.
Published
by Asses of Parnassus
*~*~*~*~*~*
What
Would Santa Claus Say?
What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to kill and plunder?
For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!
When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,
when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?
*~*~*~*~*~*
Willy
Nilly
for the
Demiurge aka Yahweh/Jehovah
Isn’t it
silly, Willy Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
Published
by The New Formalist
*~*~*~*~*~*
POEMS FOR AND AFTER RICHARD
MOORE
The Whole of Wit
If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity
are the whole of it.
Published
by Shot Glass Journal
*~*~*~*~*~*
Moore
or Less
Less is more —
in a dress, I suppose,
and in intimate clothes
like crotchless hose.
But now Moore is less
due to death’s subtraction
and I must confess:
I hate such redaction!
Published by Trinacria
*~*~*~*~*~*
SAGELY AGING
Thirty
Thirty crept upon me slowly
with feline caution and a slowly-twitching tail
...
How patiently she waited for the winds to shift!
Now, claws unsheathed, she lies seething to
assail
her helpless prey.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Laughter’s
Cry
Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.
Because death is a mystery, we cry
when one is gone, our numbering thrown awry.
Published
by Setu (India)
*~*~*~*~*~*
Housman
was right ...
It’s true that life’s not much to lose,
so why not hang out on a cloud?
It’s just the bon voyage is
hard
and the objections loud.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Ironic
Vacation
Salzburg.
Seeing Mozart’s baby grand piano.
Standing in the presence of sheer incalculable
genius.
Grabbing my childish pen to write a poem
& challenge the Immortals.
Next stop, the catacombs!
*~*~*~*~*~*
ADULT STUFF
Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...
But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.
The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more whore-y!
*~*~*~*~*~*
First
Base Freeze
I find your love unappealing
(no, make that appalling)
because you prefer kissing
then stalling.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Mini-Ode
to Stamina
When you’ve
given so much
that I can’t bear your touch,
then from a safe distance
let me admire your persistence.
Published
by Asses of Parnassus
*~*~*~*~*~*
Millay
Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor
After a night of hard drinking and spreading her
legs,
Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs:
“Please act more chastely, more discretely,
more seemly!”
(His name, let’s assume, was, er ...
Percival Queemly.)
“Expel me! Expel me!”—She flashes
her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That
wouldn’t be wise,
for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my
name ...
Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque
your fame!”
“Continue to live here—carouse as you
please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees.
Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his
nose:
“I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I
suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll
sacrifice to Moloch.”
(Which explains what became of pale Percy’s
son, Enoch.)
Originally
published by Lucid
Rhythms
This poem is based on an account of Edna St.
Vincent Millay being confronted by a male Vassar
authority. However, there is a some poetic
license involved, for the sake of humor. It was
actually Vassar President Henry Noble MacCracken
who mentioned Shelley. Here is his account in a
response to a question about Millay cutting
classes: “She cut everything. I once called
her in and told her, ‘I want you to know
that you couldn’t break any rule that would
make me vote for your expulsion. I don’t
want to have any dead Shelleys on my doorstep,
and I don’t care what you do.’ She went
to the window and looked out and she said, “Well
on those terms I think I can continue to live in
this hellhole.” The stuff about Enoch and
Moloch is, of course, pure fabrication on my part.
*~*~*~*~*~*
DUMPING ON A DUMPLING
Trump’s real goals are obvious
and yet millions of Americans remain oblivious.
*~*~*~*~*~*
The
Hair Flap
The hair flap was truly a scare:
Trump’s bald as a billiard back there!
The whole nation laughed
At the state of his graft;
Now the man’s wigging out, so beware!
*~*~*~*~*~*
Toupée
or Not Toupée, That is the Question
There once was a brash billionaire
who couldn't afford decent hair.
Vexed voters agreed:
"We're a nation in need!"
But toupée the price, do we dare?
*~*~*~*~*~*
Toupée
or Not Toupée, This is the Answer
Oh crap, we elected Trump prez!
Now he's Simon: we must do what he sez!
For if anyone thinks
And says his "plan" stinks,
He'll wig out 'neath that weird orange fez!
*~*~*~*~*~*
Stumped
and Stomped by Trump
There once was a candidate, Trump,
whose message rang clear at the stump:
"Vote for me, WHEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!,
because I am ME,
and everyone else is a chump!"
*~*~*~*~*~*
The
Red State Reaction
Where the hell are they hidin’
Sleepy Joe Biden?
And how the hell can the bleep
Do so much, in his sleep?
*~*~*~*~*~*
Red
State Reject
I once was a pessimist
but now I’m more optimistic
ever since I discovered my fears
were unsupported by any statistic.
*~*~*~*~*~*
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