Member Poem

These are sonnets by Michael R. Burch. Many of these sonnets are "heretical" sonnets in that they disobey the rules of orthodox sonnets and return to the original definition of "sonnet" as a "little song." Included are Shakespearean sonnets, Petrarchan sonnets, Spenserian sonnets, blank verse sonnets, free verse sonnets and experimental sonnets.

Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch

May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leave us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but her thorn.

Published by The Lyric, Poem Today, Deviant Art and Suravejiliz (Tokelau)
 

 

Corona
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
… without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
… … but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
… … … felt more than seen.
… … … I was eighteen,
… … my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
… Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.
There was an instant
… without words, but with a deeper communion,
… … as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
… … … liquidly our lips met
… … … feverish, wet,
… … forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
… in the immediacy of our fumbling union
as the rest of the world became distant.

Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.

With all the understandable gloom, doom and despair over the coronavirus, I was reminded of using the term "corona" in a happier light. I wrote this poem around age 18. It has been published by *Grassroots Poetry* and *Poetry Webring* as “The Communion of Sighs.” The ellipses should be spaces, for purposes of indentation, but some websites eliminate multiple spaces for reasons know only to god and AI.

Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness
so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.

Sonnet: Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch

I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.
A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright.
Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling;
here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead.
Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling,
simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed,
his tongue flicking rhythms,
the sun—throbbing, spilling.

Sonnet: Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
undressing tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”

Sonnet: A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the minions of autumn, how swiftly life goes
as I fled before love ... Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.
I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the specter of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.

O, where are you now?—I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.

Sonnet: Oasis
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.

Sonnet: Melting
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools, whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous, so bright, so beautiful ...

I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.

Sonnet: Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

The night is full of stars. Which still exist?
Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know.
For now I hold your fingers to my lips
and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow ...

once slow to match this reckless spark in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame ...

for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie
in dawning recognition is enough ...

enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.

Sonnet: All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.

[Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.]

Sonnet: Twice
by Michael R. Burch

Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days
when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.

But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:
rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.

"The Descent into the Underworld"
by Virgil
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

for Martin Mc Carthy

The Sibyl began to speak:
“God-blooded Trojan, son of Anchises,
descending into the Underworld’s easy
since Death’s dark door stands eternally unbarred.
But to retrace one’s steps and return to the surface:
that’s the conundrum, that’s the catch!
Godsons have done it, the chosen few
whom welcoming Jupiter favored
and whose virtue merited heaven.
However, even the Blessed find headway’s hard:
immense woods barricade boggy bottomland
where the Cocytus glides with its dark coils.
But if you insist on ferrying the Styx twice
and twice traversing Tartarus,
if Love demands you indulge in such madness,
listen closely to how you must proceed...”

Crunch
by Michael R. Burch

A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucus you scrounge from your nose
then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ...
You claim to be *the* advanced life form, but, *mon frere*,
sometimes as you snatch encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan ass
and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic.
You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion
to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters:
surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information,
in order to ensure the survival of the species.
Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces;
their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium.
But your cranium
is not nearly so adaptable.

Sonnet: Modern Appetite
by Michael R. Burch

It grumbled low, insisting it would feast
on blood and flesh, etcetera, at least
three times a day. With soft lubricious grease
and pale salacious oils, it would ease
its way through life. Each day—an aperitif.
Each night—a frothy bromide, for relief.
It lived on TV fare, wore pinafores,
slurped sugar-coated gumballs, gobbled S’mores.
When gas ensued, it burped and farted. *’Course*,
it thought aloud, *my wife will leave me. Whores
are not so damn particular. Divorce
is certainly a settlement, toujours!*
A Tums a day will keep the shrink away,
recalcify old bones, keep gas at bay.
If Simon says, etcetera, Mother, may
I have my hit of calcium today?

Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.
We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.
Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams ...
and emulating limply, screams and screams.

Sonnet: Ant Farm
by Michael R. Burch

I had a Vast, Eccentric Notion—
out of the Void, to Conjure one Bright Spark,
to lend all Weight of Thought to one small matter,
to give it “life.” Alas!, it was a lark…

The Wasted Seconds!—failed experiment…
I turned My Back and shrugged; how could I know
appraisal of My lab-sprung tenement
would be so taxing? (Though Mom told me so.)

I poked them while She quickly tabulated
the final Cost of All that I Created…
The Jury’s back. Eviction: Dad’s Decree.
I’ll pull the plug, but slowly. How they scurry!

They have to pay, to suffer: “life” is strange.
They cost too much. Let’s toast them… on the range!

Fly’s Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Inhibited, dark agile fly along
paint-peeling sills, up to the bright glass drawn
by radiance compounded thousandfold,—
I do not see the same as you, but hold
antenna to the brilliant pane of life
and buzz bewilderedly.
In your belief
the world outside is “as it is” because
you see it clearly, windowed without flaws,
you err.
I see strange terrors in the glass—
dead airless bubbles light can never pass
without distortion, fingerprints that blur
the sun itself. No, nothing here is clear.

You see the earth distinct, eyes “open wide.”
It only seems that way, unmagnified.

Sonnet: Singularity
by Michael R. Burch

Are scientists confounded like the ostrich?
Heads buried in the sand, they shout, *Preposterous!*
This universe, so magical, they say,
proves there’s no God. But let’s look anyway ...

He said, *Let there be Light*, and there was light.
Stumped scientists have scratched their heads all night
and solemnly proclaimed an awesome Bang,
from which de Light immediately sprang ...

which sounds like God to me!, Who, with one word
made Light, and proved man’s theories, not absurd,
but logical, if only they’d agree
in one tremendous Singularity!

(However, there’s one problem with my plea:
*it turns out that His world is made of pee*.)

Sonnet: Quanta
by Michael R. Burch

The stars shine fierce and hard across the Abyss
and only seem to twinkle from such distance
we scarcely see at all. But sheer persistence
in seeing what makes “sense” to us, is man’s
best art and science. BIG, he comprehends.
Love’s photons are too small, escape the lens.

Who dares to look upon familiar things
will find them alien. True distance reels.
Less what he knows than what his finger feels,
the lightning of the socket sparks and sings,
then stings him into comic reverie.
Cartoonish lightbulbs overhead, do we
not “think” because we feel there must be More,
as less and less we know what we explore?

Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I grope,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear—
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.
And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don’t quite understand),
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?
Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).

No Proof
by Michael R. Burch

They only know to sing—not understand,
though quizzical, heads cocked, they need no proof
that God’s above. They hop across my roof
with prescient eyes, to fall into His hand...
as sure of Grace as if it were mere air.

He gave them wings to fly; what do they care
of cumbrous knowledge, pale Leviathan?
Huge-brained Behemoth, sagging-bellied one!

You too might fly, might test this addling breeze
as gravity, mere ballast, tethers naught
but merely centers. Chained to heavy Thought,
you cannot slip earth’s bonds to rise at ease.
And yet you too can sing, if only thus:
Flash, flash bright quills; rise, rise on nothingness!

Sonnet: 911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

*“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats*

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”
They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,
far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot ...
Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.

The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,
when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,
when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...
There is no emptier time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears
beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.

In a Stolen Moment
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

In a stolen moment,
when the clock’s hands complete their inevitable course
and sleep is the night’s dark spell,
I call it a curse,
seeking the force,
the font of candescent words, the electric thrill
tingling from brain to spine
to incessant quill—
the fever, the chill.
I know it as well as I know myself.
Time’s second hand stirs; not I; in my cell,
words spill.

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.

Geode
by Michael R. Burch

Love—less than eternal, not quite true—
is still the best emotion man can muster.
Through folds of peeling rind—rough, scarred, crude-skinned—
she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale.

Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted,
in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows
that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle;
dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell.

And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster,
as she hints and shimmers, touching those who *see*,
she is not without her uses or her meanings;
in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows
the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer,
till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair.

Sonnet: Eras Poetica II
by Michael R. Burch

*“... poetry makes nothing happen ...”—W. H. Auden*

Poetry is the art of words: beautiful words.
So that we who are destitute of all other beauties exist
in worlds of our own making; where, if we persist,
the unicorns gather in phantomlike herds,
whinnying to see us; where dark flocks of birds,
hooting, screeching and cawing, all madly insist:
“We too are wild migrants lost in this pale mist
which strangeness allows us, which beauty affords!”

We stormproof our windows with duct tape and boards.
We stockpile provisions. We cull the small list
of possessions worth keeping. Our listless lips, kissed,
mouth pointless enigmas. Time’s bare pantry hoards
dust motes of past grandeurs. Yet here Mars’s sword
lies shattered on the anvil of the enduring Word.

Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

*for Nadia Anjuman*

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes,
imposing night on one who clearly saw.
Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw―
envenomed, fanged―could swallow, whole, your Awe.
And yet it was not death so much as you
who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing
and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's
white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing!
But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren!
Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.

The Vision of the Overseer’s Right Hand
by Michael R. Burch

*“Dust to dust ...”*

I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color ...

There a skeletal figure
groped through blonde sand
for a rigid right hand
lost long, long ago...

A hand now more white
than he had wielded before.
But he paused there, unsure,
for he could not tell

without the whip’s frenetic hiss
which savage white hand was his.

To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know you as Mary,
when you spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
*beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.*

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
*beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.*

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard you exclaim—
*beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom*

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?

O, My Redeeming Angel
by Michael R. Burch

O my Redeeming Angel, after we
have fought till death (and soon the night is done) ...
then let us rest awhile, await the sun,
and let us put aside all enmity.

I might have been the “victor”—who can tell?—
so many wounds abound. All out of joint,
my groin, my thigh ... and nothing to anoint
but sunsplit, shattered stone, as pillars hell.

Light, easy flight to heaven, Your return!
How hard, how dark, this path I, limping, walk.
I only ask Your blessing; no more talk!
Withhold Your name, and yet my ears still burn
and so my heart. You asked me, to my shame:
for Jacob—trickster, shyster, sham—’s my name.

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

*for Beth*

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt, I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.

Hymn to an Art-o-matic Laundromat
by Michael R. Burch

*after Richard Moore’s “Hymn to an Automatic Washer”*

O, terrible-immaculate
ALL-cleansing godly Laundromat,
where cleanliness is next to Art
—a bright Kinkade (bought at K-Mart),
a Persian rug (made in Taiwan),
a Royal Bonn Clock (time zone Guam)—
embrace my ass in cushioned vinyl,
erase all marks: anal, vaginal,
penile, inkspot, red wine, dirt.
O, sterilize her skirt, my shirt,
my skidmarked briefs, her padded bra;
suds-away in your white maw
all filth, the day’s accumulation.
Make us pure by INUNDATION.

Published by *The Oldie*, where it was the winner of a poetry contest.

If Love Were Infinite
by Michael R. Burch

If love were infinite, how I would pity
our lives, which through long years’ exactitude
might seem a pleasant blur—one interlude
without prequel or sequel—wanly pretty,
the gentlest flame the heart might bring to bear
to tepid hearts too sure of love to flare.

If love were infinite, why would I linger
caressing your fine hair, lost in the thought
each auburn strand must shrivel with this finger,
and so in thrall to time be gently brought
to final realization: love, amazing,
must leave us ash for all our fiery blazing.

If flesh’s heat once led me straight to you,
love’s arrow’s burning mark must pierce me through.

Because She Craved the Very Best
by Michael R. Burch

Because she craved the very best,
he took her East, he took her West;
he took her where there were no wars
and brought her bright bouquets of stars,
the blush and fragrances of roses,
the hush an evening sky imposes,
moonbeams pale and garlands rare,
and golden combs to match her hair,
a nightingale to sing all night,
white wings, to let her soul take flight ...
She stabbed him with a poisoned sting
and as he lay there dying,
she screamed, "I wanted everything!"
and started crying.

Duet of the Heroic Hamster
by Michael R. Burch

If love is just an impulse meant to bring
two tiny hearts together, skittering
like hamsters from their Quonsets late at night
in search of lust’s productive exercise…

If love is the mutation of some gene
made radiant—an accident of bliss
played out by two small actors on a screen
of silver mesh, who never even kiss…

If love is evolution, nature’s way
of sorting out its DNA in pairs,
of matching, mating, sculpting flesh’s clay…
why does my wrinkled hamster climb his stairs

to set his wheel revolving, then descend
and stagger off … to make hers fly again?

u-turn: another way to look at religion
by Michael R. Burch

... u were borne orphaned from Ecstasy
into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms
dreaming of Beatification;
u'd love to make a u-turn back to Divinity, but
having misplaced ur chrysalis,
can only chant magical phrases,
like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ...

pretty pickle
by Michael R. Burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur GAUD’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).

Sonnet: Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch

We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each face—
a carnival-like mirror. In the space
between the silver backing and the glass,
we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass
who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed
to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed
for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee
to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key.
We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung.
In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.

East Devon Beacon
by Michael R. Burch

Evening darkens upon the moors,
Forgiveness—a hairless thing
skirting the headlamps, fugitive.

Why have we come,
traversing the long miles
and extremities of solitude,
worriedly crisscrossing the wrong maps
with directions
obtained from passing strangers?

Why do we sit,
frantically retracing
love’s long-forgotten signal points
with cramping, ink-stained fingers?

Why the preemptive frowns,
the litigious silences,
when only yesterday we watched
as, out of an autumn sky this vast,
over an orchard or an onion field,
wild Vs of distressed geese
sped across the moon’s face,
the sound of their panicked wings
like our alarmed hearts
pounding in unison?

The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Sonnet: Caveat
by Michael R. Burch

If only we were not so *eloquent*,
we might sing, and only sing, not to impress,
but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed.
We might inundate the earth with thankfulness
for light, although it dies, and make a song
of night descending on the earth like bliss,
with other lights beyond—*not to be known*—
but only to be welcomed and enjoyed,
before all worlds and stars are overthrown ...
as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face
and find it beautiful for emptiness
of all but joy. There is no thought to love
but love itself. How senseless to redress,
in darkness, such becoming nakedness . . .

Originally published by *Clementine Unbound*

Within the CPU
by Michael R. Burch

Here the electronic rush of meaning,
the impulse of mathematics
and rationality,
becomes almost a restless dreaming
never satisfied—
the first stirrings of some fetal Entity.

Here within a sterile void
flash wild electrons,
portent stars.

Once the earth was an asteroid
this inert, this barren
till a force
flashed across the face of formless waters
and a zigzag bolt of lightning
sparked life within an ocean.

Now inquisitive voltage crackles
along pathways
never engineered. A notion
stirs. And what we have created
creates within itself
something we cannot hope to comprehend.

Whatever It is,
when It emerges from the mist,
its god will not be man.

I wrote “Within the CPU” as a freshman computer science major, age 18 or 19.

Sonnet: The Monarch’s Rose or The Hedgerow Rose
by Michael R. Burch

I lead you here to pluck this florid rose
still tethered to its post, a dreary mass
propped up to stiff attention, winsome-thorned
(what hand was ever daunted less to touch
such *flame*, in blatant disregard of all
but atavistic beauty)? Does this rose
not symbolize our love? But as I place
its emblem to your breast, how can this poem,
long centuries deflowered, not debase
all art, if merely genuine, but not
“original”? Love, how can *reused words*
though frailer than all petals, bent by air
to lovelier contortions, still persist,
defying even gravity? For here
beat Monarch’s wings: they rise on emptiness!

Sonnet: What The Roses Don’t Say
by Michael R. Burch

Oblivious to love, the roses bloom
and never touch . . . They gather calm and still
to watch the busy insects swarm their leaves . . .
They sway, bemused . . . till rain falls with a chill
stark premonition: *ice*! . . . and then they twitch
in shock at every outrage . . . Soon they’ll blush
a paler scarlet, humbled in their beds,
for they’ll be naked; worse, their leaves will droop,
their petals quickly wither . . . Spindly thorns
are poor defense against the winter’s onslaught . . .
No, they are roses. *Men should be afraid*.

Sonnet: Bowery Boys
by Michael R. Burch

Male bowerbirds have learned
that much respect is earned
when optical illusions
inspire wild delusions.

And so they work for hours
to line their manly bowers
with stones arranged by size
to awe and mesmerize.

It’d take a great detective
to grok the false perspective
they use to lure in cuties
to smooch and fill with cooties.

Like human politicians,
they love impressive fictions
as they lie in their randy causes
with props like the Wizard of Oz’s.

Sonnet: Over(t) Simplification
by Michael R. Burch

*"Keep it simple, stupid."*

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful,
or comforting, or horrifying. Move
the reader, and the world will not reprove
the idiosyncrasies of too few lines,
too many syllables, or offbeat beats.

It only matters that *she* taps her feet
or that *he* frowns, or smiles, or grimaces,
or sits bemused—a child—as images
of worlds he'd lost come flooding back, and then...
they'll cheer the poet's insubordinate pen.

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful.

At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch

At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,
while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound
of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—
to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember,
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.
Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by *The Lyric*

Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun…
We are nonplussed, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant…
We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,
and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade—
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.

These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

*a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .*

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time alone, not untouched,
and I am as they were—unsure, for the days
stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze.

Ah, faithless lover—that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart that has leapt the highest pinnacle of Love,
and the result of all such infatuations—
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.

Originally published by *The Lyric*

Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official—zenlike Art—
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile becomes mock porcelain.

Till in the end, the smile alone remains:
titanium-based alloys undestroyed
with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains
of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed
us most about the corpses rectified
to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.

Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man’s tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men’s frozen genes convene ...
there is no answer—death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth’s “highest species”—
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.

Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem should be a wild, unearthly cry
against the thought of lying in the dark,
doomed—never having seen bright sparks leap high,
without a word for *flame*, none for the mark
an ember might emblaze on lesioned skin.

A poet is no crafty artisan—
the maker of some crock. He dreams of *flame*
he never touched, but—fakir’s courtesan—
must dance obedience, once called by name.

Thin wand, divine!, this world is too the same—
all watery ooze and flesh. Let fire cure
and quickly harden here what can endure.

Originally published by *The Lyric*

To the Post-Modern Muse, Floundering
by Michael R. Burch

The anachronism in your poetry
is that it lacks a *future* history.
The line that rings, the forward-sounding bell,
tolls death for you, for drowning victims tell
of insignificance, of eerie shoals,
of voices underwater. Lichen grows
to mute the lips of those men paid no heed,
and though you cling by fingertips, and bleed,
there is no lifeline now, for what has slipped
lies far beyond your grasp. Iron fittings, stripped,
have left the hull unsound, bright cargo lost.
The argosy of all your toil is rust.
The anchor that you flung did not take hold
in any harbor where repair is sold.

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.

#SONNET #MRBSONNET

Keywords/Tags: sonnet, sonnets, Shakespearean sonnets, Petrarchan sonnets, Spenserian sonnets, curtal sonnets, Italian sonnets, blank verse sonnets, free verse sonnets, experimental sonnets, love, romance, Romantic, Romanticism, relationships, time, loss, sorrow, happiness, joy, seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter