Epiphanies on Woman as Divine Love Incarnate
by Hildegard of Bingen

These heretical poems on the subjects of God, religion and Christianity explain why I “left” the Religious Right.

If one screams below,
what the hell is "Above"?
—Michael R. Burch

Religion is regarded by fools as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These are prayer poems by Michael R. Burch, along with a few hymns and hymn-like prayer poems. There are also poems on the subject of God and religion—the Christian religion in particular. In my youth I wrote some devotional poems but my later poems tend to be heretical, after in-depth study of the Bible revealed things unworthy of decent human beings, much less a perfect deity. 



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).

Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?

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

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

These are poems about God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, the Christian religion, and religion in general. 

Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.

But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.

***

The Gardener’s Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms
 
this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.

These are epigrams by Michael R. Burch and his translations of epigrams by other poets  ...

Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch

Love has the value
of gold, if it’s true;
if not, of rue.
—Michael R. Burch

Springing, seeping,
Waters flow.
Lithely, floating,
Autumn glow.
Waxing, moaning,
Harvest sky.
Closing eyes,
Sorrowful cry.

"Cleansings" is a Holocaust poem I wrote while working with Holocaust survivors like Yala Korwin to translate Polish and Yiddish Holocaust poems into English.