love

These are early poems of mine, written beginning around age eleven as a boy, then through my high school and college years ...

The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her ...
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

These are Romantic poems (with a capital R) that I have written under the influence of feminine beauty and poets like Sappho, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Kevin N. Roberts, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Dylan Thomas.

She Gathered Lilacs
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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

These are humorous epigrams about love, sex, procreation, politics, God, the Bible, religion, life and death.

Less Heroic Couplets: Midnight Stairclimber
by Michael R. Burch

Procreation
is at first great sweaty recreation,
then—long, long after the sex dies—
the source of endless exercise.

Published by: The HyperTexts

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Less Heroic Couplets: Liquidity Crisis
by Michael R. Burch

These are epigrams about life, death, love, society, politics, the coronavirus pandemic and religion. 

Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends I
by Michael R. Burch

Conformists of a feather
flock together.

Winner of the National Poetry Month Couplet Competition

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Less Heroic Couplets: Fine Feathered Fiends II
by Michael R. Burch

Fascists of a feather
flock together.

These are my modern English translations of epigrams by ancient poets like Homer, Rumi and Seneca.

Elevate your words, not their volume. Rain gros flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, translation by Michael R. Burch

For the gods have decreed that unfortunate mortals must suffer, while they themselves are sorrowless.
—Homer (circa 800 BC), Iliad 24.525-526, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These are my modern English translations of poems by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

I Loved You
by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ...
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.

These are heretical poems about Christian concepts such as heaven, hell and salvation. In the past I have published such poems under the heading "Heresy Hearsay."

Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals
by Michael R. Burch

“I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.” — Mark Twain

for Beth

Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?

Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue.

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...

Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations’ dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ...

Nothing can surpass
The tight hug of a close friend
On a particularly hard day