The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (1-25)
These are the Best Poems of Michael R. Burch in his own opinion and in Google's, with some differences of opinion here and there.
I let Google pick the first 50 poems by using the searches: "Michael R. Burch most popular poems" and "Michael R. Burch best poems." There are a number of ties because Google has changed its ratings of my poems from time to time. These are my best and/or my most popular poems according to Google...
Epitaph for a Homeless Child (#1 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
Over the years this poem has been published with a number of different titles. It began as a Holocaust poem with the title "Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust." When I became a peace activist and the author of a peace plan for Israel/Palestine, I published versions titled "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" and "Epitaph for a Child of the Nakba." There have also been publications dedicated to the children of Darfur, Haiti, Hiroshima and Sandy Hook. This has become one of my most popular poems on the Internet, with 92K Google results at one time. A peace activist said the poem was like a ghost touching her. I agree with Google and rank my epitaph first out of all my two-liners and other original epigrams.
Will There Be Starlight (#1 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?
And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?
And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?
I must admit that I like Google's choice for my most popular poem. No arguments here. The last time I checked, "Will There Be Starlight" had 672 Google results. That much cutting and pasting suggests many readers liked the poem. I wrote it around age 18, while in high school. "Will There Be Starlight" has been published by TALESetc, Starlight Archives, The Word (UK), Poezii (in a Romanian translation by Petru Dimofte), The Chained Muse, Famous Poets & Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Inspirational Stories, Jenion, Regalia, Chalk Studio, Poetry Webring and Writ in Water; it has also been set to music by the award-winning New Zealand composer David Hamilton and read on YouTube by Ben E. Smith.
To have a poem written as a teenager translated into Romanian, set to music by a talented composer, performed by one of the better poetry readers, and published in multiple literary journals is not a bad start!
Moments (#2)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.
There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.
I think "Moments" is one of my better poems. No argument with Google here.
I Pray Tonight (#3 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
I pray tonight
the starry Light
might
surround you.
I pray
by day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.
I pray ere the morrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.
"I Pray Tonight" has been set to music by three composers: Mark Buller, David Hamilton and Kyle Scheuing. That's quite a compliment! At the height of its popularity, "I Pray Tonight" had 1.1K Google results. While I don't think this is the third-best poem that I've written, I like to think it has magical powers of comfort and protection. If I told you why, you wouldn't believe me. But perhaps print it out and keep in in your wallet or purse, in case you ever need white chorales of angels to watch over you. How Google figured this one out, I haven't a clue, but I do approve.
Something (#3 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
?for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.
Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.
Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which finality has swept into a corner ... where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.
"Something" was my first poem that didn't rhyme. This was not a conscious decision on my part; the poem came to me "out of blue nothing" to quote my friend the Maltese poet Joe Ruggier. I wrote "Something" in my late teens. At the height of its popularity, "Something" had 1.5K Google results. I agree with Google here.
The Harvest of Roses (#4)
by Michael R. Burch
I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.
I would have a lover's quarrel with the Imagists, except that I don't love their preoccupation with "things." I don't think this is my fourth-best poem, but I do like it, and perhaps Google groks my differences of opinion with William Carlos Williams, et al. This is one of my early poems, written in my early twenties. At the height of its popularity, "The Harvest of Roses" had 3.6K Google results. Not bad for a young poet testing his wings and taking on the big name poets.
Because Her Heart Is Tender (#5)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.
She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.
Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.
The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.
She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.
This is a true poem about what my wife Beth did on the first anniversary of 9-11. This is the sort of unabashedly sentimental poem that no self-respecting "major journal" would publish ... but then what do any of them know about poetry, much less human hearts? I love this villanelle because it captures Beth in all her fury and all her love. It may not be a great poem, but I think readers will grok Beth, so hopefully the poem accomplishes its purpose. I concur with Google on this poem.
Free Fall (#6 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes—the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air—
too thin to grasp, to breathe. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ...
two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other—fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.
I suspect Google has rated this poem a bit too highly, but I like it and believe it captures something of the chaotic and contradictory nature of human love affairs.
Cheyenne Proverb (#6 tie)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Before you judge
a man for his sins
be sure to trudge
many moons in his moccasins.
I began writing poetry around age eleven, mostly for personal amusement at first, then started to write with larger goals in mind around age thirteen or fourteen (I was very ambitious). "Styx" is one of my earliest poems, written in my teens ...
Styx (#7 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters,
deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way,
or will.
Poems I wrote as a teenager have been published by literary journals like The Lyric, Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), Nebo, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Blue Unicorn, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, New Lyre, Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Trinacria. Today my poetry has been translated into 19 languages, taught in high schools and colleges, and set to music 55 times by 31 composers. But it all started in my boyhood with early poems like "Styx," "Infinity," "Observance" and "Leave Taking."
In Praise of Meter (#7 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.
If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax—their circumstance
as humble as it is?—or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?
I admit a special fondness for this poem, liking to think that I pen musical poetry from time to time. I concur with Google here.
Caveat Spender (#8 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
It’s better not to speculate
"continually" on who is great.
Though relentless awe’s
a Célèbre Cause,
please reserve some time for the contemplation
of the perils of
EXAGGERATION.
I like to believe that I have my moments of cleverness, and that this poem is one of them. While #8 may be too high for a bit of fluff, I am inclined to agree with Google here. It makes me chuckle and that is the poem's purpose.
Infinity (#8 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your heart 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.
This is the second poem that made me feel like a "real" poet, after "Reckoning/Observance." I remember reading "Infinity" and asking myself, "Did I really write that?" Many years later, I'm still glad that I wrote it, and it still makes me feel like a real poet. I believe I wrote "Infinity" around 1976, at age 18. But I wasn't happy with some of the verses in the longer initial version, and over time I pared the poem down to the version above. "Infinity" was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses (for a whopping $10, my first cash payment) then subsequently by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Setu (India), Better Than Starbucks, Borderless Journal (Singapore), Poetry Life & Times, Formal Verse (Potcake Poet’s Choice) and The Chained Muse.
A Surfeit of Light (#9)
by Michael R. Burch
There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.
We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.
We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.
You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!
The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.
This was an usual poem for me to write. I was trying to capture the idea of someone endowed with grace but struggling with the basics of life. I am inclined to agree with Google about this poem.
Sweet Rose of Virtue (#10)
by William Dunbar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue men hold most dear?
except only that you are merciless.
Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I found flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently?
yet nowhere one leaf nor petal of rue.
I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair flower and left her downcast;
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that I long to plant love's root again?
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.
If the tenth line seems confusing, it helps to know that rue symbolizes pity and also has medicinal uses; thus I believe the unrequiting lover is being accused of a lack of compassion and perhaps of withholding her healing attentions. The penultimate line can be taken as a rather naughty double entendre, but I will leave that interpretation up to the reader! I agree with Google here.
Autumn Conundrum (#11)
by Michael R. Burch
It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.
I am inclined to give myself high marks for the title. It even looks poetic! I think the ranking is a bit high for such a short poem, but I do like it myself. And readers seem to agree, because at the height of its popularity, "Autumn Conundrum" had 1.4K Google results and was still climbing.
Let Me Give Her Diamonds (#12)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Let me give her diamonds
for my heart’s
sharp edges.
Let me give her roses
for my soul’s
thorn.
Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.
Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.
Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.
Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.
Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require
the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.
I can't call this a great poem, and yet I wouldn't change a word of it. The poem is an apology of sorts: one nearly every husband has probably owed his wife innumerable times. Not a great poem, perhaps, but still one that seems close to saying exactly what it intends to say.
Step Into Starlight (#13)
by Michael R. Burch
Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .
Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .
Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.
Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .
And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway . . .
For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!
I believe I wrote the original version of this poem in my early twenties. I was trying to capture what it feels like to be a young girl, and in love, and pregnant, and betrayed, all at once.
Frail Envelope of Flesh (#14)
by Michael R. Burch
for the mothers and children of the Holocaust and Gaza
Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...
Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...
Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...
I read the phrase "Frail envelope of flesh!" in a comic book as a boy and never forgot it. Eventually, it occurred to me to write a poem with that title and theme. I wrote the poem circa 1978 around age 20. When I published the poem online, probably around 2002 after it had been published by The Lyric, I scoured the Internet for the phrase "frail envelope of flesh" trying to find the comic where I had read it as a boy, but the phrase was unknown to Google. But today other writers are using it, so I suspect that I gave it a second life. At the height of its popularity, "Frail Envelope of Flesh" had 1.4K Google results. It has been set to music by the composer Eduard de Boer and performed in Europe by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab. It has been translated into Arabic by Nizar Sartawi, into Italian by Mario Rigli, and into Vietnamese by Ngu Yen. It is being taught in online courseware by Course Hero. "Frail Envelope of Flesh" has been published by The Lyric, Promosaik (Germany), Setu (India), Sindhu News (India), Tho Tru Tinh (in a Vietnamese translation by Ngu Yen), Sejak Sajak Di (Indonesia), Orphans of Gaza, Irish Blog, Alarshef, ArtVilla, Borderless Journal (Singapore), Daily Motion, Poetry Life & Times, Generations Shall Call Them Blessed (a Holocaust book by Dan Paulos) and Academia.edu.
Myth (#15)
by Michael R. Burch
Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.
And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf—
full of faith, full of grief.
Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain—
golden and humble in all its weary worth.
I believe I wrote the first version of this early poem toward the end of my senior year of high school, around age 18 in late 1976. To my recollection this is my only poem directly influenced by the “sprung rhythm” of Dylan Thomas (moreso than that of Gerard Manley Hopkins). But I was not happy with the fourth line and put the poem aside for more than 20 years, until 1998, when I revised it. But I was still not happy with the fourth line, so I put it aside and revised it again in 2020, nearly half a century after originally writing the original poem!
don’t forget (#16)
by michael r. burch
for Beth
don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved (like your Heart)
and that even Light
is bent by your Gravity.
The opening lines of my poem were inspired by a famous love poem by e. e. cummings. I like the poem, but most of the credit is due to mr. cummings.
Enigma (#17)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night, or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior.
Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?
Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love, this—our reclamation;
fallen wren,
you must strive to fly though your heart is shaken;
weary pilgrim,
you must not give up though your feet are aching;
lonely child,
lie here still in my arms; you must soon be waking.
Google and I will have to disagree on this poem. I rank "Enigma" higher than most of the poems Google has ranked above it. And I'm sure Beth would agree.
Breakings (#18)
by Michael R. Burch
I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?
I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.
But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in such great matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.
I suspect Google has overrated this poem. This is a protest poem and I believe the protest is warranted, but #18 is too high, I fear.
The Peripheries of Love (#19)
by Michael R. Burch
Through waning afternoons we glide
the watery peripheries of love.
A silence, a quietude falls.
Above us—the sagging pavilions of clouds.
Below us—rough pebbles slowly worn smooth
grate in the gentle turbulence
of yesterday’s forgotten rains.
Later, the moon like a virgin
lifts her stricken white face
and the waters rise
toward some unfathomable shore.
We sway gently in the wake
of what stirs beneath us,
yet leaves us unmoved ...
curiously motionless,
as though twilight might blur
the effects of proximity and distance,
as though love might be near—
as near
as a single cupped tear of resilient dew
or a long-awaited face.
I think this poem is better than some of those ranked above it.
For All That I Remembered (#20)
by Michael R. Burch
For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.
I rank this poem higher than Google. It may help, at times, to have a human heart.
Floating (#21 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.
Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.
Memories of ghostly white limbs . . .
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.
We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.
Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.
Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.
Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm breasts,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.
And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea . . .
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;
bright waves throw back your reflection at me.
This is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem may have had a different title when it was originally published, but it escapes me . . . ah, yes, "Entanglements."
To Flower (#21 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the bacchae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
Second Sight (#22)
by Michael R. Burch
I never touched you—
that was my mistake.
Deep within,
I still feel the ache.
Can an unformed thing
eternally break?
Now, from a great distance,
I see you again
not as you are now,
but as you were then—
eternally present
and Sovereign.
Passionate One (#23)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Love of my life,
light of my morning?
arise, brightly dawning,
for you are my sun.
Give me of heaven
both manna and leaven?
desirous Presence,
Passionate One.
"Passionate One" has five stars at PoemHunter.
Cleansings (#24 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
Walk here among the walking specters. Learn
inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave
to bone this tightly if their hearts believe
that God is good, and never mind the Urn.
A lentil and a bean might plump their skin
with mothers’ bounteous, soft-dimpled fat
(and call it “health”), might quickly build again
the muscles of dead menfolk. Dream, like that,
and call it courage. Cry, and be deceived,
and so endure. Or burn, made wholly pure.
If one prayer is answered,
“G-d” must be believed.
No holy pyre this—death’s hissing chamber.
Two thousand years ago—a starlit manger,
weird Herod’s cries for vengeance on the meek,
the children slaughtered. Fear, when angels speak,
the prophesies of man.
Do what you "can,"
not what you must, or should.
They call you “good,”
dead eyes devoid of tears; how shall they speak
except in blankness? Fear, then, how they weep.
Escape the gentle clutching stickfolk. Creep
away in shame to retch and flush away
your vomit from their ashes. Learn to pray.
Published by Other Voices International, Promosaik (Germany), Inspirational Stories, Ulita (Russia), The Neovictorian/Cochlea and Trinacria
in-flight convergence (#24 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city ———— extend ————
over lumbering behemoths
shrilly screeching displeasure;
they say
that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command
here the streetlights that flicker
and those blazing steadfast
seem one: from a distance;
descend,
they abruptly
part ways,
so that nothing is one
which at times does not suddenly blend
into garish insignificance
in the familiar alleyways,
in the white neon flash
and the billboards of Convenience
and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance
as we thunder down the enlightened runways.
Originally published by The Aurorean where it was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I rank this poem higher than Google.
In the Whispering Night (#25)
by Michael R. Burch
for George King
In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
as the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some savage ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze ...
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.
This is a poem I wrote for my favorite college English teacher, George King, about poetic kinship, brotherhood and romantic flights of fancy. At the height of its popularity, "In the Whispering Night" had 1.6K Google results. I rank this poem higher than Google. It has five stars at PoemHunter.