Above The Poets Station
You’re a poet, as they say
All you write is poetically full of art
Wince when you read your stuff
As from literacy you stand apart
Such great depiction, fiction
wordplay and poet structures
Diction, contradiction, dead
good words and writing such as
Ballads, salads and other kinds
Wordplay With Marshmallows
Some days are meant for marshmallows
Such light and puffy stuff
Time for tossing words about
For phenomenal fun with fluff
Infinite interludes for introspection
Imbue innumerable another day
However a taste for marshmallows
Suddenly insinuated itself today
No harm ensues from marshmallows
Wordplay
Bumptious
Scrumptious
Totally presumptuous.
Fearful
Tearful
A bit of an earful.
Blinker
Winker
Epigrams 6
These are humorous epigrams: puns, wordplay, quips, zingers, japes, jests, gags, giggles, one-liners, irony, etc.
State of the Art
by Michael R. Burch
A poet may work from sun to sun,
but his editor's work is never done.
Useful Idiots
Useful idiots
All around.
And they failed to
Understand me.
I borrow time
And useful idiots
Help me reversed.
I know not
The Prison Of Poetry
Free verse, they call it. But is it really fully free?
As language looms large like a secret-police state
Dominating, dictating, dulling unfettered thought
In unsuspended sentences of stultifying strict syntax,
Confining, constraining cell-walls of pent-up punctuation,
And jackbooted, joyless jailers of rigorous grammar
Which conspire to restrict all breaths of inspiration
And leave us gasping, grabbing at gobbledygook
Instead of succinct, supple, well-wrought wordplay.
And, not content with eliminating insistent insight,
A Poe-Try Wordplay Before Logging Off
Insight... is only superseded by foresight,
which in truth is an out-of-the-box sight-
of thinking, brainstorming, eyes phased and sideways,
tapping the God-Gift of peripheral pathways,
as opposed to premonition which is poor definition,
of twenty-twenty vision, or false intuition-
from a night time apparition, better known as a Dream,
Double Helix Abecedarian Poetical Pizza Extravaganza
Accomplished verse must whizZ
Zestfully forwards as imagination's fleA
Bites author's itchy fingers. Cells greY
Yearn to coin expressions. Gift of gaB
Crafts timeless phrases which waX
Xanadu with Coleridge nectar, emotive gamut pedantiC,
Devise surprising riddles whose fair floW
Will appeal to all who reaD
Empathetic intellect must reV
Vers libres, prose or traditional versE,
Copper Snake
This tale describes how Israelites all grumbled
at God and Moses in the wilderness.
Although they all by biting snakes were humbled,
God cured them by a magical process
which violated laws that Moses gave
the Israelites. Much later Hezekiah
rejected idols many people crave,
refusing to allow them to expire.
Long journeys made the Israelites most restive.
Visit Of The Queen Of Sheba
As gifts to Solomon the Sheban Queen
brought lavish presents, Cushite gold
and precious stones and incense, clearly keen
to prove that she would not withhold
her treasures from a monarch who had built
his reputation on his wis-
dom, and a temple expiating guilt,
thus offering herself as his,
not sacrifice upon a temple altar,
but partner in his bed.
Early Poems
EARLY POEMS: JUVENILIA
by Michael R. Burch
These are early poems, most of them written between the ages of 11-18 and some published in my high school literary journal, THE LANTERN. Other poems were written later and several of those were published in my college literary journal, HOMESPUN.
Ironic Vacation
by Michael R. Burch
Ogden Nash
I can say, without a hint of flattery,
That wordplay devoid of nattery,
And disciplined use of rhyme,
Get the verse done every time.
Midlife Set Of Cards
In midlife we are served a set of cards
that are less promising than those
we played in springtime of our youth, like bards
presumptuously pre-empting prose.
Inspired by Christopher Isherwood’s review of Melissa James Gibson’s new play, “This” (“Does Adultery Make You an Adult? ” NYT, December 4,2009) :
“This” is a bum title for the beautiful new play at Playwrights Horizons. But then Melissa James Gibson, the author of this tart, melancholy comedy about a group of close friends entering the choppy waters of middle age, has such boundless affection for language that even the drabbest constellations of vowels and consonants — words like “this, ” in other words — are made to soar and leap like ballet dancers in full, ecstatic flight, or alternately stand alone in a sea of silence, ominous and resonant, like those pregnant pauses in a Pinter play. The author of the quirky, cult-appeal comedies “[sic]” and “Suitcase, ” both seen at the downtown powerhouse Soho Rep, Ms. Gibson graduates into the theatrical big leagues with this beautifully conceived, confidently executed and wholly accessible work, which is not just her finest to date but also the best new play to open Off Broadway this fall. Its confused but lovable characters are drawn with a fine focus and a piercing emotional depth; the dialogue sparkles with exchanges as truthful as they are clever; and as directed by Daniel Aukin, Ms. Gibson’s longtime collaborator, and performed by a flawless cast, the play’s delicate pace, richly patterned wordplay and undercurrent of rue combine to cast a moving spell that lingers in the memory, like a sad-sweet pop song whose chorus you can’t shake. This is entirely appropriate for a play about how we process love, hurt and loss by concocting tidy stories to recall our experience, or reshape it — and sometimes to frame a happier future too…
Golden Rule
To find oneself within another, while
another is within
oneself, is what defines the loving style
of games that are win-win.
Inspired by Lev.19: 18 and a paper that my nephew Alon Goshen-Gottstein dedicated to me for my seventieth birthday, citing Ps.90: 12 in a subtle wordplay. The paper, “Jewish-Christian Relations and Rabbinical Literature––Shifting Scholarly and Relational Paradigms: The Case of Two Powers, ” argues that perspectives on the relationship between rabbinic and early Christian literature are affected by contemporary mindsets and the authors’ emotional stances. He illustrates this with an analysis of the position of Daniel Boyarin, which replaces the polemical model adopted by previous scholars, notably Ephraim Urbach and Jacob Yuval, with one that validates each side, presenting the authors of both rabbinic and early Christian literature as legitimate heirs of an earlier stage of Judaism in they coexisted without clear borderlines. Goshen-Gottstein points out that Boyarin’s position emerges from the context of the American academy which “is based on a pluralistic ethos, where members, often representatives, of different religious traditions work alongside one another in a way that maintains their religious identity while sharing a broader framework of the humanities or of religious studies.” Citing Boyarin’s declaration that, “As long as I can remember I have been in love with some manifestation of Christianity” (Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity [Philadelphia,2004], ix) , Goshen-Gottstein describes the emotional roots of Boyarin’s position as “finding oneself within the other and the other within oneself.” He argues that since Boyarin finds himself in an ambivalent movement that seeks to establish identity and difference simultaneously, his scholarship is conducted in a context that is neither theologically nor emotionally neutral, and proposes a third model.
8/15/08
Cleanliness, Godliness, Lust
Cleanliness they say is next
to Godliness. No text
exists, however, showing
that God, who is All-knowing,
considers greatness––Yiddish
New Runny Babitt (For Tanja)
New Runny Babitt (For Tanja)
While you were writing
serious wordplay,
about Animal Spirit*,
your letters were
on a golden way.
But when you started writing,
from ordinary habit,
Heavenly Parrots
Rabbi Eliezer listened to a voice
from heaven, which had little merit.
He said that if he had no choice
he’d also listen to a parrot.
In Yiddish parrot’s papagei,
which makes it like a voice from heaven
that’s spoken by the Papa Guy
deciding Akhinai’s pure oven.
This poem is a wordplay based on two rabbinic texts: .
Ph: Humor: One Poem (That's It!)
These words ring in my ears as I dream of a meaning
I'm hungry to post, have another heart taste,
such, that promise of sex might not tempt me at all!
Hark! Sharp uptake of breath from freak's mind at a phrase,
oh, the wordplay's so sweet. There are twists of mind's canyons
that slime the sleepwalker from wheat fields to slopes
of more vertical content, now riddled with pause!
How she hangs on the edge of this precipice leaning
toward whispers of answers that gather, lays waste
Bow Bells
I opened for the one I love
“Hello! ” and my belovèd melted
away. I looked below, above,
but in the dark he'd helter-skeltered.
Then when he spoke, I lost control––
I sought him and I could not find
the rainbow that my flesh and soul
were striving all the night to find.
I called him––he did not respond
the way that I had hoped to do.
You Want To Be Born Again
In evening I need
to speak with my small voice
to fill my dreams with moon.
Buried alive in the brick―
wall, a frightened poem
wails.
I will meet you, my muse―
in your space, without any pang,