The Making of a Poet

The Making of a Poet by Michael R. Burch While I don’t consider “Poetry” to be my best poem—I wrote the first version in my teens—it’s a poem that holds special meaning for me; I call it my ars poetica. I also consider the poems that follow to be ars poetica verses. Poetry Poetry, I found you where at last they chained and bound you; with devices all around you to torture and confound you, I found you—shivering, bare. They had shorn your raven hair and taken both your eyes which, once cerulean as Gogh’s skies, had leapt with dawn to wild surmise of what was waiting there. Your back was bent with untold care; there savage brands had left cruel scars as though the wounds of countless wars; your bones were broken with the force with which they’d lashed your flesh so fair. You once were loveliest of all. So many nights you held in thrall a scrawny lad who heard your call from where dawn’s milling showers fall— pale meteors through sapphire air. I learned the eagerness of youth to temper for a lover’s touch; I felt you, tremulant, reprove each time I fumbled over-much. Your merest word became my prayer. You took me gently by the hand and led my steps from boy to man; now I look back, remember when you shone, and cannot understand why here, tonight, you bear their brand. I will take and cradle you in my arms, remindful of the gentle charms you showed me once, of yore; and I will lead you from your cell tonight back into that incandescent light which flows out of the core of a sun whose robes you wore. And I will wash your feet with tears for all those blissful years... my love, whom I adore. Keywords/Tags: art, ars poetica, poems, poets, poetry, verse, write, writing, Muse Goddess by Michael R. Burch for Kevin N. Roberts “What will you conceive in me?” I asked her. But she only smiled. “Naked, I bore your child when the wolf wind howled, when the cold moon scowled... naked, and gladly.” “What will become of me?” I asked her, as she absently stroked my hand. Centuries later, I understand; she whispered, “I Am.” In the Whispering Night 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, and 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 bodies to some violent 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 world of resplendence from which we were seized. Currents by Michael R. Burch How can I write and not be true to the rhythm that wells within? How can the ocean not be blue, not buck with the clapboard slap of tide, the clockwork shock of wave on rock, the motion creation stirs within? The Harvest of Roses 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. What the Poet Sees by Michael R. Burch What the poet sees, he sees as a swimmer ~~~~underwater~~~~ watching the shoreline blur sees through his breath’s weightless bubbles ... Both worlds grow obscure. In Praise of Meter 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? Discrimination by Michael R. Burch The meter I had sought to find, perplexed, was ripped from books of “verse” that read like prose. I found it in sheet music, in long rows of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed half-centuries by archivists, unscanned. I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed— why should such tattered artistry be banned? I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads, the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs... A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks are all I’ve found this late to sell to those who’d classify free verse “expensive prose.” What Works by Michael R. Burch for David Gosselin What works? hewn stone; the blush the iris shows the sun; the lilac’s pale-remembered bloom. The frenzied fly: mad-lively, gay, as seconds tick his time away, his sentence?one brief day in May, a period. And then decay. A frenzied rhyme’s mad tip-toed time, a ballad’s languid as the sea, seek, striving?"immortality. When gloss peels off, what works will shine. When polish fades, what works will gleam. When intellectual prattle pales, the dying buzzing in the hive of tedious incessant bees, what works will soar and wheel and dive and milk all honey, leap and thrive, and teach the pallid poem to seethe. Caveat Spender by Michael R. Burch for Stephen Spender 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. The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On...) by Michael R. Burch Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts at “meter,” I crossly concluded I’d use each iamb in lieu of a lamb, bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded.