These are War poems and Anti-War poems, including a hymn for fallen soldiers and poems I wrote about 911 and its aftermath.
Hiroshima Shadows
by Michael R. Burch
Hiroshima shadows ... mother and child ...
Oh, when will our hearts ever be beguiled
to end mindless war ... to seek peace,
reconciled
to our common mortality?
***
Mending
by Michael R. Burch
for the survivors of 9-11 and their families
I am besieged with kindnesses;
sometimes I laugh,
delighted for a moment,
then resume
the more seemly occupation of my craft.
I do not taste the candies;
the perfume
of roses is uplifted
in a draft
that vanishes into the ceiling’s fans
that spin like old propellers
till the room
is full of ghostly bits of yarn . . .
My task
is not to knit,
but not to end too soon.
Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Poetry Life & Times
***
Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch
Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.
Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.
When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency), that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.
***
Break Time
by Michael R. Burch
for those who lost loved ones on 9-11
Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
Published by Sonnet Writers, Freshet and Sontey (Czechoslovakia)
***
Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch
Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go ...
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.
Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us rest here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin ...
So lay down your pamphlets; now no one will “win.”
Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through . . .
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.
I wrote “Lay Down Your Arms” around age 21 and it became my first published poem, possibly. Can an acceptance be a rejection? I never received a copy of the first journal that accepted one of my poems, The Romantist, so I still don’t know if my first “published poem” was actually published!
***
Of Tetley's and V-2's
(or, “Why Not to Bomb the Brits”)
by Michael R. Burch
The English are very hospitable,
but tea-less, alas, they grow pitiable ...
or pitiless, rather,
and quite in a lather!
O bother, they're more than formidable.
***
America's Riches
by Michael R. Burch
Balboa's dream
was bitter folly—
no El Dorado near, nor far,
though seas beguiled
and rivers smiled
from beds of gold and silver ore.
Drake retreated
rich with plunder
as Incan fled Conquistador.
Aztecs died
when Spaniards lied,
then slew them for an ingot more.
The pilgrims came
and died or lived
in fealty to an oath they swore,
and bought with pain
the precious grain
that made them rich though they were poor.
Apache blood,
Comanche tears
were shed, and still they went to war;
they fought to be
unbowed and free—
such were Her riches, and still are.
Published by Poetic Reflections, Borderless Journal and Tucumcari Literary Review
***
An Ecstasy of Fumbling
by Michael R. Burch
The poets believe
everything resolves to metaphor—
a distillation,
a vapor
beyond filtration,
although perhaps not quite as volatile as before.
The poets conceive
of death in the trenches
as the price of art,
not war,
fumbling with their masque-like
dissertations
to describe the Hollywood-like gore
as something beyond belief,
abstracting concrete bunkers to Achaemenid bas-relief.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Keywords/Tags: war, war poems, anti-war poems, fallen soldiers, soldiers, violence, Hiroshima, 911, hymn, hymnal, hymnals
Reviews
No reviews yet.