Bride of the Monster
The soul enslaved gives a sign,
when love looms like terror,
resignation in a single breath
blown then gone. Is it all bad?
Jewels clash like falling hail, but
Bear their brightness true,
Oh, green, blue, garnet's there,
Or diamond, cut like dew.
Is it all bad, then, for days & hours
shadowed room empty save for dust,
walk you through my hand reaching up,
smoke pouring from your face like writhing
steam after summer rain. Enchanted sleep
takes you, bride. Afternoon wearies on,
like rotten fruit. Still you sleep & sleep.
Is it all so bad? Of the monster?
Well, you married him.
Everyone said so, even the blackbirds
that haunted the trees. Empty salmon
can, stained white coffee up, lipstick ghosts
and crushed Pall Mall's. Is it all so bad, Bride
of the Monster? Oh, blue, green, garnet,
diamonds in dark velvet. Wake from
your enchanted sleep, Bride!
It is all bad, for your child reaches up
& clutches air or smoke. A single breath
blown and lost, forsaken, gone.
The Revenge of the Mummy
Go tell the galling kites
they missed their meal. Wheel high,
birds, disturbed by brewing sand,
thick stones shiver in the maelstrom,
when I wake to sun and memory.
Riprap history means nothing,
reading all night in yellow fear,
page after page of knowing
nothing. Hide there, stay there,
for history, riprap knowledge
seals me deep. Smell of must.
herbal fluids course my heart,
beating beneath all the covers.
rise me again. Here I come,
loathsome, ancient & obsessed,
while kites circle, hooked beaks clack,
empty claws grip at air,
for history cannot be held like that,
Eaten like that. Riprap me,
founded on the red-hair's man anger,
knows his mission: learn nothing, be nothing,
suffer everything. Test my uncanny will,
& then you will see. Kites go hungry,
history piled on thick, knowledge,
riprap works crushed. And here I clack,
stolid forever and ever.
The Thing from Another World
Blessings unto you,
strange star fallen like the accusing one,
laid to earth, but in barren places
which the sane have forsaken,
There you will fructate, corporate,
a gem on the eternal strand,
in the wrongest place
you can imagine. What ever
goes right, that's the question.
Lost among the cosmos, stars
aplenty, bending time and coherent
light, you home in here
like some top-40 song coming in bright
on the long highway ride.
technological advances mean nothing,
for in your world the essence of time
drinks like cool water in your mind,
but science bends the rules of this world,
for the method bloods superstition's
open lips, seducer of logic & killer
of algorithms mighty as a Druid's oak,
& here are you, child born of inquiry,
son of fusion, get of the cosmos, vain
longings for love out there, but here,
oh, here, fear fills that appointed role,
for you. Blessings unto you, beast,
like nuclear war, or drones blasting away,
heedless of guilt or innocency,
you kill just because
from a star you fell into
the wrongest place you & I.
About the Author
Mark Burgh lives and teaches in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Mark holds a BA in History from the University of Delaware, and an MFA in Creative Writing along with a PhD in English from the University of Arkansas.