On Writing

On Writing

by Gideon Burton

Of what exists that matters in the gray

and wet cerebrum, liquid rivers flush

with possibility, ideas that stay

until of course new currents crossing rush

a mash of second thoughts, as though the poles

of gravity inverted in a flash–

I only feel, yet cannot firmly know;

so volatile the mind, so fragment-fast.

But as the ink commits me to its form,

as sentences reveal what hid before

(secure in mute obscurity), the storm

subsides; the spyglass finds the shore.

        For as I write I come to know my thought,

        unborn until I craft it as I ought.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - athena

A fibrous light that weaves itself along

A fibrous light that weaves itself along

by Gideon Burton

A fibrous light that weaves itself along

the eastern mountain ranges thickens hot

as all the molten doubting you had caught

and swallowed from the evening’s sinking songs.

They were too easy, failing in the west

of measured meaning, spitting ashy fire,

provoking piercing silence wet as flesh.

And then the loom of morning, orange mesh

absorbing evergreens, the darkened spires

unshadowed in the valley.  Nothing pressed

by midnight’s ruses but enfolds in rays

of wet release and rich, expanding breath

I’ve often heard the stories naming death

but in this morning those are tales of haze.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - shockmotion

Numbers

Numbers
by Gideon Burton

Of all the numbers counted even, odd,
or dark within the scale of fractions dense
along the endless integers, the flawed
eternities of primes whose great expanse
is random-scattered, patchy, pure, across
the exponential wilderness -- I wish
I had one multiplier without loss,
nor subject to divisions poorly rich.
With such I would such mathematics yield
for you, you’d wonder what remainder stayed,
what algorithms algebra concealed
obscure that might have freer play.
     While others crack their chalk in mute despair,
     These nimble number symbols root my square.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - dullhunk

Anger

Anger
by Gideon Burton

Like hard and earthy red ceramic, kilned
by desert suns and desert afternoons,
whose cracking surfaces by hours milled
to blunted blocks and scraps of gibbous moons--
so lies the soiled, ungraced remains of some
whose souls are sold to anger's strong embrace.
So red, so hard, so heated by the sun
yet never to be questioned or replaced,
content to beat, again, this stubbing place,
until all moistened hopes are dried to clay
or salty alkaline no mist would taste.
So bakes the land, and so the hours prey.
        The dirt that itches in these muddy pores
        has too long festered; still, they ask for more.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Ian Boyd

Mystery, Miracle, Marriage

It's my wife's birthday today, and I've been listening steadily to all of her music, especially that nice rendition of Francis Cabrel's moody "C'etait L'hiver" that she put together yesterday, patiently learning the French pronunciation (as she'd done with the Portuguese version of Girl from Ipanema awhile back), and doing take after take until she was happy with the mix. This woman is incredible, pumping out weekly tunes for music Mondays and doing her own sound production, while keeping up a thoughtful daily blog, caring carefully for four sons, and being a steady companion to me. I'm blessed to know her, and intend to know her better.

Mystery, Miracle, Marriage

by Gideon Burton

The more that you reveal through image, thought,

and through your honey-alto-angel voice,

the more your mysteries compound. I'm caught

in awe, in gratitude we made the choice

to hand-in-hand the lengths of twisting time,

to share the casual miracles that come

when man and woman choose to rhyme,

despite what jolts and jarrings have undone.

I kneel, I find you kneeling next to me.

We interlace our worries and our tears.

I stand, I find you standing next to me.

We alternate who comforts and who cheers.

     Of what's to come, I haven't any clue,

     But I can trust the peace I know with you.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship.

No Still Voice and Small

No Still Voice and Small
by Gideon O. Burton

The Spirit, so they say, comes still and small,

As though the voice of God Himself were stagnant;

Or that creation's Author scarce can call

Who sings into the winds that stroke his planet,

Who roars into the crashing waves alive,

Whose sprouting, greening plants do shake and stir,

Whose million moving species active thrive.

No quiet voice thus bids such life occur.

As Jesus summoned, "Lazarus, come forth!"

So beckons God to each our dying souls,

In resonance that echoes south to north,

In burning, hot as magma, bright as coals.

     The Lord Almighty's voice is as a storm;

     His Spirit shouts and suddenly we're born.

This poem won first place in the 1995 Literature and Belief Writing Contest for poetry and was subsequently published in Literature and Belief 17.1&2 (1997): 99.  Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - damian 78

Prune Me

I spent most of this amazing Spring day pruning two apple trees with my sons. We hadn't pruned properly in years, and the branches had woven themselves into tangles of misdirected growth. I even extracted a Chinese Elm working its trash-tree tendrils half-way up the Granny Smith tree. My oldest bravely sawed the tops off, then surgically trimmed it all into modest submission. We cut drastically, worrying we'd gone too far, then stood back and saw these truncated trees as somehow more whole, more complete in being less. Well, the metaphor begged to be expressed. The tone and approach I borrow from John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV (previously posted here).

Prune Me

by Gideon Burton

My gardening God, I am both wheat and chaff,

an olive tamely wild and wildly tame, 

a field that's white for harvest and for laughs.

I sow the bad, the good; I reap the same.

Too long have I, some spastic sapling, spread

my vainest vines along the sunlit path.

Now tangled, gangly, half-alive, half-dead,

I wish for purging, plead for plowing wrath.

So, grasp the sharpest, razored pruning hooks,

strip all my blossom buds with shredding cuts.

I do not care how amputation looks,

just slice and rip my gnarled and pulpy guts.

     For if I am not cut to heaven's length,

     I clot with growth, I wilt in aimless strength.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Earth is School

Earth is School

by Gideon Burton

Whole days in tunnels, cubicles of dark

denial of the windy world outside

where sudden sunshine steals across the park

or warming rains make maples shake in pride.

We have too well composed our roofs and doors

and piped into our cells what we all thought

we needed, cleaned and waxed our parquet floors

as though our feet should nothing soil nor spot.

But wiser ones have cast aside the pride

of stucco, timbers hewed and deftly locked,

have whispered to the mountain crests outside

and dirtied shirts and shoes and pants and socks.

        Defy the rain, come with me in the cool.

        No need for work or study. Earth is school.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Mike Hornblade

Orange Sonnet

Orange Sonnet
by Gideon Burton


The orange peel exudes a pungent oil
that stings its way into my open pores.
To shred its plastic skin may take some toil:
I twist, I claw, I probe its juicy core.
A citric mist explodes into my eyes,
an acid answer to my violations.
It's worth the tangy perfume I will wear;

I suck each nectar node with fresh elation.

My hands are strung with tissue, yellow-white,

that lined the interstices of this sphere;
beneath my nails, fresh evidence my fight
was won to quench my thirst in juices clear.
     So delicate, this pod of sugared juice
     I’ll tongue your secrets till they all come loose.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - J Devaun

He tethered us with mercy in the dark

Originally I composed this sonnet with the early pioneers in mind. In fact, the first two lines come directly from a story about a Mormon pioneer who claimed the difficulties of their journey were worth it because they came to know God in the process. Today, however, as I'm thinking about a friend undergoing an extreme trial, it seemed very contemporary.

He tethered us with mercy in the dark
by Gideon Burton

In our extremities, however, we
became acquainted with our God. In mud,
in winter's coldest anger, in the sea
of prairie winds, in sweat and tears and blood.
He tethered us with mercy in the dark.
His grace survived, a blanket in the night,
and though we walked unshielded in the stark
and rocky wilderness, consumed with fright,
our feet and hands grown numb within their rags
our children, mothers, sinking into graves--
yet sunlight breaking through the mountain crags
conveyed his promises in warming waves.
     Though faint, we heard his voice, we felt his hand;
     and as we did, we found his promised land.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - MarkKelley

Spam Sonnet

Okay, so I've been doing too much of the moody-heavy-abstract kinds of sonnets. Any moment now my nine followers will drop to four. Can't have that. Solution? Spam! (the kind you eat or don't eat; not the kind you filter)

Spam Sonnet

by Gideon Burton

Third cousin to a pig and twice removed,

It oozes, goopy, from its squarish tin;

Thick film conceals the lard with which its grooved,

Intestines pureed mottle its pink skin.

Would ancient man have glorified the spam,

In pictographs preserved its conquest sure?

Or would they shrug at its smooth texture, bland–

No boxy graphic to make spam endure?

In industry the spam is thrift itself:

No bones or organs spill aside as scrap.

Once salted, lives for decades on a shelf;

Discerning palates know its kind from crap.

     Maligned, despised, yet all the while consumed

     If spam’s eternal, earth itself is doomed.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - AJC1

Remember all the darkened months of waves

Remember all the darkened months of waves

by Gideon Burton

Remember all the darkened months of waves
against our midnight swimming skin the day
the other moons appeared, their humid rays
invisible, and yet we came to crave
their buoyancy along the breaking planes
of milky starlit water boiling thin
behind our lenses, down the silence trimmed
by intimacies published by the cranes
who stood observing us ascend the sky,
our naked steps uncertain on the air.
We swam, the roping moonlight taking care
to blanch the taste of salt from where we’d fly.
Remember all the waves of dread, of dark,
annihilated by these starry sparks.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - stuant63

When visions come: be still, behold, be filled

When visions come: be still, behold, be filled

by Gideon Burton

When visions come: be still, behold, be filled

with liquid light as rich and warm as nights

where milky ways of wonder, darkly bright,

descend and rise again, then bursting, spill

electric, drenching silence white with widened will,

with fissures tearing heavens from their heights,

the comets curving earthward in their flight.

But as the autumn-embered airways dim

or glow with pulsing heavy banks of sky,

so dark with water seeping down the high

descent, diffused by saffron shredded thin--

so I have traced his wingspan, seen him fly

in circling, curving arcs with scanning eye

that spans the chasms where I sinking swim.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: NASA

You cannot suffocate beneath that tide

You cannot suffocate beneath that tide
by Gideon Burton

You cannot suffocate beneath that tide
of quiet moons unsheathing overhead.
No matter the illusion of the spread
of silence, breathing trees and valleys wide
enough to span horizons in the dried
and slaty desert thrive -- though pressed and bled
of all the singing voices that have fled
throughout those measures, marked upon the wide
plateau of thought, the thinning rays of age.
I had considered other ends, the scents
of moistened bark recalling me, the taste
of ripened mornings scant of garish sounds.
But all of that has crumbled, ended, spent --
so many blasted pollens in the waste
of this, my wayward hope all out of bounds.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo - flickr - uticaflowercompany

Cherry Cola

Cherry Cola

by Gideon Burton

I'm told my cola beverage is a poison,

its stimulants a fraud of frothy sweet;

its syrups, surreptitiously the reason

that some are born twelve-toed and with three feet.

Alright, it isn't spinach juice and whey.

I know, the carbonation's lethal gas.

Of course, caffeine makes me obey

that spell of craving it so ably casts.

And yet, my cheery cherry cola's true

to me while bad for me: the rush is sure,

--no matter what unhealth it takes me to

--despite the artificial buzz it stirs.

   Sometimes you crave the craving, not the juice.

   So friends, your intervention is no use.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Kyle May

Snowslush

Snowslush

by Gideon Burton

So many metric tons of springtime snow

lay heavy on the Wasatch mountains, dense

with runoff ready to cascade below

as soon as weather breaks the crystals, tense

with holding latticed diamonds smooth and still.

The aching acres wide and white will rush

from warming alpine altitudes to fill

the bouldered rivers with their thinning slush.

But on this April afternoon it waits,

allows a kind of surfing down its hide

from skiers loath to change their winter states,

content to linger on the mountain's side.

     In airy snowy powder I may thrive

     But even snowslush keeps ski bums alive.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Hunger

Hunger
by Gideon Burton

A certain burning, sluggish cooling lead
descending black into the thinning blood.
A trembling of the organs, salty red,
which dissipate into a common mud.
A pleading stretched in pulses in the nerves,
or else a slowing echo in the mind
as breathing hastens, stomach inward curves.
An absence seeking what it cannot find,
it fills the body, empties spirit clean.
And soon the numbing turns the daylight numb
So present, though unbodied and unseen--
how deeply will its twisting knife blades plunge?
        As hunger sharpens I will grow more dull,
        not human quite, until once more I'm full.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - nosha

Balloons back then were not an easy matter

Okay, time to lighten things up a bit on the sonnets. Here's one I did for Valentine's day awhile back...

Balloons back then were not an easy matter

by Gideon Burton

Balloons back then were not an easy matter.

In ancient times they had to kill a goat,

extract its large intestine (or its bladder);

some lumberjack would huff, the ball would bloat.

Today, some weakling florist turns the gas,

and presto, a bouquet of mylar orbs!

Expired the rites of manhood to be passed,

inflating them no time nor sweat absorbs.

True valentines their own balloons must fashion,

must find a cow or rhino to dispatch,

must find the guts to well express his passion,

to show his love that florist’s met his match.

Believe me, this procedure’s tripe and true:

she’ll know your love by just how well you blew.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - km33068

This last remittance, oily liquid pearls

This last remittance, oily liquid pearls
by Gideon Burton


This last remittance, oily liquid pearls
upon the roughened surface unabsorbed.
The slightest trembling clutches at the core,
the edges fray, withdrawing as they curl
toward the ashen center salty-wet,
unlikely to unfold that little more
so requisite for what now lies in store.
These recent birthings, sloughing life we shed
in sticky distance, multiply the flow
and stench and pebbled measures, dense and taut,
replace the hard reluctances we know
so well, propel the simulacra's burst,
the stamen stilled or stanched or even cursed,
conceding that the voice is overwrought.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - only alice

The Eye Hath Not Seen

I'm a big fan of imitation as a way of composing. This was a common mode in the Renaissance, reborn today in the form of remix culture -- an idea to which my "open source" sonnets blog is devoted. I believe that some of the divine gifts given to us are to be found in the cultural commons, where we can rework established creations into things not tried before. So here's an attempt, a sabbath sonnet reworking a biblical promise.

The Eye Hath Not Seen
by Gideon Burton

An imitation of 1 Corinthians 2:9-10

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

In holy writ, in prophets' ink, it's said 
the eye with all her searching has not seen, 
nor has the patient ear with patience read, 
nor has it entered hearts both whole and clean, 
those glories, blanket blessings thick and full, 
that he our loving God has long prepared, 
has saved and savored till at last he pulls 
the heavens whole on souls whose hearts are bared 
in pure and simple love for him. And yet 
our gracious master has revealed this boon 
through spirit, holy washing grace, through wet 
and cleansing peace upon us, heaven's tune.

    For Spirit searches well and fathoms deep 
    to find in us divinity to keep.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - greencandy8888

It is the thing that we keep hidden well

A friend introduced me to Carl Jung's concept of the "shadow," and it has haunted me every since. Not necessarily one's evil twin, but something potent, permanent, a counter-balance to our public selves. It is the thing that we keep hidden well, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

It is the thing that we keep hidden well
by Gideon Burton


It is the thing that we keep hidden well,
a thing that we refuse to give a name.
For this, perhaps, it flexes, reaches, swells
to unpredicted girth one cannot tame
with bright diversions, cannot leach nor spill,
exfoliate nor immolate nor quell.
It worms its tendrils tight around the will,
compelling weak confessions one might sell
to selves less calloused to the pattern. So,
despite the exorcisms and the paint,
the breath of children and the river’s flow,
the chanting of religions deep or quaint,
it is the thing that on our dying lives,
that we embrace for every pain it gives.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - sufw

Your skin is cool against my smoothing touch

Your skin is cool against my smoothing touch
by Gideon Burton


Your skin is cool against my smoothing touch.
Forgive me if I linger longer near your cheek
And if I nuzzle nearer as you lie in such
Relaxing poses. Let me grow more weak
In knowing you asleep and calm.  Your breath
Inhales, exhales, inhales against the beat
That I can hear so strong within your chest.
But white and welcoming from head to feet,
Your cool and fragrant skin invites me back
To you, as though warm waterfalls had bathed
You fresh, replacing any life you lacked.
So still, you must have nodded as you prayed.
        My wife, I curl against your comfort touch.
        Don’t wake, no need to surfeit what’s enough.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: Luann Hawker, WholeGrainPhotography.net

The soundest restlessness, the cinnamon

The soundest restlessness, the cinnamon

by Gideon Burton

The soundest restlessness, the cinnamon 

reprieve along the length of shining hair, 

the sugared punctures more than time could bear 

and yet my sleep an animal to stun 

toward the opening, a melted gun, 

a compromise, the stock to split its shares 

regrouped in random bunches, won’t we stare 

a moment longer in the purpled sun? 

I cannot track the beating, not the blood 

or bread or crumbs of resolution, not 

the sylvan sluices trebled in the shade 

defacing tired tracks in grainy mud. 

I’ll commandeer a khaki-colored cloth,

a chance to rub my thumb along a spade.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - webtreats

Perhaps another sort of autumn, then

Perhaps another sort of autumn, then
by Gideon Burton

Perhaps another sort of autumn, then,
as cool as dusted saffron, but inside.
As yet, the densities of blood collide
with tendoned, muscled, tightened breathing spent
to temper silent knots of fire. The phlegm
of thought compounds in roiling rivers wide
as night compressing hoping to a thing denied,
a swallowing of stony mud or stems.
The choruses of quaking aspens strew
a hundred mornings' suns about my feet.
A cooling chill unveils with windy skill
the agile amber shadows that I knew
before this dense desire, this dark retreat--
this viscous praying God will not distill.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship

Like leaden filaments absorbing in the waves

I've written a series of more abstract sonnets, not intended to be directly representational. I think of them like an abstract painting: potent with enough form to catch a feeling, create a mood, but not attempting any sort of literalism or narrative. They either do something for the reader, or they don't. And that's fine.

Like leaden filaments absorbing in the waves

by Gideon Burton

Like leaden filaments absorbing in 

the waves, like liquid ash not grey not white, 

not memory, not veins along the slight,

the undulating surfaces, but dim 

enough, opaque as ignorance or grim 

reluctances spread out across the night, 

the hesitations of the comets, bright 

enough for only outer planets, thin 

and thinning for the rest of us, a skein 

of kelp submerging then emerging, dulled 

and drowning in the tepid light. As soft 

as sand, or soft as footfall on the main, 

untainted part of childhood that you pulled 

in taffy strands and yet compelled aloft.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - tomt6788

Potato Sonnet

Potato Sonnet
by Gideon Burton

Potato -- either russet, red or sweet --
you slumber under mud until complete.
While tubers zig the surface, indiscreet,
you swell to ripened fullness under feet.
You are the king of carbos, prince of starch,
the staple of our lust for chips and fries;
for you to Idaho I'd gladly march,
despite your tendency for sprouting eyes.
In families of five or twenty pounds,
I purchase you in bags of plastic brown,
then cook and smash you into steaming mounds
on which I ladle gravy without bounds.
       Les pommes de terre you are my daily buds;
       I worship at the shrine of fluffy spuds.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - LavenderCreek

Resurrection (3)

Image by Loci Lenar via Flickr

Resurrection 3
by Gideon Burton

With distant thunder, hooves upon the plains,
comes sweaty death to plow our bones to powder.
Horizons tremble, skies explode in rains,
our prayers are dimmed by darkness growing louder.
Good God, what whole and frozen night consumes
this flesh or drilling sunrays dessicate
the supple muscles?  Dust clogs up the tombs,
so instant and so absolute our fate.
Then turns the slumberer, our ocean home,
fresh tides in yawning newness paint the shores.
The April One to all gives liberal loan:
So many wakings, living spreads its spores.
     Though dim his entrance, slow and seeming late,       
     he wakes us wholly, Jesus, savior great.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Resurrection (2)

Continuing my Easter weekend set of sonnets, a second on the subject of resurrection:

Resurrection (2)
by Gideon Burton

When He who clothed our bones had been disrobed,
When sank the eyes that once had cosmos scanned,
When punctured were the palms that cupped the globe,
When blank and dark the mind that worlds had planned;
When He who gave each creature blood was bled,
When Man of Peace did fall to men of strife,
When breath that blew the winds had thinned and fled,
When He in giving life gave up His life--
Then came the Father, quietly, to hold
The cold and broken Jesus' form, to weep
For him though all had been foreknown, foretold:
Our Father trembled, seeing Jesus sleep.
         Oh, silent son, how camest thou to this?
         My Lazarus, I wake you with a kiss.