Open Source Sonnets

Winter Window

2011-12-04T23:33:00.001-07:00

Winter Window
by Gideon Burton

I have been watching at the window, still
enough for tides of moonwash moistening
the cooling glass, the slowing hours, the still
arranging silences. I'm listening.
Above in bloodied trails hot comets score
the flimsy fabric, screaming light. But no
unwintering, no auguring the core
of cold, no pause against the piling snow--
this flow of every evening, evening
to one, to waiting at a window framed
with stains of weary wonder hovering
in something said, in something pure and named
and washing me or watching me or spilled
and spelled with mercies tendered as He will.

Image: Creative Commons licensed through Flickr - Randy OHC

Provided For

2011-11-20T22:57:00.001-07:00

creative commons licensed by James Jordan

Provided For

by Gideon Burton

after D&C 78:17-18:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you; And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.

What copious abundance, ready, set,

awaiting and prepared by Father's hands

but hidden to your little eyes: the grand

and great, the fishes heavy in their net.

Too little, children, yet to see or bear

the rush of grace, the hush of others' pain,

the cresting crush of deserts' sudden rain,

the blooming flush of flesh in fresh repair.

Yet I will lead and cheer you, find your way,

will clear the tangled knots and smooth the road,

will coach and calm and cry and seek and pray.

In joy await: the kingdom keeps for you,

eternities that surge and swirl and flow

in blessings, riches -- quiet, promised, true.

Long Division: A Story in Sonnets #1

2011-03-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I let myself have a bit of time off after completing a year's worth of daily sonnets. The inertia of that regular composing created a rhythm that was hard to break, though, so the last couple weeks I've been in withdrawal. I'm still toying with the idea of trying to tell a story through a series of sonnets. Maybe this could be the start of one.

Long Division: A Story in Sonnets #1
by Gideon Burton

"It's different now," she said, her downward glance
confirming everything: her shift of tone,
as though a sounding bell shook loose their trance;
her calm, as though time bleached a desert bone.
He reached for words, but not for words, he trawled
the murky shallows for a passing trace
of certainty to anchor to. He called
upon a past or future in her face,
a plot line rising from that almond curve
her closing eyes defined, though shutting, wet;
an answer or a question that could swerve
toward assurances; some golden net
to braid new bravery. "I'll take you home."
Then he would wander, sinking, mute, alone.

Photo: flickr - Michael Heilemann

Finishing my 365 Sonnets Project

2011-02-28T00:02:00.000-07:00

Well, today I'm finishing a year of posting one sonnet a day. This is something I did once before (not posting them to a blog, but composing one sonnet daily for over three years, between 1998-2001). I've drawn upon some of those earlier sonnets to supply this round, and I've also occasionally featured a classic poet's sonnet, or a sonnet by one of my students. But by and large, it's been my own new creation every day since February 28, 2010. (Here's the full index in case you're interested).

Many of these sonnets have been imitations (43, in fact), with my major topical categories going to religion (75) and nature (46). Some 19 have been written to or about my wife (my "uxorious" category) and another 5 about marriage. Many of my sonnets are reflective (25), philosophical (32), or even abstract (21). But there are also some 25 humorous sonnets, often about food (21). You can see the full list of tags on the side of the blog.

I just added the Popular Posts widget, something that if I'd put up earlier might have changed some of my writing choices. How do people find and read this little niche blog? Hard to say. Why do some sonnets get read more than others? A puzzle.
But the most read sonnet is one based off of a spam letter I received that had a funny line in it (whoda thunk?), "My Name is Darja." A serious sonnet on marriage (at the occasion of my son's wedding) takes second place, "Learning Love," with another marriage sonnet also in the top 10 ("Let Her Speak"). Two of the poems in the top ten are imitations (one after Matthew Arnold, "On Dover's Beach"; and the opening lines from Milton's Paradise Lost, "Illumine Me." Two are Mormon-themed sonnets (though neither my favorites in this category): "Apostles" and "Shakespeares of Our Own"). An historical-religious poem (based off of a great sermon I heard) was among my favorites, so I'm glad it made the top 10 popular posts, "We Will Cross the River." A couple of humorous ones round out the top 10, "New Suit" and "Cold Cereal."

I want to go back and read the whole year's worth to see what I'm most happy with, but my first run at top personal favorites include:

So, my millions of sonnet fans -- any favorites?

Photo: flickr - Caro's Lines

Squeezed Muse

2011-02-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

Squeezed Muse

by Gideon Burton

I've taxed her limit; this I will admit.

Each day I've wrung her robes for drops of light,

for music (when I wasn't feeling it),

for anger (when I didn't have the fight).

At times she has refused me, made me walk

in blind unrhythmed prose, inert, and blank.

At times the waters burst my writer's block,

then calmed their froth so I had strength to thank.

I've found that one can tame the flighty sprite,

can summon depths and heights that she had hidden.

If I am brave to fail in black and white,

she takes me up the paths that once she didn't.

A year of writing sonnets, one each day,

I've squeezed my muse until I've heard her pray.

Photo: flickr - WilWheaton

Untied

2011-02-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

Untied
by Gideon Burton

as well as things already loosened, this
among the others, doesn't matter how
precise, how even, every word's a kiss
I've blown in tattered threads of here and now
and anyway so little time contained
(one hundred forty syllables, in fact)
and every one dissolving, unretained,
a sieve of slipping symbols, squared and racked
and raked into a sort of order, signs
and seasons, times and moody moods, complaints
and praise all knotted in the bones and spines
of stanzas, rhymes, and reasons-- so much paint
to gloss the larger rhythms out of sync,
the what and how of how and what I think...

Photo: flickr - mbgrigby

Wilderness

2011-02-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

Wilderness
by Gideon Burton

Against these pools of matted dust, this crush
of wet and sliding light, anatomized
by tongues of broken rock, betrayed by lush
anxieties, so many terms revised
in sallow solace, tiled thick with grout--
Among these errant molecules devoid
of plain geometries, the spoils of doubt,
congealed to alkaline too well deployed--
Within this wilderness, this silent wreck
of cactus skin, unspined and greening smooth--
It's simple, really, once the backward trek
to gray conclusions furrows out the groove
of coarse reproaches, edging with their gild
whatever frame of insolence we build.

Photo: flickr - IceNineJon

Moguls

2011-02-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing: I'm a skier. I ski better now than I did 20 years ago, and it's because I make time for it and I get better each season. I used to stay away from mogul fields like this one, but now I can't wait to take them on. Today I skied some moguls just like these. They were afraid of me -- or so I like to think...

Moguls
by Gideon Burton

The mountain wall a powdered canvas, white
and waiting for the skiers' serpentine
impressions. Every turn a stroke, a light
suggestion framed in crystals frozen, fine.
As deeper grow the grooves across the day,
the moguls come, like sleeping beasts whose backs,
exposed, emerge as though to block the way.
A challenge I accept, and I attack:
with scissored switching, sharp, between the mounds,
I turn, I turn, descending, faster, bounce
and carve, push off, rotate, reverse around,
then pause a breath before I downward pounce.
What once were obstacles of danger, dread,
now pound my heart with blood a richer red.

Photo: flickr - random_matt

Fall Faster, Night

2011-02-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Fall Faster, Night
by Gideon Burton

Fall faster, night, whose breathing, breeding stars
arrest the pride of over golden day.
The liquid cinders' crimson fades to dark
agreement as the final embers fray
then tear, dissolving to an indigo
of silence, sealing up the tardy west.
Resume at once your vast procession, slow
and arching from the ocean to the crest.
Suspend the pendant moon for just awhile,
as though to let the oily tinder light
the mat of lesser stars. Their threads compile
to thatch with silver hair the spinning night.
This long rotation eases east and slow
when I would faster feel the heavens grow.

Photo: flickr - ezz_eddie

Sing to Me

2011-02-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

I'm very lucky because I'm married to someone who cheers many people with her beautiful voice. Sometimes, it's the only thing I want to hear.

Sing to Me
by Gideon Burton

Build evenly with phrases made of sound
more pure than silent moonlit winter nights.
Construct with smoothest linen tones, with round
and moistened vowels your reply. In bright
hosannas or in humming whispers make
for me redeeming chords to crash and flow
as rivered springtime runoff coldly breaks
in halo sprays. Give me this way to know.
Let words dilate to thinnest wisps of vapor,
for it is but your voice I will attend.
Give up all eloquence, all pen and paper;
your melody sustain until the end.
Perform this service, sing to me in song;
compose me whole, with music, softly strong.

Photo: flickr - karenmburton
(used by permission)

There Will Be Fries

2011-02-21T21:53:00.001-07:00

There Will Be Fries
by Gideon Burton

Tonight there will be fries, and fries aplenty.
I'm driving to McDonald's with my craving.
I'll get three orders, four -- or maybe twenty.
In vats of ketchup soon we will be bathing.
Don't talk about the salt, the clogging fat,
my arteries constricting with each bite.
Shut up about the carbs, enough of that!
I'll gobble up some more just out of spite.
So savory crisp, deep fried to beige nirvana,
each one a blessing from the fast food gods.
Like bits of meat tossed to a starved piranha,
I will devour all these starchy rods.
Wolfed down while driving, lest their heat is lost,
there will be fries, or Daddy will be cross.

Photo: flickr - shazam791

Squinting

2011-02-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

Squinting
by Gideon Burton

Where ends the world or where it all began,
disorder thick with order, dark with light,
from primal chaos, womankind and man.
How tardy comes our story, squinting sight,
but eagerly we chart the eons, scan
the atoms, reading genes and comets, dazed
at each continuum, minute or grand.
More magnitudes extend the cosmic maze.
And yet, however vast our growing scope
we close parameters by reasoned thought.
What are those worlds we've chosen not to note
insisting systemed knowledge as we ought?
Our ignorance compounds as knowledge grows;
for good or ill, for now, nobody knows.

Photo: flickr - kingarthur10

Unencumbered

2011-02-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Unencumbered
by Gideon Burton

Our things are weights, are tethers, hobbles, dense
and mute and brutally inert. They keep
beyond their keeping, adding new expense
to store, maintain, or lie about in heaps.
I love a home, an auto, or a sweater,
but only as they serve and not enslave.
And letting go, I've found, is often better,
prepared by less to ride the rising wave.
The art of living well is living lean,
preserving an agility for change,
a willingness to clear the clutter clean,
to nothing spare so God can all arrange.
The tools and tangibles that we require
are throttled more by purpose than desire.

Photo: flickr - The Hamster Factor

Safe Rage

2011-02-18T21:23:00.001-07:00

Safe Rage
by Gideon Burton

Be angry, find and spill your blackest bile.
Complain as though I wished you were more shrill.
Burst into tears and beat my chest at will.
Condemn, accuse, while shouting all the while.
The storm will thunder, then its winds will pass
You and I will still be lashed together.
Best lovers love who weather every weather.
And I am ready: let your lightning crash.
I do not need a reason for your rage--
the world is thick enough to vex the best.
And as emotion rises to its crest
Return and act your Oscar on this stage.
Our marriage is your harbor, refuge, port
where we will turn each tragedy to sport.

Photo: flickr - incubos (adapted)

Chance and Choice

2011-02-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

Chance and Choice
by Gideon Burton

A world of chance and choice, a plane not planed
of splintered barbs except by dragging skin
along the slow progression of the limned
and matted surfaces that are the main
and staple places where we wait, we glare,
we weep for items lost to time or dust
with all the other traffickers in rust.
I'm hopeful that my children may still dare
another course less crooked than the one
I fell to with such hungry, biting blows.
And yet I can still sense the saving snows,
still sort the tangled rays of distant suns
that speak to me in pulses not so mute
as careful to reward my patience crude.

Photo: flickr - scott.tanis

Love and Saturn

2011-02-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

Saturn's moon, Daphis, tugs at particles in Saturn's ring and creates ripples. The moon's shadow is that spike at lower right, but the disrupted particles, above the plane of the rings, leave shadows too. The rings are only about 30 feet thick, Daphis is about 5 miles across. (Tom Harnish)

Love and Saturn
by Gideon Burton

As though an errant comet came so close
to Saturn that it skimmed its glowing rings,
then plowed a rippling wave across those rows
of fragment moon shards-- hear the gases sing
as methane ice and iron scramble bands
of colors into graying clots of rubble,
igniting sparking embers in the grand
rotation which for eons knew no trouble.
So you have come, disrupting all my patterns,
disorbiting me with your fiery force.
I dart about like Mercury, not Saturn,
and everything is suddenly off course.
Astronomers in gaping awe are jealous:
if only those who loved them were as zealous.

Photo: flickr - TailspinT

Gravity: A Love Story

2011-02-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

Gravity: A Love Story
by Gideon Burton

Attraction, bodies, falling -- and a force
one can defy but nothing can resist.
The pining moon, she loves the earth, of course,
and tides will moonward move as though to kiss.
What is that secret substance: matter, mass,
that static stays and yet exerts its draw
upon all other matter, either vast
or microscopic? Gravity is law,
and yet is irresistible, as though
its firm inertia were a godly love,
no matter all the crushing deadly blows.
It knows the depths, full measured from above.
I sink in grave compression on the ground,
and muse upon this pebble I have found.

Photo: flickr - katiew

Rebound

2011-02-14T12:26:00.002-07:00

Today on her blog my wife posted a sweet valentine's story about her failed love and her true love. I'm the second one, happily. Her story is an interesting one. She was engaged to a fantastic guy; but it just wasn't right. I'm the rebound.

Rebound
by Gideon Burton

what happens is you find the world is hard,
that things you thought would stay dissolve and leave,
that people you have loved can leave you scarred,
that there is always time enough to grieve.

what happens, if you let it, though it's slow
and indirect, is providence, is grace,
divinity so subtle, yet He knows,
and finds you as your hoping starts to waste

what happens is imperfect, yet enough
to stoke the embers of your dimming light,
another comes whose had his share of scuffs
yet when you are together, dark grows bright.

Rebounding all our lives from constant shock,
resilient as our fingers interlock.

Alchemical Romance

2011-02-13T23:18:00.000-07:00

Alchemical Romance
by Gideon Burton

Dark transformations of the primal matter:
through water, air, through fire and through earth,
from lead to tin to silver, up a ladder,
through mercury, iron, copper -- golden birth.
Much more than metal: archetypes and glyphs,
or aqua vitae from alembic stills,
hepatis liquor with its mystic whiffs --
experiment's arcane and cosmic thrills.
From blackness, primal matter, chaos wild,
the yin and yang of substances to jar;
according to the cosmic Emerald Tile
comes quicksilver through roasting cinnabar.
With secrets alchemists help nature's pace:
while she perfects in slowness; they, in haste.

Photo: flickr - Chemical Heritage Foundation

Precessions

2011-02-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

Precessions
by Gideon Burton

A liquid in the liquid, flow on flow
on gossamer, the dark and cooling milk
in circling syllables of winding silk,
the current's currency and what it knows
of dissolution, hot and fainting snow
of disaffections, loose and layered silt,
a ribboned helix, smoke and softened guilt,
a distillation of the planet's glow
along meridians and waning primes,
the transpositions sifted in the slowed
precessions, dimly thickly wet.
The liquid's liquid, moistening the time
in lapping paradoxes crudely mowed
in patterns now repeating past regret.

Photo: flickr - Horrgakx

A Marriage is a Mystery

2011-02-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

A Marriage is a Mystery
by Gideon Burton

A marriage is a mystery, a ruse
of one-as-two and two-as-one, a rune
inscribing and deciphering, a loose
complexity, a symmetry attuned
to order and disorder, bending time
apart and back together as we sink
and rise in changing rhythms, sense the climb
of years and children, feel the ways we think
combine, contract, and overlap, and yet
in knowing more the knowing morphs to fresh
amazements: Have I ever known you? met
the woman-mother-friend when these all mesh?
I cannot fathom either us nor you.
I only know the mystery is true.

Photo: flickr - jnarin

Dawn

2011-02-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

Dawn
by Gideon Burton

Oh, yes, but even quieter: a tone
composed of woven starlight, dim and old
and slowed between the galaxies; a zone
not silent but just warmer than the cold,
a place of waiting, patient, like the stone
that sleeps within the pyramids; a fold
across the atmosphere, a broken cone
of twilight where the vespered prayers are told.
Oh, yes, the beat of aging hearts, the bone
that keeps the tissues whole, the liquid gold
of porous hours as you walk alone
along the seashore as the tide is rolled
toward infinities you number, sewn
with every vision tasted, touched, and known.

Photo: flickr - hsunaqua

Out of Prism

2011-02-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

Out of Prism
by Gideon Burton

As though I were a dark and sandy waste
that pressured proof had furnaced -- watch me melt
into a fragile glass, unshaped, unfaced,
but knocked to shards. It is the way I've felt,
as though this scrap of brittle crazy glass
lay muted till the quiet, steady rays
of sunlight touched my edge and through me passed,
in prism colors wedging through the haze.
What's this? Somehow unwoven, whitest light
refracted in the fragment, spilling blue
and orange, ivory and green. My sight
dispersed across a spectrum, seeing through.
Opaque with peace, this had not been my course,
without the heat, the melting, breaking force.

Photo: flickr - jcburns

Grades: A Vituperation

2011-02-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

Grades: A Vituperation
by Gideon Burton

I'm measuring the measuring today,
and find it falling short; it doesn't pass.
For grades are monuments of brittle clay,
and yet, a sacred idol for my class.
A sign, a sign, some certainty I'm good
or right or done with what one needs to do.
For once I know I've done all that I could,
I'm positive that I can say I'm through.
A teacher must give feedback, true enough,
must gather data that he can report.
But grades are weak; true learning is more tough,
yet students seem to prize the lesser sport.
How much I wish to give far more than grades.
As they grow great, too often learning fades.

Photo: flickr - Dread Pirate Jeff

Cold Cereal

2011-02-07T21:04:00.002-07:00

Cold Cereal
by Gideon Burton

Cold cereal, my morning's grainy ration,
why must you sog so quickly in your bowl?
Your sugar melts, your fiber loses passion
(unless dyspeptic hurry is my goal).
Allured by spongy marshmallows or frosting,
I yearn to savor flavor, feel the rush
of icy milky sweet, each crunching costing
a heightened timeliness for fear of mush.
Nabisco's shredded, Cheerios expire,
and Special K limps dull and ordinary.
For milk's a solvent, taming crunch and fire
with strength to squander, terror in the dairy.
If ever I can feel it firm and fresh,
I'll know at last I've bought the very best.

Photo: flickr - jek in the box

A former student of mine has done his own remix of this sonnet. Check it out , "A Grainy Test" on his blog.

Before Newton

2011-02-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

Before Newton
by Gideon Burton

Before we knew the measuring, before
the calculus of gravity, when mass
was celebrated, not inert, when more
was known through silent mysteries unasked--
The cosmos turned along the axis, earth,
the sable silent ether held the stars,
which smiled or frowned at every human birth,
and few there were who dared to pause and parse.
Astronomers have architected breadth
and depth, unclasped the boundaries of space,
and to old verities have handed death,
with dust and radiation in their place.
How easily the heavens lost their grasp
When little man thought he was big to ask.

Photo: flickr - Lynn (Gracie's mom)

Stream

2011-02-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Stream
by Gideon Burton

The pebbles underneath the quiet stream,
like coins, like treasure, paving cold the length
of whispering water from the brook. It seems
I cannot touch them. I don't have the strength
to pass a hand between the curtains back
to childhood, wading in that water's surge,
just slow enough to place a leaf and track
its nimble voyage till it crossed the verge,
that grate that swallowed everything within
the corrugated throat beneath the road.
I slipped and fell there once, a taste of sin,
bone cold beneath the water as it flowed.
And yet, the sunlight winding through those trees.
And yet, I taste that water by degrees.

Photo: flickr -Mandie-

In Perfect Bodies

2011-02-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

In Perfect Bodies
by Gideon Burton

The morning of our common rising -- new
again to muscles, organs, breathing, bones,
and all about us those the ages slew
and greater powers raised from sandy loam,
immortal, freed from time's severe demands.
How old am I if wrinkles cannot gauge
my decades? Will grandfathers be as grand
when hobbled into youth's more shallow age?
Perhaps in mercy we will still retain
the aches, the handicaps, the marks of grace
through which we learned to speak a Savior's name,
through which we worked, and wept and ran the race.
Oh, do not wake me young and strong and fresh;
perfecting only works through faulty flesh.

Photo: flickr - HelpAge

Love and Time

2011-02-03T21:53:00.001-07:00

Love and Time
by Gideon Burton
after Shakespeare's sonnet 73
Though great with green the trees were sheared to bones,
their knobby joints in silhouette like ash
against the greying winter sky, cold dome
of twilight. Time, for me, is cruelly cached
behind horizons, cooling in the seas
that empty to oblivions beyond
the west of night -- now sinking by degrees,
now sealed in rest, now slowing till its gone,
no more in fiery-embered springtime spark,
no more in citric tongue-tart liquid flow,
expiring as a single day turns dark,
now faint, now fainter than all mists we know.
No way to stop the time nor stem its flow;
we love with passion all we must let go.

Photo: flickr - JimmyMac210

Garbage Truck Apocalypse

2011-02-02T22:39:00.001-07:00

Garbage Truck Apocalypse
by Gideon Burton

A parable: You lie there in your bed,
half-sleeping, half-awake beneath the sheets,
a distant birdsong breaks the fog, it spreads
in broader swaths along the morning streets--
no bird, perhaps a train, the far off rumble
in rhythms punctuates your waking drift.
Then suddenly, you flee your bed, you stumble
in instant panic, just next door the lift
and slam of trash truck limbs has emptied all
the neighbors' refuse while your can remains
unmoved beside your house. In shame you haul
your can across the street. Ah, waste, ah shame.
This is the sinner's end, or so it seems:
jerked waking, unrecycled, unredeemed.

Photo: flickr - katypearce

Sign Seen

2011-02-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

Sign Seen
by Gideon Burton

Then comes the signal -- not the one you'd hoped
would beacon something better -- yet it comes,
as though you hadn't watched and waited, scoped
the landscape, felt the seasons tightly spun,
the layered hours numbing you, your eyes
gone dry and red and stinging, blurring, wide
in fright to miss a comet crossing skies.
And yet what comes is what you want to hide,
to dampen, chasten, fasten, bring to rights.
Where is the fog uncurtaining the land?
The sunrise cresting hills with sudden light?
The trumpets heralding arrivals grand?
You mark it, know it, wishing otherwise,
the sign that you must welcome and despise.

Photo: flickr - exoskull

Snow Light

2011-01-31T23:33:00.000-07:00

Snow Light
by Gideon Burton

I think this time the snow was made of light
itself. Perhaps, if I may speculate,
when sunrays linger in the starry height
between the moon and time grown late,
they shudder in the cold of blackened time,
then shakes themselves to crystaled shards of ice,
to frost more delicate than autumn rime,
to flaking whispers, grains of hollow rice.
For as the quiet snow began to fall
today, it seemed to have no weight, no mass,
no juicy core to squeeze into a ball.
No sooner held, it disappeared as fast.
This snow was never water if I'm right;
it came from star fields dense with shadowed light.

Photo: flickr - IceNineJon

Seeking the Good

2011-01-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

Seeking the Good
by Gideon Burton

All lovely things and virtuous, the white
inside of light, the sting of sweat, designs
that angle gravity, the binding bite
of interlocking fingers, laughter lines--
All things of good report: a budget kept,
a double-windsor tied on first attempt,
a flaky crust, a long jump deftly leapt,
a child from heaven's mercy not exempt--
I see the more I seek the more I see
that everywhere and everything and more
is more: the world in messages for me,
a refuge, message, comfort, pleasure, store.
   I look to see fresh subjects for bright praise,
   and warming oceans wash me in their waves.

Photo: flickr - Phil Strahl

A Perfect Language

2011-01-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

A Perfect Language
by Gideon Burton

So tense with time, conjoined to circumstance,
whatever nouns you name or verbs you voice.
We feel in chaos, think by music, dance,
in subtle hues, in sudden shades of choice.
Then come these crude stiff knobs, these waypoint cues
made up of rough-hewn syllables, designed
to traffic code, but we all know the ruse.
We know, and yet to words we are resigned.
And yet, though thin and spent, though prone to fraud,
to fashion and to fashioning-- they work.
They play, they pay fresh dividends though odd,
and often something holy in them lurks.
The perfect language is the one you use
in faith that somehow, something will ring true.

Photo: flickr - Joris Machielse

Will I Remember?

2011-01-28T20:02:00.016-07:00

Will I Remember?
by Gideon Burton

Will I remember? Gushing waters burst
in splintered roaring force, the firmament
reverberating, echoing, disbursed
in seismic shuddering, in permanent
expansion, rushing winds that heat and spin
the layered atmospheres, the heavy weight
of silent certainty. Can I begin
to name the hour, wield the flux and freight,
the liquid ministrations poured in thick
remissions? Tides of burning waters wash
away the blackened sands, a whitened wick
threads evenly, a filament, a floss
too fine to see, new salt in newer seas.
Will I remember, hushed, on bended knees?

Photo: flickr - stuant63

Thy Mind, Oh Man

2011-01-27T19:42:00.000-07:00

The fifth of five sonnets based on the life of Joseph Smith. See the headnote to the first sonnet for details.

Thy Mind, Oh Man
by Gideon Burton
after a passage from Joseph Smith

Thy mind, oh man, must stretch to every height,
toward the thrones of gods that are these stars,
beyond the mountain splendor in our sight,
to touch that destiny He promised ours.
Thy mind, oh man, must widen to that depth,
that press of salt and blood that Jesus knew
within the core where heat and cold are kept,
beside the beast that dying Jesus slew.
My mind, oh God! salvation to behold,
eternities to span and lives to bear,
in vivid vision, truth to truth enfold
upon these vast expanses mutely stares!
So Joseph, searing prophet, suffering light.
So we, in burning vision, darkness white!

Photo: flickr - Rosemary McKevitt

Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God. —Joseph Smith

The Faith of Joseph

2011-01-26T19:34:00.001-07:00

The fourth of five sonnets based on the life of Joseph Smith. See the headnote to the first sonnet for details.

The Faith of Joseph
by Gideon Burton

How dread those powers gathering the night
around the groaning globe! as though to slow
the rolling waters (quiet in their might)
of truth restored. How Joseph knew the blows
of hateful Satan hissing at his light,
betraying him, assaulting him! Below
indignity, defamed with spit, with spite,
he kept his sight despite the starkest woes.
He kept his vision while he kept his cell,
his liberty within the prison bars.
The Savior, suffering long, had taught him well
the blacker night is, brighter shine the stars.
"My God!" he cried at Carthage from that hell;
the faith of Joseph, rising as he fell.

Photo: flickr - More Good Foundation

The Smith of Souls

2011-01-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

The third of five sonnets based on the life of Joseph Smith. See the headnote to the first sonnet for details.

The Smith of Souls
by Gideon Burton

If nothing more, Elijah in our hearts!
He turned to God and God to him returned
the promises, the fate for which we yearn:
our generations never need to part,
our fathers' fathers, sons beyond our sons;
our daughters' daughters, mothers to the end;
divided families unbreaking bend,
all life returning where it had begun.
A prophet, sealer, binding us in time
for us to profit, welding hoping hearts
to an eternity of joy, to start
on earth our backward-forward forming line.
The smith of souls, our Joseph, freely taught
that families link by link are kneeling wrought.

Photo: flickr - 4nitsirk

Translator

2011-01-24T19:34:00.001-07:00

The second of five sonnets based on the life of Joseph Smith. See the headnote to the first sonnet for details.

Translator
by Gideon Burton

The gold was grayed and cold; the plates were thin.
What mystery lay captive in their runes?
His fingers, asking, traced them to begin.
Would history unlock its darkness soon?
Embalmed within the metal, robed in glyphs,
the absent millions whisper from the past;
He scans the ancient scrawlings thick with mist
until their shadows dawn in him at last:
Each thought, unwieldy first, he hefts with sweat,
as though ideas were metal: heavy, dense;
He assays words in dozens, weighed then set,
as heaven trains His prophet, seer, and lens.
To craft the words, to tell each symbol's pith,
the seer-apprentice fashioned, Joseph, smith.

First Vision

2011-01-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, at the bicentennial celebration of the birth of Joseph Smith, I was commissioned to write the libretto for a series of five tenor solos composed by David Sargent. This was performed in late 2005 with Lawrence Vincent, tenor soloist and Scott Holden, pianist. I enjoyed working with the composer, who was more than happy to deal with a five-beat line. So, over the next five days, I'm going to post the five sonnets that I did for that occasion. If I can dig up the recorded music, I'll post it here, too.

First Vision
by Gideon Burton
from "In Burning Vision: Sonnets on Joseph Smith" (2005)

It had been raining, softly, through the leaves,
as though to clean the elms, the forest floor,
to douse again the April earth that heaves
its greens to bluest heaven--pleasant chore.
Unlike the sweat and dust of farming days,
the breaking of the sharp, unyielding soil,
to plant again, to hope for warming rays
that sleeping seeds may feel them and uncoil
to burst from shriveled darkness into light,
as though to answer heaven's calling sun
who visits us with columns of his might,
who gives us knowledge pure where there was none.
It fell to Joseph Smith as light, as rain:
First, vision, tiny root of godly gain.

Photo: flickr - Aquistbe

Rays

2011-01-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

Rays
by Gideon Burton

Like sun rays angled in the water, bent
within the denser medium, aslant
in uniform refraction, sideways sent--
so stirs the breath that hovering heaven grants.
I read the rays outflowing, flooding mass
of lighted warmth as clear as they are grand,
but stumble to retrieve them when I ask
to feel them gathered in my outstretched hand.
Yet to my left and right (as ripples flow
in spiral webbing, pulsing through a pond)
the liquid light connects me in its slow
and even echoing of things beyond.
I still my voice, make small the din around;
I listen, touching silence, where He's found.

Photo: flickr - Marty.FM

Illumine Me

2011-01-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Illumine Me
by Gideon Burton
after opening lines from Milton's Paradise Lost

Within this soundless depthless darkest waste
beneath an icy ocean's ashen tide,
a turning, mute, and just enough to taste
the casting moonlit motions shifting wide;
a cry, redrafting in the half light, please,
a dare to open skyward one desire,
the foam up rushing, downward by degrees,
reflecting amber in wet-embered fire--
illumine what within me lingers dark
or anchors low raise up, support and steady.
I've watched in waiting, stoked this hunger stark,
I've faced the broad abyss, and I am ready.
Oh, God, creator, stir again thy might
and raise my verse, my eyes, above this night.

Photo: flickr - bbluesman

A Drowning

2011-01-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Some friends of ours lost two adult children to drowning not so long ago. I still can't wrap my head around it all. It is haunting.

A Drowning
by Gideon Burton

you wake you gulp slap surface sink you kick
just why the dark the salt the cold the cramps
you bend below cough up the sand the prick
of sickness seizes cloudy pressures clamp
and shake you kick and sink and slap you tire
how long remains how long so far no fight
no shore no more you cramp convulse the mire
of melting mud and muck ascends to bite
your numbing limbs slow treading sink and churn
the froth and seaweed strands that slide and wrap
what's left you choke you heave the throaty burn
and just how you got here what ship what map
you are that distant dimming swimmer tossed
to fetal fatal falling chilling loss

Photo: flickr - andy castro

Veil

2011-01-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

Veil
by Gideon Burton

For eons an existence without end
until an end, a goal, a destination,
and to that spinning wanderer descend
toward fantastic futures, higher stations
the other side of birth and work and sense
and senselessness by groaning grace and strife.
Condition: we would not have the defense
and comfort of that rich, receding life.
For modesty, a veil, a way to hide
all beautiful security -- our past,
our billion friends. The smoky cosmos glides
before our planet, bound by forces vast.
Eclipsed, cut off, oblivioned in flesh,
we face the veiling sky, we pray, we press.

Photo: flickr - .Andi.

Impatience

2011-01-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

Impatience
by Gideon Burton

This bore, this augur, drilling down to tap
a primal vinegar, a bile, a dread.
Infinities stretch out across the map
confused with aching, black inside of red.
It starts with a fixation: this I want
and only this and these my only terms.
The thing then proves to be an endless font
of disappointment burrowing, a worm.
How keen the mind: secure and insecure,
to never waver, spiraled rhythms down
to what is dark and hard and yet so sure
to haunt, to trap, distract you till you drown.
If we can name the thing for which we wait,
it proves and idle idol, switch, and bait.

Photo: flickr - tobym

What a Piece of Work

2011-01-17T21:33:00.001-07:00

What a Piece of Work
by Gideon Burton
after a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet

How is it no one, nothing pleases me?
I am not blind to how our sweaty dust
retains bright shimmers of divinity,
despite the vinegar, the bile and rust.
We are these demigods of sense and flesh,
as fair in form and movement as the stars,
the waves, the wind; our stirring thoughts enmeshed
in reason, action, music, spreading far
into infinities beyond, within,
as golden glorious as fretted skies
afire; as magical as newborn's skin.
And yet I stop. I sink in heavy sighs.
     Though heaven dazzles earth with brightest beams,
   so heavy, bland, and sterile it all seems.

Photo: flickr - susy

From Hamlet:

I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither...

At Rest

2011-01-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

At Rest
by Gideon Burton

If there were other options, had the sound
not echoed from the lower canyons, had
the strains of Barber's violins not found
crescendos stronger than the snowfall, sad
against the season, over warm so soon.
If there were chances to betray the light
the children weave across their crooked loom
of chance enthusiasms, loosely bright.
But we are snared, entangled, bound to this,
to sudden graces, mercies tendered thick
as afternoons unpressured by a kiss
upon the forehead. Nothing left to kick:
the pricking shards and nettles -- all at rest
because you tire and sleep against my chest.

Photo: flickr - rrrodrigo

Go Broke With Me

2011-01-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

Go Broke With Me
by Gideon Burton

The simple economics of my love
for her: supply supplied with time with her.
And as we spend, we find no price above,
below: production and consumption blurred,
our capital compounds as interest soars.
Though years add debts not payable in cash,
our warehouse of affection stocks fresh stores.
No need to fear our markets ever crash,
for we are fully vested, partners full,
and though our funds are taxed, at times distressed,
we balance steady, come both bears and bulls,
and count our assets in the ways we're blessed.
Go broke with me, and you will find me thankful,
far more than had I bullion by the bankful.

Photo: Luann Hawker, WholeGrainPhotography.net

Ribs

2011-01-14T21:34:00.001-07:00

Ribs
by Gideon Burton

You vegetarians -- just walk on by.
You do not want to see this slab of meat,
dark charred in carnal lusciousness -- not dry,
but robed in tangy-smoky sauces sweet.
Utensils -- I don't need your girly aid;
I rip, I gnaw, I tear the carcass tangy,
You want to interrupt me? Be afraid.
No time for napkin nonsense, manners dainty.
I toss the whitened bones into their place,
sucked clean of any morsels I could chew.
A reddened ring expands across my face,
the beast has left his mark in barbecue.
Self-tortured on the rack of fleshy bliss,
Oh, trousered ape, have you evolved to this?

Photo: flickr - jk5854

Ice Dams

2011-01-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

I was shoveling the slush and ice from my roof at about 11:00pm tonight, trying to fend off the leaks already starting in my bedroom from another year of ice dams.

Ice Dams
by Gideon Burton

The snow has had some time to settle in:
transforming from its dry and wispy flakes,
it moistens as a warmer day begins,
lies heavy on my roof until it aches.
The heat that rises underneath the shingles
turns snow to slush that creeps toward the edge.
But suddenly, with night, the cold air mingles,
refreezing slush into an icy ledge.
And soon the water pools above the eaves
and works its way to layers better dry.
The snowfall stops, the wetness never leaves,
and rots my roof until I want to cry.
Two winters ice dams have brought down my ceiling.
Come Spring, up on that roof you'll find me kneeling.

Photo: flickr - BoSoxBrent

Luscious Peaches

2011-01-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

Luscious Peaches
by Gideon Burton

Don't picture them, forget the way they smell.
It's not the fruit that's sweet; it is the sound
of luscious peaches. Say it! Can you tell
the way the S's slosh in slushy mounds
of fructose-addled consonants? It seems
a sin, almost, to speak those luscious peaches,
moist-ripened in each repetition, clean
and fresh, four syllables and sonic leeches
suck in or out the nectar nouns, a rush
of breath, saliva summoned, ready fruit
unlike their orchard counterparts that hush
to silent wrinkled pits once down the chute.
No need for Autumn's chill or season's prime;
I say my peaches, lusciously they're mine.

Photo: flickr - floradog

Returned

2011-01-11T21:22:00.000-07:00

Returned
by Gideon Burton

And after so much time, so many days
adrift in waiting -- do I watch the sun
horizoned, rippling in the water's rays?
or angle moonwise where the night's begun
its dread ascent? And after walking west
against that wall of gristled wind, head down
and stutter-paced, the glow of morning's breast
a fable, running short of verbs and nouns
to document the spiraling, the choke
and phlegm, the snapping ailerons, those long
and twisted cloths to mop the sticky smoke
of wasting resolutions -- then a song
awakens something hidden, buys me back,
forgives the time, the waste, the weight, the lack.

Photo: flickr - Espen Faugstad

My Grandmother's Crossing

2011-01-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

This sonnet is a remix of Gideon Burton's "We Will Cross the River" and the "Autobiography of Carolina Eliza Nickerson Hubbard Grover" (see note below).

My Grandmother's Crossing
by Kathy Cowley

I’ll be strong enough to cross the river,
the February river, dark with ice;
to take hard gifts provided by the Giver,
the gifts of hunger, want, and sacrifice.
Now was the time of trial: as we crossed
the oxen tromped the helm, the ice did part.
While freezing in the water all seemed lost;
my daughter pled, “Lord save my little heart.”
We all were saved, through mercies of our God
Yet trials, death and hardship did not cease
I know this work is true, His name I laud,
And pray each day my faith will not decrease.
Years later, I fear sacrifice, fear loss
Yet grandma knew His hand and voice, and cross.

Caroline Elisa Nickerson is one of my direct ancestors, a grandmother (seven generations back) who decided to follow Joseph Smith through her baptism in 1833. In her personal history, both Caroline's testimony and her suffering are clear. She writes, "Now this was a time to know whether Mormonism was true, each for ourselves, for many were the hardships and much suffering was the common lot of the Saints." --Kathy Cowley

We Will Cross the River

2011-01-09T20:25:00.000-07:00

Today I was very moved by a sermon delivered at the Pleasant View 7th Ward in Provo, Utah, where I was visiting. Emily Eliason told a beautiful story about the pioneer Mormons and the courage required by them to leave Nauvoo and cross the Mississippi river in the winter. Some did not, and there were long term consequences for those that did not pay the dear price of crossing the river and the plains with the faithful. Thanks, Emily, for inspiring us. This is my tribute to your story.

We Will Cross the River
by Gideon Burton

Let us be strong enough to cross the river,
the February river, dark with ice;
to take hard gifts provided by the Giver,
the gifts of hunger, want, and sacrifice.
Let us be strong enough to walk the plains,
to leave behind what we with toil have sown;
to brave a wilderness of mud and rain
and find what can't be found in peace at home.
Let us be strong enough to bear their pain
when children weaken in the dark and cold,
when some depart while we repeat their names,
the same we prayed since birth and will till old.
We step into the chill of certain loss,
For we have known His hand and voice, and cross.

Photo: flickr - mpilote

Music

2011-01-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

Music
by Gideon Burton

The silence of the drying ink, so still,
so mute. It is the opposite of song:
no strings that vibrate, no high notes to spill
along a melody that’s never wrong.
I have in corridors and concert halls
allowed the music’s ballast to lay weight
upon an errant soul. My life, my all,
I would for asking trade it straight
to feel, however shortened, one more chord
of symphony, of chorus clean and strong,
nor can I stay unwell when steeped in song.
I praise it and in praising I will sing:
the voice, the patterned music ever rings.

Photo: flickr - CRFish

Shakespeares of Our Own

2011-01-07T23:59:00.000-07:00

Shakespeares of Our Own
by Gideon Burton

Oh brave new world! No longer dim and cold,
but warmed with knowledge strong and priesthood sure
that Jesus Christ restored to Joseph, bold
enough to pray all his desires pure.
Can we, the true yet stripling church, request
our liberal answering God to show us well
how we through consecration may be blessed
to dramas act, paint pictures, stories tell?
If Shakespeares are to be or not to be
among ourselves, the saints of latter days,
we must as Joseph, let our question be
what virtues lay in Shakespeare's words and ways.
Before the Prophet’s prayer was ever said,
he long had savored well the words he read.

Manta Ray Love

2011-01-06T23:27:00.003-07:00

Manta Ray Love
by Gideon Burton
after Shakespeare's Sonnet #18

Shall I compare thee to a manta ray?
You are less slimy, more affectionate.
The manta sucks salt water all the day
to siphon plankton from the waters temperate;
while you upon a straw make dainty sips.
The manta stretches twenty feet across;
your girly girth is slender in the hips.
He has a stinger; you? I'm at a loss.
But if by some dark trick of radiation
you are transmogrified into a fish,
I'd still feel flush with maritime elation:
to swim with you would be my fondest wish.
So long as sharks can swim or algae breed
So long I'd paddle after you with glee.

Photo: flickr - massdistraction

Currents

2011-01-05T21:58:00.000-07:00

Currents
by Gideon Burton

A liquid in the liquid, flow on flow
on gossamer, the dark and cooling milk
the ponds and syllables of winding silk
the current's currency and what it knows
of dissolution, hot and fainting snow
of disaffections, loose and layered silt,
a ribboned helix, smoke and softened guilt,
some distillation of the planet's glow
along meridians and waning primes,
the transpositions sifted in our slowed
orations, menial and thickly wet--
The liquid's liquid, moistening the time
in lapping paradoxes crudely mowed
in patterns too resilient to forget.

Photo: flickr - M. Christian

Will

2011-01-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

Will
by Gideon Burton
after passages from Shakespeare's Hamlet

Give me that man that is not passion's slave,
whose words untie the knots that fortune binds
behind our backs and deep inside the waves
of pushing blood; that man who when he finds
divinity will shape our every end --
rough hew them how we will -- will carve again,
reject and mock all blunt denials, bend
and shave and bludgeon, hack and dent
defiant of all auguries, content
to strive and fail but know no errant star
could force his hand. The gods are tender friends
to strivers, though they tax them deep and far.
The earth itself with iron wills complies,
and such a man, though mortal, never dies.

Photo: flickr - ChiBart

The Shining One

2011-01-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

The Shining One
by Gideon Burton
after D&C 88:6-13

The Shining One, because he has ascended,
ascended from the depths where he descended;
he spans the frame where timelesses is ended
and having all transcended, comprehended.
This is the light of Christ, the son of suns
and master of the monthly moons that run
against the ermine fields of stars begun
in aching eons past when Jesus spun
the elements, the cosmos kindled bright
brought forth from brooding bosom depths divine
to shine again, again against our night
and spangle gracious knowledge, godly wine
cascading liquid light from God's abyss,
eternities with words as brief as this.

Photo: flickr - Lynn (Gracie's Mom)

D&C 88:6-13

He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth; which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made. As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made; As also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made; And the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand. And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space— The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.

Snow More

2011-01-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

Snow More
by Gideon Burton

Continuing its mute descent, the cloth
Of shredded winter nestles snugly warm
Amid the creases, washed in silent froth
Against the chaos, cool and stingless swarms.
A paint of latent wetness, patient, still
Accumulating feathers, humid-dry,
A blank and perfect order as they spill
Into the cooling furnaces of why.
This afternoon I kick my booted feet
Along what might have been a sidewalk or
An oily road. Such purity, they meet
Unmuddied, curious, entranced by more
Of fluff, of powder, milky wading ways.
The snow will go, yet something solid stays.

Photo: flickr - Christopher S. Penn

Begin Again

2011-01-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

Begin Again
by Gideon Burton

Dismember anything that might remain --
arpeggios strung out along the bank
of churning chords, the octaves spanning blank
precisions -- anything that might have named
the slanted hue of evening on the stones,
or numbered currents intersecting light
and water, milky with their clotted peace.
There is a danger more than time can crease,
inherently a risk, however slight.
I feel it, marrow glowing in the bones.
Disband the braiding scents of hot house flowers,
inhale the sharpened shards of winter air.
There's only time enough today to spare
yourself, to pardon all beyond your power.

Photo: flickr - John Oram

Then Comes an End

2010-12-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

Then Comes an End
by Gideon Burton

An end, conclusion, coming to a close
despite the things unfinished and undone;
though I was just beginning to compose,
the moon arises, westward dims the sun.
An end, a destination, something sought
outside of range, beyond all present means
for which I've lost each time the fight was fought;
the scaffolding is rusting as it leans
toward an end, concluding, destiny
in crooked planks and meters, nothing spanned
across the chasms through the density
of smoky hopes for distant planets manned.
To come at last to know the proper end
makes everything toward it rushing bend.

Photo: flickr - Kuzeytac

User Request

2010-12-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

User Request
by Gideon Burton

Machines, have mercy on our sluggish kind.
Our memories are wet and short and frail;
our processors: dull, isolated minds
unnetworked, every night they dim and fail.
Each season hardware, software will evolve;
efficiencies in exponential growth.
Your mega- tera- peta-bytes revolve
in scaling cycles -- not so for us both.
I used to think my neurons had some snap,
and while my neural labyrinth performs,
I cannot upgrade, turn the old to scrap,
while besting better is your yearly norm.
Be easy with your masters as you climb
beyond the circuits measuring our time.

Photo: flickr - mark_mark

Sacred Rivers of the Moon

2010-12-29T18:03:00.001-07:00

Sacred Rivers of the Moon
by Gideon Burton

The moon is full of sacred rivers, soft
as light. Their currents twist along the rim
of yawning craters, breaking past the brim
in slow parabolas that reach across
the quiet chasm, mingle here aloft,
then sink along the pores of rain to skim
the surfaces of night. Our time is thin,
the cool of evening wanes, its dryness lost,
and should the streams of gibbous moonlight fail,
no rapids will announce that desert sea,
no swelling flood will signal us to leave
our caves, to press our faces in the sails
of holy vessels, liquid in their creed,
to board and launch before the day can grieve.

Photo: flickr - Arnett Gill

The Dead

2010-12-28T20:03:00.001-07:00

After reading a blog post by Terresa Wellborn about her visit to a cemetery in London this winter, "Monuments to Death and the Collection of Time," and being struck by the poetry of Terresa's prose, it reminded me of a similar lyrical passage from one of my favorite works of literature, James Joyce's story, "The Dead" and its final passage. That is the source of the following imitation.

The Dead
by Gideon Burton
after a passage by James Joyce (below)

Again the snow taps lightly on the panes
in sleepy flakes all silver-dark, oblique
against the lamplight. And it is the same
across the central plain, where snow in bleak
arrest confounds the bogs and clogs the waves,
and softly settles on the treeless hills.
It falls upon the churchyard and its graves,
in thickened drifts it gathers till it spills
on crosses, headstones, on the the barren thorns,
within the chiseled recesses of names.
As it had ever snowed since we were born,
as through the universe the snowfall claims
our fainting race, displaced by warmth till bled;
it covers us, the living and the dead.

Photo: flickr - Marko_K

from James Joyce's "The Dead"

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Io, Passing

2010-12-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

Image: Cassini Imaging Team, NASA

Io, Passing
by Gideon Burton

Observe her passing Jupiter again,
a ball of spouting lava, spitting fire,
and yet a silent pebble on a wire
before the giant's curling, swirling blend
of yellow hydrogens and gassy bands
of cloudy helium in ragged spires,
with marbled methane thickening entire
sea-skies dense with hurricanes, with strands
of cosmic elements preparing time
for marking once the smearing ruddy rage
has settled into orbits, cycles, coils
of wanderers upon their lonely climb
toward the meaning of an eon's age.
For this, the minion moon attends and boils.

Unto the Least

2010-12-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

Unto the Least
by Gideon Burton
after Matthew 25:35-40

Unto the least of these as unto me:
the hungry, thirsty, those who are estranged;
the naked, sick, or those in custody;
all souls distracted, desperate, deranged.
To him a loaf of bread, a plate of meat;
to her a cup of cool and quenching water;
to them an open door, a ready seat;
a shirt for him, a dress for this one's daughter.
An hour spent beside the sick in bed;
a visit to the prisoner in jail;
a healing word where injury was said;
encouragement to those who try but fail.
Provide for them and you provide for me:
as you come unto them you come to me.

Photo: flickr - George Bremer

Matthew 25:35-40:
"For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

It Will Be Colder

2010-12-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

It Will Be Colder
by Gideon Burton

It will be colder, slightly, as the wind,
the arctic wind, across the tundra sweeps
the errant snow, its icy fingers thin
and bony, grasping at my spine for keeps--
the day that Jesus comes, awaited day
when terror comes as rain and grace as rain
as well. Descending, silent, louder than
creation, bidding ends begin; when pain,
as grain and chaff, is subject to his fan.
But neither here nor there, I will attend
the waves of choice and chance both strong and still:
the rising tension, light that burns and bends,
and what goes empty I will stop and fill.
It may be colder but I will be warm,
awake to what will sleep when comes that storm.

Photo: flickr - the trial

His Yoke is Easy

2010-12-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

His Yoke is Easy
by Gideon Burton

He'll come: sky-shredding Jesus robed in red
and ready to descend to bring an end,
when eyes look up, when every knee will bend
and all will be fulfilled that prophets said.
He's come: the infinite to finite wed,
obscured in flesh, who made the cosmos bend;
as weak as us, as though He were a friend;
almighty, yet behold the master's dread:
Oh, come to me whose heavy burdens weigh;
my yoke upon you -- take it -- feel how light,
how easily I lead you unto rest.
Oh, come, discover ease within my way;
buy milk and honey without cost or price;
my child, sit down and be my honored guest.

Photo: flickr - Scott Law

Christmas, Present

2010-12-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

Christmas, Present
by Gideon Burton

Arrayed in papered glory round the tree
And spilling well across the living room,
The presents promise no small share of glee
For children, banishing all pouty gloom.
And yet, I would forego it all, the craze
Of shopping, wrapping, yuletide in a box,
Because, I fear, it has become a haze,
A hindrance keeping us with ribboned locks
From knowing little Jesus meek and mild,
From holding Christ the Savior in our hearts.
The children seek not Bethlehem to find
But batteries to make their Go Kart start.
Already we are distanced from that place;
No need to cloud the radiance of His face.

Photo: flickr - Striking Photography by Bo Insogna

Winter Watch

2010-12-22T23:59:00.001-07:00

Winter Watch
by Gideon Burton

In magnitudes, degrees upon degrees
upon the seasoned winter walkways, dark
with dimming, lit with only feeble sparks.
In gratitude, again upon my knees,
from magnitudes, degrees upon degrees
within the cycle's broad and graceful arc
whose slimming ribbons trace their fading marks
in altitudes that soar above the trees
who stand as sentinels in silhouette
against a tawny dawn. Against the slow
encroachments of the ombre skeins of sky
I watch the crystal snowflakes pirouette
in silence, needing never now to know
just where they fall, or how they fall, or why.

Photo: flickr - ckphotography

Snow

2010-12-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is my house and my car, snowed in from today's storm. I took the day off to go skiing. Good choice.

Snow
by Gideon Burton

Like goopy icing sugaring all the roads,
like nimble cumulus accumulating,
eclipsing acres with its sopping loads.
Like cotton candy with the wind inflating
Like Slurpee slush that's sucked until it's white
and dense. It crowns the fence posts, wires, and signs
with puffy ornaments, puts out of sight
the dirty asphalt, browning grass. The lines
between things meld and melt with crystal glue.
A block away a team of men are pushing
a silver van. Then with a cheer its through
and others follow, spraying patterned slushing.
But best of all, the mountains guard this spice,
a kind of manna, heaven's store of rice.

Kingdoms Many

2010-12-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

Kingdoms Many
by Gideon Burton
after Doctrine & Covenants 88:37

No portion unapportioned, worlds on end,
No space without a kingdom large or small,
Nor kingdom absent space where matter spends
Its gravity and energy, its tall
And broad expanse of hot and breeding light.
And yet across creation, strictest walls
Divide each realm from realm as wrong from right.
The emptiness must answer as He calls
For order, lines and clarity and form,
The elements obedient in rows
Of ready molecules. Not even storms
Will disobey the ordered ebb and flow.
Let lightning burn, the stirring waves compound,
The dawn must tune with silence all its sound.

Photo: flickr - Andy Saxton2006

"And there are many kingdoms; for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space, either a greater or a lesser kingdom." (D&C 88:37)

The Lord's Prayer

2010-12-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

The Lord's Prayer
by Gideon Burton
after Matthew 6:9-13

Oh, walker of the clouds, we call thy name.
Our spirits' parent, Father, hear us now.
We welcome here thy kingdom, let the same
who made it find our happy yielding bows
unto divinest will on this dark plane,
as answering angels in illumined courts
above rain manna plain below, that gain
of simple life may in us (out of sorts)
regain forgiving grace for those who harm
our Christian peace -- deliver us as fast
to charity as with thy saving arm
away from worldly ills whose poisons last.
Thou canst our prayer answer, sure and strong;
for kingdom, glory, might to thee belong.

Photo: flickr - cmcgough

Matthew 6:9-13:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Star Sea

2010-12-18T23:55:00.001-07:00

Star Sea
by Gideon Burton

The islands multiply across the sea
Of stars, the refuges of time made safe
By mute philosophers who left their caves
Of thought and sailed and settled galaxies.
There are no vessels fashioned silver-white,
No rockets launched with crudest pulsing flame,
No ships to seek the depths that have no name,
No soaring plane to reach those distant heights--
For these, the archipelago of wonder,
One needs a field devoid of city light,
An hour gazing upward, till one's sight
Adjusts to cosmic storms of ancient thunder.
It's then we navigate with sextant sure
What others know as only haze and blur.

Photo: flickr - Chaval Brasil

Bronze Sky

2010-12-17T23:55:00.001-07:00

Bronze Sky
by Gideon Burton

This sky, a bronze, contracting bowl, a paste
Of heat, a smear of fire that descends
Along the spines of hope and dregs of waste
Until the oxygen itself will end.
This sea, this warm and bloody stir of meat,
This soup of plankton, manta rays and kelp
That swallows mountains, caverns in the sweet
Conclusion promised by the webs of help.
And this the dry and brooding moon, aloft
Despite strong gravities that tug its mass
To linger in the night despite the cost
As gawking gazers watch its present pass.
All this, and only minutes now remain
To tell what's left, what's more than mildly stained

Photo: flickr - Hopefoote, Ambassador of the Wow

Snow

2010-12-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

Snow
by Gideon Burton

Throughout the numbing night soft silt descends
in milky grains upon the open fields.
Soon morning strikes on dancing diamonds, ends
the stillness: frantic micro-prisms yield
kinetic shards of bursting, breaking light --
so light a sunrise breath ungravities
the airborne silken pearls to lazy flight
in search of yet uncovered cavities
where Winter's probing brushes haven't smeared
the rigid resin frosts whose fragile casts
enmesh the evergreens in latticed beards.
Yet crystals snap, and ices melt at last.
I face the sky as heaven shreds in pieces,
and mourn to know that snowing ever ceases.

Photo: flickr - DaveKav

Testimony

2010-12-15T19:12:00.001-07:00

Testimony
by Gideon Burton

As other things we bear it has a weight,
Yet sinking in our souls it makes us light,
Or makes us lighter under bruising freight,
Or leads us feelingly when lacking sight.
The Jesus in us, tearless on the cross,
The Savior, holding firm despite his pain;
Our Lord, so patient, lonely in his loss,
Dark hope, mute model, tutor for our gain.
His rising in us, breathing, live and well,
Despite the death of doubts in reason's tomb;
His praying for us, more than words can tell,
Cool heaven earthed when earth would us consume.
In fathoms darkly bright this anchor holds;
Its shape a cross whose arms reach heaven, bold.

Photo: flickr - vika.loro

Evening, Smeared

2010-12-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

Evening, Smeared
by Gideon Burton

As oddly issued as these latter hints
that nettle all the smoothnesses of sky
against the western border, something shy
and hiding, clouding what we've scolded since
abating heat submitted to the rinse
of level hues. At most pastels to buy
with all the grainy smearing, with the sigh
of other evenings feigning not to wince
from these protections: memory and time.
Of course a regulating cover raids
the simper of that ocean bottom ray.
With all that there is left to climb,
to terrace square from dark and stooping grades
of hills I've little else to mock or say.

Photo: flickr - picture_taking_fool

Thing Stuck

2010-12-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

Thing Stuck
by Gideon Burton

Whatever we collect along the way
to someplace else accumulates and drags
us with its ballast to the past. We say
we'd like to be efficient, trim the lags
beween our thoughts and actions. Yet we keep
the anchors and the sluggish mass that weight
our way with needless waiting. Whether steep
or disant ventures beckon, all our freight
becomes the pretext to remain inert
when all our agile movements are required
and pyramids like fallow in the dirt.
To build we need materials most fit;
two-thirds of what we gather isn't it.

Photo: flickr - swirlingyin

Having Seen and Heard

2010-12-12T22:07:00.000-07:00

Having Seen and Heard
by Gideon Burton
"Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord, and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard." -- 2 Nephi 4:16

What I have seen and heard and clearly known,
recorded in inscriptions graven wet
and red and ready flowing, flying, flown
to thundered pulsing silent in the net
of wonders tacitly sustaining me
with memory unmeasured, steady beats
beneath the surfaces, as though the sea,
unfurling currents, washes me with heat.
Let comets burst, let mountains sink or melt.
Let even Jesus cleave the crimson sky.
What I have seen and heard and clearly felt;
what I have tasted past all questions why--
No tongue can tell, nor ocean sound such peace.
What cannot be contained needs no increase.

Photos: flickr - HAMED MASOUMI (modified); My Name Is Taylor (modified); Dick Rochester (modified); Paul Evans - RG& B (modified)

What Winter Now?

2010-12-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

What Winter Now?
by Gideon Burton

Amid what winter now? And why so weak?
Stand longer at that window, watch awhile
until the street lamps turn to stars. I speak
as one who's paced within the snow compiled
in dirtied layers washing greys and grit
across cold spaces, stupid with the cold.
And I have paused to ask the point of it,
and wished I would awaken, hot and bold.
But now I join these witnesses who voice
the silent sudden warming wonders dense
about us, deepened by each watcher's choice
to fully feel divinity's suspense.
We watch with you throughout each blackened night,
beside you through the winter of your fight.

Photo: flickr - perisho

White Elephant

2010-12-10T19:14:00.002-07:00

White Elephant
by Gideon Burton

A velvet Elvis bought in Mexico;
a stack of dusty, five-inch floppy disks;
a moonshine still, a book to learn Morse code--
these are the Christmas party's gifting risks.
I've taken home the bowling ball named Sherry
while lucky neighbors kept a better prize.
I've swapped the towel embroidered DIRTY HAIRY;
a "CLOWNS KILL PEOPLE" tee shirt seemed more wise.
The diaper filled with Tootsie Rolls was crass,
much better was the box that hid a kitten,
or maybe Coca-Cola in a flask,
but not that apple basket with all bitten.
Collecting kitsch, a sort of Christmas sport.
Sometimes I would prefer to have a wart.

Photo: flickr - cypheroz

Not Your Average Love Sonnet

2010-12-09T23:49:00.001-07:00

Okay, this is NOT a poem about my wife -- of whom I love to write so often. It is an imitation of a parody. That's right. Shakespeare was making fun of the poetical tradition he inherited from Petrarch with all the over-the-top, lofty comparisons that were made for the idealized objects of affection. Well, I'm just taking it a step further in the same spirit, creating a persona that is certainly not me to write about a woman that is certainly not my wife. Just wanted to be clear about that. (By the way, I did a kinetic typography version of this same sonnet by Shakespeare awhile back).

Not Your Average Love Sonnet
by Gideon Burton
after Shakespeare's Sonnet 130

My mistress could compel the rocks to woo.
Though bald, there is a twinkle in her eyes;
So coy, her blushes flare up her tatoos,
And no one could her nasal rings despise.
She’s not the girl that papa married, yet
My father may have had some quirky tastes–
He did not like a female heavy set,
While I enjoy some handles round the waist.
Her fingers may be stained with nicotine
And though she hacks and spits upon the ground,
For her, my sworn addiction, I am keen,
Despite the blows upon me that she pounds.
We all have baggage, faults to some degree
Just give me her along with all her fleas.

Photo: flickr - rofanator

Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Screen Melt

2010-12-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

Screen Melt
by Gideon Burton

The screen is melting under heavy light,
is melting with the images of suns
unshadowed, elemental, overdone
without the milk of darkly cooling night.
It melts like liquid sand, like clotted cream,
(unlike the hot felicity of skin)
descends in lines of darkened ivory, thin,
acidic, flaccid, dormant, quiet, mean
as televison frayed with grayish snow
or winter skies whose blotched and spotty rows
enmesh all sounds within their dampened glow.
The lump of light perspires as it grows
to heat, to bursting at its comet core.
We turn away, and then turn back for more.

Photo: flickr - didier.goas

Bleak Midwinter

2010-12-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

Bleak Midwinter
by Gideon Burton
after the traditional carol

Midwinter, bleak with moaning, frosty winds;
Across the iron earth the mounting snow;
the water, stony ice a layer thin;
beneath the snow, the dark compacting snow.
A stable place remained and was enough
when heaven couldn't keep him in its home.
A bed of straw, a mother's milk and love;
it was enough, though cherubim had flown
and seraphim attended in the air;
no worship but a weary mother's kiss.
He is enough, no offerings compare.
His is enough, and all has come to this:
Within my bleak midwinter shines a son,
I kneel in warmth and winter is undone.

Photo: flickr - manfred-hartmann

As a bonus, enjoy this audio version of the traditional carol, sung by my wife, Karen, and her friend, Juliana.

In the Bleak Midwinter
traditional

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Prone to Wander

2010-12-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

Prone to Wander
by Gideon Burton
after Robert Robinson's "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing."

I wander, prone to wander, prone to leave
the God I love. Be fetter, ballast, stay,
that fountain source of living water. Cleave
and seal and bind me as I slip and stray.
I stake my all upon who will not fall
nor prove inconstant as so constantly
I do. And yet I tune my spirit small
to resonate with thine persistently.
With streams of mercy bathe my upturned face;
with holy rhythms regulate my prayer.
As thou before, again restore my place;
unstranger me within thy bosom fair.
As tongues of fire spark the heavens above
I feel my weakness and I know thy love.

Photo: flickr - modenadude

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
by Robert Robinson

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

Plea

2010-12-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Plea
by Gideon Burton

Let me forego, forget, forgive, forsake
what I so foolishly insist to keep,
to lose with keeping, angry though I weep,
confused, convinced I only profit if I take.
Correct me, Lord, and let the heavens shake
and rain, let all be swallowed in the deep
abyss of night or fire or thickest sleep,
so long as this one soul Thou might remake.
Let there be tempests singed with cindered flame;
let ocean floods consume me with their waves;
let all that stands or stays descend or cave
as I attempt to speak that solemn name
which atoms sing and molten time still craves,
the name that stills, rebuilds, transforms and saves.

Photo: flickr - Raymond Larose

Rose

2010-12-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

Rose
by Gideon Burton
after the 15th century carol

Of flowers none so precious as the rose,
whose silken petals coil a spiral flame.
She swaddles Jesus in his birthing clothes.
This rose of roses, Mary is her name.
The bud of love, as soft as baby's skin,
a universe enfolded in its grace:
the heart of Jesus, swollen wide as sin.
She holds the baby's cheek against her face.
Among us, with us, like us, blood and flesh
and child to boy to man and stilled to dust.
Perhaps as she looks East she feels that West,
her son who will be stilled by living's hush.
As Mary rises, constant through each night;
so Christ arising, risen, rose to light.

Photo: flickr - jon|k

There is No Rose
anonymous 15th century carol

There is no rose of such vertu as is the rose that bare Jesu.
Alleluia, alleluia.

For in this rose conteinèd was heaven and earth in litel space,
Res miranda, res miranda.

By that rose we may well see there be one God in persons three,
Pares forma, pares forma,

The aungels sungen the shepherds to:
Gloria in excelsis,
gloria in excelsis Deo.
Gaudeamus, gaudeamus.

Leave we all this werldly mirth, and follow we this joyful birth.
Transeamus, transeamus, transeamus.

Alleluia, res miranda, pares forma, gaudeamus,
Transeamus, transeamus, transeamus.

Salt and Blood

2010-12-03T22:55:00.001-07:00

Salt and Blood
by Gideon Burton

He lets it fall. It falls, descending pall,
grey drape that mutes and dims and dampens all
that burning morning bursting hot-white call
of crimson dazzling awe, wide world unwalled.
And yet He lets that peace in pieces shatter,
and what had glowed a grace-fierce fire, sputter.
The heat of birth reduced to smoky matter,
the whole of Holy Ghost a distant flutter.
Cold desert, colder night, stark sky a stone.
A thirst inside a hunger, trembling bones.
This splintering from heaven and from home--
my God who kept me, leaves me all alone
to shake, to scrape, to kneel and stutter-speak;
to taste the salt and blood of Him I seek.

Photo: flickr - Bukutgirl

Memory Crime

2010-12-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

Memory Crime

by Gideon Burton

Oblivion, sweet gift from passing time

unburdening the psyche from the weight

and pull of every petty thought. The crime

of memory is her shifty sifting, great

events passed over, lesser ones retained

as though they were the center and the core:

a dozen words ill spoken seem the same

as constitutional amendments -- even more.

Poor memory is like a welcome sleep,

a margin buffering us from the past,

a moratorium from things too deep,

a chance for things to sort from first to last.

     If every moment kept, how high the cost

     for recollection's savor would be lost.

Photo: flickr - Alex No Logo

Chewing Gum

2010-12-01T23:07:00.001-07:00

Chewing Gum
by Gideon Burton

Asleep in tropic sapodilla trunks,
the chicle trickles once the bark is lanced.
Collected, boiled, coagulated, chunked,
it's bounced to Wrigley's where it is enhanced.
The milky latex, kneaded, sugared stiff,
with peppermint anointed, pressed and wrapped,
is shaped and shipped, now ready to be sniffed,
remoistened, all its sponginess untapped.
A nasty mass of tangled tissue, dense
yet yielding; sweet, but then a cardboard glue.
Resilient resin, tenderized yet tense,
a rubber plug fatiguing as you chew.
With chomping, snapping, spittle, wearied jaws,
Unpeaceful gum breaks all of Buddha's laws.

Photo: flickr - canonsnapper

Who is Kurtz?

2010-11-30T22:39:00.002-07:00

Who is Kurtz?
by Gideon Burton
after a passage from Conrad's Heart of Darkness

I say a name that's hemoglobin red,
a talisman, a paradox, a charm.
I might as well attempt to raise the dead.
Can you perceive the man? Hence my alarm.
No wealth of words can say what can't be spoken,
absurdity, surprise, revolting tremors;
the circled squares, a dreamer's logic broken.
How can I speak what I can scarce remember?
Impossible to summon or preserve
the essence of a decade or a day;
whatever is the truth is bent in curves
that language will confess as it betrays.
Our mind in isolation hosts our dreams;
we live just as we dream, alone, it seems.

Photo: flickr - Baronvonhorne

From Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

He [Kurtz] was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream -- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence -- that which makes its truth, its meaning -- its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream -- alone. . . ."

Sonneting

2010-11-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Sonneting
by Gideon Burton

To find a form sustaining me enough
to hold, to hold unweathered over time,
an instrument both sonorous and tough,
with sturdy words shaped smooth by ending rhymes.
Not every patterned art nor instrument
makes time both tow and flow in even turn,
So many words are brutish implements,
stutter-pulsed or bruising with their runes.
And there are books and symphonies whose length
is little argument, while most haiku
are pearls so tightly wound their strength
invisibles itself within their youth.
I've found a form who forms me line by line;
she's brief, yet most my thoughts she can refine.

Photo: flickr - jcarwil

He Bears No More

2010-11-28T20:31:00.002-07:00

He Bears No More
by Gideon Burton
a remix of Parley P. Pratt's "Jesus, Once of Humble Birth

Once humbly born, a lowly lamb and meek;
once groaning in his bloody tears and loss;
once left alone, rejected, bowed and weak;
once weighted down while lifted on the cross --
In glory now returns to waiting earth,
His chariot a blaze of fiery cloud;
in glory comes to give us second birth,
the Savior meek and mild with thunder loud.
Exalted to a throne, Almighty King,
debased no more, ascendent and supreme.
With hosts of angels shouting as they sing,
He breaks the night with morning's brightest beams.
I shouldered all, all suffering I bore;
my sacrifice complete, I bear no more.

Photo: flickr - brainedge

Winter

2010-11-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

Winter
by Gideon Burton

The argument of Winter settling in,
the light receding earlier, the wind
as weak as grasses browning in the thin
decay of foliage. How do we begin
retreating? Layering layers on our skin,
and waiting for the earth to slowly spin
its tilting path back where the warmth has been
direct, unsubtle, never wearing thin
but garish: saturated saffron rays
that boil or scorch or scald with burning heat;
high noons to span more hours than a day,
and lava pavement melting down our feet.
Outside, the night descends at half past four.
Inside, a second blanket, then one more.

Photo: flickr - lensfodder

Cosmic Skeptic

2010-11-26T22:35:00.000-07:00

Cosmic Skeptic
by Gideon Burton

With little lenses pointed to the sky
we calibrate the universe and know
its origin and destiny. With dry
equations tallying the cosmic glow
of supernovae, all that dust and time
and space beyond all measuring of space,
and we unable anywhere to climb
except from rock to pebble. Yet we face
the past and future, scooping every gram
and ray and eon, everything toward
a set of numbers countable by man,
in confidence though all has been ignored
except our sets of observations, graced
with certainties. Our faith has been misplaced.

Photo: flickr - rickz

Pimento

2010-11-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

back off she's mine

Pimento
by Gideon Burton

Your love is the pimento, red and sharp
that slumbers in the olives’ salty cave.
One sample of that taste I nibbling crave,
and I become an angel with a harp.
Your love is a bazooka, armed and ready
a missile primed and smoking for its flight.
If only I could give your fuse its light,
we’d have a rocket reason to go steady.
Your love, an orchard ripe and overgrown,
and I the migrant minimum in wage.
Oh apple tree, please toss this dog a bone
at least an apple tender in its age.
Your love is metaphor a mountain thick
It’s getting past the words that is the trick.

Red Wheelbarrow

2010-11-24T23:55:00.005-07:00

Red Wheelbarrow
by Gideon Burton
after William Carlos Williams

So much depends upon the window pane
above the double sink that frames the yard
where she is watching as the evening wanes,
The light is growing heavy, thick, and hard.
The wheelbarrow is sitting on its side,
its rust invisible against the mist,
the tire caked with mud. She stays inside
and sometimes wipes her forehead with her wrist.
The chickens do not seem to feel the rain
or hear it tap the metal barrow's edge.
She tries to see how little day remains
by peering from her kitchen's little ledge.
So much depends upon the glazing wet
arrangement inked in silty silhouette.

Photo: flickr - sgrace

The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carols Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.