Vegas Buffet

Vegas Buffet
by Gideon Burton 

Enough. You've had three plates and it's enough.
A caravan of carbohydrates washed
in gravies, sauces, sloshing over puffs
of pastry; kilocalories accost
your system, pancreatic panic sends
along the lubricating insulin
outpaced by fresh eclairs stuffed end to end
as meats and buttered breads try to fit in
your gasping gastric track that chokes and squirms
accommodating seconds' seconds, thick
in naughty, knotty fats not making firm
your figure as desserts arrive in sucrose bricks.
     Great bargain, endless courses till you cough;
     Whatever -- oink your way back to the trough.

Photo: flickr - Librarian Avengers

The Meadows (las vegas)

The Meadows (las vegas)
by Gideon Burton

The Spanish called this place "the meadows," green
with springs within a desert. Meadows wait
in silence for the grasses' growth, the sheen
of rain to gloss their tiny flowers great
with sticky pollen for the floating bees,
loud visitors, to carry to the wind.
Vast quietness prevails, unlike the seas,
which boil and shift as though their conscience sinned.
I have seen churches built on meadows, tall
with steeples poking heavenward, and doors
ajar to let the congregation sense that all
the structure is a kind of bottom floor.
     The earth can rest and wait in seasons clean
     Las Vegas, restless, browns its native green.

Vivaldi

Written at the church of St. Martin in the Fields, London, while listening to a Vivaldi cello concerto on May 25, 2001.

Vivaldi

by Gideon Burton

On these crescendos, brushing toward a soft

alignment, something heavy seems to light:

a slight , accusing signal, less than night,

and just as suddenly compelled aloft.

The music, rising, in perfecting fades.

Its blush and color thunders in its rush

toward a last parenthesis of breath.

A death perhaps. Perhaps a shift in clef.

The even ground tugs skyward in the crush

of green ascension, morning heaved in spades

another time for this, another peak,

another supposition given full

disclosure, casual of where it pulls

serrated phrases on us, strongly weak.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - kardboard604

Abandoned House

Abandoned House
by Gideon Burton

Moreover, we found moonlight caught in rafters
And tangled helpless in the swirling dust.
The air was old, and yet it smelled of laughter,
Too thin to be distinguished from the must
Of silent decades, stones inside of stones,
Preserving echoes of the absent coals
That warmed the grimmest night of fear and bones.
The wreckage creaks, the breezes try each hole,
And winter weaves its fabric in the night
Of weakened spaces and forgotten chimes.
Walk quietly, try not to stir the spite
That time has gestured with its sluggish mimes.
       The house will have its reasons and its wood,
       A frame devoid of laughter's noisy good.

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

Notre Dame de Paris

To me the social architecture of a cathedral outstrips its aesthetic wonders. A cathedral is a monument to a community, to a way of life, to a view of things bigger than one's own little world. It was Victor Hugo's novel, Notre Dame de Paris, that led me to understand a cathedral's power, and this one in particular. I think the high dynamic range of this photo brings out that sense of the glowing presence this building has had in Paris and in the imagination for centuries.

Notre Dame de Paris

by Gideon Burton

Great ribs of stone rise romanesque, then vault

Into the dark and airy transept's top.

Two vast and colored windows, round, will halt

And heat the light to rosy hues, not stop

The sight of heaven that two hundred years

Brought pious masons, carpenters and all

The cutting grinding laborers so near

To godly mystery, its silent pall

Uplifting with the buttressed walls of mass.

A vision, wafer thin and ruddy red,

In sweaty time to sons from fathers passed

Who saw God's finished house when they were dead.

       She marks the tomb of peasants, and the times,

       Part sepulcher, part temple, part sublime.

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

Varanasi

I wrote this sonnet based only upon vague impressions about the Ganges and its geographical and cultural settings. Then, years later, I visited Varanasi and went out on the Ganges river to explore the ghats and watch the pilgrims bathing and the ashes of corpses floating alongside the tea lights set afloat. I decided my sonnet pegged it. Nice when that works out.

Varanasi
by Gideon Burton


Is this the thin descent? The liquid way
of gossamer and fear? The curry blows,
the crocodiles upset the Ganges flow
enough–not quite enough–to breathe the play
of wind with daylight. All that Muslims pray
ascends in minarets of spice below
the smear of yellow-gray that ebbs and grows,
that closes over India to stay.
The echo of the desert comes to rest
against the twining granite idols, mute
and patient on their broken bases. White
absorbs whatever we had stated best,
and salmon tigers prey upon our brute
reflections, sharpened past the point of spite.


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

The Pyramids Conspire

The Pyramids Conspire

by Gideon Burton

The pyramids conspire to remain

the metaphor despite their long erosion.

Despite the plunder, all of the corrosion

by robbers, tourists, treading down the range

of holiness erected by the same

compulsions – East beyond the West’s implosion,

reduced to glimmers, none of the explosion

of oily heat that bathes the Nile like rain

from some elapsed and sleeping god. The flood

of due affection waters marsh and shore,

provoking hope in soft ceramic folds

until the Hebrew turns it all to blood.

We lapping drink, and drinking gasping more

than this renewal of the green of gold.

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