Karen Bookguilder is intended to be a collection of poems 60 poems expressly for the Book Guild
by Mike Burr - the themes being dictated by or about its published artisans .
Games
they with both organs male and female
are yet are not hermaphrodite
fused and cylindrical their minds
are as ours .. human minds
but with that wider compass of knowledge
that both parts could bring to our imagining
and in the history of universal things
how did they come to be
with heavy metals such as indium and tellurium so scarce
and so usually associated with planetary suns
i have no idea, my science is too myopic
but abundance makes for peculiarity
and with that frugality my logic
aligned weakly with the tactics of its application
my successes are thus limited, acutely so
whereas i must tell you theirs has
both power and perambulation
real devils acumen in the formulary of games
those which we so adore and so fills our leisure temples
albeit virtual or vicarious
but their existence was not virtual
they were real enough
and they were Carlo Masdevali and Anfica Falenopsis
the names but random in a world of mixed gender
and of their owners liking but i shall use
human epithets and feelings like "he" and "she"
to ascribe their attributes
for so it fell to being [sort of]
as they were merely the ambassadors
of the unique molecules that
engenders and enables its telepathic pathways
and from whose cradle born
the fever of obsessions algorithms cries
in strange and modal wailing
thus were they linked through different tactics
different ploys
to the strategies of their ancient spiritual peers
the game plan :
to extract the sentiment from the object
but it must then be transfered into the custody of a haven
whereby it may be distilled or transfered weak for later
recrudescence, distillation or refinement
the objective being to produce the most precious or precocious
object d'art from those [could we say?] pigments of feeling
of course to suggest that proponent Carlo
or antagonist Anfica were themselves the arbiters of play
would be no more true than to suggest Ben Hur built his chariot
or that he was the sire of its power force
they were mere visible exponents
elemental in the web and pyramid that provided all resource