Bound
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14-15

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.

Published as “Why Did I Go?” in my high school journal the Lantern in 1976. I have made slight changes here and there, but the poem is essentially the same as what I wrote in my early teens.

the sky is sopping up
                smears of weather from the city day
filling out darkly
  the portly host of the eve   ushers us into warm dens
nature starts the night shift
it appraises

this night is rat dog    recovering from urban filth
                                       rolling in grass dew and spoil

the tainting of the air     is contributed to from abroad
migration of contraband fumes (forest fires out west)
                                     and the heat raises

too populated   to hold a proper witching hour
the night in shifts
any slumber has its quality watered down 
                                    the constant street activity

weeping sunrise   nights excuses stopper   inebriation rests
arrested blight   morning light and everything about
your crushable body smiles naked things
i roll over to face the uncurtained window
hunch out of bed and stilt my way
to support my self at the sill

overcast with an invasive muffle of smog
members of the bright-time    pooling for occupation
                      do not remember the night
                                it's simply poor sleep

Without exception,
Not a day passes
Where you don't dwell
In thoughts, on my mind;
Nothing so sets on this mental landscape,
The days only combine.
Two planets in the sky,
There's the star & the moon
And all the buffer in between-
Like the ache I have for you
And all that prevents me
From wanting any remedy.
Another repeat in the alphabet,
***

O graunt O God that when I do descryue
Lustrous Selene, Qheene of ebon night,
Readers by reading sie the Qheene aliue
Shining with lighte as beautifull as bright.
God-giuen gifte of beautie is the sight
Of her who shineth like a falling starre
Maintaining still her place in heauens height
High up aboue whair heauens orbits are.
Aboue our heads so neare and yett so farre
Shineth the goddesse faire since auld lang syne.
The troubadours melodious repertoire
He doth performe within her siluer shine.
Romance doth quick the pvlse and pvll the tide:
The loue of God is giu'n unto his bride.

A Candle
's flame
-the most
selfless of light-
Consuming itself,
to
Illuminate night.

It is night, I walk

across the metropolis --


which denies the night.

with unencumbered pink flourish she strips knickers down and dress shruggled brisk over her head a flit of no patience for my timid bow she clocks my eyes senses are abled then blasted overwhelm with her **** light it radiates exposed armpits huff glowing mist her groin blazes at me stricken to match but my male has no luminosity and no athlete or brute *** form either she must have liked our bar dance or the alcohol defect or she might even have bin soft for the random humour i worded her wooded way she reflects and we are minded and shyly i lump off my boots scuffle my clothes to the ground and embrace for the pacts effect everything becomes animal our playful selves step in take sleeve over us makes us kinetic cadaverliers strobic and i’m all muzzle and snout oder out of control and slurring eyes and hooked hands grubbing foreign soft hummocks and we brandish the moon and charge on frantic stimulus it's all fleshed out in front of us this splay

Blotted starlight from sunken Heaven
Aligns separate suns with black-hole-being
Under salivate fires of flickering, flickering,
Fading into condensation breath;
Tormentation of an insipid other—
Congregation of a half-life sect.