We’re nothing but skeletons through safety nets -
Fingers clicking new time sets,
Carcasses savouring the darkness
Lipsticks by cigarettes following the dim lit spec
Of no ground beneath us, wanderers foetusless
Figuring the freckles from the sun to our mess -

Caskets of breath, holding up heads
Hangers and railings, waiting for the horse sense sect...

Arrows through archways, glass light through windows
Pink blood smelling phoenix potent
Broken street slabs, bruised zinc honing
Wailing, awoken, wasting, frozen
Bent not broken– darker, sharper

Pieces of our star creature
Learning to walk quicker
Into the other whirl where we were hurled from...

No longer held off,
Dragons and sky gods
fending the ether -
Furious feathers float into glowing oceans that camber...

Fahr an’ Ice
by Michael R. Burch

(apologies to Robert Frost and Ogden Nash)

From what I know of death, I’ll side with those
who’d like to have a say in how it goes:
just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker),
and real fahr off, instead of quicker.

Originally published by Light Quarterly

Keywords/Tags: Robert Frost, Ogden Nash, death, fire, ice, liquor, quicker, humor, nonsense, light verse, parody, satire

I do not understand this poet
Nor the glimmer in his mind,
and no amount of persuasion
Will ever make him mine

The great poet the world has known
The English Soul, the Bard of olde
Speaks little but of jests,
and not a word of happiness

But who am I,
forgot to time,
I all but simple words I leave,

I will never have
Shakespeare's memory