Spilt upon the breathing tide
The shadows of our former pride
Stained with gilded, rusty gore

Songs upon the breeze still scream
From barren bog and skylit sea
Once were sung but nevermore

Clouds cry crimson in the lake
The moons and stars the sky forsakes
As darkness falls on ****** shores

Tear me down
Show me your will
Break me
hate me
destroy what forsakes me

Bleed me dry
scar my life
End my world
End my world

Leave me alone
Let me rot
Diminish whats left
TAKE IT ALL
TAKE IT ALL

Wrapped around the trunk
snake-like,
I taste the venom of my own tongue,
I lick the skin
in search of an antidote,
My last breath simulating the first
doubles the thirst to live,
But alas!
My love forsakes me to death

Poems about the Moon and Stars

These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)



Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret...
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once again—
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse


Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!

Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today



Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch

She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...

what do we know of love,
or duty?



Kindred
by Michael R. Burch

Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?

Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,

so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?

What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.

We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,

and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,

for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.


Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark...
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?

Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?

Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?

I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.



Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...

Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.

The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.

Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.

Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.



Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps...

How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded...

They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover's ease idly tracing flesh...

They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen...

Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda...

Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.

Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes syphilitic craters
and veiled by ghostly willows, palely looms,
while we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue—
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise—
adagio, the music she now hears,
while we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars' bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The night is dark and scary—
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother's love
and your puppy's kisses, doggonit!



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka... if I wished
upon a frozen star... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm...
yet something still not love... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove...

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. I believe this was my first attempt at blank verse.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe's.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace's or Mesopotamia's.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool's gold.



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,

I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.

The end of every man's the same
and every god's as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on

to hope when there's no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.



The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch

Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.

Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance...

Quiescent unions... thoughts of bliss, of hope...
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars...
like childhood's long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions... slip and bra...

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon's illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.

Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England). I believe I wrote the first version of "Listen" around age 17.

Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, sky, nightfall, tonight, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love

Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"

they day finishes with: at last! a schoth reserve
for highlands nomads!
     long gone is the fatamorgana of soberness
coupled with a very softcore soviet sleep
experiment: i chance you to also say:
the soviet sleep experiment is a way to censor
dreams, **** it: another paul mccartney
can write another yesterday into the repertoire,
you can hear of marathon-men who did over
100 hours without sleep, and when it came to
sleeping: hour-long interludes...
as all the p.o.w's realised was the case:
stop this dream-industry of disney! stop it!
nearing 36 hours is nothing,
when i'm going to do a hiatus in Poland visiting
my grandparents i'm planning to top that,
perhaps 48... just to get the glory days of Jews
in ancient Egypt and Joseph the adviser to
the pharaoh: 7 lean years, followed by 7 years
of starvation: what we otherwise carpe diem
over-indulgence - Moses wrote the book
of disgrace... when things turned sour,
obviously he was *******, just a little bit,
from a Jew becoming an adviser to the pharaoh
by interpreting his dreams which were always
in abundance given his lavish lifestyle...
dreams come to people who aspire to lavish
lifestyle, dreams come to people who take no
pleasure from the simplest prospects of a peaceful
hermitic life... they need both the lavish life
and the lavish hope of an afterlife with abundant
dreams... they can't master the opposite:
from simple pleasures that life has to offer:
one forsakes the capacity to the need to dream...
yet those who attain a comfortable Buddhist /
bourgeoisie / middle life: through the ethic of hard
labour find dreams nonsense... only
aristocrats find meaning in dreams, because
they have enough life insurance to guarantee them
the very unentertaining life, hence the Freudian
cinema, and here is their seeking of meaning,
because outside of their sleep nod,
their meaning is already akin to a predatory creature
kept in a zoological confinement, rather than
beckoned to attest the prime element beyond
the classical elements of fire and: where was the
Japanese army bombing the hell out of that
****** tsunami to make the orca-surf shrapnel?
where? nowhere! the reporters were there prior,
i'd swear you could have done the reverse Aleppo
with that tsunami wave by bombing it and
saving lives... but no... atoms bombs were never
intended for warfare as such, they're non-profitable...
all the arms-dealers across the world make more
money from millions of bullets and thousands upon
thousands of guns being sold: atom bombs make
no economic sense... atom bombs make
no economic sense in terms of dealing arms...
the soviet sleep experiment was one of the topics
at the end of today... the other was feline pavarotti
in a cattery: i swear to god that ginger is acting
too much like a bloodhound... moans all the ******
time, i've heard every kind of Tosca, but a cat's Tosca?
never in my life has a cat so many variable versions
of meow... animals really do possess their owners,
but in a way that shows the owners to themselves...
a poem a day: keeps the psychiatrist away.
and back to the soviets, who discovered Yiddish
dream-factory ******* that only applies to
aristocrats akin to Wilhelm Oedipus II,
    i never understood why people desired so much
from dreams, pure unconscious doesn't allow it,
it's shallow dreaming that becomes easily swayed
by a decreasing poignancy of the senses that
creates dreams, and as we've already been told:
they're bound to millisecond intervals -
snoring can be seen as a prompt for dreaming,
but then pure unconscious that's beyond the sensual
realm of pulverising you with everything external
          doesn't allow dreams, because it allows rest...
the subconscious makes more sense in terms of dreams
than what it currently prescribed,
             on the fully-waking hour of what people call
reverse-psychology (popularly), or who people can
influence you and treat you as a pawn...
   in the waking hour the theory of the subconscious
is that it's somehow there, and it's brimming with
theories ranging from the unitary stealth workings
of a superego, to advertisers competing for your
attention, as in: how can this person be manipulated?
that's the strain of thought working from consciousness
where you are said to have: no free will,
no critical approach toward the world with thought,
that you are naive and gullible...
  such people do exist, because they're not working
on the subconscious from the unconscious position,
hence they are most probably highly-developed dream-machines,
they probably even dream in colour and remember
dreams vividly... but take all the things i said
about the subconscious from a conscious pinpoint
and invert the starting point from an unconscious
pinpoint, and all that manipulating dynamic that
the subconscious is supposedly is fed fades
   to simply expose the subconscious as the medium
of dreams, whereby dreams appear from a sensory
hush of all external factors... a few days back i dreamed
i woke in a bed covered in cobwebs and spiders crawling
in them... the last thing i remember looking at?
my pet incy-wincy hanging on a silken web in
the corner of my room... for this to be true,
and for all that pompous subconscious theoretical *******
to go away, to actually work on the subconscious
having a dream reality rather than a reality of
being easily swayed by superego or advertisement
and willingly giving up your will to external factors
that go beyond mere senses... you have to acknowledge
at least 36 hours of the soviet sleep experiment, clock:
no nodding.m i've set the threshold,
the junkies did over 100 hours without sleep,
but they were army material, i'm... dunno.
              a break with an article on melanie martinez,
and then back into today's end...
    it's pouring cats & dogs outside, and will so
throughout tomorrow, one of the street lamps has
turned itself into solitary disco strobe...
   e.e.m. (epileptic eye movement)
           vs. r.e.m. (rapid eye movement) -
the difference? the latter invokes the theatrical curtain
of the eyelids... the former invokes your eyes
having rolled to the back of your head so you only
see the sclera...
but a real life problem too!
in these pseudo-capitalistic societies, companies
have started to do the Pontius Pilate tactic,
they are companies without employees,
what they want are subcontractors, people who
are self-employed, because actually employing
employees is bad business for them: you have to
have a pension fund... and what capitalist wasn't
old people getting money for doing nothing?
most construction companies are following this trend...
but the problem with that is that these companies
are employing useless managers, construction
site managers that should be on a site for at least 2
days a week... even 3... so they can get the knitty-gritty
of organisation done and the project runs smoothly...
but as i've already known for months,
say a roofing company from Gloucester is given
a London-based contract... it has employed a
project manager... who 1st of all doesn't have the right
credentials to be a manager... and this pleb travels
to London from the village of Gloucester
and is on a construction site for about half an hour,
doesn't make any notes,
and spends the rest of the time being a ******* tourist
in and around London, a day like this happens,
an authentic waterproofing problem...
   so you have these flats near the city airport,
and they're connected with walkways and have planters
too... you lay the concrete, then do the waterproofing:
primer, hotmelt, fleece, hotmelt, felt.
                  now the problem, why impose self-employment
and also employ parasitical managers who know
jack **** or are interested in selfies on tower bridge?
only because they can get a cheap train ticket back
to the village of Gloucester before the rush-hour commute?
the problem is simple, or hard, depends whether
there's an actual plan and someone is bothered..
four elements...
       1. drainage matt,
             2. pebbles,              3. filter layer
and 4. ~artificial turf... plastic-like, not asphalt,
     i grant it a status of artificial asphalt,
  or turf coloured copper...
the debate ranged about where the filter layer should go,
but there was no manager with the appropriate
method statement to give... the ******* crane arrives
at 8am, and he texts the day before that he might have
an answer by noon... or that some other manager should
be consulted to the method statement...
i suggested that first: the drainage matt, then the pebbles,
then the filter layer and then the artificial asphalt...
   the other suggestion was: drainage matt,
filter layer, pebbles and then the artificial asphalt
        given that pebbles will never be spread like
a plateau of concrete, meaning there will be pockets
beneath the artificial asphalt to soften the walk
and give more spring to the step...
                  and then i read a newspaper in england
and start to think: are these the only people on an actual
payroll? with safety in retirement schemes?
          i used to think of journalists as daring...
Watergate journalism that did something...
               then you turn on the 24 news channels
and state media is no different to free-enterprise media...
     as people my age say: television is really
a piece of 20th century antiquity... who gives a ****
that millions watched a man walk on a moon
on it... at least a billion people watched the cinnamon
spoon challenge from some ******* on the internet!
     or that guy who gave his cat l.s.d.,
or that guy who jumped off tower bridge and caught
pneumonia and had to be rescued...
still, the rain is ******* down, i've got my headphones
on, and that rebel street-lamp has turned into
a discoteque strobe's of needy rhythmic epileptics -
as every: i count most psychiatric terms in popular
use as undercover poetics, people who don't read
poetry, nonetheless apply psychiatric terms
   an unilateral transcript of denoting them as metaphor(s)
in everyday sprechen; and yes,
our informal vocabulary usually suffers for the fact
that we have chosen a fixed (courteous, hierarchical)
formal vocabulary, that erodes any chanced deviation
akin to a cat-stretching: e.g. (a) so and so died,
(b) oh, i'm sorry,        (c) and you're the one who
brought back the resentful Lazarus?
(d) as if you could have, prevented the inevitable;
a conversation between four strangers.

The quiet August noon has come,
  A slumberous silence fills the sky,
The fields are still, the woods are dumb,
  In glassy sleep the waters lie.

And mark yon soft white clouds that rest
  Above our vale, a moveless throng;
The cattle on the mountain's breast
  Enjoy the grateful shadow long.

Oh, how unlike those merry hours
  In early June when Earth laughs out,
When the fresh winds make love to flowers,
  And woodlands sing and waters shout.

When in the grass sweet voices talk,
  And strains of tiny music swell
From every moss-cup of the rock,
  From every nameless blossom's bell.

But now a joy too deep for sound,
  A peace no other season knows,
Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground,
  The blessing of supreme repose.

Away! I will not be, to-day,
  The only slave of toil and care.
Away from desk and dust! away!
  I'll be as idle as the air.

Beneath the open sky abroad,
  Among the plants and breathing things,
The sinless, peaceful works of God,
  I'll share the calm the season brings.

Come, thou, in whose soft eyes I see
  The gentle meanings of thy heart,
One day amid the woods with me,
  From men and all their cares apart.

And where, upon the meadow's breast,
  The shadow of the thicket lies,
The blue wild flowers thou gatherest
  Shall glow yet deeper near thine eyes.

Come, and when mid the calm profound,
  I turn, those gentle eyes to seek,
They, like the lovely landscape round,
  Of innocence and peace shall speak.

Rest here, beneath the unmoving shade,
  And on the silent valleys gaze,
Winding and widening, till they fade
  In yon soft ring of summer haze.

The village trees their summits rear
  Still as its spire, and yonder flock
At rest in those calm fields appear
  As chiselled from the lifeless rock.

One tranquil mount the scene o'erlooks--
  There the hushed winds their sabbath keep
While a near hum from bees and brooks
  Comes faintly like the breath of sleep.

Well may the gazer deem that when,
  Worn with the struggle and the strife,
And heart-sick at the wrongs of men,
  The good forsakes the scene of life;

Like this deep quiet that, awhile,
  Lingers the lovely landscape o'er,
Shall be the peace whose holy smile
  Welcomes him to a happier shore.

It looks like any other path. It is deceiving that way, that danger that for whatever reason isn't so obvious to you, it being quite sneaky and tricky while you are thinking that things are going just fine. Before you know it, you're knee deep in it, and it is pulling you under, threatening to devour you in its breath-******* muck and mire. The more you struggle, the deeper you go-- until it has all of you.

That could describe a lot of things, but to me it is the depression and, sometimes, anxiety that I wrestled with my whole life. It was never an everyday thing-- not always the most ominous feeling--and that is why I haven't always been wary of the warning signs. I was quick to want to forget about it, thinking that if I didn't continually address the matter that it would be gone forever. In other words, I wanted to return to the old and familiar, the patterns in which  life seemed easier than dealing with the matter. What felt like normalcy never required anything differently from me.

Ideally, when we are sinking, we would want there to be someone there that would be on solid ground to save us from that deadly patch of quicksand--that tsunami of terrible dread--but often the isolation becomes an only friend, a cold companion. Fear takes over, and it is just as gripping as the loss of our sure footing. Some people just don't understand, or surely think that we should have saved ourselves from this mess in the first place. And, no doubt, there is self-responsibility to counteract the lack of good chemicals in our brains, or deal with the unpleasant circumstances in our lives, but often it starts with us reaching out our hand to accept the hand that lends itself out.  It is that leap of faith to accepting outside help that becomes our first step--one of many steps we need to take in our journey.

And concerning faith, when there isn't a physical hand or tangible grip to grab onto, I know God is  always there. In my lowest of times, I have remembered the teaching that God never leaves nor forsakes us. Even when feeling unlovable, this becomes my lifeline.  So soon-- or eventually-- I come to realize that I can be brought back on dry, level ground, back freely onto my feet, unhampered and untangled from the muddy web I was stuck in. And God remains faithful--whenever I lose good direction--and the way seems so utterly, hopelessly lost. He always has. For no matter what, when I turn to God I know I can always reach out and my hand will not be slapped away.

Gratefully, I will do my best to do the same for someone else.

1379

His Mansion in the Pool
The Frog forsakes—
He rises on a Log
And statements makes—
His Auditors two Worlds
Deducting me—
The Orator of April
Is hoarse Today—
His Mittens at his Feet
No Hand hath he—
His eloquence a Bubble
As Fame should be—
Applaud him to discover
To your chagrin
Demosthenes has vanished
In Waters Green—

I'll  do nothing...
bad in life that will make my mother cry.
You can disgrace me, debase me, tie me to a railroad track.
But once the tears flow from my beloved mother, there's  no putting them back.

I'll  do nothing, bear this in mind and hear it,
I'll  do nothing that will diminish her spirit.
I  wont let evil near it. 
 I'll honor her by being like her, and proudly cheer it.

    A mother is nurture, she is the birth of nature.
A teacher not a taker, a mentor not a faker.
The ultimate God given talent, a human being maker.

She forsakes hers for the needs of  yours,
with dreams of high aspirations of her off- spring for,
nothing less, till their health and happiness soar.

Who else in this jaded,
complicated,
world gives unconditional love.  Who else.
Who else has you in their thoughts expressly, wantonly.
Who else has you in their thoughts religously, constantly. 
 
Concerned about your wants and needs, worries and dreads,  
doesn't want to pry, so she prays for you instead.
Who else.
No one else!

I'll  do nothing bad in life that will make my mother cry.