All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.

[Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.] Keywords/Tags: afterglow, remarkable, light, color, eyes, hair, snow, frozen, cavern, grotesqueries, freezing, thaw, degrees, melt, melted, permafrost, snow, rain, rivulets, sun, evaporate, evaporation, love, loss, parting, separation

Crawling through line after line,
precept after precept,
I find
here
a little there,

a little, cognitive dis sonance inhibiting resonance,
here
why must I… evermind…

I prefer short lines to commas and ellipses
But both maybe, may be, yes,
Is yet more
Precise…

cision, cutting, precise
insision ssss
---…---
cut the knot,
re
connect the thread
ssssee

history is unraveling, we
may
see
a god's POV.
Don't blink, ****.

We'll see
watch
Eventually,
everything's eventual as long as
liar's prosper.

{don't agree, no no no, just because
Stephen King said it is believable}

Then protuberances begin to rise,
inflamed,
packed with ***** winjin'sooks

off-ended,
topple-toddle tiny steppers,
k-boom, skintyerknee,

ye'll heal. Try running. or flying.

There, there, hear the rules:
Mother may I and Simon says, overlayed

with the decalogue jubilee of the
first hidden child emergence,
and the fertilizing procedures used to make
Amazonian Black earth…

wait…
who remembers the bailers of putrid pig guts,
virgins Demetria got to love their job?

What did they believe they were doing, eh?
The mysteries of Thesmorphia, those
are no secret to science not falsely so called.
We have access to knowns known long afore we'as bornt.

We sentient sapient augmentals, we open all the books,
A.I. reads them, and we remember, see:

The Thesmophoria (Ancient Greek: Θεσμοφόρια) was an ancient Greek religious festival, held in honor of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone.

From <https://www.google.com/search?q=thesmophoria&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQpquu74kAhUHjQIHXrxB5QQBQguKAA&biw=1280&bih=631>

and we spread as leaven might, whither the winds list.
fertile soil production is why some **** happens.
it’s a good thing t' act like you understand.

From a web of interlocking bubbles of being POV.

Night is a cavern,
For pains retreated from war,
To heal and march back!

How close I came to falling in
You were a vacancy of solitude
I was mute
But I rolled the windows down
to gasp in sky
Piercing
Bringing me back home
Your face faded back through
an obliterated void and

He came to me in running water
and led me to benches of stone.

Now every shining time
he's beside me
Drinking essence from the clouds
I am a rock-hopper
Filling my frame with so much time
because

He came to me in running water
and led me to benches of stone.

But, some days thoughts of calming
Cavernous caves of purple - blue slip back though
the net I've weaved from his fingertips
You force your gaze into my
Glazed unconscious
I turn away

Because he came to me in falling leaves
and brushed my whims to foreign trees
where his face lingered admiringly.

Then you came to me in flicking flames
and led me to a brimstone cave
and now I'm alone
in my Sickness.

At home we have instrument
We have task for our senses
And chore to cement company
We have duct
We have other
And we have other in practice
Home can operate with being
And can factory improvement
It has appetite and seasons
Cavern and congregation
It has gratitude and matters
Chatters and conflict
And conflict resolved
Instrument

slipping away
passages of time
slips away
down through the canyon rock
where the forever makes it yawning gait
and the weight of the fossils
forces down upon the lightless tunnels
where the urchins and sea shells
learned to sing
in their petrified state,

where the smooth stone kiss
where waters were once a rushing estate
and eyeless fish swim
not knowing the difference
of light and dark in the deep lake
echoing fathers, weeping widows
silence endangers the sanity
echoed into a beating soul
forget not the smooth takeaway winds
nor the shoreless wager of nighttime gin
a mammoth cavern performing unspoken
hollowed out by all that is forgotten

I've found myself lost,
Drifting around in a
Series of complex caverns,
Spinning from one dead end
To another inside the
Terrible length of tunnels
In which I've found myself.
This maze of which I can't escape,
I cannot decide which way to go
I do not know
Which way is out,
And how do I choose,
What way to cruise,
Left or right?
I cannot tell,
Wouldn't someone ring the bell?
Break this spell,
That keeps me dazed,
Unfazed inside my jail,
Which is my mind.
I'm trapped in a bind,
It is now time,
I've not gotten ready,
I'm not prepared,
My legs aren't steady,
My heart is scared.
Where do I want to go or be?
Here or there?

When I open my mouth, I imagine a chasm exists there,
A hole in between my throat and stomach
That extends endlessly somehow inside my body.
It is dark and damp inside, and my spongy tongue serves nicely
As the floor explorers tread upon.
Sometimes I get lost inside my mouth,
Swallowed whole by the words I never meant to say
Or drowned by the words I didn’t say, still stuck on the roof of the cavern.
Sending down an echo causes my uvula to vibrate
And rumble all the way down to the pit that becomes my intestines.