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Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem about a crisis of faith that occurred after the death of the wife of a fellow poet.

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.

Published by The NeoVictorian/Cochlea, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada). Keywords/Tags: crescendo, heaven, salvation, price, cost, hymn, funeral, grave, graves, coffins, cross, crosses, cemetery, graveyard, church, spire, God, distant, silent, misunderstood
Steph Portuguez Jan 2020
Aren't you afraid of happiness?

At this glorious moments of youth escape won't be easy when our willing to win is gone, we hate what we'll become.

As our laughter evolves into madness and as our heart machines rise to sadness, we ignore our realistic surroundings, we light up the fire
as we admire the cadavers dancing. The town will flood in blood, it will unmask the rottenness of the animated corpse.

We'll be a beautiful and strange memory, monsters waking up ghosts from the doomed century, withered roses are her favorite, sweet and mad ****** reigns our team, we're rich in poverty. We abandoned the routine tale just for today, we cry of joy, happiness and bliss, yes, yes, we feel everything.

Smiling is hard when you know it won't last, Saturday nights and ******* race
what a blast. Be respectful as you jump over their graves, have mercy for the ones who rest, have sympathy for their miserable fate. We'll enjoy our liberty as well.

The Devil invocation brought us a loser angel, he doesn't know where he belongs, we welcomed him home, he didn't have the honor to meet the God, he's skeptic about the existence of his benevolence. Dear rejected angel, would you have the kindness to tell us, are we gonna gather an army or are we just gonna have a party?


So aren't you afraid of happiness?

Ugly interesting kid, putrid smell refreshing the air. We feel unstable to be the essence of rebellion, I don't know what's scarier us or them. Wildness and hormones at its best. What a rich environment of power and ridiculousness.

What is life now? What are we tonight? We don't know, we won't, we'll just be.

Hard laughs, my throat hurts, cheap axe to cut their bones, they found the elegance under this blood storm.The town became their ballroom, they weren't alive but they are living by the sentiment of this night.

The Morning turned us sad, the storm never painted a rainbow, the lost ghosts never found the beginning of the end, they'll be imprisoned with the forgotten chains, the skeletons never danced to the blues, we'll be forever ****** to be sane, our souls weren't never new.

We were the legends of youth...
Merry Aug 2019
It’s cold tonight in Eden
A full moon is a spectral sight
An apple tree is in full bloom
In this garden where we may say our prayers
Dirt is caked under my nails
I’m tumblin' down, down, down
Eight feet, just for you my dear,
Lenore can’t so no
Not when the throes of passion
Are caught so deep
I’m restless against the stillness
Aching and grinding
Yet paradise is so cool this low
Alex Frass Jul 2019
The story goes as it should.
The Man sits and the Woman looks
at him, face to face
glaring eyes looking
A fire burning
and a microwave singing blips.
I am heating some food, the Man says.
The Woman, still starring straight
into his eyes, weak he felt
fiddled with a gaze.
Stunned in half a second.
Such a weakling.
He brought the plate and put
it in front of her. She was
still silent to the point that
he thought she was done.
Over and long gone.
The Woman finally says
Your Muse is mine to give
and without it
you writing is hollow
empty, gray shells upon the sand.
Buried.
What do you think will happen
if it comes alive again, she asks.
The Man, not a word spoken
not a single phrase uttered
though he was always good
at speech.
She says : “you’ll have
a screaming thing in a coffin
in a cemetery, and the guard
will go crazy.”
I am crazy, and so are you,
the Man manages to utter.
Ahavati Jun 2019
“All the great sadnesses, great temptations,
and great mistakes are almost always
the result of loneliness.”
-- José Saramago, Margaret Jull Costa

In the end we all become graves,
our differences united by the same
neglect of weeds and immense
necropolis whose swathed residents
observe from quiet encasements.

Beyond our mounds will spread
giant limbs of balboa, tapping
like trapped hangers behind closet
doors casting macabre shadows
across plastic flowers and dirt.

Visitors and memories are decimated
by time until all that remains
is a hovel of chiseled stone.
History becomes an illusion
of mystery, like that black dog,

there -- just beyond Aiken's bench,
sniffing out with such diligence you
would swear it was seeking the birth
certificate of God, until it ***** its leg
and ****** on the concrete instead.

~
Legend has it that Conrad Aiken wanted his tombstone in the form of a bench so poetry lovers could sit there and enjoy a drink or two.
ran into a whispering angel at the cemetery today,
customary to have a small ceremony
when the monument finished,
the grave now well and truly marked,
an unveiling held, the kaddish said,
a small stone
placed upon the monument,
a five thousand year old tradition,

started by Jacob

we line up to place our rock of ages goodbye token,
an opportunity to angel whisper one last goodbye,
but good bye is not on my mind,
no, my own approaching deceasing dead,
for the pains come regular now
in the places that means trouble ahead,
and no one knows but me

so to my friend Al,
who once asked me
where do the poems, the words, come from,
I whisper in your six feet underground ears,
though I swear I hear ya laughing both
right behind me both
at your jokes, and at me,

“see ya soon, buddy, see ya soon”
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/376358/with-each-passing-poem/

https://www.shiva.com/learning-center/death-and-mourning/unveiling/
farhan Jun 2019
Success finds story,
Failure rests in cemetery.
every success story finds a matching narrative such as hardwork struggle but failures die peacefully
Amanda Kay Burke May 2019
I lay trust in your consuming arms
Tears fall
You have broken my heart once again
I hear another empty apology
Bury it in this teeming cemetery of promises dead

A thousand aging tombstones
In marble we carved regrets
Your name occupies my mind
Can't remove it or forget

Release me from chains of grief
Know you carry your own
You know it is not easy
Say that you've been alone

I cannot believe your dead blank eyes
Your desperate but familiar voice
I may have decided to allow you inside
Loving you was not my choice
Does Stephen King spell it Semetary?
Riz Mack Apr 2019
I had to hear the sound of the zip on that dress
I asked her back to mine for cold coffee and cigarettes
She said she doesn't smoke but she'd have one to impress
and she isn't one for coffee
So sorry, I digress

Before she sat down all these lines coalesced
with secrets and lies, I try to confess
she catalysed a crystal convalescence
her garnet eyes sparking wildfires in my chest
my lungs are so tight they could rival her dress
Stung in the heart for kicking the nest
took a shot in the dark
Again, I digress

A small crowded room - as small rooms tend to be
but for everyone there, she was all I could see
the picture of perfection, framed perfectly
in a dress designed to buckle my knees
Crowded c'rod'd quickly becomes we
and I was trying to get her on my settee
Is it a metaphor if I meant it literally?
Excuse me, once more it seems
I digress

I just had to get her out of that dress
mess up her make up
make her hair a mess
kiss her when she wakes up
and watch her get dressed
to undress her again
exalted by the scent
bask in the sound
of the zip on that dress
while I sip on cold coffee
and smoke cigarettes
The story isn't in order so it's automatically better, right?
Like pulp fiction
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