Death is beauty,
               as the rose atop of death
feeds on the nourishment of
                                   an empty shell.


Even though its petals decay,
                              its reaches higher

than the tomb
                      to bring life crimson to the surface.

Kindred (II)
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.

Published by Songs of Innocence. Keywords/Tags: moon, pale, disastrous, remote, detached, cold, inhuman, lustrous, pallor, love, itself, white, corpse

Dust
by Michael R. Burch

Flame within flame,
  we burned and burned relentlessly
    till there was nothing left to be consumed.
    Only ash remained, the smoke plumed
  like a spirit leaving its corpse, and we
were left with only a name
ever common between us.
  We had thought to love “eternally,”
    but the wick sputtered, the candle swooned,
    the flame subsided, the smoke ballooned,
  and our communal thought was: flee, flee, flee
the choking dust.

Keywords/Tags: dust, ash, spent flame, smoke, spirit, corpse, common, name, divorce, separation, parting

My eyes has been
wide open all night
like a corpse’s eyes

Would you come and
gently close them for
me so I can finally sleep?

The unspoken words
grew in my veins till
they intoxicated my mind

A deadly psyche planted inside
a breathing corpse
that’s perpetually dying

It's all for the one's you'll never meet

a word
a system
a building
a philosophy

Their onus is ownership
intended or otherwise

what will you leave behind?

It's a ghost city
where the dread of death
stalks the dead.  

A corpse gazes
into the mirror
to feign a state of the living.

A brutal past haunts
memory's grave;
Unfinished stories remain forsaken.

A desolate shadow
falls on an unceasing night;
the stillborn day mourns.

Cry of a vanished era
bares a collapsed glory;
Pride falls from grace.

A crow kissing skeleton skull
   And pecking dirt in the process.

Lace my ashes with flower seeds
   So that I may live a little longer.

I'd love to feel the rain
  Drip down my veins once again,
And make-believe the strid formed
    Will never dissapear. But

The dead don't get to decide that much
   Ahead.
Crow bleeding sunny black eyes, sing a song
As we

         Cross into morning. Crow, that maps my skin
          In sanskrit, please go a little softer. It's not
          That I never expected to die, it's just that I
           Never pictured it so sudden; and it's still

So long to go until I'm found...
Crow, would you be so kind as
To keep me company until then?