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Seán Mac Falls Mar 2020
.
          1
Sometimes the body is contagion
To the soul.  Stars in their mission fall
To seed the fertile flesh, ignite
Blue waters of sulfureous hearts,
And so the flash is set to cancel
In the flood.  

          2
Sometimes the lip of soul onto seal
Will not hold, before he first knocked
And let flesh enter, thorny pegs
Pricked nerve and pierced bone on his climb
To the rose, yea, some stars odd as
Meteors crash.

          3
In the swan-sea, song-sangy-frame of crib,
Rough hewn words bent mold to scrape, like
Blasted coral, stood half-submerged
Amid sea and sky, for between the leaves,
Behind the eye, there are little stars
Shining like existence.

          4
In a circle world he fashioned green
Blazons about the darkling day,
Fostered by celestial navigation,
Wrote a language for music, on a map of love
And charted the force of green in a wind-
Rose of discovery.

          5
Sometimes the soul is not contained, it
Bursts in silent sound like well water
From the source.  And of men in streets
He saw the pennies in their grumble
Eyes, and of love and its course he rubbed,
Tickling dim stars.

          6
It was his thirty ninth year in that fall
To heaven when the steeping cell,
Refused to push in its tide.  Homeless
And free on scaffold of bone the middling
Man retracted from sun to sink
With the moon, turn-tiding-toward sea
Like a changeling.

          7
And as ever, nor often, unwavering eyes
Sprout through shifting grains.  And as he spoke
Quite rimless, Dylan Thomas was petrified
In undying light, and solid set within a rill
Of reef sparkling in concert betwixt gas
And sea, so becoming in purple sleeves,
This constellation of mute singers all,
Dried five-fingered-fish, bright embryos
Returned to the shell, they burn between the leaves,
Beset the grounded skies and show sprite flashes
In the dark where He has left his imprints, burning
Above and plastered below.  The first rock stars!
.
— for Dylan Thomas
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch

Where you have gone are the shadows falling...
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
...do you not hear me calling?

Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen...
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
...is silence at last your anthem?

Keywords/Tags: elegy, eulogy, epitaph, death, grave, Sheol, shadows, silence, eternity, funeral, memory, memorial, tribute
Liz Rossi Mar 2020
here the sunshine patriot, bright and bleached –
they plucked the stars
to hang them from your chest. the rest are
gone, hidden by light pollution
and concrete skies.
your eyes reflect the blank face
of stopped clocks; steps from the car,
summer soldier.

but winter hides in
the cold metal of the trigger

a bang –
it echoes in fireworks, spatters the street with
blue white red red red.

the stutter of a gun,
or just a backfiring car?
sunshine man melts in a puddle of gaudy red,
the colour of sticky ice lollies
and patriotism.

here the newscaster, weeping tirelessly
for the camera.
“he was our country,” he says, and wasn’t he just?
back alleys and sunshine and
wanting to go back, wanting
to hide in the past.

and here the politicians, mourning loudly
into crisp white handkerchiefs. oh, how i wish we could
freeze time, draw grimaces in markers
on their painted faces
and watch them point fingers.
they use pretty words
heroic, or tragic
and pat their sweaty backs.

meanwhile,
sunshine man bleeds into the gutter
red white blue
the colour of freedom.
Yup, a poem about Marvel's (wonderful) "The Death of Captain America". Apologies both to Cap and the Winter Soldier, who, it seems, I've made into his murderer. Kudos if you caught the Thomas Paine reference(s)!
N Jul 2019
It is brutal
to have reached for
my trembling hand
and hold it

only to dust me off
back to my grave
without a goodbye
nor a burial

It is cruel
to have made me
believe I am one
with the livings

only to make my
second death
far more ******

O, tragedy indeed
Austin Reed Mar 2020
It’s an early March morning
There’s an overcast sky
Winds whipping through the pines

A man stands hillside
Alone & afraid
Accompanied by clattering chains
Theres a distant wagon in the valley
Each gallop growing closer
He begins to weep

He prays for a miracle
Maybe the wagon will crash
Just anything he begs

A crowd can be heard near
desperately he thrashes around
Kicking the cage  
Over & over
Surveying for help
All can be seen are the roaring pines

He grips the cage tightly
As it creaks open
Two men drag him out
Pulling him through the streets,
Brought down to his knees
He pleas, screams, mercy please

Everythings exhausted
He feels numb & defeated
As the Warden marches forward

Reaching for his big axe
The Warden overlooks the man
Raising his blade
The air becomes still
A small thud echoes through the town,
The wardens lip quivering to sight beneath his feet
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch

. . . qui laetificat juventutem meam . . .
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
. . . requiescat in pace . . .
May she rest in peace.
. . . amen . . .
Amen.

NOTE: I was touched by this Latin prayer, which I discovered in a novel I read as a teenager. I later decided to incorporate it into a poem. From what I now understand, “ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam” means “to the God who gives joy to my youth,” but I am sticking with my original interpretation: a lament for a little girl at her funeral. The phrase can be traced back to Saint Jerome's translation of Psalm 42 in the Latin Vulgate Bible (circa 385 AD). Keywords/Tags: Latin, translation, Saint, Jerome, Vulgate, Bible, prayer, elegy, eulogy, hymn, joy, youth, death, peace, rest, consolation
Austin Reed Feb 2020
On his porch the fickle man rest
Wrinkled and worn
Like a blue collar wallet

He watches the day pass
Vicariously through the youth of the block
Often pondering his dog days

He reads his morning paper
To the sound of neighboring dogs howls
Growing annoyed, he howls back
Owwwww!

Wise to the humid day
He finishes his chores early, pulling out a rag
Wiping the sweat from his forehead
He sits back down to a long awaited Budweiser

Watching the neighbors come home
He smiles, back to the kiss of his late wife
What freedom she gave after a long day

After supper he settles down for dusk
Reaching for his radio
Tuning into the ball game
Pirates up two, bottom of the fifth

On his porch the man rest
Wrinkled and worn
Watching the sunset
Cherishing his every breath
Austin Reed Mar 2020
A fragment of a man once was
A distant man at the crossroads
Desperate and no where to go
Ready to face the debt he owes.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
"Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" has become one of my most popular poems on the Internet; the last time I checked with Google it appeared on over 400 web pages.
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