Throughout the life of this lonely traveler, one thing has been true.

No one knows the burdens of a truthful, man.

Women pine, quake and laugh about the piteous concerns, and lies of, men.

But, no man has ever exposed the truth of women and their lies.



Clothes to cover up, aging flesh, morose temperament, and the scars of woe & wrath.

Mascara, the dark filth of the earth, to cover tired eyes and the depth of secrets in the soul.

Paint, to cover the cracks of age, and the true doom of the beautiful, yet withering, rose that is youth.

White lies, that blind and twist the fabric of a man's sense of truth and wonder about his love.



The lies are small, the vanity deep, and the wrinkles like rivers that are of broken reason. Trickling; yet, like veins in the eye,

The blood of falsity bleeds deep into the twisted soul of the lying woman. The illusion.

The lies are. Small. Yet each day, each month, each year, they are built skyward, like bricks in a chimney.

The smoke from within is putrid and rife with the anger of misunderstanding and emotional vapor.



The chimneys I see reveal factories of deceit and compulsive irony. The make-up of woman-kind.

They beg for truth, yet hide everything but tears to the eyes of their coddled lovers.

Each man, a babe; helpless to the hammer and clock of heart break to come.

A woman will tell one lie to save your soul... then tell another, to sell it to carrion. The lost.



I am lost. I am a vulture to truth and I am sickened by the taste of greed for love.

They tell me, they hurt, because one man broke promises meant to churn the engines of love...

Yet they continue to stir the cauldron of their own false worries and stifle the honesty of love.

What do they want? My soul? My. Soul? I will give it. I will bury it in the grave of pity, I will.



I will shovel out all the hope, dreams and promises I have to give and empty out a nest; in there.

I have burrowed out the ache and the pain of the bricks and lies women have told me, just to make home for new residence.

When I watch the walls crumble from the coom and cuss, of their idiocy, I will simply clean up the mess.

I have no more to give, but what I hope to be and what I hope to have once I find the woman without lies.



Truth is, men are masters, 'because' of women. Physical strength is all that keeps them at bay, because they, once, slaved us to their needs, we tipped the balance and hold the chain of destiny, in hopes of taming the horses that pull the chariot of angels.

The woman I see, riding the chariot is fierce and bright, like the light that shines that forms the ever-present sun.

I watch her until she passes by and wait for an empty return.

As I am here, with an empty soul... For. New. Residence.



The emotional man, is whipped and beaten by that chariot-woman. She laughs and curses me into the dirt.

But, I stand up righteous in my pursuit for the honest woman. The 'giving' woman.

She waits upon the highest tower, letting down the chains of our bond, to give me flight to the heavens.

... Until then. I simply. Have.

No woman.

We kissed, I loved, you betrayed
My youth, a trust, perfect days.
You went, I mourned, nothing left,
I was, you were, my hope bereft.

1984

Having faith in the change
the wind might bring
is a thing
y’know?
a challenge
testing bitter thoughts
and locked up hearts
too long apart

But it will blow
y’know?
this wind we wait for
bringing other thoughts
to sit inside
and while away togetherness

I watch the forecasts
come and go
y’know?
and pretend that there’s a pattern

This mapped isle
has never been one
for clement weather
but I’ll pretend to know

The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine, Famous Poets and Poems, Litera, Poetry Life & Times and Freshet

Keywords/Tags: Stoops, folly, wisdom, children, wise, know, knowing, understand, understanding, life, death, grave, years, dark, leaves, trees, prince, toad, kiss, fairytale, coffin, fortress, bloodletting, maple, syrup

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                            
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'
.