Having decided to go out in a whisper, this vignette, blows through and around the bones of the no longer relevant truth.

It is a wonder how something as simple or complex as a paradigm shift, can usher entire worlds in and out of existence.

I've clung to this narrative that I am a prisoner in my own mind.
That some usurper took the reigns when I was otherwise too weak.
I needed to believe that, that there existed a power beyond me.
That there was some distinct discontinuity between us.

And if we are indeed one and the same, we are also different.
There was strength in being divided, separate, unique.
I've not yet created a reality where being a singularity is supreme.
So I cry out in agony, united in my unknowing.

I write to shape this new form, this new being, this new structure.
I write to fight against the unmaking of my self.

The State of the Art
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has passion been coerced?

Shall poetry fade slowly,
like Latin, to past tense?
Are the bards too high and holy,
or their readers merely dense?

Keywords/Tags: poetry, art, rhyme, reason, meter, form, sonnets, fire, passion, Latin, stale, outdated, past, tense, readers, readership



The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.

Originally published by The Lyric

The People Loved What They Had Loved Before
by Michael R. Burch

We did not worship at the shrine of tears;
we knew not to believe, not to confess.
And so, ahemming victors, to false cheers,
we wrote off love, we gave a stern address
to things that we disapproved of, things of yore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We did not build stone monuments to stand
six hundred years and grow more strong and arch
like bridges from the people to the Land
beyond their reach. Instead, we played a march,
pale Neros, sparking flames from door to door.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We could not pipe of cheer, or even woe.
We played a minor air of Ire (in E).
The sheep chose to ignore us, even though,
long destitute, we plied our songs for free.
We wrote, rewrote and warbled one same score.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

At last outlandish wailing, we confess,
ensued, because no listeners were left.
We built a shrine to tears: our goddess less
divine than man, and, like us, long bereft.
We stooped to love too late, too Learned to *****.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

Keywords/Tags: traditional, poetry, meter, rhyme, reason, music, song, form, love, loved, monuments, bridges, unpaid, free, verse, score, classic, classical, Romantic

a man is talking at a house party on the other side of the canal/ people are talking around him/ occasionally laughter erupts and rushes rather than drifts on the air/ a car tyre screeches and somewhere a washing machine or a hoover or a truck cleaning the streets is humming/ my pen on the page is a hollow drag / my hand sticks to the paper as it moves left to right/ the music playing outside is a song i can't identify/

go back to where it began:
trombone / cob nut / tadpole / violin /
you fell —
and i have not breathed it since
except that hot summer;
when we excavated
an entire roman village of chicken bones
from the soil
where now there are none

The Tender Weight of Her Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

The tender weight of her sighs
lies heavily upon my heart;
apart from her, full of doubt,
without her presence to revolve around,
found wanting direction or course,
cursed with the thought of her grief,
believing true love is a myth,
with hope as elusive as tears,
hers and mine, unable to lie,
I sigh ...

NOTE: This poem has an unusual rhyme scheme, with the last word of each line rhyming with the first word of the next line. The final line is a “closing couplet” in which both words rhyme with the last word of the preceding line. I believe I invented this ***** form and will dub it the "End-First Curtal Sonnet." Keywords/Tags: curtal, sonnet, *****, form, tender, weight, sighs, heart, doubt, presence, gravity, orbit

I asked what am I to do and you told me to write
About the heaviness
The emptiness
The way that all of this seems like it’s just too much to let go of
You see I’m holding on to so many things that I’m not even sure where to lay them all down
Lead me to the altar so that I may sacrifice my burdens
I wonder if you’d still love me if everything that makes me unlovable is my only offering
Can you honestly look at me in all of my unholiness or will you turn your face the other way
Bury my religion six feet under so it can not reach me and rip the honesty out of my hands
If everything has a purpose then maybe I need to find where the pain belongs and leave it there
If I knew I wouldn’t have all these ties tied so tight to my wrists it stops the circulation
And my hands are numb
When winter came and went it took my hands with it
And they lay in the ice with all of their ties intertwined between my fingers

                                                          -m.g.­