Deep dark night
Helpless, state

Miserable plight
Cool and bleak

Wintry landscape
Unknown faces

Cruel blow
Strange air

Poisonous water
Stinging earth

Strange paths
Motionless movements

Voiceless calls
Senseless imagery

Weeping cries
lyrical emotions

All jerks, activities
Noises, announcements

Agreements, decisions
Every deal and done

Heartless, motionless
Helpless state

Miserable plight
Voiceless calls

All with my pangs
Only calling You

Make the all norm
With the warm sun

Illuminating rays
Eliminate darkness

The Merciful Lord

The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

for Harvey Stanbrough

I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.

Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.

This poem was originally published by The Raintown Review when Harvey Stanbrough was the editor, then later by Mindful of Poetry. I wrote the poem out of dissatisfaction with the strange idea that poetry should consist entirely or primarily of concrete images. Would the “experts” who espouse this bizarre idea junk the great soliloquies of Shakespeare and Milton and the direct statement poems of A. E. Housman? It also bears noting that the twin titans of English modernism, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, did an awful lot of “telling” rather than always “showing.” Keywords/Tags: Harvest, roses, images, imagery, imagism, meter, time, beat, rhyme, shimmer, gloss, perfume, reap, reaping, gossamer

He was a Daytime Wind-howler all covered in shrouds of grief


She was a Sunset Nightingale with pink and golden wreaths

Upon her head with hair so dark

It made one feign to weep


She held out hands of magic pearls and wiped his tears asunder


The fragile mess lay in her lap


The pale sky switched to thunder


She wasn’t bothered by his past


She’d sail on any ship

She’d fall in love real fast



Staring deep into majestic mirrors


She’d take on any form


If not for howler’s poison kiss,


She’d run right straight inside the storm



But for him, there were thorns everywhere



Blanketing the mother earth; the sky, the sea, the air




From whence he came nobody knows, but Daytime Wind-howler howls and howls and growls



Lets his teeth show



While Sunset Nightingale sings her love
Of daffodils and peppermint groves


Until the day when such grave laments
should


be


let


go

Gravity is precious

The air we breathe is wine

If you think the stars are joking, you’ve already lost your mind


Brave child

Why are you all-a-weep?

The huntress shall return


Meek and mild

I know you watch me sleep

Cities are gonna burn


But what a careless thought


Such a crown of thorns


When we all can be sold and bought

We’ll hear the bell that warns


Gonna March right outta this town


To the woods

To the thicket

To the marsh

To the groves




Gonna live underground

Blue agate in my soul

Crushed to pieces

By jaded crows


They gain strength by wrecking me


My body

Made of feathers of the softest, most delicate kind

My memory

Made of fire that would burn a thousand men



But still I am weak



But still I cannot cry



And yet I can speak



Be still you wicked lie

Sacred writing on the bathroom wall

Makes me think of brighter days

Of Summer then Fall


Kitchen blessings by tweeting birds

As I wake up from my slumbering state


Daughters in the hallway

Singing praises to the cat


When will the daisies show-up to make the daffodils smile?


All this I hold dear to my heart

The whole earth

Is drenched in pearls

That glisten

Like the glitter on a winged cherub


The universe, in its entirety

Is bathed in a ritual bath

Of waters that are blessed by mothers


The space I now occupy Is covered

In the vines of a grassy bungalow

Cursed with graces from Golden Times


Utopia is real

Today I was made of gold & silver


Each hair strand was pure UV light




Gracefully sublime


A pyramid-shaped treasure implied




And it was lyrical





When I was feeling like this and like that

It had a ripple effect on my spine




My skin felt pleasantly warm

And fine




Like after bathing and dancing


In star-crossed crystal canyons






I felt small and significant

All in the same







I could walk right up to the painted sun


the peach-peach

the vellum




And I knew I could save him




With all the diamond tears

I had collected

In my apron






Believing we could both be made

Of the same wavelength




The same endearing fire






The same sovereign echo of a heart beat