Pity Clarity
by Michael R. Burch

Pity Clarity,
and, if you should find her,
release her from the tangled webs
of dusty verse that bind her.

And as for Brevity,
once the soul of wit—
she feels the gravity
of ironic chains and massive rhetoric.

And Poetry,
before you may adore her,
must first be freed
from those who for her loveliness would ***** her.

Published by Contemporary Rhyme (January 2005) and The Columbus Dispatch (Sunday, April 3, 2005). Keywords/Tags: Poetry, pity, clarity, obscure, webs, dusty, verse, brevity, gravity, irony, chains, manacles, massive, rhetoric, imprisoned, prisoner, jailed, *****, ******, *******

Performing Art
by Michael R. Burch

Who teaches the wren
in its drab existence
to explode into song?

What parodies of irony
does the jay espouse
with its sharp-edged tongue?

What instinctual memories
lend stunning brightness
to the strange dreams

of the dull gray slug
—spinning its chrysalis,
gluing rough seams—

abiding in darkness
its transformation,
till, waving damp wings,

it applauds its performance?
I am done with irony.
Life itself sings.

One suspects the typical American poetry professor and/or workshop instructor would advise birds to give up singing for mostly inaudible expressions of jaded irony. Keywords/Tags: performing, art, poetry, song, singing, music, irony, cynicism, parodies, dreams, imagination, chrysalis, butterfly, transformation, natural, performance

Shall we defend each other’s right to defend ourselves from each other?

I'm back into this beautifully torturous environment  

That I so un-proudly call “home”

Chained, restricted, duct tape shut

I’ve felt it all before

#childhood

The scars, the bruises, and the cuts

They were starting to heal, slowly but surely

But I’m starting to feel the cuts reopen

The bruises coming once again

And the scars shining brighter than before, taunting me with the reminder

That there is truly no place like home

I heard a story about a man who lost his fame
He became sad and lonely, stated drinking his bitters away
Some looked, others starred, everyone knew it was a **** shame
Then one dark dreary night, the man fell into the bay

Many gazed, few searched, For they knew the man wasn't coming back
They hung his picture to the wall, the frame was built from his stool
Although his name was unknown, many just called him Jack
The regulars still question his fate, insisting he'd be alive if he wasn't such a fool

A few years later, a filmmaker came to town, He wanted to use the bar in a scene
We started chatting and soon he asked if I was a fan of the man on the wall
I told him the story, He laughed, called an actor in, and to my own disbelief it was the man who looked good as clean
He pieced his life back together, found his fame once again before they left he looked at me and laughed, smiled for a minute and said relax all that happened was a little fall

The deafening silence
The still world surrounds us
Our fear louder than our voice
But we have no choice
We must stand tall
The irony of it all
We’ve created a life
Which we’ve taken for granted
All the choices made up until now
They have brought us here
Against our will we are held
At the mercy of nature
Once again our kind is brought to our knees
By the unseen
And yet we will still survive
We won’t change when this calms
And we will live once more with
Ignorant bliss, selfish and useless
Using our time to unwind the progress made
It will become history
And some day we will fall again
Oh, the irony of it all
                                  -kmarie

an angel fell from the sky tonight.
he wandered the streets, wings trailing
(didn’t last long — do you know how
difficult it is, getting chewing gum
out of feathers?)

the angel squinted at the
headlight-drenched
pavement, the neon signs
and gold squares stamped into
the sides of skyscrapers. he
lifted his wings against the rain
and looked for his stars
but only saw the red light
of a passing plane.

Fear
of
flying—
facing fear
he boarded the plane
which some minutes after takeoff
violently shook and then plummeted toward earth—
him being sad, not over his impending death, but having just won the lottery



© 2020 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.