No fancy journals
Designer markers or pens
Number two pencil

Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch

A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."

Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.

Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."

Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.

This road is neither long nor wide . . .
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.

Keywords/Tags: oblivion, milestones, markers, tombstones, radiation, fallout, nukes, winter, path, destruction, Armageddon, Apocalypse, nuclear, a-bomb, atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini Atoll, Manhattan Project, Trump, planet, earth, war, violence, America, environment, holocaust

As midnight strikes, I wage wars
with invisible enemies
that will never breach
your side of the snow globe.
And you'll wake like my nightmares
are your dream catchers.
You'll wake and catch sunlight,
dew drops and morning air.
You are in the bubble of where
good things still happen.
You are where
I am not.

And sometimes I still wonder
how you get the better
end of the bargain,
while I only get nostalgia,
unhealthy coping mechanisms
and nuclear explosion
barren spaces in my heart.

I can't see past old horizons
and what's stuck ticking restlessly
on blank canvas walls
has always been a marker
dividing my present
from yours.

I found my old box of markers
I'm going to create some art
Not sure exactly what it is I have in mind
But I shouldn't put the horse before the cart

Mainly I just doodle, I'm whimsical and free
Sometimes, I draw straight from the heart
I enjoy using lots of different colors
While making others feel as though they are a part

Pictures of things in all shapes and sizes
I've got creativity just oozing out my pours
Could be a fierce dragon, or fluttering butterflies
But their beauty could never be ignored

I'm always opened to new suggestions
Ideas can be contagious in many ways
My mind does tend to go off on tangents
And a picture says what a thousand words can say

Some pieces can be pinned up on the freezer
Others, should be framed as works of art
You will never know until the work is finished
And you can't finish, until you start.

Come on ! Come on !
Let's go ! . . .
row upon row
do the red poppies grow

Red ! Red !
the petal fed
taken from the lives
of the young and dead

The white bones
bleached of dreams
and forgotten sins ,
everything

Row upon row
of white the markers go
drenched in poppies
the dead in red grow

Bleached bone dreams
no breath
no whispers of "dear"
that death's spear pierced

Their's , no longer
the years , the fears , and tears
where the red poppies grow
row upon row