I tell myself there's no shame in silence.
After all, it's you sent me away.
Why do you appear now, crying
after me? Did you want me to stay?

Whisper in her ear and paint me
like a villain if you need.
You've got the harness, pull it out;
Keep her suckling at your ****.

Does it warm your flesh and tickle you
to feel her shakes and cries?
When she knows your love's the only love,
Does that make you crack a silent smile?

Does your aging daughter's love fulfil
the gaps around your nest?
Does it make you feel the abundance
of nourishing love inside your breast?

Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

for lovers of traditional poetry

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed—
why should such tattered artistry be banned?

I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."

Published by The Chariton Review, The Eclectic Muse, Famous Poets and Poems, Poetry Life & Times and Trinacria (where it was nominated for the Pushcart Prize)

Keywords/Tags: Sonnet, rhythm, rhyme, meter, traditional poetry, metrical verse, poetry journals, literary journals, number, numbers, feet

It seems your face still makes me smile,
Despite the things that you have done,
I've endured your cuts, I've stood your trial,
And yet your face still makes me smile

When we first met, my heart was won,
And even though you drowned our son,
It seems your face still makes me smile,
Despite the things that you have done.

A careful cut, it is the stuff,
Of which our world is made,
Utility and art are fused,
The noblest of the trades,

A sturdy chair of solid wood,
Yet sturdier the heart,
Passion, vision, faithful work,
The noblest of the arts.

I'm still glad to see your face,
Though you look better when you smile,
I'd love to stay with you, and trace,
Your gentle figure for a while,

But now the ocean's steady push,
Has split us off on different tacks,
Drifting off aloof, at odds
With everything that we had planned,

So let's no longer talk of rings,
Or the promise we unmade,
Plans are precious brittle things,
And love is easily mislaid,

Eagerness without content,
We allowed ourselves to get so bold,
We threw away our better sense,
Now bitter tides are taking hold,

I loved you like I never dared,
You had me captured and ensnared,
I gave my soul to you,
Had it clad in gold for you,

But let's no longer talk of lies,
Or the thing that you debased,
The future is a fragile thing,
I fear my life has been misplaced.

The snow is piling higher now
on the garden that was young
when pretty boys they gave me flowers
that I planted, one by one;

But the years flew by like summer birds
bound elsewhere, like the youth I knew -
now there's a pretty flower there
for every pretty boy I knew

when I was young. It doesn't matter now
that all the memories are buried
and none of them remember how
to save me from the one I married.

Winter scratches at the door with frosty fingers.
All the pretty boys are gone - but the snow it lingers.

Cupping candles on the open landscape,
marching to the heartbeat of the earth,
head hung low I hold the empty plate
that carries my last meal, the vanished mirth

I knew before the terrible black promise
of days that have been too long in the night.
I know I will not see the fabled summit.
A phosphorous reminder of the light,

Solemn-eyed the moon proclaims my doom,
my quiet song on this unhappy moor,
as I who move from chaos into gloom
light candles and bring darkness to the world.

If I could find within this grave omission
the fortitude of strength to stay the hand
that trembles with an urge to amputation
on the backdoor of tomorrow where I stand

How I would walk then as the need arises
and before the looming mountain make my plea
as far away the sun it blithely rises,
but I do not think that it will rise for me.

I do not think that it will rise for me.

Gone are the seas of daffodils.
Gone the sunny green, the plains.
Gone are the green gored hilly hills
And gone the blue sea's blurry stains.

Gone everything, the curtain drawn,
The dream of yesterday's fond fears
Abruptly brought to what's beyond
The final "triumph" of our years.

All is dark where once was hue
And wet with slime, the years' long trace,
The stones they bare mute witness to
The death of this burned rock in space

And though they did not see the fall
And though they can not voice our pain
They will never disregard at all
The sad, still wetness of the rain.