i see the nevermore
   again and again
never happened never will
   yet it drives my mind
to distraction of cognition
   what else is there
but a choice moment by moment
   a difficult task

Nevermore shall you see me,
Nevermore shall you hear me,
None shall,
For I shall be lost,
Gone away from this road,
This path I was given,
Forever falling,
Forever free from this,
This endless torment,
With the name of life.

- Jay M
October 8th, 2018

Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

(after Edgar Allan Poe)

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
—the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore—
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not claim her,
nor could she give them pleasure ...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely covered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way ...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea . . .

their skeletal love—impossibility!

Keywords/Tags: Nevermore, Poe, horror, supernatural, dark, sea, shore, death, dead, ******, ghosts, night, surf, ******, ****, naked, ***, corpse, skeletal, skeleton, skeletons, demon?, demons, demonic, surreal

Petals do fall
corrupted they descend,
acid teardrops decline.
The day after is nevermore,
yesterday never existed.
The sun will never sheen,
the night has fallen, nightmares ecstasy.

When I roll my tongue--
Cellar door,
Cellar door,
Cellar door.

a certain morning stiffness
in your joints

you find your face
in the bathroom mirror
and wish you hadn't

the puzzled wisdom
    of middle age
wavers from your eyes
deepening wrinkles
   of many laughs
   many frowns

   how many more?

   nevermore ?!

the room becomes aflutter
with poesque ravens
the presence of absences
fills the void
your life is on the brink
of deconstructing itself
to the periphery of the universe
a discourse of silence
forever becoming ... becoming ...
what...?

   nevermind!

so

you close your eyes
   hard
for a minute or two

when you look again
you meet the stare
of a not-so-bad-looking
man in his best years
  
   graying sideburns
   receding hairline
   20 pounds too many
      BUT
   a firm decision
   to work them off
  
   still a bit sleepy
   yet determined
   to shave
      get dressed
      have breakfast
  
   and teach
   that wonderful seminar
   on 19th century poetry
   to eager graduate students

the two of them
attached at the hip;
inseparable.
how strange to be
such opposites,
yet forced to live in the
same prison.

one was an insomniac, while the other slept 16 hours a day.

one was confident and able, nothing could bring her down.
the other faulted inside herself, with arms stretched above her, begging for a way up.

one was flowing thoughts and new ideas, with an unconscionable amount of energy.
the other thought obsessively, always in the negative, lacking the ability to even speak most days.

one was a stomach full of butterflies, terrified at the thought of dying.
the other spent her days, chest aching and empty, begging for each one to be her last.

so tell me, how do astronomical
glow
and insufferable
darkness
coincide accordantly?

they simply don’t

with each constantly afflicting the other,
the small prison in which they inhabit
is collapsing
falling into itself
soon to dissipate
until nevermore