I'm the shadow,
   shuddering

                               what can I see

within the darkness...

Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms ... she would say
that we'd loved, but some book said we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall.” Keywords/Tags: Night, onyx, skies, love, ***, sin, thunder, lightning, virtue, grace, moons, lakes, winds, mountains, Chloe

Midnight claustrophobia dreams,
                           where the charcoal
suffocation presses on my chest.

My expiration has no date of
                elapsing.

But the animation of my expiration
            still lingers,
and I hold on to that moment.

You are my collection of recollection,
            and in the onyx covering
  that the luminosity clings too,


we suffocate on every


                  exhalation of the other.

Please hide me...

    It knows I'm here!


It's waiting till the light
Illumiates, so I can see it.

Never hiding in the onyx.

It wants me to see it,
Knowing that it knew I



                  Saw it.


You think the light
     Grants you sevatude...

Playing keys you don't
         Know have a meaning.

They want you
     To know there coming...


Sunsets hide there intentions.
     They want you to know
What's about to happen.


They want illumination,
    So you know whats about to digest

      every moment.

Your screams are numbed.
   But inside they hear you scream.

We are to busy looking at the grandeur
                  of the nirvana above
to realise that even though there is beauty
exhaling  beyond our sights.

                       That there is an inhiation
of stunning metaphors
                              swimming beneath ever wave..

Stories drowned beneath every convulsion that
             swells with every passing rise of
                                 nights eternal watchman.

Immersed luminosity that never sees lambent ashes
                                            hanging silently above.
Only giving the onyx deep a light show
                    of life's perfection to never fade away..

For in every darkness there is a shade of light,
               and within every light
there is a passing glimmer of shading.

For no matter how far we ascend, what is beneath
            still teaches us that we need to look into
the  darkness to realise that we need go deeper
                       before we ascend higher than our gaze wishes..