Will I find you here Mary?

I have stood by for long now, and you are still not here >
The lake is cold by mist and frost

The wild geese have arrived here
Of course.

As I tried in vain
To repair my old motorcycle
But gosh! Lest had I forgot
That my pet, Lucy
Had eaten the guide to
My salvation;
It had tasted upon 'Zen
And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'!
That I carried in my pannier

As I sit there,
Staring at the solemn solace,
In solicit solitude –
I find that you were right,
That I don’t have to walk on my knees
For a hundred miles through desert;
Repenting,
But all I have to do is, let my heart
Linger amongst the crimson red
Flowers and butterflies and
To appreciate my ineptness.

I am thirsty of imagination!
And yet I wait for your arrival –
You have to keep your words,
For I wait to tell you
All my despairs – and to listen
To all of yours,
Meanwhile the sun scrapes a
Shy blossom in the sky
And the clear pebbles of rain,
Bathe the long stretch of landscapes
Along the prairies and the deep trees!


The wild geese now have started
Their ebb and flow,
And I still feel alone –
Whoever I may be,
The first cries, now of the geese
Call out to me to say,
That you are close by
And I, a pawn in the
Family of things!

Why does it take long to write a poem?
are months consumed into few fleeting feelings?
a poem is severed.
Of feelings that need to be let go of,
a delusion of a listen,
poem doesn’t listen,
what does it do?
An appearance for
no purpose,
but to be outside
is like braving the wind
to tell the wind you have braved it,
is this a poem?
None of us know yet.
Mounting feelings in an abandon,
a poem deceives,
and leaves them for dead,
for forgetfulness is eternal,
and the rest rot in several lifetimes,
but the burden?
Unburden, eventually?
The poem is ******,
Can we let go of it at all?
It persists.
We let them know we were there,
to come face to face with selves of us,
that we have avoided,
does the poem really look out for you?
And asks, pretending you know?
Do we need no end?
We are here to while away time
and tell them
we whiled the time away.

I have laid down my life as I laid down my gun
the battle is over
I don't know who won
their side our side
does anyone care when it's all  said and done?
Long ago and far away
at very the end of the hardest day
when silence falls on the blood red, mud red, grass
will anyone remember what came to pass?
Young men die and old men weep
for comrades lost and the memories they keep
hugged to themselves till their time is done
a long life haunted by the shadow of the gun.
I have no name
war took it from me
a symbol, instead of the lad I used to be

Dearly Beloved
by Michael R. Burch

for Suzan Blacksmith

She was

Dearly Beloved by her children, who gather
to pay their respects; they remember her
as they clung together through frightful weather,
always learning that Love can persevere ...

She was

Dearly Beloved by family and friends
who saw her great worth, even as she grew frail;
for they saw with Love’s eyes how Love’s vision transcends,
how her heart never faltered, through cyclones and hail ...

She is

Dearly Beloved, well-loved, sadly missed ...
and, while we mourn the lost days of a life too-soon ended,
we also rejoice that her suffering is past ...
she now lives in the Light, by kind Angels befriended.

And if

others were greater in fortune and fame,
and if some had iron wills when life’s pathways grew dark ...
still, since Love’s the great goal, we now reaffirm her claim
to the highest of honors: a mother’s Heart.

Keywords/Tags: Suzan Blacksmith, elegy, eulogy, epitaph, memorial, tribute, remembrance, farewell, goodbye, last respects

I was going to write a poem,
Something witty, something fun,
But instead the words pop in my head,
About a Soldier and his gun.

I think about the wars of old,
And the wars still yet to come.
No difference in the way they feel,
A soldier and his gun.

So many battles won, some not
Each one with Soldiers lost,
They fight for king and country,
Without clear thought of cost.

And though the tragic loss of life,
Weighs heavy on my heart,
Without them, life would ever change,
With freedom torn apart.

So many soldiers lose their lives,
This knowledge, saddens me.
Those that survive, should walk with pride,
All thanks to you, I'm free!

With this, I write my words of thanks,
This poem's almost done!
I simply give my gratitude,
To each Soldier and his gun.

Will there be a time when
All this technology ends

When the screens go down
We all mute the sound

Will we return to a time
Not forged in financial design

When the ROI and the GDP
Big money banks we no longer see

Or the interest rates and credit lines
Hidden fees and holdback fines

And tell them, when I turn my shoulders to the night,
I sent you to discuss the market's yield's human right

I was born
A raised fist
A superman
A self-esteem built through
Tender love
I was born
A commitment
A future
My eyes carried a flame inherited
Relentless struggle
Scars and shadows that underlines
Everything that we are

As time leaves us behind
I understand
My fists opened up
They come together
In a series of
Shame and regret
Missed opportunity
A wasted life
Wasted dreams when I heard
Nothing because I closed my ears
Shut my eyes
Spoke no more
Dead outside as within
I understand but I cannot
Accept
Reject this being with all its glory
Glory and an endless sob story

I was born with a flame
I will extinguish it
Keep the coal warm till it crumbles
With the ashes let another write
Write my sins down to remember
Write me down to remember
Remember
Fist
Fire
Forging dreams
Feeling love

Forgiveness is a gift
I refuse to take with me
Remember to bury me under
Flowers of Passion
Remember to bury me

Maybe the darkest things are the truest things,
Death, the redoubtable lover of all, the atom bomb
Burns beneath cherry blossoms of closed eyelids,
A magnolia grove of forever fasting lips of the dead,
Pompeii and Hiroshima, twin lovers of rupture,
Graves of the wind now, keepers of nothing and all.

Remembrance
by Michael R. Burch

a coronavirus poem

Remembrance like a river rises;
the rain of recollection falls;
frail memories, like vines, entangled,
cling to Time's collapsing walls.

The past is like a distant mist,
the future like a far-off haze,
the present half-distinct an hour
before it blurs with unseen days.

Published by Romantics Quarterly. Keywords/Tags: coronavirus, remembrance, memory, memories, recollection, time, rain, river, mist, haze, blurs, past, present, future

I suppose I long for those moments in the bright sunny parking lot far away from home again where the music is playing softly from the car and I’m smiling at the birds flying over my head and the flag is waving;
the clinking, sharp metallic sounds of the ropes and supports smacking against the flagpole are washed away with the wind and it sounds beautiful, like the early morning tinkling of the neighbor’s wind-chimes next door.
And here we are walking,
those I care about;
we are walking and there is the slap of our shoes on the pavement and it sounds so very loud in the bright sun, as if the sounds of our feet are much closer to us than even the air on our skin.
I am visiting my yehyeh and he is going to smile as bright as the sun beating down and tanning our arms and shins(oh, how easily I would tan those summers). My mom will worry and fret like she always does these days and she will make sure everything is okay- grandpa insists everything is just fine. Even during these times I longed for the neighborhood days- a memory within a memory- running down the sunny sidewalks, opening the hot metallic gates that have eaten up all of the sun’s rays- and then running through the mulch with my sister, smiling and happy and swinging and playing. Those days were full of smiles and small complaints about things that didn’t really matter- there is mulch in my shoe and I wanted the other swing, not this one. Then we would run home to hug amah and she would laugh and tell us she loves us ‘all the way from your head to your toe!’ and then I would giggle so hard- it always made me laugh, the way she said it and tickled my face and smiled! After that, time passed so quickly and everything changed in less than an instant. Now there is less talking and more of our worries are in our own heads and not shared at all.
Now the sun does not shine so brightly and the strange black hole that is eating the earth very slowly inches its way further and further into view, like the sun making its way down, down, down the sky until it is barely on the horizon...