Regret
by Michael R. Burch
Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear . . .
once starlight
languished
in your hair . . .
a shining there
as brief
as rare.
Regret . . .
a pain
I chose to bear . . .
unleash
the torrent
of your hair . . .
and show me
once again―
how rare.
Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse
White Goddess
by Michael R. Burch
White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.
Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.
Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.
Published by Carnelian, The Chained Muse, Poetry Life & Times, A-Poem-A-Day and in a YouTube video by Aurora G. with the titles "Ghost, " "White Goddess" and "White in the Shadows."
The Stake
by Michael R. Burch
Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.
Originally published by The Lyric
If
by Michael R. Burch
If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.
If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.
If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.
If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch
A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember
now that I cannot forget.
And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh ...
our soft cries, like regret,
... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...
now that I have forgotten her face.
Published by Poetry Magazine, La luce che non muore (Italy), Kritya (India), The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Carnelian, Triplopia, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Poetry Life & Times, Strange Road, Inspirational Stories, and Centrifugal Eye. Also e-mailed to over 20,000 subscribers by lovestories.com and read aloud to a live audience as part of the Candlelight Reading Series.
Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.
She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.
Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.
The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.
She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.
Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Eclectic Muse, Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine and Other Voices International
Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch
Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.
There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times
Absence
by Michael R. Burch
Christ, how I miss you!,
though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips.
Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips
and the dishes are all stacked away.
You left me today ...
and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Having Touched You
by Michael R. Burch
What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.
And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west,
another remained,
suspended in memory
like a flower in crystal
so that eternity
is but an hour, and fall
is no longer a season
but a state of mind.
I have no reason
to wait; the wind
does not pause for remembrance
or regret
because there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget...
Forget we were utterly
happy a day.
That day was my lifetime.
Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine:
the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root and I grew.
Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife,
and yet I can bear it,
having touched you.
Originally published by The HyperTexts. I wrote this poem as a teenager after watching "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble": a made-for-TV movie, circa 1976, starring John Travolta. Keywords/Tags: regret, regrets, remorse, contrition, remonstrance, pain, sorrow, suffering, memory, memories, remembrance, rue, ruefulness, compunction, pang, pangs, pangs of conscience