Nicolaitans, enigmatic, but
     Balaam we think we’re certain.
Truly they’re both mysteries,
     wisely and deliberately hidden.
Flesh and blood cannot reveal
     but only the Father in heaven.
Jesus, the only teacher, explains,
     as always, privately to his chosen.

Now I know I have a case of you
On this cruise I live in this box of things
Memory is the real beauty that holds them together
The guitar strums a chord with me

To compose the fractured consciousness like a million-piece mirror with something greater than glue, The Galaxy of thoughts and their accompanying peopledness swirls fresh and new this morning, propping me up instead of weighing me down.

I have the footprints of some road signs that I ran over one day, the car ploughed through them all going off the shoulder of the highway and up the muddied neck of creation.

If the world has fallen, where does one lie down at night other than under the rubble or under the stars?

There hollers a man, soul searing, guts thoroughly wrenched, but he Blocks the doorway of parties with hidden interests, all of them equally Drunk, though sober, Boredom is a clever disguise.

The man who moulds his breath into that violent Release also works on the artistry of his face. For a man with nothing to hide your face can never have too many lines, and he's carving out a clay masterpiece though his life is a kiln of grief, the Cold Furnace carries on around him, Robbing itself of the simple beauty it produced long ago.

US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)

Published by The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse and Poetry Life & Times

The Unisphere mentioned is a spherical stainless steel representation of the earth constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age and dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." The lines quoted in the epigraph are from W. H. Auden’s love poem “Lullaby.” Keywords/Tags: Auden, unisphere, lullaby, verse, revelation, cryptic, legislate, enumerator, sins, dreams, value, love, sings, quaint, quaintly, lesser, greater

Something lies beyond
The power of Love is unity
Fear thrives on division
Life online ... A virtual existence
An implementation of fear
Something unseen is at work
Is the beast on his way
Or perhaps already here
A blanket of darkness has covered the earth
An awkward silence hangs in the air
And fear has become tangible
The earth seems sad and tired
Then a division line shall be drawn
Across earth and sea
The time to separate sheep from goat has come
And what is hidden shall be exposed
Like an overripe fruit that has fallen from a tree
Burst open for all to see what was lurking inside