A lost hungry vagrant
on a train to nowhere
everywhere's his home

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     on a patch of hay
     in the heat of day
     he doesn't bother to get
     on his knees and pray

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          everything he wants
          is in his sweat and blood
          the shirt on his back
          and his matter of fact

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                                     ­          no one can touch his
                                               solitary freedom
                                               even when burdened with chains
                                               and in heavy rains

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                    he flies through time
                    known by himself
                    on a patch of hay

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        in an empty, lonely cart
        on a train to nowhere
        wandering the face of the earth

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yearning for Starlight💫

Take me out into the starlight
High above the ground
Pull me close
Play an old french love song
Grip my hand in yours
Take my waist
Dance with me until we both realise
Neither of us are good at it
Hold me sweet and soft
Sway with me to the melody
Nobody and nothing else
Exists in that moment
But for you and I, my love

Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low

for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men . . .
when we were men, or almost so.

Published by Homespun and Mind in Motion. This poem was written either in high school or my first two years of college because it appeared in the 1979 issue of my college literary journal, Homespun. Keywords/Tags: shadows, dark, walls, evening, starlight, moonlight, men, souls, drowning, phantoms, shades

the black sky is speckled with stars that glow

the full moon sheds a dim light on the scene

the night seems alone, but you and i both know

your eyes shine and you smell of coffee bean

the constellations spell out both of us

my small hand is intertwined with yours

you are finally someone i can trust

you have managed to open up my doors