Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.

We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.

Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals “love’s” damaged images: its dreams ...
and ******* limply, screams and screams.

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll

Keywords/Tags: tenement, rats, unclean, cheap, sordid, despair, squalor, TV, screen, sonnet, limp, limply, screams

Derelict, decrepit,
Just a waste of space
A relic from a different age
One who'd run the race

An eyesore
Gives the place a name
Represents a time long past
It's no longer in the game

A stiff wind would take it down
It's not worth a single dime
Take it down, demolish it
It's enemy is time

A single pane of glass is left
Cracked from side to side
In fact it's cracked the whole way through
As tall as it is wide

The others are all boarded
Keeping out nothing at all
The only thing the wood does
Is act as canvas to them all

Graffiti covers every space
That is left standing here
It used to be a factory once
That made a local well known beer

BUT ON THE OTHER SIDE....

Inside the building squatters sit
Derelicts, wastes of space
The building is their home for now
Away from the rat race

Eyesores, hidden in plain sight
Humanity at it's worst
That is the image given them
Because of addictions thirst

A stiff wind would take them down
So thin and frail are they
Protected by a building that
A storm could blow away

One side thinks it awful
The other, thinks it's good
An eyesore and a fragile shell
Of old bricks and glass and wood

But...for one plain window
Separating worlds apart
A crack runs through the window
It is the buildings heart.