When the rain falls,
Washing away the caked-on dirt from your face,
The thick of your web fails as the silk drops from the weight,
And I can breathe again.

Free from the venomous barbs and guilt-ridden limbs
That poke holes in my skin,
Free from my vital force being drained,
No longer a mere husk or cask
For you to tap and drain the crimson liquid,
I am no longer a dinner tray for your demonic maw.

I won’t be suffocated by your vice-like grip darkness,
I can’t be held down by the dimly lit specters,
I won’t save you from yourself,
Since you only wished to drown me further.

I am free of it,
Falling onto verdant paradise,
As the sun ignites my soul ablaze,
I can live again!

the rose that grew from concrete
fossilized in my dreams
gaslit to believe, you were my everything
each deep breath, every spring it crept
my dreams reveal all secrets kept
i saw you cheat, i saw your deceit
i expose your lies, i burned the fleet
nobody does wrong by me without repercussions
your lies were dozens on dozens, webbed my worries
my first and only until you tainted the holy

labyrinths of interwoven
                            time..

Cling on the dawn of morrow.
       unseen until the rigor of seasons.

I gaze out and splendor at the
     entanglement interlaced
before my eyes,

                            and smile.

Pity Clarity
by Michael R. Burch

Pity Clarity,
and, if you should find her,
release her from the tangled webs
of dusty verse that bind her.

And as for Brevity,
once the soul of wit—
she feels the gravity
of ironic chains and massive rhetoric.

And Poetry,
before you may adore her,
must first be freed
from those who for her loveliness would ***** her.

Published by Contemporary Rhyme (January 2005) and The Columbus Dispatch (Sunday, April 3, 2005). Keywords/Tags: Poetry, pity, clarity, obscure, webs, dusty, verse, brevity, gravity, irony, chains, manacles, massive, rhetoric, imprisoned, prisoner, jailed, *****, ******, *******

I keep it all in;
Let the spiders crawl
Throughout my skin,
And spin their webs
In my soul’s
Numerous holes.

suspended in the air
creations of your own kind of flight

wispy strands protect and feed you
the weary that are trapped by your game

crawling and weaving,
flightless yet flying,
ever graceful,

the spider and his web.

Sometimes I wake up
To seconds that float in oblivion
Before it all floods back in waves

Dreams sewed into webs of thread
Sunshine caught in shards of glass
Seashells echoed on ears' shores

But in a sanctuary of stars
Lies the peaceful silence of unborn stars