I walked in a mask
A dead baby bird keeping me company.

It had see-through skin
and told me how
Rich people have wider sidewalks
And richer dont have any

We stopped to ***** in their gardens

I listened as I walked
Crushing something under my heel,
I didn't look.

I felt.

The heat of the flames
The smoke swells through the mask
I can't see the fire yet,
But it's coming.

When your urge to forgive
Overpowers and violates my
Blessed and Righteous wrath
Remember
Rainbows are only allowed
After the torrent has finished ravaging
And mourning

Rainbows are only allowed
After the torrent has finished ravaging
And mourning

The Kiss of Ceridwen
by Michael R. Burch

The kiss of Ceridwen
I have felt upon my brow,
    and the past and the future
    have appeared, an eerie vapor,
mingling with the here and now.

And Morrigan, the Raven,
the messenger, has come,
    to tell me that the gods, unsung,
    will not last long
when the druids’ harps grow dumb.

Originally published by Songs of Innocence

Keywords/Tags: Ceridwen, white, witch, enchantress, sorceress, crone, cauldron, awen, throne, Morfran, power, Wales, Welsh, Druids, Banshee, Picts, Scots, Scottish, fairies, glade, raven, gull, King Arthur, Arthurian, Morgause, Merlin, round table, knights, England, stone, Excalibur, chivalry, Camelot, Uther Pendragon, Colgrim, Saxon

Death came in the night,
slinking in the shadows, weaving in and out of darkness
and being stealthy
and he rested on the man's chest.
Death took cover in the blank black of night and breathed out an invisible net and caught,
lives
and took and stole
Death came disguised as sleep and in the vulnerability he snatched away life
and left the part he didn't need in the bed
as a gift, a token
He surrounded existence by his inevitable arms and strangled it, ****** it out.
Death,
he came quietly and like silent destruction,
and scattered the lines of connection,
for the dead, and for the living.

Except but he didn't come just at night.
He came dancing through summer, enveloped in joy and white lilies,
Tap dancing through the mess he created.
Turning souls into memories.

Death followed them to the beach, and spread his cloak in the warm sand, and ran in to the water
after the boy
and pulled him into his arms under the gentle waves
then allowed him to float, lifelessly
like a bouy
He was erratic and unstoppable
Transforming summer days at the beach into unspoken family grief,
celebrated yearly
the day that he swam with the boy.

Death sipped a cool drink and waited, for what to take next.
He sat patiently at the pool, with open arms and a ticket with a name on it.
He was impulsive and careless.

Death sang a song and they danced to it,
each step deadlier than the next
until
they stood at his feet dressed in white covered in permanence.

He followed around with his cart
waiting to pluck the next one
from their line
and to leave behind
distorted and collective grief
set in a bed of white silk
in a casket

Death never slept, but decided which costume to wear.
he had many,
for every occasion.
But on her day,
He dressed as an errand run
disguised as a daily task to the store
he invited his friends;
accident and collision
and told them to wait at the traffic light
and when they saw him,
they ran to meet him in the middle.
And embraced each other,
leaving a mangled ball of assorted metals behind.
with crimson splashes, strewn clothes and full stops
and they laughed
and he carried his 5 tokens
and left behind his signature,
locked the box of their future
then swallowed the key.

And he didn't look back
as he danced beautifully

Suddenly it was over
All colors changed to black
But white was still fighting for hope
Shouts, cries from gray in the middle
Blue trust surrounded by doubt
Purple imagination becomes limited
Even pink was lacking of love
And who could stop the red bleeding
Too late for that, nothing to bled
No life left

Once Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness . . . or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka . . . if I wished
upon a frozen star . . .  that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm . . .
yet something still not love . . . if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove . . .

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. Keywords/Tags: blank verse, winter, December, snow, white, ghosts, parka, frozen, star, warm, warmth, tenderness, glove, ice

Kindred (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?

Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,

so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?

What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.

We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,

and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,

for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.

Published by Songs of Innocence. Keywords/Tags: moon, pale, disastrous, remote, detached, cold, inhuman, lustrous, pallor, love, itself, white, corpse