#commonplace
potions made under new moons
drink my thoughts at noon
sit with sadness in the blue lagoon
purify myself with a joint or two
****** the volleyball and scream a few
spike it, set it, pray for a breakthrough
bike to work, work to bike
fight the urge to be petty and spite
spike it, fight it, today is a breakthrough
peace is a breath away
death is commonplace
deep breaths today
stress is commonplace
Sep 1, 2023
Sep 1, 2023 at 9:37 AM UTC
Maybe it's all the avarice
The commonplace detachment,
Of trodden-life, taken as a game.
It is what it is,
The way things go,
A billion different ways
To say the same thing.
Jun 18, 2023
Jun 18, 2023 at 1:54 PM UTC
In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch
In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.
Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.
I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun
and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.
Keywords/Tags: swoon, life, death, ordinary, commonplace, usual, average, mediocre, inferno, intensity, passion, cool, cold, pale, moon, blazing, sun
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 3:30 AM UTC
Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch
Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way
and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.
Your hair’s blonde thicket’s thinned and tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way.
Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray ...
to warm ourselves. We do not touch, despite
a love so indescribable. We say
we’re older now, that “love” has had its day.
But that which love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way.
Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Mandrake Poetry Review, Carnelian, Poem Kingdom, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Famous Poets and Poems, FreeXpression, PW Review, Poetic Voices, Poetry Renewal, Poetry Life & Times; also winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne Poetry Award
Keywords/Tags: Villanelle, ordinary, commonplace, everyday, love, bed, sheets, warmth, comfort, delight, limbs, night, light, white, hair, back, hands, feet, romance, passion, desire, longing, *** intimacy
Mar 16, 2020
Mar 16, 2020 at 5:39 AM UTC
<>
The Instigation:
Edmund Black, commenting on “weary weighted,”
I agree with Kim; This is poetry at its best :)“
<•>
*both of you shush!
there is no “better” in poetry
mine yours theirs, alive or not,
just gasps tears and blood
whimsical smiles and isles
cuts and burns of pained revelations,
hidden in fog,
that words try to delete away,
through the shrouded mists of
human tissues,
unconstrained by the
bounded shape
of the human cell,
our first, our own
self-imposed jail
tissue, too,
baby soft, or,
purple beating majestic bruised blotches
by those weaklings whose
kindness never
fully developed;
or old man mine whose
skin cells erodes, so poems and light
weary weighted, lightly flake off
for your “betterment”
mostly tho for worse
good humans all await,
in patientce lightly hidden,
residents of dark sunspots
in the glaring existence exposer
of the unlit lighthouse whose time will come
they get it
how we get there unimportant
get there
GET THERE
get there
that is the poetic
mission critical
no path best or style preferred-
no compare just, but,
any path that
lifts and elevates,
to the commonplace*
the common place
*where all costarred, universal,
where common is the temple mount
of highest praise, holy smoke rising,
a place that
that discloses and closes,
is scribed/described honestly as
a connective,
which is the simplest
successive
call my poems,
blessedly common!
that an honorable,
so gladly accepted
and
so much more meaning-full
than merely best or better*
for that,
I’d gladly weep,
for no praise
ever been
bettered
8/2/18 406pm
on the jitney to my isle
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 4:15 PM UTC
I listened for an error but could not find
Anything to tell me that you'd erred.
The human voices were left behind
Among the dead, the long interred.
I wondered at the worry of a bard,
Whose penchant for making mosaics
Of dead and living shards,
Might wax a bit prosaic.
But 'tis nothing too commonplace for me!
I live in such a new land.
And look back where my roots might be,
Standing on a sunlit strand
And strain my eyes for thee.
And my ancestors who, distant, pass,
Clouded with poetry and pride.
The latter mean nothing, not even my last,
Grandparents who came here and tried.
Shoemakers, firemen and their wives,
Learned to dwell in a sprawling place.
But huddled like old Celts, converted, shrived,
As Saxon fires round them paced.
But all of that ended or so we thought,
One April day on a Lexington span,
Declared was freedom and dearly bought,
And a ****** new history began.
August 7, 2012
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 1:54 PM UTC
blood is spilled as credits run
twelve new shadows lose the Sun
cellphones off
the popcorn hot
severed souls now haunt this spot
let's change theaters
I know this scene
they break
they turn
they ****
I mean...
how many times has this been done?
the dark night rises
the scene is run
...again
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018 at 6:54 PM UTC
Complicated things
Now seem commonplace somehow
When innocence fades.
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 1:57 PM UTC