#crosses
Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch
This is a poem about a crisis of faith that occurred after the death of the wife of a fellow poet.
As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.
These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.
Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.
God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.
Published by The NeoVictorian/Cochlea, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada). Keywords/Tags: crescendo, heaven, salvation, price, cost, hymn, funeral, grave, graves, coffins, cross, crosses, cemetery, graveyard, church, spire, God, distant, silent, misunderstood
Mar 22, 2020
Mar 22, 2020 at 1:02 AM UTC
the Hail Mary transgression:
falling in love with me when it crosses over the line
*guilty of the same, so even when I condemn the errant woman,
with an ice block from a Northeastern pond of no soft forgiveness,
which is still and yet, the only cutoff ending appropriate
but you woman, deserve to learn that
emboldened fantasy that crosses broken bold lines,
is a jagged rot that doesn’t cure the dreamy unreality of
the-cannot-be,
it’s pouring hot water on scalding burns entrenched
guess time to share that your fantasy is the
number one commandment
that this boy also violates routinely so he has a phd of experience,
and the burn proofs when he thot he too could be,
Cervantes, the knight errant, lover of the impossible woman
I, guilty as charged by “The Duke,” am an idealist and bad poet,
so many poet-women here I secret cherish at levels that are nonsensical, absurd, ludicrous
and hold the fantastical fantasty of them dear,
so close and so near, so mine
wrote them each love poems, and they know it,
now, here, in my confessional booth,
my priestly punishment always the same,
ten thousand Hail Mary’s,
but I cheat the cohen priest,
and just write another poem,*
this one is about the line that never can could will be
crossed, hail mary!
Feb 11, 2019
Feb 11, 2019 at 11:48 AM UTC
A storm and the stars
Everywhere it would
Echo the song
Of sheltering silence
The dream of
What's ahead
The dawns, how
They turn into days
Fate, the blissful chase
Enduring crosses
Completely, These
Extravagances
Of the heart
Even the nearest
Moment is far
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 25, 2018 at 5:47 PM UTC
It’s not usual to feast on snap-dragons in the cold months
Or run naked through un-sketched woods reeking of incense
And gloom, ridiculing the battered men on crudely carved crosses-
Dribble running from their loose-lipped mouths tumbling into rivers.
The soul, recently discoloured, doesn’t stay long in such corrosive
Environments where time runs furiously along a thin elastic band
Springing backwards then stretched to eternity.
It isn’t usual to feast on snap-dragons in the cold months
Keeping warm before the incumbent gates of hell
Afraid to sweep the snow away from the garden and live.
To sweep away the snow, now turning brown, and gild
With shafts of gold the fallen lily.
Jul 11, 2017
Jul 11, 2017 at 4:19 PM UTC
(Warning: this poem is not for the religiously inclined.)
For centuries, entrepreneurs
Have been selling slivers
Of the True Cross of Jesus
Promising how much it delivers.
Of course, if they were any part
Of the real True Cross at all
The weight of all that wood means
The cross was thirty feet tall.
Still, it is only meant to be
A symbol of The Son Of God
Who got murdered and transformed
Into a deity, but that's odd.
It’s like all the Romans making
A ****** dagger their sign
Of the purity of Julius Caesar;
Revered if not quite divine.
Or maybe worshipping the bullet
That killed Kennedy or King.
Are we sure that kind of devotion
Is the right way to the right thing?
But fonts full of holy water did
The trick for many centuries.
So, maybe the faithful don’t care
About ecumenical vagaries.
Yet I don’t hold much hope out
For businesses of spirituality
Who put up golden castles
In zones of the most abject poverty.
Anyone who thinks a god
Needs to look down on glitz
Promises not much more
Than a dogma from the pits.
We need to celebrate what we have
And not so much what is lost.
What has all the jewels and gold
And superstition added to the cost?
I prefer to keep my integrity and
Check out who’s the real boss.
Knowing that it might upset those
Who get weepy about a cross.
Jan 7, 2017
Jan 7, 2017 at 10:52 PM UTC
Memaw & Pepaw ..Mason Dixon Saturday night,
Just sippin' muscadine wine by the Tennessee moonlight
Rockin' chairs...Zenith Black and White
Roy, Buck, Minnie Pearl a Hee Haw delight.
Crickets a chirpin' and a Frogs a croakin'
Toe tapin' rhythm's got em all in motion.
Corn fields swaying like a metronome
Watching those two dance to cotton eye Joe!
Sunday mornings best at the Church of Christ,
Me, I'm Thinkin' bout Memaws country gravy, my fav-o-rite!
Fried Chicken, taters, eggs sunny side right,
These are the memories I like to recite.
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 12:19 PM UTC
Your smile, your messages,
your voice, your jokes, your cares,
Everything, will I remember them all.
I may forget your face, but not the memories
that I've carved into my soul,
Until the time our line crosses again.
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 9:50 PM UTC
the white hospital room,
laid a girl on her bed
bruises, scars, scratches,
with lines and crosses
dancing across her skin
dried tears and
freckles dusted lightly
amongst her temples.
with wires wrapped
around her body,
he holds her hands,
afraid of letting her
go.
Nov 13, 2015
Nov 13, 2015 at 9:22 AM UTC
Forgotten crosses in the clearance section-
religion has become cheap.
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC