#front
Read all about it
of poets in the limelight
of quills bleeding ink
Oct 30, 2025
Oct 30, 2025 at 8:45 PM UTC
They asked me what I did on my week off
I told them I was busy out front, yea! I was busy shining my ideals
Making them look nice and pretty and prim
All the people passing they'd look in and say in admiration
"My! you got such lovely looking ideals"
I'd smile and nod back knowingly
When they'd gone however I'd go in my back room
I'd smile again then I'd hoist my Jolly Roger.
(Every morning for breakfast I eat a big bowl of moral fibre
Then I mount my pulpit to lecture everyone
"Woe onto you if you do this, woe unto you if you do that"
But during the night when it's quiet and there's no one about
I sneak down the stairs and...ha!ha! I raid the refridgerator).
Jul 2, 2025
Jul 2, 2025 at 2:24 PM UTC
If you my ***** leave a message
Ill call you back
If you a debt collector
Or
Killer
Leave a message
And
Lose my #
I won a case
So serious
Itll scare any attorney
Search my program govt
Lost your pension
Presidential Above
Stealth movement
Big ****** no cuz
Megaloads
Matter fact
Count your check
Look at mine
You winning
Is this municiple
Hugh heff left me playboi
You losing letters
Letters need to grow
We built our own
Now we cash checks
Whos lick
Feel me
Sign now pay later
Buy a burner
Phone an sacrifice
Zville
Zhill
Zzill
Aug 2, 2024
Aug 2, 2024 at 6:15 PM UTC
Fingers trace the
curves of his bare chest,
Every touch, a deliberate exploration.
In the quiet moment, I find my desire,
Jul 24, 2024
Jul 24, 2024 at 10:57 PM UTC
Open whole heart for you
Cautiously flip every stone so you may view it's front and back
Understand ins and outs
And where surface chips and cracks
Correct me without saying words
Context unnecessary
Highlight favorites
I can catalog your desires in my mental filing cabinet
Your memorable features listed in numerical order in one folder
And when you finally witnessed every nook and cranny
Are done exploring the regions of my body
Brain
Soul
Turn away
Then waltz out of life like a tourist catching the red eye flight home
Mar 18, 2024
Mar 18, 2024 at 12:33 AM UTC
Alone in the dark again,
With no one to take me to the end...
So now here I stay
to suffer alone,
Ill keep the demons at bay...
Alone in the dark,
Alone once again...
I'll take my life
to make it to my end
Oct 23, 2023
Oct 23, 2023 at 12:15 PM UTC
Reading the front pages
Why? Because you’re beautiful
To an unread poet and Whipping posts away,
It’s untitled leaking..It’s just like water,
An October sky It’s just a memory
A cry for the quiet... Burns A candle
For the lost in translation about Fake love
Falling for If they wanted they would.
I care that Mars is a red planet
I’m still here is A suicide note
May 4, 2021
May 4, 2021 at 10:40 AM UTC
oh
oh how far i have
let myself go
i have forgotten
how it feels
how the words
bleed.
no more
no,
writing.
i need to express
how i feel
and i have never learned
how to be vocal
just,
writing.
Oct 19, 2020
Oct 19, 2020 at 7:05 PM UTC
I’ll still love you long after
we’re gone.
When we’re just two names forgotten
with time.
Yours will stay wherever mine goes.
Wherever that is.
I’ll find you again.
Oct 1, 2020
Oct 1, 2020 at 11:45 PM UTC
***** fingernails
and cheap wine.
Fleetwood Mac and chicken tenders.
Snapping you little flirty faces
saying how much I’d like to make out.
Feels like we’re a couple of teenagers drunk in like.
Just a silly girl who can’t wait to see you
and pretend you don’t know what I look like
in the dark.
Oct 1, 2020
Oct 1, 2020 at 8:50 PM UTC
The woman, the one whose intellect stands and pleads on her legs, bring about equality
But whose body recoils not out of her own conformity
Manoeuvre balletic,compassionately and LADYLIKE
Humanity continually directs her, she is a woman, and that is her lone portrayal
Where she yearns to put her foot down ,
she is always giving a foot stool
Assistance is what she needs
Her being independent is hazardous
Only scrutinised for what she wears
underneath her garments
identified solely as a exquisite blossom
A instrument for the hands of society to play
The artistry of woman’s body withholds plenty functions
That men lust for
Gratification being the prime reason
The make-believe contrast bound by “She and He”.
A level of credit is disposed from men.
Pureness faraway from conclusive
Self-pride being fundamental
Society makes this concrete description.
How to act according to our particular
In order to be respected in the eyes of the people.
of lust and desire.
To gratis herself, to alter what being a woman means,
what (gender) equality means.
Women shouldn’t be criticised by the dimensions of a skirt
A women shouldn't feel apprehensive to chase her dreams
because of society’s wail
It shouldn’t be intricate for all to be the same
to be equivalent
Free of cost from the penny priced stereotypes
Sep 23, 2020
Sep 23, 2020 at 9:37 PM UTC
If i was one,
I'd tie a knot
in myself...
To remind me,
where the front
starts and the back ends...
I just need fingers to
tie myself up..
Now that's a whole other
idea for another time...
Aug 31, 2020
Aug 31, 2020 at 5:49 PM UTC
I feel my chest filling up with pressure
my heart is in knots
and my stomach hurts
I am feeling so very sad that it’s painful
I’m so sad about this whole thing
I guess I just have to say I’m laying in bed and my throat feels like it’s closing as I choke back sobs
They say good times will come
I’m starting to become afraid that I’ve used all of my good times in the past
I have given so much of myself to people I’ve become used up
and left with an empty shell of a girl who used to laugh and sing and dance and take silly photographs and drink a little too much, read and write poems
I’ve become the shell of that girl
and I miss her very much
Aug 12, 2020
Aug 12, 2020 at 9:05 PM UTC
a bag
of skill
and time
is shrill
there to
bite the
beau with
antiseptic and
kiss the
blues away
the tear
to till
the tack
debonairly so
today is
solidarity my
honey bunch
Jul 27, 2020
Jul 27, 2020 at 9:01 AM UTC
we need to honor the MEDICAL TEAMS
who are taking on this fight
they're at the front with all the risk
and sometimes there is no light
what would we do without them
as this virus takes control
one by one it pollutes us
in TEAMS, they stay on patrol
we need to honor the MEDICAL TEAMS
they will help us win for sure
they will hold their ground regardless
and help that someone find a cure
Brian Hill - 2020 # 86
Mar 26, 2020
Mar 26, 2020 at 9:03 AM UTC
Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch
(dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.)
I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone,
talking about poke salat—
how easy it was to find if you knew where to seek it ...
standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green,
straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches,
crowding out the less-hardy nettles.
“Nobody knows that it’s there, lad, or that it’s fit tuh eat
with some bacon drippin’s or lard.”
“Don’t eat the berries. You see—the berry’s no good.
And you’d hav’ta wash the leaves a good long time.”
“I’d boil it twice, less’n I wus in a hurry.
Lawd, it’s tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst.”
He seldom was hurried; I can see him still ...
silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight,
stooped, but with a tall man’s angular gray grace.
Sometimes he’d pause to watch me running across the yard,
trampling his beans,
dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants.
He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression.
Years later I found the proper name—“pokeweed”—while perusing a dictionary.
Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a ****
I still can hear his laconic reply ...
“Well, chile, s’m’times them times wus hard.”
Published by Lonzie’s Fried Chicken, Grassroots Poetry, Poet’s Forum Magazine, Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, A Flasher’s Dozen (prose version), Poetry Life & Times, Centrifugal Eye, Better Than Starbucks. Keywords/Tags: Great Depression, South, father, grandfather, son, grandson, memory, memories, flowers, nettles, **** weeds, pokeweed, poke salad, poke salat, bacon, lard, front porch swing, sweat bees, green, greens, beans, forage, foraging
Playthings
by Michael R. Burch
a sequel to “Playmates”
There was a time, as though a long-forgotten dream remembered,
when you and I were playmates and the days were long;
then we were pirates stealing plaits of daisies
from trembling maidens fearing men so strong . . .
Our world was like an unplucked Rose unfolding,
and you and I were busy, then, as bees;
the nectar that we drank, it made us giddy;
each petal within reach seemed ours to seize . . .
But you were more the doer, I the dreamer,
so I wrote poems and dreamed a noble cause;
while you were linking logs, I met old Merlin
and took a dizzy ride to faery Oz . . .
Then it came to pass you had no time for playthings,
for with strong hands you built, with bricks and stone,
tall buildings, then a life, and then you married.
Now my fantasies, again, are all my own.
This is a companion poem to “Playmates,” the second poem I remember writing, around age 13 or 14. However, I believe “Playthings” was written several years later, in my late teens, around 1977. According to my notes, I revised the poem in 1991, then again in 2020.
Abide
by Michael R. Burch
after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"
It is hard to understand or accept mortality—
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea
boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle
than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists
simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.
And so we abide . . .
even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink,
it is best not to drink
(or, drinking, certainly not to think).
Originally published by Light Quarterly
Observance
by Michael R. Burch
Here the hills are old and rolling
casually in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . .
By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have known the years to pass
almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . .
For here the valleys fill with sunlight
to the brim, then empty again,
and it seems that only I notice
how the years flood out, and in . . .
This is an early poem that made me feel like a “real poet.” I remember writing it in the break room of the McDonald's where I worked as a high school student. I believe that was at age 17. "Observance" was originally published by Nebo as "Reckoning." It was later published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Verses, Romantics Quarterly, Setu (India), Better Than Starburcks, The Chained Muse, Formal Verse, the anthology There is Something in the Autumn and Poetry Life & Times. That’s not too shabby for a teen poet!
Ivy
by Michael R. Burch
“Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” — Pablo Neruda
“They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”
Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.
Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.
Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.
The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch
There was a moment
without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
felt more than seen.
I was eighteen,
my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.
There was an instant . . .
without words, but with a deeper communion,
as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
liquidly our lips met
—feverish, wet—
forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.
Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.
This is one of my early poems but I can’t remember exactly when I wrote it. Due to the romantic style, I believe it was probably written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time.
Moments
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.
There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.
Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Grassroots Poetry, The Chained Muse, in a Soundcloud reading by Vex Darkly, in a YouTube reading by Jasper Sole, and in a Romanian translation by Petru Dimofte
Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch
Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.
There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times
Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch
I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
swirling together through Himalayan serene altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhaled breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness . . .
But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!
We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter there will be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.
Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch
With her small eyes, pale and unforgiving,
she taught me—December is not for those
unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings
who bicker for worms with dramatic throats
still pinkly exposed, who have not yet learned
the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour
their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned
fortress and impregnable bower
from which men must fly like improbable dreams
to become poets. They have yet to learn that,
before they can soar starward, like fanciful archaic machines,
they must first assimilate the latest technology, or
lose all in the sudden realization of gravity,
following Icarus’s, sun-unwinged, singed trajectory.
The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch
Whatever we became climbed on the thought
of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings
ten thousand miles above the breasted earth
that had vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ...
I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling
my human form about; I writhe; I writhe.
Invention is not Mastery, nor wings
Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides
and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ...
Oh, some will call the sun my doom, but Love
melts callow wax the higher atmospheres
leave brittle. I flew high: not high enough
to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers.
Retro
by Michael R. Burch
Now, once again,
love’s a redundant pleasure,
as we laugh
at my childish fumblings
through the acres of your dress,
past your wily-wired brassiere,
through your ******* pink billows
of thrill-piqued frills ...
Till I lay once again—panting redfaced
at your gayest lack of resistance,
and, later, at your milktongued
mewlings in the dark ...
When you were virginal,
sweet as eucalyptus,
we did not understand
the miracle of repentance,
and I took for granted
your obsessive distance ...
But now I am happily unbuttoning
that chaste dress,
unhitching that firm-latched bra,
tugging at those parachute-like *******
the ones you would have gladly forgotten
had I not bought them in this year’s size.
Originally published by Erosha
Mar 26, 2020
Mar 26, 2020 at 3:30 AM UTC
Could It
it could happen
intense, strong, emotions with exciting speeches
are you kidding me
have you seen it
do you even realize what's going on
back door thinking with front door faces
could it
****
Brian Hill - 2020 # 44
Feb 13, 2020
Feb 13, 2020 at 11:22 AM UTC
We live on the same street,
but you anit nothing like me,
This isn't a 12A,
The kids in this will **** you for
disrespecting the other side of the street..
Eternal outlaws, as kids we knocked and run
each others doors..
But i knock your door,
you lucky if you survive,
the third knock that is off the safety...
A hole fills your vacant look, holes at the front,
smudges that cant clean off your regrets..
I'll knock your memory into the past..
mothers will cry.. but you'll never realise
that we aren't just one street.
But you look at me wrong, I'll knock some sense
into your frame..
Bruised moments..
You cross my gaze,
my street…
I'll make the black
vison of bow heads grace the road..
But you'll not see,
your the one closed eyed,
while others weep...
Sep 28, 2019
Sep 28, 2019 at 5:14 PM UTC
different
isn't a bad thing
the offbeat
isn't wrong
everyone is special
in one way
or another
and that's human nature
we're made to be unique
be ourselves
in front of others
that's why I love
living in the offbeat
Apr 8, 2019
Apr 8, 2019 at 5:57 PM UTC
And as effortlessly as that,
You had me cracked
You chipped away at my cold exterior
Dodging shards of ice until I was no longer hard
My frozen heart exposed to the warmth of your hands slowly melting away with the steady breeze of your breath
Incapsulated in the prison of your knuckles
Only for you to drop my heart in search of another
Another that’s slightly warmer
Slightly more hospitable
And slightly more lovable than I am.
I guess my coldness could freeze everything, except your love for me.
Jan 9, 2019
Jan 9, 2019 at 4:45 AM UTC
I face the light... and I have to use my hand as a shield...
My pupils dilate in a painful reaction... It's too bright for me, but it can't be sealed
So I have turned my back on the light... on the sun... and it's flame...
I couldn't handle its truth... its purity... the Light and I were not the same...
So I faced my shadow instead... it laid on the ground in front of me...
I could handle the darkness better... or so I thought... It seemed to be free
But then I began to realize something strange about my shadow...
It would change its shape... it became unpredictable...it's me it would follow...
Even when I tried to follow it sometimes, it would play mind games
It would laugh... appearing to my left.. to my right... whispering my name...
There were days... I would be facing my shadow... my head hanging low...
And on my back of blackness, I would feel the bright heat of the suns light flow
Reminding me... that it was still there... reminding me it was still here for me...waiting
But my stubborn, rebellious, selfish heart ignored... its passionate side fading...
Finally... The shadow began to lead me to dark rooms...
black corners... where it would fit in with the other shadows... I was left alone... in a gloom
Too often this happened... and they abused and used all that they pleased...
Haunting me with my past... My worries... My concerns... My fears... They forced my heart to freeze...
In the night... I thought all was done out of sight and in secret
I was a slave to keeping my shadow quiet... What a prisoner I was to keep it
But soon the morning came... the Sun and its glory unleashed...
And my shadow cowardly used me as a shield... all of the other shadows deceased.
I finally realized that I must look down on my shadow... for it is a low life of what I use to be
A beggar on the ground, dead as the graves in the dirt, a jealous mimic, and mockery
LOOK UP TO ME SHADOW!!! For it is I who controls you!!!
It is my choice how I make you stretch, and bend, and break, and move!!
My back is facing you now... and I face the sun, whose light will last!
It doesn't follow me, or make me feel low about myself because of my past
It tells me to follow it! It allows me to see!
It tells me to look up and believe!
And when the darkness comes to haunt me, it is still there.
It uses the moon, my friend, to reflect and remind me of its love and care!
It does not change its form, its light, or solar course.
It'll always stay the same and always try to be selective with its rays of force.
It provides things to grow, so I can be satisfied with its blessings.
But you? what do you have to offer? A darkening comfort of split-second feelings?
It has melted away the ice and snow, and scared away the shadows and ghost
Yes... its light is still blinding... but that pain will only provide warmth and beauty... and in this... I will boast!!!!
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 12:08 PM UTC
Thirty three years Alexander lived
Shakespeare wrote his tragedies
the teacher near our house
...in dhoti turned twice
still ***** with yesterday's mud
goes for another regret
what am I doing?
The play was staged
clowns and faces with paint
their age twenty
The man next door
his face well known
for the cycle he drew across the world
where am I here?
The lunatic
in house arrest wants to breathe
showing the foolish thumb
to people on lanes
but what am I doing?
What am I doing? Doing what? Doing what ?
Till half past three into the night
the question haunts my ribs
A inadequate path, oozing with men flood
but all headless clouds
Am I one in them?
All my life I have been placing this head
The weared out head of mine
In one body
in another
Trying to look into the mirror
On which body does this head of mine
look like me
Jun 17, 2018
Jun 17, 2018 at 3:23 AM UTC