#gloss
Parched simile washing canvases
I spot her tote
Bragging inside of an engagement box
Tossing it out of our building to feed the rain
Peels of dresses won't stick right
Patched ribbons between jean memories better glue the seems
Feb 18
Feb 18, 2026 at 2:25 PM UTC
I am a broken piece
Fraudulent in twine
The indelicate knot
Purposed and shined
As a lighthouse in a meadow
Misplaced and strange
Overlooked and exhausting
I've no questions yet
Stilled upon the high water lines
True smears of stain
Pressed for comfort
Nearer the base
A dry branch without soil
No legs nor mind
Young, studying the stars
I am placed besides, within my grasp as I spin.
Feb 18
Feb 18, 2026 at 1:42 PM UTC
Some paint grace for flawless finish;
but some dark truths no concealer can conceal.
That scarlet gloss smears—not from love’s touch,
but from hands that quiet her will.
The liner refuses to run,
though tears fall like fountains still.
So beautiful, those glittering robes—
veiling marks not of love,
but stories etched in fragile skin,
silent, unseen, within.
Nov 9, 2025
Nov 9, 2025 at 4:56 AM UTC
Polish
by Michael R. Burch
Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.
Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.
You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.
I thought about titling or subtitling this one “A mini-ode to manicure” but thought better of it. Please note that this poem is not about female predators but the way the human race “glosses over” its predatory nature. We may appear to be “civilized” but what are we doing to the planet and its other inhabitants? Keywords/Tags: polish, nails, talons, claws, predator, gloss, loss, red, tooth, claw, pollution, climate change, global warming, mass extinction, genocide
Apr 1, 2020
Apr 1, 2020 at 3:58 AM UTC
The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch
for Harvey Stanbrough
I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.
This poem was originally published by The Raintown Review when Harvey Stanbrough was the editor, then later by Mindful of Poetry. I wrote the poem out of dissatisfaction with the strange idea that poetry should consist entirely or primarily of concrete images. Would the “experts” who espouse this bizarre idea junk the great soliloquies of Shakespeare and Milton and the direct statement poems of A. E. Housman? It also bears noting that the twin titans of English modernism, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, did an awful lot of “telling” rather than always “showing.” Keywords/Tags: Harvest, roses, images, imagery, imagism, meter, time, beat, rhyme, shimmer, gloss, perfume, reap, reaping, gossamer
Mar 26, 2020
Mar 26, 2020 at 2:37 AM UTC
Two small globes
Cover with view
Small and frail
See thy truth
Nov 25, 2018
Nov 25, 2018 at 9:24 PM UTC
Told how to live, how to dress, how to talk,
Taught how to sit, how to eat, how to walk,
We buried our freedom beneath the gloss of life.
The savages lived happily after all,
Not caring about the gloss of success,
They enjoyed the hell hole, called life.
Aug 2, 2017
Aug 2, 2017 at 6:54 AM UTC
beneath his flawless public facade,
coated by the veneer of composure;
and the gloss of success,
he hid tragic despair of his life…
Aug 2, 2017
Aug 2, 2017 at 6:52 AM UTC
the love he needed,
the gloss of success he craved,
it was nothing but a masquerade…
blinded by the laminated desires,
of the mockery camouflaged as love,
he fell for a complete charade.
foolish he was to believe the travesty,
that brought upon endless misery,
he craved the love all too glossy to be real.
mockery or parody, perhaps,
he was a *********
fell in love with misery.
Aug 2, 2017
Aug 2, 2017 at 3:17 AM UTC
War paint I always found unnecessary:
Gloss for manicured lipstick commercial princesses
Not of my kind.
And though I walk with shield, I am without armour:
Ramparts mere cheekbones,
Bare skin impressionable as snow.
Boot-print,
The mark I hated. My characters:
Frail tree rings, exposed to the chill night air.
Gold inlay frozen solid.
The fairly bound dream factory
Lies purple with melancholy.
It’s the world’s bruise. It colours sudden,
Shadowing the other side of the room
Where it paused, rare moth
Lighted upon my dark reflection,
A Mona Lisa dressed in black
And reminiscent of bobby sox.
Beauty without fanfare.
Stuff of woods: we do not glitter.
We don’t call out.
Our tongues are both dumbstruck bells.
Shy rabbits, we fold within ourselves
And sequester our secret pulp.
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 7:15 PM UTC
I'm the boss
I won't take a loss
Just the marks of her lip gloss
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 10:19 AM UTC