#images
we saw that
everything we had accepted
from the small moments
returned to us
when it set aside a scene
for gray-hued images
whatever this pain may be
it brings itself to us
to our region
only occasionally
without burning us either
1d ago
Jun 2, 2026 at 8:46 PM UTC
Lost spots enter the walls
The coat is relieved
Diversion in the mind covering the shipyard
Rails fix a rut into the city
Out in the countryside musicians tangle in flowerbeds
Perhaps the planes are also in revolt
Feb 20
Feb 20, 2026 at 11:05 AM UTC
Always counting tries
In a lineup of sorted love
Pledges and page links
New attempts in a stand off
Relinquished
The loss
Adding time to create
Portrait in frames
The incomplete naked
Absorbing intricate positions
Taken
Spaces to separate angles
Closure refuted
Having
Always back
Feb 13
Feb 13, 2026 at 1:22 PM UTC
I hope when you think of me
It is not of love and smiles
But a picture of
How much you broke me
Jan 5
Jan 5, 2026 at 11:07 AM UTC
You're my fault,
The product of my imagination,
Everything in life I wanted,
Everyone I wanted to live in stagnation,
I'd rather live in my anger,
Then let it live in me,
And if the meds aren't in my head,
It's all the broken images of what I wanted life to be.
Mar 2, 2025
Mar 2, 2025 at 7:02 PM UTC
Whispers in the sky,
Dreams painted in soft white hues,
Nature's fleeting art.
Jan 28, 2025
Jan 28, 2025 at 5:59 AM UTC
I have all these scenarios playing out in my head
Because I keep wondering what life would be like instead
Of waiting for the future, I imagine it myself
Cause I know, life won't turn out as I hoped
They'll fall apart
I'll fall with them
These images in my head will fade
None of them will be real
All these scenarios
Will only ever remain
As words.
Aug 13, 2024
Aug 13, 2024 at 12:42 PM UTC
It was bad as I always imagined
Honey no longer tastes sweet
All who partake intoxicated
Words melted in the midday heat
Illusions beyond comprehension
Evoking apparitions from a fleeting flashback
Fragments claimed in the light of day
Painted my world in shades of black
I could only watch colors fade
Charismatic allure had me paralyzed
Energy spent transformed into tears
Crossed paths unrecognized
Time has not dwindled intensity
Feeling depth exceeding all measure
Defined by despondent devotion
You no longer bring body pleasure
I dream a life free from anchors
The shadows darkening the air
In moonlight images my skin unblemished
Make-believe scars were never there
Jun 28, 2024
Jun 28, 2024 at 9:24 PM UTC
It was January, twenty - four, in the year 2019,
I was hurting from an infected, tooth, it was 2:00,
In the morning, I saw myself in A dream.
My image was standing, in the corner,
Looking about, 30 years younger,
In clothes, I use to wear, I could not believe,
I had to get up, and walk over there,
I was not afraid or scared, more curious,
Excitement, flowing in the air.
I remember, saying you are me, I reached,
To shake hands, only A blank face,
A motionless, body to see, The sound, of a vacuum,
Distracted me, I thought, it was early, for the maid,
What could this sound be, I saw an image of my maid,
With her glasses, hanging, down from her head,
Then I woke from my sleep, I was lying in bed.
Was the infection, that bad, I was about to fall,
Then my subconscious, said, not your time,
Then gave me a wake-up call
The Original: Tom Maxwell © 12/10/ 2021 AD 7:00 AM
Dec 10, 2021
Dec 10, 2021 at 8:22 PM UTC
The alarming realm of the vertical,
so immence a hue – a blue
of such majesty that wonder
comes over all.
The magical universe of color –
linear filigrees of tone sheened
on unlikely surfaces : clandestine
rose and violet, a shout of crimson,
a whisper of pastel.
Sun-honeyed pine trees,
wind-silver rumpling of fields
falling into manes of lustre,
galleries of varying shades
fading into each other,
mirroring a marriage
of likenesses, mauve
through cerulean.
Tinted pavilions of firmament
overhung with luminescense
where mind is lost in the
amazement of impermance .
Dec 8, 2021
Dec 8, 2021 at 4:51 AM UTC
Not unlike lights turning off abruptly
the rumble of the earth underneath
the waves of the sea rushing
unfamiliar faces passing
dark grey clouds gathering
blood tinting the river
and a lifeless corpse falling
Dread clutches my throat
and drags me into the abyss
Aug 8, 2021
Aug 8, 2021 at 1:14 PM UTC
To see the World without the light
To watch the flow of the wind
To listen to owls in their flight
To hear the spirits sing
To feel the breeze of a windless day
To taste the river of love
To smell the words other people say
To dive into waters that flow above
Apr 10, 2021
Apr 10, 2021 at 8:30 AM UTC
Images we hang carefully on the wall,
hung carefully so it might not fall.
Mar 27, 2021
Mar 27, 2021 at 11:44 AM UTC
owls in willow trees
saddest of images to me
owls in willow trees
softened broken limbs in me
owls in willow trees
let mossy scars all over me
owls in willow trees
night windows time in me
owls in willow trees
now have nothing to do with me
owls in willow trees
where I have been arrives in me
owls in willow trees
more than many of each of me
owls in willow trees
past beyond memory me
owls in willow trees
now there is enough of me
Mar 18, 2021
Mar 18, 2021 at 9:47 AM UTC
SELF REFLECTIONS
These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections and self-reflection. How do we see ourselves differently than other people see us? Why do our impressions of ourselves sometimes end up like so much shattered glass?
Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch
for anyone struggling with self-image
She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she's grossly unthin
when seen from within;
soon a griefstricken campus will mourn.
Yet she'd never once criticize
a friend for the size of her thighs.
Do unto others—
sisters and brothers?
Yes, but also ourselves, likewise.
Reflections
by Michael R. Burch
I am her mirror.
I say she is kind,
lovely, breathtaking.
She screams that I’m blind.
I show her her beauty,
her brilliance and compassion.
She refuses to believe me,
for that’s the latest fashion.
She storms and she rages;
she dissolves into tears
while envious Angels
are, by God, her only Peers.
Is the mirror unkind
by Michael R. Burch
To your lovely brown eyes is the mirror unkind,
revealing far more than reflections defined
in superficial glass, so lacking in depth?
Is the mirror unkind, at times, darling Beth?
What you see my dear, I see different by far,
as our sun from Centauri is just a “small” star,
but here it brings life and warms each day’s start.
Oh, and a mirror can never reveal a true heart.
On Looking into Curious George’s Mirrors
by Michael R. Burch
for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon aka Seamus Cassidy
Maya was made in the image of God;
may the reflections she sees in those curious mirrors
always echo back Love.
Amen
The Mistake
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
All your life, O Ghalib,
You kept repeating the same mistake:
Your face was *****
But you were obsessed with cleaning the mirror!
Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.
Radiance
by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.
The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.
Belatedly he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.
Downdraft
by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
We feel rather than understand what he meant
as he reveals a shattered firmament
which before him never existed.
Here, there are no images gnarled and twisted
out of too many words,
but only flocks of white birds
wheeling and flying.
Here, as the sun spins, reeling and dying,
the voice of a last gull
or perhaps a lost soul,
echoes its lonely madrigal
and we feel its strange pull
on the astonished soul.
O My Prodigal!
The vents of the sky, ripped asunder,
echo this wild, primal thunder—
now dying into undulations of vanishing wings . . .
and this voice which in haggard bleak rapture still somehow downward sings.
Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch
Take this geode with its rough exterior—
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...
a diode of amethyst—wild, electric;
its sequined cavity—parted, revealing.
Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.
Each spire inward—a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails—fractured light,
the heart ice breaking.
Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch
We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each face—
a carnival-like mirror. In the space
between the silver backing and the glass,
we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass
who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed
to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed
for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee
to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key.
We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung.
In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.
Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My era's obscuring mirror
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.
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.
Mending Glass
by Michael R. Burch
In the cobwebbed house—
lost in shadows
by the jagged mirror,
in the intricate silver face
cracked ten thousand times,
silently he watches,
and in the twisted light
sometimes he catches there
a familiar glimpse of revealing lace,
white stockings and garters,
a pale face pressed indiscreetly near
with a predatory leer,
the sheer flash of nylon,
an embrace, or a sharp slap,
. . . a sudden lurch of terror.
He finds bright slivers
—the hard sharp brittle shards,
the silver jags of memory
starkly impressed there—
and mends his error.
The Poet
by Michael R. Burch
He walks to the sink,
takes out his teeth,
rubs his gums.
He tries not to think.
In the mirror, on the mantle,
Time—the silver measure—
does not stare or blink,
but in a wrinkle flutters,
in a hand upon the brink
of a second, hovers.
Through a mousehole,
something scuttles
on restless incessant feet.
There is no link
between life and death
or from a fading past
to a more tenuous present
that a word uncovers
in the great wink.
The white foam lathers
at his thin pink
stretched neck
like a tightening noose.
He tries not to think.
POEMS ABOUT POOL SHARKS
These are poems about pool sharks, gamblers, con artists and other sharks. I used to hustle pool on bar tables around Nashville, where I ran into many colorful characters, and a few unsavory ones, before I hung up my cue for good.
Shark
by Michael R. Burch
They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light . . .
I am not of them,
as I glide among them—
eliding the amorphous camaraderie
they are as unlikely to spell as to feel,
camouflaged in my own pale dichotomy . . .
That there are women who love them defies belief—
with their missing teeth,
their hair in thin shocks
where here and there a gap of scalp gleams like bizarre chrome,
their smell rank as wet sawdust or mildewed laundry . . .
And yet—
and yet there is someone who loves me:
She sits by the telephone
in the lengthening shadows
and pregnant grief . . .
They appreciate skill at pool, not words.
They frown at massés,
at the cue ***** contortions across green felt.
They hand me their hard-earned money with reluctant smiles.
A heart might melt at the thought of their children lying in squalor . . .
At night I dream of them in bed, toothless, kissing.
With me, it’s harder to say what is missing . . .
Fair Game
by Michael R. Burch
At the Tennessee State Fair,
the largest stuffed animals hang tilt-a-whirl over the pool tables
with mocking button eyes,
knowing the playing field is unlevel,
that the rails slant, ever so slightly, north or south,
so that gravity is always on their side,
conspiring to save their plush, extravagant hides
year after year.
“Come hither, come hither . . .”
they whisper; they leer
in collusion with the carnival barkers,
like a bevy of improbably-clad hookers
setting a “fair” price.
“Only five dollars a game, and it’s so much Fun!
And it’s not really gambling. Skill is involved!
You can make us come: really, you can.
Here are your ***** Just smack them around.”
But there’s a trick, and it usually works.
If you break softly so that no ball reaches a rail,
you can pick them off: One. Two. Three. Four.
Causing a small commotion,
a stir of whispering, like fear,
among the hippos and ostriches.
Con Artistry
by Michael R. Burch
The trick of life is like the sleight of hand
of gamblers holding deuces by the glow
of veiled back rooms, or aces; soon we’ll know
who folds, who stands . . .
The trick of life is like the pool shark’s shot—
the wild massé across green velvet felt
that leaves the winner loser. No, it’s not
the rack, the hand that’s dealt . . .
The trick of life is knowing that the odds
are never in one’s favor, that to win
is only to delay the acts of gods
who’d ante death for sin . . .
and death for goodness, death for in-between.
The rules have never changed; the artist knows
the oldest con is life; the chips he blows
can’t be redeemed.
Pool's Prince Charming
by Michael R. Burch
this is my tribute poem, written on the behalf of his fellow pool sharks, for the legendary Saint Louie Louie Roberts
Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool,
making all the ladies drool ...
Take the “nuts”? I'd be a fool!
Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool.
Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis,
owner of (ahem) a similar pelvis ...
Compared to you, the books will shelve us.
Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis.
Louie, Louie, fearless gambler,
ladies' man and constant rambler,
but such a sweet, loquacious ambler!
Louie, Louie, fearless gambler.
Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic,
pool's charming hero, but tragic, Byronic,
winning the Open drinking gin and tonic?
Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic.
I used poetic license about what Louie Roberts was or wasn't drinking at the 1981 U. S. Open Nine-Ball Championship. Was Louie drinking hard liquor as he came charging back through the losers' bracket to win the whole shebang? Or was he pretending to drink for gamesmanship or some other reason? I honestly don't know. As for the word “chthonic,” it’s pronounced “thonic” and means “subterranean” or “of the underworld.” And the pool world can be very dark indeed, as Louie’s tragic demise suggests. But everyone who knew Louie seemed to like him, if not love him dearly, and many sharks have spoken of Louie in glowing terms, as a bringer of light to that underworld.
My wife and I were having a drink at a neighborhood bar which has a pool table. A “money” game was about to start; a spectator got up to whisper something to a friend of ours who was about to play someone we hadn’t seen before. We couldn’t hear what was said. Then the newcomer broke—with such force that his stick flew straight up in the air and shattered the light dangling overhead. There was a moment of stunned silence, then our friend turned around and remarked: “He really does shoot the lights out, doesn’t he?” — Michael R. Burch
Rounds
by Michael R. Burch
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.
Now agony still hounds me
though elsewhere mirth abounds;
hidebound I stand and try to think,
not sink still further down,
spellbound.
Their ecstasy astounds me,
though drunkenness compounds
resounding laughter into joy;
alloy such glee with beer and see
bliss found.
Originally published by Borderless Journal
Keywords/Tags: mirror, image, images, imagery, self, self-image, self discovery, fear of self, self control, self harm, reflection, reflections, reflecting, glass, mrbref
Feb 24, 2021
Feb 24, 2021 at 3:28 AM UTC
Sitting on the bench
under this weeping willow,
I talk to you.
As I throw my voice across
the breeze catches my words,
and brings them back to me.
I make
watercolor images of you
on my paper.
Stroke after stroke,
using shades that I like
to fill the crevices and gaps within me.
Tonight I throw pebbles idly
into the stream.
As fishes gather around them
I talk about us to the moon.
Jan 8, 2021
Jan 8, 2021 at 7:16 AM UTC
Please play with closed eyes
About ships that survive waves
Flags flutter Armada!
Battles cannons roar
Shooters shoot drift ashore
Wait wait what do they mean
But one measure after another
Images sail over times
Then and then people
Eyes open and hear nothing more.
Oct 30, 2020
Oct 30, 2020 at 12:02 PM UTC
Ujjal Mandal, India
Much colourful images are painted
On the wall of eyes,
But the eyes contain colourless teardrops.
Oct 23, 2020
Oct 23, 2020 at 1:22 AM UTC
I am the one in suit made of nigh
The person with the blood behind the axe
The signs you'd see beneath the sky
The words you hear in a moment of wild
I became thoughts you never wish you had
The lips with kisses for every child
A calm you feel when in your mind
A spark of blast at leisure time
Like a love that comes through a while
I am the dancer whose clothes are rags
I sail but only at the center of your minds
My crew are made of wood and skulls full of thoughts
I creeps into the fawnest minds
I etch unto the tauntless nous
I am lurking behind their every words
I heal but a day with me hurts
I crawl into your heart and live only in your head
I am those voices you hear when In your bed
The breeze that tilts the window head
Image flashes with shadows unclear
I am creatures in the dark whom thoughts you hear
The one that increase with your slightest fear
I am the illusion!!!.
Sep 29, 2020
Sep 29, 2020 at 5:54 PM UTC
#*Miraculously mysterious
The images in the eyes
Not a match for the one in mind
The visionary, sees through*#
Jul 23, 2020
Jul 23, 2020 at 1:58 PM UTC