#mirth
I stepped out — to buy some bread.
The rain, a silver needle, embroidering the diaphanous gauze of the atmosphere.
Thoughts, like feral hounds, prowled and dragged me
astray, to the wrong street.
And there —
the abyss.
No grocery here.
Only the void, yawning wide, insatiable, ravenous,
a Grand Canyon, misplaced in the geometric monotony
of concrete blocks — a scar on the skin of the ordinary.
Who sanctioned this?
Who gouged this chasm into the fabric of the mundane,
this rupture in the tapestry of the everyday?
We inhabit a world where everything
appears to matter —
blueprints, ideals, the ceaseless scramble for triumph,
the Sisyphean climb toward some illusory summit.
But time, that insidious thief, that silent eroder,
dissolves it all into the silt of oblivion.
What endures?
Laughter.
Laughter — not mirth, but a gasp,
a surrender to the absurd, a white flag waved
at the futility of it all.
It is the sound of a man
teetering on the precipice,
howling into the void
and hearing only his own echo reverberate,
a hollow chorus of his own insignificance.
But nothing matters only
when you are solitary,
when the world contracts to the size of your skull.
No wife, no child, no anniversaries to commemorate.
No one to observe, to decipher, to adore.
Laughter then is not liberation —
it is the wail of the forsaken,
the cry of a soul unmoored, adrift in the vast, indifferent sea.
Imagine the edge.
The abyss below, fathomless, voracious,
its maw gaping, hungry for meaning.
You can shriek, sob, summon aid —
but no one answers.
And so you laugh.
Not because it is droll,
but because it is the sole retort left to you,
the last weapon in your arsenal against the void.
If we cannot alter anything —
if the gears of fate grind on, indifferent to our pleas —
why even endeavor?
Insignificance is not a curse.
It is a peculiar emancipation,
a shedding of the weight of expectation.
Your blunders, your trepidations, your aspirations—
they are sandcastles, ephemeral and frail,
washed away by the tide of eternity.
Yet there is splendor in the act of construction,
in the fleeting defiance of entropy.
Even stone crumbles.
Even the most impregnable bastions succumb to time’s relentless siege.
Laughter cannot nourish the famished,
cannot solace the lovelorn.
It is a spark, evanescent,
a brief luminescence in the abyssal dark,
a fleeting exertion to convince yourself
that anguish and torment are illusory,
that the weight of existence is but a shadow on the wall.
And it is, perversely, amusing.
Mar 18, 2025
Mar 18, 2025 at 9:04 PM UTC
The phoenix is a bird said to rise from its own ashes
being a symbol of immortality and spiritual rebirth.
So life in this world undergoes many similar flashes
which determine the degree and quality of our mirth.
_________________________
Oct 31, 2023
Oct 31, 2023 at 10:24 AM UTC
Can't make me want to stay alive.
It's sisyphean if you try.
You can, however, make things worse--
Suggest a ride inside a hearse.
-- Before, that sentiment held true,
But that's before my meeting you!
With you I've found a taste of mirth
And more-- A motive on this Earth.
Apr 17, 2022
Apr 17, 2022 at 4:36 AM UTC
Virgo in the ascendant,
Saturn in decline,
A retrograding antidote,
A calculated rhyme;
Overtones of melancholy,
Undertones of mirth,
A surfeit of misfortune,
Of musery a dearth
Faithless Fortune taps her foot,
While plotting my demise,
A rhythm most unruly,
A metaphor unwise;
In minutes and in seconds,
She wreaks havoc on my pen,
A glib faux pas, no coup de grâce...
And so I start again.
§
_My zodiacal tendencies,
Triumphant in their prime,
Fade to skepticism
As life spins on a dime._
Nov 11, 2021
Nov 11, 2021 at 2:22 PM UTC
Look at the people around us
Dying, sick, alone
cold
Look at the wondrous things
Some have
money, smiles, ****** and
gold
Surplus of food
thrown all away
So many others still starving
these days
Illness stretches through the earth
And yet for others happiness
They still wander and play
in mirth
Making more sickness
making more death
are you happy now?
That some people no longer have breath?
May 13, 2020
May 13, 2020 at 8:16 PM UTC
Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy Michael Burch
Cherubic laugh; sly, impish grin;
Angelic face; wild chimp within.
It does not matter; sleep awhile
As soft mirth tickles forth a smile.
Gray moths will hum a lullaby
Of feathery wings, then you and I
Will wake together, by and by.
*
Life’s not long; those days are best
Spent snuggled to a loving breast.
The earth will wait; a sun-filled sky
Will bronze lean muscle, by and by.
Soon you will sing, and I will sigh,
But sleep here, now, for you and I
Know nothing but this lullaby.
Keywords/Tags: lullaby, child, cherubic, angelic, imp, chimp, mirth, sleep, snuggle, snuggled
Apr 5, 2020
Apr 5, 2020 at 6:09 AM UTC
“So soon must I go my love?”
Said I with bold Shakespearean jest
A giggle escaped
From her rosy lips, let suddenly out from her mind’s possessions
With goofy smile and posh accent,
She replied in kind to my intent
“Of course good sire! You will now take your leave”
A flood of mirth and good faith, a shower of genuine joy
Blossomed with liveliness betwixt our figures
Oriented sideways, laying on low-cropped carpet
Our laughing drifted freely in good humorous air
Dying slowly into breaths and smiles, her bountiful hair
Glowed softly in that room
Softening my jagged soul, fixing it with tempered gaze
Though Heaven’s eye and lovely Earth
Quarreled on that day, separated by grey droplets of clumpèd air
In low light, I still retained a clear vision of my love laid before me
In Venusian position, a blush from our previous merriment
Still traveled up her throat and up her cheek
Marking her lovely countenance proudly with color because of me
Those moments are now dead and gone
The ungrateful witch has left me to hang
Solely by my neck
In a noose of my own sorrow, growing tighter and tighter until one day I will break
And I will die and I will suffocate
Under the weight of my body and my baggage
This love was not real! Only a lust dressed up in whore's clothes that shrivels up in the light
Bah! Who cares about wenches these days? The wretches
Merely prowl about the countryside, searching for untested men
Nay, boys
To draw water from, tying them down and breaching their chests
Reaching in and stealing their best
Traits and memories and garments and vex them
Out of their minds and out of their hearts
Out of their homes and out of their children’s arms!
Nay, I say! What, ** Dare you contravene my verity?
That my heart was broken? That much is truth
That I was told, “You are not good enough.”
Dec 25, 2019
Dec 25, 2019 at 7:38 PM UTC
For once, the day was okay.
For once, my soul wasn't at dismay.
For once, the sky wasn't gray.
The darkness had faded into happiness,
And the sun came back to life.
The garden was no longer filled with dreariness,
And I
Began to live
Once more.
Apr 22, 2019
Apr 22, 2019 at 12:06 PM UTC
Under you pockets deep,
Has dwindled your wishes' screech.
Watch out,
Let me get you a mirth very meek.
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 24, 2019 at 11:01 AM UTC
Oh, how our petals fall
from the depths of our eyes;
the reminiscence of our small
and warmly stricken sky.
Oh, how it crumbles mutely
striking hard upon the earth;
the ground now bleeds acutely
and still, we drown in mirth.
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 3:15 PM UTC
Sometimes my vision starts to vibrate
Back and forth,
Like the firmament of reality
Is ripping apart into dreams
And I wonder if one day it'll go
All the way
And I'll just zoom off into some strange bruise of blue
And purple-black
Heart attack
Reading HR on the wall
Thinking how far we have to fall
Feeling the pleasant rush of air
Run across my free cheeks
And I keep blinking,
Thinking that if I just want a little more
Push a little more
Maybe the word will crack open the rains of fortune
And whisk me away like an egg
Grinding my fingers against the tree,
Trying to eat at the bark
Like a little ******
But not so wrong, honestly.
I find more often than not
When I oft retreat into enclosed thought,
Stepping stones across the pond
Of reality,
I dream of something that could never be.
Like a stone,
Crashing into a celestial dome
Only a fraction of an inch
And destroying wholly
All things that called it home.
Clawing deep at wormword
Blood on fingers, blood and hand
To fall ever softly toward the beautiful
******
To some perfect miracle.
Jun 30, 2018
Jun 30, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC
And I gave my First Snowglobe to them.
…And When I had given that to them, I had told him to give me a gift in return that may have more to itself than just simple life.
“Inahah oona sept amni kquestal”.
Yet I had no other thing to give, this broken soul, beyond more than just flesh, I was naught. And so she had nothing more to me than that of the great overtone, the great silence of the earth, of space, her arms stretching invisible to hold our gaze to her innumerable foreign light show and state--
Perhaps there is another lover of soul somewhere within?
And he said simply to me, that there is someplace for me to be, someone for me to see-- that there was innumerable and inexplicable, incalculable and incomprehensible, powerful and overwhelming deterministic fate that guides my eyes, lets me chose without choosing, think without thinking, know without knowing.
And he knew—and she knew—and they knew with a knowing that I can never know; true and whole and unspoken, I can only dream to describe.
"We made the world for us, for you."
And I felt their love radiate that ferrous heart, steeled with centuries of pain and removal, heated by the ***** of her truth and guided by the loving, tender hand of his true brilliance that blinded and pleasured my aching eyes.
The entire web of the cosmos, in my eyes, dreaming and thinking that maybe I’d be back there one day, whole, float-- bool and cruelty of world inconsequential within the vast expanse of everything—
A powerful, emanative, restorative code of the universe that held itself no information but all, no hate but the misidentified ache of longing love, differed from the soul of the grinding earth—so far away from god through sickly skin and broken bone that without expanding into time and vaporizing into pure light, these feelings which we can never know.
May 9, 2018
May 9, 2018 at 10:58 PM UTC
A silken rope of phrases
ailuranthrope blood tasted
Sweet salt of the earth
The dark minded misanthrope
lycanthrope with ****** noise
could always be worse
Now i'm just a broken rope
of the wagon, on the boat
been sinking since birth
I want to forsake this curse
travel through time on this earth
longing loving mirth
A haiku trapped in mundane
A perfect body
I lust for your gorgeous brain
Surround me with your splendor
help the broken see
and find a way to mend her
This world it may betray us
and you may find you hate it
but it could be worse
Broken bones on dusty throne
lone failure and cheap cologne
I can see the hearse
Passing through, heart still with you
Now I'm done, let us review
Empathy in you
Did you know you were my worth?
The meaning of my rebirth
no greater on earth
Jan 18, 2017
Jan 18, 2017 at 2:26 AM UTC
Because she was made of tiny little particles,
Full of life and mirth,
A beautiful constellation,
That was her.
Sep 14, 2016
Sep 14, 2016 at 3:47 PM UTC
Let's leave the shores of uncertainty,
Oops, my boat has holes
And is made of human skin
Water gargled through
Shock-wide mouths
But don't let's fret
Or fret let's don't
For we see what we look at
Through eyes that look through me
Let's inflict ourselves upon reality
I'm so biased, me
I don't know you,
Or do I? Don't tell me for,
What can you know,
Believer?
Let the waves tickle your feet
And laugh at the sensation of their beckoning
Turn it down with a snort of mirth
And breathe easily for once, or twice, or thrice...
We just can't know.
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 7:34 AM UTC
when your heart's
beating overtime
and you drool poison
in your sleep
and you're looking down
on this wound
of slaughter
simply turn your head
and repress the urge
for mischief
mirth
and laughter
© Jon Thenes 2015
Nov 5, 2015
Nov 5, 2015 at 4:02 AM UTC
To write, to write
Yes these words do excite...
A sleeping giant of sorts
Whose brow has not been tested
And how carefully invested -
Scrambled verse is attested
To a rhymic riddled head
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 9:18 AM UTC
Merriment bequeaths mirth,
cheeks shed a glow
coddling the tranquil soul.
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 5:21 AM UTC