#whistle
I grew tired and small as the day passed.
The night winds
settling through the streets.
Sleeting snow
surrounding and suffocating.
Whistled howling
through the windows’ cracks.
I shrink into the only little tiny corner I have.
Nestled and disintegrating
like a flake of snow in the blizzard.
Mar 6
Mar 6, 2026 at 11:53 PM UTC
Did Jesus whistle?
I mean while he worked
and when walking.
Just him and you
and the work, and the walk.
Did he learn that from watching Joseph?
I think he did.
Did Jesus sing?
I mean while he washed
and when he cooked.
Just him and you
in the routines of life.
Did he learn that from watching Mary?
I think he did.
And did he ever worry
about being off key?
Or was he embarrassed
at being overheard?
I think not.
I think he took pleasure
in life, in song, in whistling.
And I think his disciples learned that too,
from watching him.
Dec 13, 2025
Dec 13, 2025 at 2:17 AM UTC
Banti (ban-tee)
Such a odd name
But the name I called him
Him.
My beloved grandfather
The man who pushed me to do my best but without the pressure
The man who was always there
The man who put family above anything else
The man who was the easiest person to talk to
My grandfather
Gone.
Leaving behind the people who needed him
Leaving behind his family
Leaving behind the pain that he had to push through
Selfish.
Selfish is what I am
He was in pain and sick
He had a whistle because he couldn't get up
This whistle is all I have left
He made his mark
A great mark
A mark that will forever stay with everyone that knew him
A mark that left his dog depressed for days without eating
A mark that left many crying for days
Gone.
Whistle.
Mark.
Keywords that tell his story in my words.
His story.
My words.
Banti
My grandfather…..
“He loved his family above all else.” (quote from his obituary)
Sep 22, 2021
Sep 22, 2021 at 9:21 AM UTC
She sat there plucking bits out of the long grass in her hand
The wind ruffled her hair, lifting her eyelashes to the majestic view of the sunflower meadow
The sun setting had made a dark scarlet and purple hue in the sky
The birds retreating back to their nests
Over with their daily hunt for food, and singing their melodies
She sang her own song and whistled to the tune of the birds
Her eyes sparkling from the last rays of sun, she closed her eyes
Laying her head on the soft grass, she dozed into the night of stars
Mar 22, 2021
Mar 22, 2021 at 7:32 AM UTC
From the old house in the planes
I can hear it from the hay,
The night quickly turned eerie
At the whistling miles away.
As I said into the dark
“Soon he’ll be around “,
Phantom tales coming back
The child cowered from the fire,
“If it sounds close, then he’s far,
If it sounds far, then he’s close”,
The man with the hat and matching coat
Dragging heavy bag of bones.
Cursed by his mother
Because he killed his father,
He roams till the end of time
He already got my brother.
He is roaming your neighborhood
When you hear the clanking sounds,
Now it’s my turn at last
To go join them in the bag.
Jun 17, 2020
Jun 17, 2020 at 3:38 PM UTC
I don't want this
To be understood
Just for a while
Can we think of that time?
Where the leaders don't need to
Trial the trust
Every time
I don't understand how they digest
Inedible ****
I don't understand how smartly we are misguided.
I don't understand their blind supporters.
I don't understand whom they stand for.
I don't understand the basis needs.
I don't understand their priorities.
I don't understand
Anything
Camouflage
And I don't want this
To be understood
Either
Being outsider
Jay Nepal
Apr 2, 2020
Apr 2, 2020 at 10:18 AM UTC
Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake
I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.
I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked
nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.
II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,
the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.
III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,
I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,
were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild
I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.
Keywords/Tags: Orpheus, singer, poet, William Blake, whistle, Satanic, mills, manacles, law, leaden, ball, chain, prison, song, freedom
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 1:34 AM UTC
The Pain of Love
by Michael R. Burch
for T. M.
The pain of love is this:
the parting after the kiss;
the train steaming from the station
whistling abnegation;
each interstate’s bleak white bar
that vanishes under your car;
every hour and flower and friend
that cannot be saved in the end;
dear things of immeasurable cost ...
now all irretrievably lost.
Note: The title “The Pain of Love” was suggested by an interview with Little Richard, then eighty years old, in Rolling Stone. He said that someone should create a song called “The Pain of Love.” I have always found the departure platforms of railway stations and the vanishing broken white bars of highway dividing lines to be terribly depressing. Keywords/Tags: pain, love, parting, kiss, train, whistle, departure, platform, interstate, dividing, line, hour, flower, friend, lost, cost
Mar 25, 2020
Mar 25, 2020 at 4:43 AM UTC
The wind whistles as it whips down the winding street
Trying to knock down people
wary of the ice and snow beneath their feet.
The sky watching over them is still.
But it's a trap. A storm is coming in for the ****
Nov 11, 2019
Nov 11, 2019 at 7:46 PM UTC
A mournful sound of a train
I’m not sure why
Makes me want to cry
Is it saying I’m going now
Like it’s saying goodbye
I might never see you again
Or is it saying i will be back soon
Wait for me
Don’t move
Pitiful mourning in the night
When everything is sleeping
Searing soulfully in the mist
Why does this sound
evoke emotion like this
I get up so it can speak to me
I grew up with it
It’s familiar to this child
A long comforting hug
Maybe it’s the strength
Maybe it’s the speed
Maybe it’s the a far off loud
A need to keep hearing
It's only a whistle
Holding in my memory
Jan 21, 2020
Jan 21, 2020 at 9:19 AM UTC
Look down.
There’s a whole world below,
dug out and timber-framed,
mapped and named.
Its tunnels stretch for miles
under the mountain.
Once it shook with blasting,
screech of train, and whistles.
The coal was iridescent blue.
Headlights on a curved track
burst like shooting stars
out of the deep.
That mirror world is dark now.
The men laid down their tools,
and took the mantrip
to the surface, home.
In the quiet,
hear the mountain sigh.
Aug 1, 2019
Aug 1, 2019 at 8:09 PM UTC
In the middle of the night
as the breeze soothes the mind.
A lonely owl steps out to the light,
leaving his nest behind.
The moon shines
and the wind blows.
A nightingale hymns
while the gaslight glows.
Nocturnal creative artists at work.
The night fuels their quirk.
Then a sudden cacophony disturbs the air.
A noise no one can bare.
From a distance it can be heard.
It whistles, but it is not a bird.
It slows as it reaches its destination.
Breaking through the peace with its whistle.
The train stops as it reaches the station.
Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018 at 4:14 AM UTC
Let it be grey.
It has never rained like this before,
I like it this way.
I don't care if it is night or day.
For all the times I have felt sore,
Let it be grey.
They will not come today.
No one will knock on the door,
I like it this way.
There is nothing for me to say.
I want to listen to the clouds roar,
Let it be grey.
The wind whistles my stress away.
And I have nothing to cry for,
I like it this way.
My mind wanders away.
My eyes marvel at the downpour,
Let it be grey.
I like it this way.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 4:04 PM UTC
As the whistle blows,
We stand too.
An order is bellowed,
Fix bayonets!
The time has come,
For our last breath.
As the whistle blows,
We go forth,
Into the mist.
As the whistle blows,
We die well.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 7:25 AM UTC
He swims upon the lake and swell.
Inside the waters where she fell
on that moonlit winter morn.
All alone and now all gone.
Within that wet, that lake of ice,
he spots her shade. Not once but twice.
She's smiling still, all hope and bells
just like she looked before she fell.
Oh Cre'Atus, please cut her loose,
his words fall dead like neck and noose.
And so he swims, his body cold,
in hope his heart gives in and folds.
This longing hits, and loneliness
becomes his friend, as bitterness
invades his soul, has come to linger
in this man once known as Wind Singer.
Of wind was he, and in his rhymes
there would be joy and better times.
His lips would purse, his whistles call
and all the birds from sky would fall
into his home, a barren field.
A homely place, with little yield,
but tenderness, this man would give
to all the beasts and birds that live.
Inside the woods, he passed with light
around his feet, and in the bright
green heart of leaves and trees he chimed
with each pure whistle. Each soft rhyme.
He met her there, a girl of peace
so great her smile should never cease
and from that moment he knew joy.
An angels face. Heavens envoy.
He took her in, and showed the world
how God had surely carved this girl
from summer winds, and autumn song.
She stayed with him, where she belonged.
They walked the fields, the barren soil,
but with her laugh and through their toil,
the lands became a place of worth.
A place renowned throughout the Earth.
The love he knew. The heart they shared.
And every time he showed he cared
her love would swell. So would her life.
And so, he took her as his wife.
Time passed by quickly...
The nights grew long. The trees grew old.
The starlight those days seemed so cold.
The fields were bare. The harvest cleaned.
Their home was peaceful and serene.
But shadows crept within the trees,
so soft, so harsh, like a disease
it swept upon the woods and beasts
until all life had surely ceased.
There man and wife, unknowing still,
knew not their lands had fallen ill
with taint and shadow, dark refined.
They sat in bliss while light declined
around their hearth. Around their love,
until the shade, wrapped like a glove
their home and with it in it's might
it weaved a spell, their hearts couldn't fight.
In fear she fled, and in her stead,
her husband stayed behind and bled
as he took arms and fought this fiend
with strength in men, so rarely seen.
At last he overcame his foe.
Threw down this dark, had overthrown,
but not victory or respite
had he, for where now was his wife?
He fled into the trees and brush,
past deadened trees which once were lush.
Past beastly corpse, and silenced bird.
He called her name until he heard
a song, a sound. The heart of her.
He ran toward the sound in fear,
that he should somehow lose his light.
Should suffer loss because of blight.
And there he saw his beauty fair.
Against the sky he saw her there,
upon a cliff top, doomed to fall.
She answered not. Heeded no call.
In her despair her senses fled.
In her fear, panic in her head,
She saw her husband dead on the floor.
No more love. No more! No more!
And so as all the tales have told,
this lady fair. This beauty old,
jumped to the sky and met her fate.
The husband came, but was too late.
He screamed his pain to the skies.
'What was it for, Cre'Atus, why?!'
But silence met his pained demand,
and so he jumped, took life in hand,
but fate was not with him that day.
This life was not for him to slay
and he lived, he still breathed, still fought
against the death his loss had bought
for what is life without her near.
Why exist without her here?
Why go on within his fields,
alone, no song to grow the yield?
And so he swims within the swell.
Inside the waters where she fell.
His love is lost, straight to his core.
The Wind Singer will sing no more.
Apr 26, 2018
Apr 26, 2018 at 8:07 AM UTC
the hushed
prairie
beckons
quietly
its stately grasses
forming a dry
whistle
as they
wave
hopefully
Apr 21, 2018
Apr 21, 2018 at 11:14 AM UTC
I took a walk down a sloping path
Trees and brambles, nature’s bloodbath
My hands, a guide
My eyes, a map
My mouth, drooling and drawn to that amber sap
The ground below finally led me there
A trusted fort, a quiet town square
A lonely whistle serenading the unsoiled air
A symmetrical tree sat waiting like a snare
For me to take its’ paragon
But, oh, do I even dare?
Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 at 1:51 PM UTC
textures from spit
can you not feel
the
wallows
follow me here they cry
who says I
who says I
another ***********
from what mind
of
manners
foundations
foundations
foundations
before
the
world
as my palm castle
what sanded windows
have you caught
bring me
from
your
terror
what
hilltop cross
barren other side
broken intentions limpiming
here
I
am
layn in denial
you from me
i
am
the
you
in me
strangle hold
floor choking me
words foaming spit
here have I been found
bound in more
here
am
I
found
loose
textures
from
spit
?
...
..
.
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 7:09 AM UTC
Crescent white in the sky
No voice, no sound
Neither the prayer
Once I tried to whistle,
When nothing is something
Knowing darkness has ears
Art is a voice of reason
Imagine infinite mysteries,
A version of reality
Resolute endeavor
To a speech therapist
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 9:54 AM UTC
Train whistle late at night
Fills me with a melancholy fright
Living in a world that is not right
In the moonlight, past midnight
A late-night blight until the next daylight
Apr 7, 2017
Apr 7, 2017 at 11:19 AM UTC
Help me for I don't,
I don't know what's going on.
Im still here,
waiting.
For what?
I don't know.
Ask the bracelet,
It shall tell all.
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 9:53 PM UTC