I think I have never been so exalted
As I am now by you,
O frost bitten blossoms,
That are unfolding your wings
From out the envious black branches.

Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine
The twigs conspire against you
Hear them!
They hold you from behind

You shall not take wing
Except wing by wing, brokenly,
And yet—
Even they
Shall not endure for ever.

Are my scars saying words,
Too frankly to you?

What of my wounds,
That have yet to heal?

Is my courage too loud,
For you, Sir Proud -

Am I too brokenly real?

I exhaled

Smoke riding towards

The stars

My eyes red swollen

Tracing thousands of scars

And everything felt stolen

And my blood and pain covered me

In places you couldn’t see

My knees scratched

Feeling brokenly free

And I let my eyes

Become the ocean

I asked God for something

Broken from emotion

And I saw lights

That made me smile

Some nights

Breaking what I thought

Was unreliquishing darkness

Which I addictively sought

And God I swear

I tasted heaven

Smelt it in the air

The lights dimmed

And the beach tractors

Drove past me

But heaven went right through me

And even through that hell

I tasted heaven

And that kept me

Alive

Because I saw the light and I tasted heaven

When I was drowning in hell

i loved you like i loved mirrors.
a little fearfully, but curiously
and then all at once, seeing myself
reflected in your eyes and realizing
this is who i am.
and i loved it.
i loved you like i loved mirrors.

you broke me like i broke that mirror.
tentatively, not wanting bad luck
but needing to, needing to break away.
glass breaks beautifully, brokenly
but dangerously.
i watched as the fist crushed into the mirror
into my heart
and knew that i while i was the reflector,
you did not feel this pain.
you broke me like i broke that mirror.

i am afraid of you.
i am sorry. but i am.
i am like a dog that way. you hurt me once
i never forget.
i stay wary. even if it was unintentional
i will never love the same.
i will love beautifully, brokenly
i will never love the same.

Poems about Things that Break

These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old habits, our hearts, and sometimes Love itself.



Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.



Dark-bosomed clouds
pregnant with heavy thunder ...
the water breaks
―Michael R. Burch



As grief reaches its breaking point
someone snaps a nearby branch.
―Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Lightning
shatters the darkness―
the night heron's shriek
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.
―Sappho, fragment 130, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



My heart is unsteady as a rocking boat;
besieged by such longing I weaken with age
and come close to breaking.
―Otomo no Sakanoue no Iratsume, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



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.



Mirror Images
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us ...

tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief ...

ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered ...

and if you were to ask her,
she might say―
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,

and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.

Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Modern War Poems



Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you―
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

not as you are now,
but as you were then―

eternally present
and Sovereign.



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not the blossomings of song nor the adornments of music:
I am the voice of my own heart breaking.

You toy with your long, dark curls
while I remain captive to my black, pensive thoughts.

We congratulate ourselves that we two are different
but this weakness has burdened us both with inchoate grief.

Now you are here, and I find myself bowing:
as if sadness is a blessing, and longing a sacrament.

I am a fragment of sound rebounding;
you are the walls impounding my echoes.



Bubble
by Michael R. Burch

.................Love
..........fragile elusive
.......if held too closely
....cannot.........withstand
..the inter..................ruption
of its.............................. bright
..unmalleable.............tension
....and breaks disintegrates
......at the............touch of
.........an undiscerning
..................hand.

I believe this is my only shape/shaped/concrete poem.



Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, on the first anniversary of 9-11

She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget,”
Dove-white on her car’s window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: “Never Forget,”
and kept her heart’s own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers’ glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on ...
she stitches in damp linen: “NEVER FORGET,”
and listens to her heart’s emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: “NEVER FORGET”
because her heart is tender with regret.

Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine and Other Voices International



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: "Frail things must break!"
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Mate Check
by Michael R. Burch

Love is an ache hearts willingly secure
then break the bank to cure.



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy’s a wan illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.

Published by The Lyric, Black Medina, The Eclectic Muse, Kritya (India), Shabestaneh (Iran), Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Captivating Poetry (Anthology), Strange Road, Freshet, Shot Glass Journal, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Famous Poets and Poems, Sonnetto Poesia, Poetry Life & Times



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.

Published by Poet Lore, Poetry Magazine and the Net Poetry and Art Competition



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
as the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some raging ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze:
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.

Published by Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and The Chained Muse



Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as if she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.

Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia and Lone Stars



The Ruins of Balaclava
by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, barren Crimean land, these dreary shades
of castles―once your indisputable pride―
are now where ghostly owls and lizards hide
as blackguards arm themselves for nightly raids.

Carved into marble, regal boasts were made!
Brave words on burnished armor, gilt-applied!
Now shattered splendors long since cast aside
beside the dead here also brokenly laid.

The Greeks erected shimmering marble here.
The Romans drove wild Mongol hordes to flight.
The Mussulman prayed eastward, day and night.

Now owls and dark-winged vultures watch and leer
as strange black banners, flapping overhead,
mark where the past piles high its nameless dead.



Once Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness . . . or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka . . . if I wished
upon a frozen star . . .  that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm . . .
yet something still not love . . . if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove . . .

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review



Eras Poetica II
by Michael R. Burch

“... poetry makes nothing happen ...”―W. H. Auden

Poetry is the art of words: beautiful words.
So that we who are destitute of all other beauties exist
in worlds of our own making; where, if we persist,
the unicorns gather in phantomlike herds,
whinnying to see us; where dark flocks of birds,
hooting, screeching and cawing, all madly insist:
“We too are wild migrants lost in this pale mist
which strangeness allows us, which beauty affords!”

We stormproof our windows with duct tape and boards.
We stockpile provisions. We cull the small list
of possessions worth keeping. Our listless lips, kissed,
mouth pointless enigmas. Time’s bare pantry hoards
dust motes of past grandeurs. Yet here Mars’s sword
lies shattered on the anvil of the enduring Word.



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.



Old Habits Die Hard
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The habit of breathing
is an odd tradition.
Why struggle so to keep on living?
The body shudders,
the eyes veil,
yet the feet somehow keep moving.
Why this journey, this restless, relentless flowing?
For how many weeks, months, years, centuries
shall we struggle to keep on living, keep on living?
Habits are such strange things, such hard things to break!



Having Touched You (The Boy in the Bubble)
by Michael R. Burch

What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.

And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west,
another remained

suspended in memory
like a flower
in crystal

so that eternity
is but an hour
and fall

is no longer a season
but a state
of mind.

I have no reason
to wait;
the wind

does not pause
for remembrance
or regret

because
there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget...

Forget that we were very happy
for a day.
That day was my lifetime.

Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine,

the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root
and I grew.

Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife,
and yet I can bear it,
having touched you.

I wrote this poem as a teenager after watching "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" with John Travolta playing a young man with a defective immune system who risks death for a chance at love.



Published as the collection "Poems about Things that Break"

Keywords/Tags: break, breaking, breakings, shatter, shattered, shattering, delicate, fragility, fragment, touch, cruelty, brutality, abuse, stress, love, pain, relationships, society, mrbreak, mrbbreak

Let me disappear off these mortal maps
          and become a citizen of the void.

Let me revel in the peace of decay,
          as my bones lay in the comforting embrace
          of the silent earth.

Let the stars steal the light
          from my eyes
          so that, even in my absence,
          I can still guide you home.

Let me fall brokenly upon death's door
          and leave nothing but a disintegrating stone
          to claim my ashes.

I don't care how steep the price,
          please, just
                          let me leave and
                                     don't ask me to come back.

Broken.
It is such a strange word.
Broken.
It is such a strange definition.
Broken.
Can't what is broken be fixed?

If that which is broken is fixed, is it still broken?
Perhaps it is just brokenly new.
A broken heart can lead to joy.
So if a heart is sad, is it truly broken?

Broken.
Such a strange thing.
Broken.
What a strange concept.
Broken.
What a strange sound.

Why do humans call themselves broken?
Perhaps being broken, is nothing more then an allusion.
Why do we cry in despair when we seem to have broken?
Being broken only allows light to shine through the cracks.

Broken.
What a strange allusion.
Broken.
What a strange existence.
Broken.
What a strange state.

So, if broken can be fixed...
If Broken leads to joy...
If broken is an allusion..
And if light shines through the cracks of things that are broken...
Then it means two things...

Broken is a temporary state for humans.
Broken never existed to begin with.

I do not love you in the most common sense of the word.

I do not love you softly with doe eyes and tender kisses.
I do not love you bravely, for there is nothing brave in my actions or words to you.
I do not love you kindly or sweetly, gently or patiently, considerately or reservedly.

I love you like a storm was loosed on my entire being from my first glimpse of you.
I love you like a match loves to be struck, or like a nail loves a hammer.
I love you like a page loves being scarred by the ink of a pen,
and I love you like a pick loves being scraped across old strings over and over again.

I love you violently, and entirely. But, most of all, secretly.

I love you scorchingly and searingly, as if all the pretty words you've ever bestowed upon me were mere kindling.

I love you like an atom must love the universe, a thing by the grace of which it exists, but a thing also which it couldn't possibly ever grasp.

I love you behind my heart and behind my eyes, to shield such a vulnerable thing from the corrosion and harsh grinding of the world.

I love you brokenly, and bitterly, and for always, because I will not admit to loving you at all.

I loved you the way
Samson loved Delilah
Foolishly.
I loved you the way
Aphrodite loved Adonis
Sensually.
I loved you fatally
Lustrously
Beautifully
Brokenly.
I loved you the way
A rose loves it's thorn
Too tender to the touch.
I loved you the way
I loved no one else
And that was far too much.

I miss you more than you seem to know.
......She misses you too.
We talk more often now though
Because it helps that we get it, I think.

I'm not really sure how to react to all this
You being so....lost.
I sort of got into the habit of looking at you
For directions. Because I wanted to be like you, somewhat.

You're amazing, you know that?
You're the moon and the sun and autumn and
....and all the little things that bring about large smiles.
I wish I could put it to a rhyme scheme.

She's breaking. Not as bad as she could be
But she is breaking.
I don't want to watch that. I didn't sign up for this.
I didn't want to have to watch my friends crumble.

Friends. I can't even label you two as that.
It doesn't fit.
You're so much more than that. I want. I need.
The point is, you're more than 'friends'.

You're both so ridiculously beautiful, y'know?
It's not even fair or okay because people like you don't exist.
But I'm glad you do.
It's pretty ****** that I only managed to write this now.

I shouldn't even be writing this, honestly.
I should be biding my time until you get back.
I should wait maybe two weeks before I call you both.
And then I should sit you down and explain it to your faces.

I'd probably lose some friends doing that, though.
I'm terrified of losing you guys.
Like, legitimately, panic attack worthy, terrified.
It keeps me up at night, sometimes.

Because I love you guys. Scary, right?
I'm not used to saying that and meaning it.
I love you guys.
I want to see you two for a long time.

While I'm emptying my heart, I should mention
That I wrote a lot of poetry about you two
Including this, and it saved me,  I think.
I get where you are, and I've been there. I am there.

But it'd be great if you'd stay. If you'd both stay.
I don't wanna stick around without you guys.
You're something special and amazing and addictive....
And so, so, brokenly perfect.

So yeah. I guess I just wanted to say "I Miss You"
And get all this off my chest.
Because I need you here and she needs you here
But until you can be here, I can write poetry.

Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke,
So through the anaesthetic shows my life;
So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife
With the strong stupor that I heave and choke
And sicken at, it is so foully sweet.
Faces look strange from space--and disappear.
Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear--
And hush as sudden.  Then my senses fleet:
All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain
That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly
Time and the place glimpse on to me again;
And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty,
I wake--relapsing--somewhat faint and fain,
To an immense, complacent dreamery.

Have you ever Know-ticed me?
I mean truly Know-ticed me,
Look through my eyes and into my soul to grasp who I sincerely was, am, and will be?
My internal splendor, no sugar
I don’t think you do…
You may think you know but it’s apparent that you have NO ******* IDEA!
Excuse the cliché but it served its purpose so let’s continue…
Do you Know-tice me?
Do you notice that my pain seems endless, as if the Emancipation Proclamation was just an urban legend and I’m experiencing the 5th century of my peoples enslavement?
Do you notice that my smile seems brokenly forced, only coming to life in the midst of dreams of being shipped home to you?
Do you notice that my heart is internally broken externally hidden only allowing the lurid utterances of, “I DON’T GIVE A *******!”?
Did you notice the trajectory of my tears detaching me from you?
Most importantly do you notice my undying love along with the uncompromising yearning I have for you?
All of which are mere memories like…
Your captivating voice, alluring me into riveting conversations that seems to be unforgettable something I can’t dismiss
Your slow touches
Your penetrating stares
Your unfathomable yet insinuating kisses
Your love or to put it quite simply your care because to love would be entirely too much for you at the time when time was nonexistent in my mind, no clock, I wanted to Know-tice you,
Nevertheless,
No I don’t think you Know-ticed!
If you did you would have noticed how I desire your affection and loath your constant dismissal of my essence
My existence seems to matter not but here I am… waiting and I can’t rest! Believe me you I’ve tried!
But then again maybe you do notice and although this may be the hardest to acknowledge on my behalf, I may have to come to terms that you DON’T ******* CARE!
Meaning… you would fail to notice that I’ve cut all emotional physical and mental ties with my heart only to join forces with my mind creating a relentless partnership against the thought of this empty middle’s sensitivity!
Or, that I can’t look at you without hurting!
Or, that I can’t lounge in your presence so silence becomes my friend, leaving me to become sworn enemies with verbal expression and these relationships coincidently only exists when you’re around!
And finally which holds even more significance, that I treasured you and still do as a lover but MORE as a friend!
But I don’t think you Know-tice!
I need you to know this is my own analysis and reaction to the entire state of our affair. So in response, I’ve come to the realization that you never noticed nor wanted to Know-tice me, everything just happened, it was ALL meaningless. So regardless of what I’ve felt, am feeling, or will feel! You become the commemoration, a constant but unconscious drive, of my callous feelings towards the possibility of ever wanting to Know-tice another, EVER again. I wanted, want, and will forever want to Know-tice you! But that doesn’t matter anymore because you’ll never notice sincerely my past, present or future, you treat them like me who you never did want to Know-tice!

I hurt myself again today,
To see if I still feel pain.
The needle tears a hole,
The old familiar sting ,
Try to **** myself again,
But it's just another fail.

What did you become?
My sweetest friend,
Everyone I love, dies and goes away
In the end.

you left me it all,
In our empire of dirt,
you killed yourself, you let me down,
you made me hurt.

I wear this crown of thorns,
my self destruction affair,
Full of broken thoughts,
That I cannot repair.

Beneath the stains of time,
They said that The feelings would disappear,
You are dead and gone,
But I am still right here.

If I could start again with you,
A million miles away,
I would keep you so safe,
I would find a way,
To make sure that you stayed.

Why wasn't I good enough to save you from destruction?
I pray for the rain,
Are you up there?
Do you listen?

They say that if you **** yourself,
You will be sent to hell,
But God, were you an angel,
Beautifully, brokenly, emptily impelled.

the need to express
my unhappiness
mingled with my mask
of forged smiles
gifted to me
since i was a child
pretend to be
who they want to see
that's who you should be
my mind tricks me
the you, you are
is never enough
a shameful mess
blessed with a voice
hushed and ashamed
uneventful
tamed...
but the pen explodes
the paper is alight
fire burning
breaking the night
expression
confession
simple poetry
gifted to me
since i was a child
foolishly i wrote
staining blank paper
with my woes
my depression
my questions
betrayal by family
alone, lost, abused
searching for approval
embrace your child
mother, where are you...
why have you gone?
father is blind
sister is brokenly
holding me tight
protecting me
from our mother
our father...
trapped in a house
closed in
stay in
force normalcy
they must never know
you held your mother
while she wept
your blood staining her sheets
how foolish of you
to ever speak
close your eyes
sing a sweet lullaby
everything will be alright.

My legs crumble, as I crawl to the alter,
My eyes defiled by *******.. Here my feet is weak and my hands stumble.

I draw the escape,
But I choose just to stare at the pencil..

Erase the bad habit and find that it only makes it worst to fight alone...

I draw the escape,
As I quickly see other utensils

I'm weak father I'm weak!
My eyes stare down at his feet as he chose to get beat for me,
While I was steadily beating my "meat".

Escape draws me,
As I Run....brokenly.

I'm not perfect there I said it!
I need your strength or I'm headed for the tale of the Damits.. The cursed the curses the unrepentant.

I'm so ugly when it gets to this,
Beauty is vain anyway but I wouldn't regret it..

You gave me life just to live it,
And death just to see it.

This is my prayer
" Father forgive me and all those nights I came except coming to you..I...I regret it.
Lord I repent and I don't want nothing to do with this!
Draw me close to what is heaven,
I honestly need you
Jesus...
I'm desperate.
No longer will I run to **** and the world to help me for my ignorance.
I see that there blinded with it
god I stand here to night saying...
I'm forgiven,
Give me your spirit for I know that will settle it...
Help me
Save me
I need it ...


I admit it.

I'm dangerous

Sonnet: The Ruins of Balaclava
by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, barren Crimean land, these dreary shades
of castles―once your indisputable pride―
are now where ghostly owls and lizards hide
as blackguards arm themselves for nightly raids.
Carved into marble, regal boasts were made!
Brave words on burnished armor, gilt-applied!
Now shattered splendors long since cast aside
beside the dead here also brokenly laid.
The ancient Greeks set shimmering marble here.
The Romans drove wild Mongol hordes to flight.
The Mussulman prayed eastward, day and night.
Now owls and dark-winged vultures watch and leer
as strange black banners, flapping overhead,
mark where the past piles high its nameless dead.

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (1798-1855) is widely regarded as Poland’s greatest poet and as the national poet of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He was also a dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor and political activist. As a principal figure in Polish Romanticism, Mickiewicz has been compared to Byron and Goethe. Keywords/Tags: Mickiewicz, Poland, Polish, Balaclava, Crimea, war, warfare, castle, castles, knight, knights, armor, Greeks, Rome, Romans, Mongols, Mussulman, Muslims, death, destruction, ruin, ruins, romantic, romanticism, sonnet, depression, sorrow, grave, violence, mrbtr

Everything you now!
It all manners a lot,
and is shooting at you infomatter,
brokenly corrected appropriately,
into cruel decency,
and intensity, lower
that for all full emptiness
of everlacking luck,
your fall enters inward into
the deep-sea that you ignore.
Poor unhedonistic narcissist you,
you wash your hands on...
what exactly?

Slowly fades today
lost in chronicles of time
only memories

grey ashes of yesterday
haunting me with pain

tomorrow so futile seems
stabbing me with fears

longing  brokenly for hope
and lost yesterdays

hoping God may somehow blend
morrow with sweet yesterday

**~Hilda~

At 9:15 this morning
you hurt your brother and lied about it.
It was an accident!
He did it himself!
Every variation casting up a veil between us.

The victim, too young to lie,
brokenly identifies his tormentor
and I am speechless at the act
and the denial

But I remember.
I remember the impulse too well -
preserve yourself!
No-one saw, they can't be sure you did it.
The theatrical collapse into self pitying insistence.
I remember how easily
I could convince myself of my innocence
and the hopelessness of others' incredulity.
Ah, ugly times.

So I understand, but it still hurts.
Not because I can't trust you now.
Not because it seems like a moment ago
that you, like your victim,
had no inclination to deceive.
Not even because you must take me for a fool
to try it.

It hurts
because in the midst of the forest of wishes I have for you
one wish quietly crumbles:
the wish
that you
will be better than me.

It's raining
And I Want You

The rain makes me overly sentimental, adding its ten drops worth to my ocean...
Nostalgia swells up; a monolithic wave of sadness and fractured memories
The borders imposed on my heart rebounds the lapping tongues of melancholy and send them back towards the centre towards
Me
Me; the centre of my own world
The Centre of my ocean

Frail ratty rafts of values drift brokenly across my ocean
The cracks in my character screech like strained metal; shouting at me that I'm sinking them
I'm sinking the morals and values that merge to form
Me
Me; the centre of my own world
The Centre of my ocean

The aquatic depths house the monsters of my mind
The Subconscious apparitions so large that a stirring of their serrated spines change the flow of my polluted basement of an ocean
The flow of my subconcious stinks stagnantly
It results in the drifting away of me from
Me
Me; the centre of my world
The Centre of my ocean

It's drizzling
And I want you

half-form words....

sentences brok
en in two

thoughts never brought to

    wishes stuck
the  inside   confines
     of my head

dreams of golden castles and...
...ever after:
half-dreamt

lose the shackles
of this life
find the whole
among the many
broken parts

no thread completes
the picture

all
by itself

lines brokenly straight, if all alone -

there is purpose
beauty
promise
in the broken and the
shattered dream

each fragment fused
defines the fullness
of the frame

and beauty from the watered ash
will rise

for

together broken
           is
together whole

Stand with your legs shoulders apart, traveller
Accept what I tell you nakedly,
Christianity is a giant horse
Its muscles bursting with blood,

But like many other to pasture,
Beasts behave brokenly,
Is it then a healthy force
To wish upon them a flood?

Traveller,
Traveller,
If you say it must be done,
I'll lay it all out on the table

Practice your long division

The wicker chair on the porch
it’s bent
the leg that is
bent sort of brokenly in
which reminds her of
inversions,
how they turned in
and found darkness,
ineffability,
space.

Son; he says;
I am going to die.

How soon; I ask.
Real soon; he says;
Twenty, thirty years,
I've lived a while.

Why are you so old?
I ask, brokenly.
Because I was not
Ready to be a father
When I was younger;
He answers,
understanding.

I don't want you to die,
At least not so soon;
I grumble weakly

But, I'm ready for it,
I've spent my years
Holding onto life;
He says;
With you in the world
My last real job
Is to teach you
How to live.

Life's too short;
I say.
So short;
He agrees.

Now,
Let's talk girls
He says with
A wink and a smile

Why is it that I miss you so much lately,
You should be a forgotten memory.

I stare at your old parking spot...
                          How ironic it is that your old spot is his now,
                                    you share more than a name
                           Finding that out hit me like a brick,
                                    I don't think he could tell
I stare at my phone and will you to call,
Wouldn't care why, I'd pick up, say anything at all.
I stare at a screen, wrapped up in a blanket;
All alone watching your favorite movie over and over.
I stare at old photos on a Friday night,
Begging time to turn back, you here again with me.
I stare in the mirror, brokenly, at myself,
And wonder why I wasn't enough for you...
                               *Or anyone else.

people tend to come then fly away here, and we think we know them.
in memory of Busbar Dancer i had to look up James l. Dickey and he is all he said.

Falling Related Poem Content Details
BY JAMES L. DICKEY
A 29-year-old stewardess fell ... to her
death tonight when she was swept
through an emergency door that sud-
denly sprang open ... The body ...
was found ... three hours after the
accident.                                              
                              —New York Times
The states when they black out and lie there rolling    when they turn
To something transcontinental    move by    drawing moonlight out of the great
One-sided stone hung off the starboard wingtip    some sleeper next to
An engine is groaning for coffee    and there is faintly coming in
Somewhere the vast beast-whistle of space. In the galley with its racks
Of trays    she rummages for a blanket    and moves in her slim tailored
Uniform to pin it over the cry at the top of the door. As though she blew

The door down with a silent blast from her lungs    frozen    she is black
Out finding herself    with the plane nowhere and her body taken by the throat
The undying cry of the void    falling    living    beginning to be something
That no one has ever been and lived through    screaming without enough air
Still neat    lipsticked    stockinged    girdled by regulation    her hat
Still on    her arms and legs in no world    and yet spaced also strangely
With utter placid rightness on thin air    taking her time    she holds it
In many places    and now, still thousands of feet from her death she seems
To slow    she develops interest    she turns in her maneuverable body

To watch it. She is hung high up in the overwhelming middle of things in her
Self    in low body-whistling wrapped intensely    in all her dark dance-weight
Coming down from a marvellous leap    with the delaying, dumfounding ease
Of a dream of being drawn    like endless moonlight to the harvest soil
Of a central state of one’s country    with a great gradual warmth coming
Over her    floating    finding more and more breath in what she has been using
For breath    as the levels become more human    seeing clouds placed honestly
Below her left and right    riding slowly toward them    she clasps it all
To her and can hang her hands and feet in it in peculiar ways    and
Her eyes opened wide by wind, can open her mouth as wide    wider and ****
All the heat from the cornfields    can go down on her back with a feeling
Of stupendous pillows stacked under her    and can turn    turn as to someone
In bed    smile, understood in darkness    can go away    slant    slide
Off tumbling    into the emblem of a bird with its wings half-spread
Or whirl madly on herself    in endless gymnastics in the growing warmth
Of wheatfields rising toward the harvest moon.    There is time to live
In superhuman health    seeing mortal unreachable lights far down seeing
An ultimate highway with one late priceless car probing it    arriving
In a square town    and off her starboard arm the glitter of water catches
The moon by its one shaken side    scaled, roaming silver    My God it is good
And evil    lying in one after another of all the positions for love
Making    dancing    sleeping    and now cloud wisps at her no
Raincoat    no matter    all small towns brokenly brighter from inside
Cloud    she walks over them like rain    bursts out to behold a Greyhound
Bus shooting light through its sides    it is the signal to go straight
Down like a glorious diver    then feet first    her skirt stripped beautifully
Up    her face in fear-scented cloths    her legs deliriously bare    then
Arms out    she slow-rolls over    steadies out    waits for something great
To take control of her    trembles near feathers    planes head-down
The quick movements of bird-necks turning her head    gold eyes the insight-
eyesight of owls blazing into the hencoops    a taste for chicken overwhelming
Her    the long-range vision of hawks enlarging all human lights of cars
Freight trains    looped bridges    enlarging the moon racing slowly
Through all the curves of a river    all the darks of the midwest blazing
From above. A rabbit in a bush turns white    the smothering chickens
Huddle    for over them there is still time for something to live
With the streaming half-idea of a long stoop    a hurtling    a fall
That is controlled    that plummets as it wills    turns gravity
Into a new condition, showing its other side like a moon    shining
New Powers    there is still time to live on a breath made of nothing
But the whole night    time for her to remember to arrange her skirt
Like a diagram of a bat    tightly it guides her    she has this flying-skin
Made of garments    and there are also those sky-divers on tv    sailing
In sunlight    smiling under their goggles    swapping batons back and forth
And He who jumped without a chute and was handed one by a diving
Buddy. She looks for her grinning companion    white teeth    nowhere
She is screaming    singing hymns    her thin human wings spread out
From her neat shoulders    the air beast-crooning to her    warbling
And she can no longer behold the huge partial form of the world    now
She is watching her country lose its evoked master shape    watching it lose
And gain    get back its houses and peoples    watching it bring up
Its local lights    single homes    lamps on barn roofs    if she fell
Into water she might live    like a diver    cleaving    perfect    plunge

Into another    heavy silver    unbreathable    slowing    saving
Element: there is water    there is time to perfect all the fine
Points of diving    feet together    toes pointed    hands shaped right
To insert her into water like a needle    to come out healthily dripping
And be handed a Coca-Cola    there they are    there are the waters
Of life    the moon packed and coiled in a reservoir    so let me begin
To plane across the night air of Kansas    opening my eyes superhumanly
Bright    to the ****** moon    opening the natural wings of my jacket
By Don Loper    moving like a hunting owl toward the glitter of water
One cannot just fall    just tumble screaming all that time    one must use
It    she is now through with all    through all    clouds    damp    hair
Straightened    the last wisp of fog pulled apart on her face like wool revealing
New darks    new progressions of headlights along dirt roads from chaos

And night    a gradual warming    a new-made, inevitable world of one’s own
Country    a great stone of light in its waiting waters    hold    hold out
For water: who knows when what correct young woman must take up her body
And fly    and head for the moon-crazed inner eye of midwest imprisoned
Water    stored up for her for years    the arms of her jacket slipping
Air up her sleeves to go    all over her? What final things can be said
Of one who starts her sheerly in her body in the high middle of night
Air    to track down water like a rabbit where it lies like life itself
Off to the right in Kansas? She goes toward    the blazing-bare lake
Her skirts neat    her hands and face warmed more and more by the air
Rising from pastures of beans    and under her    under chenille bedspreads
The farm girls are feeling the goddess in them struggle and rise brooding
On the scratch-shining posts of the bed    dreaming of female signs
Of the moon    male blood like iron    of what is really said by the moan
Of airliners passing over them at dead of midwest midnight    passing
Over brush fires    burning out in silence on little hills    and will wake
To see the woman they should be    struggling on the rooftree to become
Stars: for her the ground is closer    water is nearer    she passes
It    then banks    turns    her sleeves fluttering differently as she rolls
Out to face the east, where the sun shall come up from wheatfields she must
Do something with water    fly to it    fall in it    drink it    rise
From it    but there is none left upon earth    the clouds have drunk it back
The plants have ****** it down    there are standing toward her only
The common fields of death    she comes back from flying to falling
Returns to a powerful cry    the silent scream with which she blew down
The coupled door of the airliner    nearly    nearly losing hold
Of what she has done    remembers    remembers the shape at the heart
Of cloud    fashionably swirling    remembers she still has time to die
Beyond explanation. Let her now take off her hat in summer air the contour
Of cornfields    and have enough time to kick off her one remaining
Shoe with the toes    of the other foot    to unhook her stockings
With calm fingers, noting how fatally easy it is to undress in midair
Near death    when the body will assume without effort any position
Except the one that will sustain it    enable it to rise    live
Not die    nine farms hover close    widen    eight of them separate, leaving
One in the middle    then the fields of that farm do the same    there is no
Way to back off    from her chosen ground    but she sheds the jacket
With its silver sad impotent wings    sheds the bat’s guiding tailpiece
Of her skirt    the lightning-charged clinging of her blouse    the intimate
Inner flying-garment of her slip in which she rides like the holy ghost
Of a ******    sheds the long windsocks of her stockings    absurd
Brassiere    then feels the girdle required by regulations squirming
Off her: no longer monobuttocked    she feels the girdle flutter    shake
In her hand    and float    upward    her clothes rising off her ascending
Into cloud    and fights away from her head the last sharp dangerous shoe
Like a dumb bird    and now will drop in    soon    now will drop

In like this    the greatest thing that ever came to Kansas    down from all
Heights    all levels of American breath    layered in the lungs from the frail
Chill of space to the loam where extinction slumbers in corn tassels thickly
And breathes like rich farmers counting: will come along them after
Her last superhuman act    the last slow careful passing of her hands
All over her unharmed body    desired by every sleeper in his dream:
Boys finding for the first time their ***** filled with heart’s blood
Widowed farmers whose hands float under light covers to find themselves
Arisen at sunrise    the splendid position of blood unearthly drawn
Toward clouds    all feel something    pass over them as she passes
Her palms over her long legs    her small *******    and deeply between
Her thighs    her hair shot loose from all pins    streaming in the wind
Of her body    let her come openly    trying at the last second to land
On her back    This is it    this
                                                          All those who find her impressed
In the soft loam    gone down    driven well into the image of her body
The furrows for miles flowing in upon her where she lies very deep
In her mortal outline    in the earth as it is in cloud    can tell n