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xyloolyx Dec 2014
yet another year zero
reinventing the squeaky wheel
constrained writing just for kicks
reviving a tragic hero
tabula rasa and leaky spiel
trained for fighting prickly ******
hollowing future and reticulating splines
swallowing nature then duplicating rhymes
only a blank drawing
at a bank withdrawing
funds splashing down like acid rain
workers trashing town with great disdain
fluxing bureaucracy
with ad hoc hypocrisy
go country for old zen
and then
shot glass shopping sprees
statues with haunting verdigris
from target to target
the stupid (never forget)
airport shuttles and toxic puddles
epic riddles while popping bottles
thrusting bodies and a fruity box
alternating current and topic drift
trusting hotties with shuttlecocks
baiting adherent with basic *****
eating that dog in a bar by the ditch
bar all rowdy with many shots taken
beer hall drowsy as closing time looms
far too loudly with identity mistaken
the band had us frankly and amply forsaken
awakening in a ditch as the a-bomb booms
a thousand soldiers ready for battle
at town's end with less depleted morals
worried about the deleted portals
we buried hell well without the cattle
no more long weeks of slicing ****** meat
origins about which they should not care
oh to sell knockoffs to the rich elite
hear their yells and use an odd nom de guerre
the profit and the revenue forecast
**** on the new road
the prophet and the parvenue act fast
pill for the wet load
he had dropped the load leaving pungent smells
in the dark it glowed and lit the deep wells
launching a rocket every four hours
we encounter yet more perplexing times
measuring success with fewer metrics
punching the clocks in tall black towers
changing the locks and the warning signs
altering quarters with newer ethics
cannibals watched while we profusely bled
fine forget it forget it forget it
ingest the capsule to induce the sweat
just relieve don't botch
figure figure figure
don't bereave think scotch
ticker ticker ticker
sounded like it came from someone shady
getting beat to end with some other blend
year to date murders now about eighty
yet today's statistics lie and pretend
fudging the digits to fake the assent
so what happened last week stays in last week
all of those painful jarring sights and sounds
making it all seem to look rather bleak
kept sly with pennies and kept shrewd with pounds
on alibaba we will not delete
separated heads from dark desert towns
metropolis with millions of dark souls
lighting up papers for a rapid trip
necropolis with brilliant harkening trolls
fighting the power in order to strip
their medals that they never earned at all
writing this line here and ******* the fall
straightforward message from a plain green rod
a photographer in obscure disguise
throw him into the main canal and nod
the coffee shop looks banal with just guys
losing interest quick and wanting to dip
touching that shiny pink wide-open clip
unknown underground studded with diamonds
mind-blowing trap sounds burst from the caliph
volume gets higher and heads start to ring
they came in sequence and then came silence
waking up confused in a condo lift
taking refuge in an ugly building
just invited myself into your home timeline
somewhat sublime reciting trifling rhymes
alter rhyming scheme to eschew couplets
now fully mobile and automatic
pentameter schemes and android tablets
tents and suburbs that look quite nomadic
recruited minions for the rebellions
human microphones sans inhibitions
quicken resistance to the man's big plan
invoking the crowd to buck traditions
spell that with an accent with great élan
broken mobile phone texting hexagram
a rapid drop in communication
a postal service mailing vexing spam
token for transit lost at the station
we can no longer go back to the farm
here in the city living these last days
sounding the airhorn and the fire alarm
seahorses as fish and whales as mammals
hard to keep track here of various things
went to the desert and smoked some camels
patient zero died sounding the alert
some will paint dark scenes with exigent themes
paintings so dire that your eyes avert
inverse distance decay in the network
old flags questing through the flood and tumult
of course these rhymes make them go **** berserk
losing sight of sites that house the occult
refusing to eat and wanting to drink
these words resonate with all those who think
utopia fell soon after completion
never understood humanity well
rationality ends with deletion
all the fine stuff just goes to *******
humans emitting alienating vibes
they form foul cliques like pups from putrid tribes
three ships all wrecked up in some unknown land
divulging harsh things and eating raw food
far too many times getting shunned and booed
had all my writings fully blocked and banned
still no dumb luck yet after x decades
recalled old friendships that have long decayed
more constrained writing that will make them groan
some will even see the trail left behind
writing all of this mostly in e-prime
punctuation-free zone made just for fun
lighting dark alleys with a mobile phone
some get all the love while others get none
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch
glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch
kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch
stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch
twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch
yesterday's blunt stunt went to the gutter
no regrets no threats no whatever man
just like autechre and that song flutter
forget the police just rave on til dawn
**** how darkness has lasted this **** long
ominous songs here still pumping along
exponential sneers and the obscene scene
existential fears lit up with benzine
socially-accepted narcissism
honest thoughts here treated with cynicism
forget all -isms / go back to the scheme
spending days like these sniffing naphthalene
won't dwank to the masses or kiss *****
temperamental peers can go live that myth
experimental stage done and over with
(pause)
*
* *
*

✝ gone to a higher place ✝
K Balachandran Jan 2013
Still night, the stars are bright,
but all I see is the darkness,
thundering, like clouds
engulfing my tragic existence.
She  has left me wilting for ever.
I don't even know why,
she never cared to tell.
When I stand here lost,
cold wind with thousand pins,
****** all over my body,
as if to verify, if I am alive;
the night  sighs seeing me
pale and tottering.
Strange,  that pin ******
I don't  even feel,
but the thought, that she
has forgotten me for ever,
forces a dagger across my heart,
she mercilessly discarded.
Still night, it seems mourning
her absence, how could
one  think to  fill
the vacuum even for a moment?
Wasn't she my other half,
the Shakti, the power to
match the Shiva's dance.
Let thousand years pass,
her voice will reverberate
in my lonely soul.
We're all human here, right?

Why, then, is my side, most human,
Something bidden I hide?

---

Mockings chant their mocking things,
Swinging from the hinges of reality.
While, sneers and jeers born from,
Overgrown fears,
Leave small ****** in my ripe heart -

Unceasingly.

At the door, my mind assured me, go,
And my feet, those dumb things, did listen.
Went right into havoc,
Wreaked solely by tragic,
Souls, so pathetic, I can't even stand it.

Who's ripping up my soul so darkly,
Save, me and the audience I've made?
Surely, the swift-sounding people,
With valiant battles to battle -
Are too busy to waste time at the gallows.

You dug the hole,
And jumped right on in,
I merely picked up the shovel,
And finished it.

Though, now, my heart aches,
So red and opaque,
Curse you,
For doing you in.

07.2011
© 2011 Elephants & Coyotes
A rest stop outside of Richmond VA.

The sun is bright and annoying as **** as usal the woman pull's up  in a brand new Mustang
cherry red gleams in the parking lot.
She's living the life but hey sometimes when ya stop to take a restroom break ***** happens.

Halfway back to Carolina me and my loyal hetro companion Bone.
Are doing what two full blooded American men would do riding like bats outta hell
going through this womans cd collection Alanis Morrisett dear lord man do they hand these ******* out as soon as they get there periods?

But isnt it ironic dont ya think?
Flying down the interstate music blasting beers gathering on the floor like brainless ***** at a
Justin Bieber concert.
I gaze into the rearview only to come to realize like weirdos in a schoolyard we are not alone.

Looking at from the backseat appeared to be some sort of old ****** in a diper hey ***** but whatever
floats your boat jesus these flashbacks are getting to be hell.

My amigo slash  fellow tripper of the light fantastic was in  a trance already
into track seven you oughta know the brainwashing was a ******* dam lesbian **** front!
Even I was fighting the urge to go to the lilth fair and stop shaving but the fellas
were so against the natural look oh snap.

Bone dear lord snap outta it were not in a movie thearter!
Sorry Gonz what the ***** up ?
Well my mexican amigo I belive theres a little perve dwarf in the backseat that or that acid
crazy Larry sold me really is kicking my ****.

Looking at me like most do with that strange since of hey should i just get out here
or go with the trip he looked for a second.
Silent in a awkward sense like when my prom date caught me masterbaiting in her closet the night befor
hey it looked better on me anyways  yeah dont ask.

Bone finally spoke you crazy ***** it's a ******* kid **** we stole a ******* kid were so ******.
Jesus we had both been so safe how was i gonna explain this i thought deeply then finally
took a detor from my usal insanity to do something i seldom do.
Think.  

Well Bone looks like were gonna have to get a abortion.
It's already born *******.
My deep thinking and total drunk amigo made a good point it would get kinda messy.

Well maybe we can check it's collar or drop it in the post office box or even a dumpster
hey dont knock it thats where momma gonzo misplaced me strippers there so care free
and total ***** im just saying but enough  bout Katy Perry

Dude are you totally ****** nuts?
It was at that moment the little bald man began to cry.
Bone calm down cant you see your upsetting it Jesus wheres my manners give him this.

Gonz dude it's my last one.
Bone had a point but this little hairless doorstop needed to take the edge off so
the beer was his.

Miles passed as we thought what to do but with this little jumping bean
it wasnt gonna be easy getting into the ******* or getting him a fake ID.
course we could always say he was that dwarf from Austin Powers
But hey even I had some morals the poor little ******* had it bad enough let alone to be connected
to Mike Myers im just saying.

The ride to grandma Gonzos chop shop proved to long for my two drunken companions hey it was past Bones bed time after all he starts drinking at 6 am  .
I gazed down apon the little amigo as he slept so peaceful must have just had a ******* ahh memories.

Then Bone finally came to Gonz what the **** dude I told you stop cuddling with me people are gonna talk!
Like they havent already just go with it and yes I am happy to see you.
After a brief fight and some make up hugs and cookies mmm cookies and ****** harassment it goes togather like poetry and misery winning.

Gonz where the hell is the kid?
My friend seemed concerned I wonder did these two have something going on
yeah maybe that was it hmmm never trust a drunk or a bald headed dwarf in a diper
but grandpa wasnt all that bad.

Gonz wheres the baby !
The sound of the car being crushed made it hard to hear yet still I could here jagged little pill
playing ranting bout what true ****** men were amen to that sister.
Jesus that Canadian ***** died hard!

  Gonz !
Finally I snapped outta my trance oh yeah that dwarf dont worry he's in the trunk.
The trunk! The ******* trunk!
Hey dont worry I left him some beer and penuts jesus man calm down must been his time of the month.

Bone was frantic like when he herd there wasa beer truck overturned on the interstate.
Tears rolled down his eye's once like any good friend i did what all true men do when a bro is crying.
Video taped it and put it on you tube to laugh my *** off later.

Gonz how could you ?
Bone he's in a better place now whats wrong?
You killed him how could you destroy such a innocent thing.

Dear lord I know my pinto is old but it's far from a deatn trap well okay it kinda is but relax
see i popped the trunk grapped the little hamster by the leg held him up high
he's fine a little stinky hey if he cant hold his  ***** thats his issue.
Btw where do we get feed for this thing cause im almost outta dog biscuts?

After Bone finally stopped being such a drama queen Jesus that album had some strange powers.
We were off with are little stinky drunken friend brothers bent on sharing experience
and drugs and maybe some strippers hey kids are chick magnets im just saying
I should have stole one ages ego.

We laughed we cried we found out dipers can really get filled up .
He sometimes it's best not to hold everything in.

And as are money flew from us like braincells from a ******* shoot.
I called the smartest most rational person i knew Richard Shepard.
Who after cussing me for waking him up at 3 in the morning finally explained
it all to me Jesus who ever knew thats where babies came from.

So there we parted togatehr the three amigo's
Man what a party hey Bone?
Dam right hey Gonz i got the stamps on his forehead help me get him in the
post office box.

And after a brief moment like my mind are little amigo was gone
Outta are lives.
We stood there silent.
Hey Gonz wanna go back to the *******.
Amigo all i gotta say is **** yeah !

And like that we were off to more adventures that rambled on for hors till ya want to strangle me or take me home and keep me like a demented perverted puppy that although seemed cute
if petted would just **** your leg.

A week later

the woman sat there with little wahtever the hell his name was in his high chair.
Harvey get the camera I think he's gonna say his first word.
The two parent's so excited  come on whatever the hell your name is say it it.

The little rascal grinned from ear to looking at the object of most means thoughts
I belive the proper term is *******.
Building up the strength from somewhere deep inside.
His parent's so excited and happy he was gonna talk also  hahaha im not right.

Finally little whats his name spoke
****!  ****! ****!
His parents stunned I told you frank not to cuss around him.
I didnt and my names not Frank *****!

***** you I told you your family's ****** up side would ***** everything up.
Yeah couldnt be the total ***** side rubbed off either huh?
It was like a scene from the Waltons.
Little whats his name speaking his first word  two parents
cussing each other out it's so holesome reminds me of home.

Untill next time watch your kids cause theres some bad influences out there
unlike my wholesome ****.
Stay crazy Gonzo
Captain Clegg Feb 2011
***** pills and that naughty no no known as drugs
hell if you do anything your addict ever see the sobber ******
down at the local mall?

Kids screaming wife *******   you catch the eyes of  the so called
happy *******  who looks like one more scream laced cry
is gonna make him flip and   create some  drama for the evening news .

Yeah happiness sure smells like misery to me.
Id rather  drink and **** till I fall out dead than
live the dream that looks more like a nightmare.

Taking pills not to strangle some misreble ***** to death.
Meanwhile she's greezing your brakes trying to to talk ya in to going to see the grand cannyon.

Ever been there?
Yeah a big *** ditch with a bunch of  annoying picture taking ******
yeah i'll snap a pic of ya okay step back ,back okay like a few more steps  well ya fell of the ledge  ya silly *******.
Guess it's cool to keep the camera.  

Ive been to scores seems the sights were more dam grand and
the drinks a hell of alot better.

Ever wake up to the dam TV blaring some early morning
horse ****?
Some dam annoying tiny voiced ******* talkin to the kids.
Look they got the net they get knocked up and make a show about it
something tells me you can cut the ******* act.

16 and pregnant wow  what genius  more like when
horney *******  attack  hey heres a brainstorm
birth control  not that some over emotional half wit
doesnt need a kid   hell   cant wait to see thoose offsprings
hey mom wanna go on a double date to the prom?

Happiness it cost to dam much and love will give ya
heart burn.
Im in a good mood today.
Well cept for being misreble *******.
Keep it between the ditches

The Captain
BE Twain Sep 2016
It was some yesterday,
sitting in my high chair
eating salted cucumber slices
a wooden one
three adjustments only
locked in
a bumble bee landed on my arm
the pain raced through my blood and brain
little pin ******
I could not get out
my memory stops there
sitting in my chair.
Skip Ramsey Nov 2014
The hiss of wet road meeting tread,
Wisps of fog reaching up to mother cloud,
Pin ****** of rain on windshield,
Twang of guitar joining with singer in song,
Morning grey surrounds me.

Pale yellow headlights meet me,
Whining as they pass,
Restaurants beckoning me,
Promising warmth food company,
Wipers warning me away,
Morning grey surrounds me.

Destination is known,
Sleep wants what it's owed,
Obligation is to be honored instead,
Fatigue is my companion,
Soon I will start to repay them,
Morning grey surrounds me.

Morning grey surrounds me...
Northeast weather in fall in winter brings such a change to everything.
I. Cogida and death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.

The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine
at five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon
At five o'clock in the afternoon.

A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridiscent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes
at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

II. The Spilled Blood

I will not see it!

Tell the moon to come,
for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.

I will not see it!

The moon wide open.
Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bull ring of dreams
with willows in the barreras.

I will not see it!

Let my memory kindle!
Warm the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!

I will not see it!

The cow of the ancient world
passend har sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with threading the earth.
No.
I will not see it!

Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him.
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood.
Do not ask me to see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
that spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills
over the cordury and the leather
of a thirsty multitude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!

His eyes did not close
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And across the ranches,
an air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Sevilla
who could compare to him,
nor sword like his sword
nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions
was his marvellous strength,
and like a marble toroso
his firm drawn moderation.
The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard
of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final
banderillas of darkness!

But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
sliden on frozen horns,
faltering soulles in the mist
stoumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it!
No challice can contain it,no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it,
nor song nor deluge og white lilies,
no glass can cover mit with silver.
No.
I will not see it!

III. The Laid Out Body

Stone is a forehead where dreames grieve
without curving waters and frozen cyprseses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves
raising their tender riddle arms,
to avoid being caught by lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.

For stone fathers seed and clouds,
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.
All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face:
death was covered him with pale sulphur
and his place on him the head of dark minotaur.

All is finshed. The rain penetrates his mouth.
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself on the peak of the herd.

What is they saying? A stenching silence settles down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades away.
with a pure shape which had nightingales
and we see it being filled with depthless holes.

Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,
nobody ****** the spurs, not terrifies the serpent.
Here I want nothing else but the round eyes
to see his body without a chance of rest.

Here I want to see those men of hard voice.
Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing
with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them. Before the stone.
Before this body with broken reins.
I want to know from them the way out
for this captain stripped down by death.

I want them to show me a lament like a river
which will have sweet mists and deep shores,
to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself
without hearing the double planting of the bulls.

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull,
loses itself in the night without song of fishes
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.

I don't want to cover his face with hankerchiefs
that he may get used to the death he carries.
Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing
Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!

IV:

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

The autumn will come with small whiet snails,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
becuaase you have died forever.

Because you have died froever,
like al lthe dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No, but I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth:
of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.
Kyle Powers Apr 2014
Her press on nails graced her sunken in cheek
Tracing the bone that seemed to cut like glass
Remembering days of endless driving
Her high heels out the window
The sun whispered sweet nothings
But no one knew how personal those were
And here she is
At the vanity of a ****** motel
Dusting powder across lesions that spattered her skin
****** patches on her skin
Just like holes in her skin
She cries
Removing the brown wig that she tossed for years
Brushing it in her hands
The tears held on as if they didn’t want to let go
Standing
She slips off her briefs
Gazing into the mirror
Horrified at the person staring back at her
Invisible bones now visible
Crevices and cavities too deep
Webs of veins that were colored too brightly
Wearing the anatomy of a man that was no longer there
A body not worth surgery
Wiping sweat off her forehead
Smearing her drawn on eyebrows
All she can hear is
“Your mother and I gave birth to a son named Raymond.
What happened?”
That name echoed in her head
Drawing pleads from her ears
She collapsed
Her thighs bruised from one too many needle-******
Tracing each hole with her finger
As if to draw out an answer
She
A forgotten woman
Who only tried to cope
Her t-shirts were too big
“Raymond, Your T-Cell count is too low”
A forgotten woman
Who only tried to cope
“Is this ‘cause you’re a ******, Raymond?”
A forgotten woman
Who only tried to cope
“Raymond, there is no cure for AIDS”
She wept
Mascara staining her pale face
Press on nails clutching her arms
Hugging herself
Because no one else was would
Rayon died alone
She was no longer forced to love from an infected vessel
To hurt from a torn home
To pray on laced knees
This hotel room became a mausoleum
Smelling of death and perfume
Rayon was a forgotten woman
Who only needed to cope
But exiled by a community of people
For loving too much
Big Virge Aug 2014
I’m Sick of How Rude English People Can Be ... !?!
I'm Sick Now of Living ... In This ******* Country ... !!!
I’m Sick of Not Knowing ... Where The Hell I Should Be ... !?!
I’m Sick To My Stomach of Not Being Free ... !!!
  
I’m Sick of The Chains of This Society … !!!
I’m Sick of How Girls ... Try Playing With Me ... !!!
I’m Sick of My Ex Saying ... " Give back my key ! ” ...
  
I’m Sick Now of Seeing ... ***** On TV ... !!!
I’m Sick of How Girls Now ... Mess With My Chi ... !!!
  
I’m Sick of My Job ... !!!
I’m Sick of Colleagues ... Who Define The Word **** ... !!!
  
I’m Sick of Fat People Who Clearly Are SLOBS ... !!!
I'm Sick of Not Being ... Able To Just Sob ... !!!
I’m Sick of These People Who Just Want To Rob ... !!!  
  
I’m Sick of These People Who Think They Can Judge ... !!!
I’m Sick of Timelines ... To Recite This Good Stuff ... !!!
I’m Sick So ****** SICK … That I'm Feeling ROUGH ... !!!
  
I’m Sick of Girls Saying ... " He's just in a huff ! " ...

I’m Sick of MP's ... Telling Me I Can't Puff ... !!!
I’m Sick of ******* ... That's Spoke In Most Pubs ... !!!
  
I’m Sick of Fools Acting As Though They Are Tough ... !!!
I’m Sick of How Girls Say ... " They like their *** rough " ... !!!
  
I’m Sick of That Bull ... OPEN YOUR LEGS UP ! ...
I’m Sick of Why After … Girls Beg For A Hug ... !!!!!
  
I’m Sick of Black People ... !!!
I’m Sick of White People ... !!!
I’m SICK ... DON'T YOU SEE ... !?!
of ... ALL of You People …. !!!!!!
  
I’m Sick of Not Being ...
High Up Like ... Church Steeple ...
So I Can Look DOWN ...
On You IGNORANT People …. !!!!!
  
I’m Sick of These FRAUD RIDDEN Marketing Schemes ... !!!
I’m Sick of These ... BULLSHITTING Marketing Teams ... !!!  
  
I’m Sick of Agendas ...
They Have For Their Means ... !!!
  
I’m Sick of Them CLAIMING ...
  
... " Their motives are clean ! " ...
  
I’m Sick of Not Having Enough ***** Dreams … !!!
  
I’m Sick of Attracting The Wrong Type of Girl ... !!!
I’m Sick of Them Trying To ... Mess With My World ... !!!
  
They Make Me So Sick … I Wish I Could HURL ... !!!!!!!!!
  
Okay Now You Know ... I’m Sick of A LOT ... !!!
But This Is The Start of The Sickness I've Got ... !!!
  
The Sickness I've Got ... Runs Through Me Like SNOT … !!!
  
The Sickness I've Got Is A Sickness To Plot …
The Death of Mankind … !!!

But This Isn't T3 And Is NOT ... I ROBOT ... !!!
  
This Sickness Runs DEEP Cos' You People Are Sheep ... !?!
And Just Don't Believe In The Sickness You Keep … !!!
  
The Sickness You Have Is Making Me .... " Weep " … !!!
  
You People Are WEAK … !!!
Your Outlook Is BLEAK ... !!!
  
And Now You're All SHOCKED …
By These Words That You Read … !?!
  
The Sickness I Speak of Defines How You Treat ...
Different People You Meet ... On Your Everyday Street ....
  
This Sickness Is RIFE ...
Men Beat Up Their Wives ... !?!
Cos' They Just Cannot Beat ...  
The Sickness They ... "Hide" ... !!!
  
My Words Give Insight ...
Into Their FOOLISH PRIDE … !!!
  
OH You're Now Feeling SICK ... !!!
DON'T You See … That's The TRICK ... !!!  
  
I Build My Lyrics On Foundations Like Bricks ... !!!

See I've Written This Script To Give You A HIT ... !!!
Just Like Police Do Young Blacks .... In The NICK ... !!!!
  
I Just Want To Give …
ALL This Sickness A Kick Right Out of My Mind …
Like Winds Blowing Clouds To Leave CLEAR Skies Behind … !!!!!
  
So Now I've DEFINED ...
What I Think of You ****** And ALL Your ******* ... !!!!!
  
To Girls I've Offended … Come **** ON MY **** ... !!!
  
And Just For You Fellas I’m Sick of You TOO ... !!!
Cos' Most of You ****** Just Think With Your **** ... !!!!
  
I’m SICK YES of People .... !!!
Cos PEOPLE ... Make Me .....….
  
………… " SICK " ………….. !!!!!!!
Sometimes, you just gotta say what ya gotta say !
sayona Jul 2016
a rose?
well that is something that i am not.
i am not admired by many
and adored by even more.
people do not gravitate towards me
because of my cliche aspect of beauty.
one does not view me as one of the most
d i v e r s e
signs of
beauty
love
or even grace.
both striking and beautiful,
she has many thorns and ******
that can cut you
and make you bleed.

me?
instead of all that,
i am a leaf.
ordinary, that i am.
and very much overlooked.
often ignored and underestimated.
your eyes do not adhere to my exclusive version
of beauty.
i can't hurt you,
or at least not as much.
i am not made up of thorns
that could easily nip you
and your fragile skin.
and even tho she,
rose,
has many ****** and thorns
that has ample enough chances to cut you,
you still choose it over me.
Natasha Dec 2013
I'll let the thorns that ensnare my fragile heart
Sink in
I trust you
Assuming you can swim
**** the weather !
It always seemed when you planned ****.
Things always turned to ****.

I had been fed the **** up far to long.
No I was more like hand me a gun and get the **** out of my way.
the ride had been the boiling point  the conversations were as mundane as the Oklahoma  
landscape.

It's sad when you see a tree and you want to get out the car and kiss the ground.
I had to distance myself and the nearest bar called me like a ship to shore .
And maybe after a few stiff drinks I could somehow convince myself the trip was worth the burden of putting up  with half the ******  I listened to out here.

The show was going to be hell dealing with some lame *** ******* with there family friendly *******.
Hopefully my set would be over fast.

Get up there talk to the deadlights crowd and get the hell off that stage before my drink needed refilling.

Hey so what's your deal?
The strange looking guy had asked me on the way up.
Just prefer silence to a ******* chatter I guess.

Whatever man.

He didn't seem to enjoy my reply and his leaving me alone for the rest of the trip was a pleasant reward  indeed.
Little early don't you think?

Another had asked as I broke out my flask and mixed the first of my drinks I like to think as
******* tolerance serum.
Well honestly being it's already ten in the morning I'm actually running late.

**** he's going to be wasted by the time we get there how ******* unprofessional.
I had met far to many of these self righteous ****** on many trips across the states and they all were the same.
To busy watching other's to even realize they had no place being in the company
of actual men  they were more like a annoying ex who nagged the **** out of you till you either said  shut the **** up *****!

Or just walked away silent as she rattled on a mental tornado in a self absorbed existence.

I rarely gave people like this my time let alone my thoughts.
For empty minded ******* could look to other halfwits to fill there heads.
me I had a hard enough time believing my own ******* to care about anyone else's.

It was a hour till my set   and as I knocked back a  luke warm beer in a first class *******
I had to think man I really should have chosen a less interesting career path.

But hell there were like almost ten people in dire need of some saving from the clutches
of candy *** humor and Lord help them if a improve group was around.

I staggered from my stool towards the door as the barkeep said.
Hey buddy need me to call you a cab to get home.
Home hell amigo I'm getting ready to clock in to work.

Maybe I could have chosen a more easy path.
But the drinks seem awful watered down driving a school bus.

Besides who would save the bored few from the family friendly
joke tellers of this world.

Till next time.

Stay crazy.
The scene was utter madness the good long fell to the boring and bland ***** that now I write apon.
Old faces had long since been replaced by these like button zombies.
Hey commenting is hard I could hear them amoungsnt all the other voices in my head.

And here I thought everyone had a opinion just like a *******.
The zombies were at the door my trusty Pub the one true place i could talk **** about the sites owner without getting banned and taken out back while being tortured having to read the darksides blog for hours listening to Yanni and Justin Bieber.
Good lord man its like starbucks and twatter   had a ******* baby and called it Hello.

My fellow comrades had long since left for higher ground or the nut house really finger painting and graham crackers are so overrated.
Trust me I know cause i have alot of crazy friends who told me so.
Im kidding its cause im ******* nuts  just when im off my meds that is did anyone hear that?

The like zombies just kept pushing that ******* button.
I mean really if it was a free drinks or a ******* button id get it folks.
Hell id probaly have corpral tunnel by now  duh that would kick ***.

Comments had fallen to the evil zombie button of doom.
And no matter were I turned I couldnt get away from it.
This write has fifteen comments.
No the **** it doesnt there ******* likes yes much like ****** the **** was spreading faster than
clap in ******* not that id know.

I couldnt take it any longer moving at the breakneck speed of drunken hampster who cant stay in the wheel
I was off.
To the land of no return the offices of the website inwhich ive annoyed the ***** outta for way to many years
no not facebook  I only go there to read **** that no one could give a **** less about.

Tina just eat a steak mmmm.
******* fasinating Tina!

Taking a long walk okay drive cause walking really screws with my drinking.
I made my way through the land of no return no not Canada.
To the center  of mount who gives a *****.
It was there at the gates of the mighty lair of the dark lord I stood flask in side pocket
The doors opened and as i walked in the empty room I was met by a huge flat screen
hmm must be where the staff watches **** or animal planet thoose animals are
total freaks.

But enough with the foreplay children.

A face appeared apon the screen.
So I see you've finally shown Gonzo   how dare you enter the fortress of the dark lord.
Well ya know the dark lord really needs some security I mean really who the hell keeps there fortress next to a bed bath and beyond?

Look you crazy ******* the anger hampster said .
They have some really great stuff oils and canddles  why me and my other half love it.
Hey did you all meet on a trip in the mountians where you were herding sheep.
Dam you Broke Back Mountian now  my wife really wonders what im up to on my fishing trips.
Thanks for ruining it for all of us.

Well Gonzo you may have  found my hidden fortress but never will you leave.
Yeah I will.
You cant!
Oh Yes I can !
Oh no you wont!
Yeah I will!
We continued this argument for what seemed like ages then finally after a canadian popstars ***** finally dropped it ended.
Duh I do have a life after all people.
Yeah I know but ****** I could if i wanted to.

So just  how do you expect to leave my frotress of doom.
Duh ******* through the front door.
You cant its locked .
Hey like i cant get outta places i dont belong  look i got outta rehab  no no no.
Talk about a ****** party  its almost as bad as my spelling yeah sometimes jokes hurt.

But I do gotta ask lord ***** for brains how do ya get all thoose likes
I mean people used to comment there arses off even me sure i cant remember what i said
but hell i was under the influence I know shocking right?

Okay you drunken ******* I'll let you know witness my geinus!
With that the dark lords fishing buddy  pulled back a curtan to reveil  a room full of
cracked out cyber monkeys all sitting in front of like buttons .
With every push theyd get yet another hit of some sort of fruit duh like monkeys like drugs
yeah you think being they throw there **** around and all but really there just mean ******.

Mr pickles just did a thousand likes.
****** someone needs to stop the insanity.
The evil dark lord laughed like a sinister women does usally when i mention ***.
I swear no wonder I use esscorts im kidding there just regular hookers.

And now Gonzo I reveil to you your own like button.
There at a small desk with my name written apon the table in what couldnt be magic marker dam little monkeys
they love to write **** or with it at least hay whatever floats your boat or tree im just saying.

Mr pickels  pushed the button on my desk a little slot opened up
and a ice cold beer and wild turkey chaser appeared .
******* kick ***  I mean how terrible.

The dark lord slash ****** with a heart of gold laughed his sinister laugh the monkey jumped up and down and played with thenselves  while listening to there God Justin Bieber.

Was All hope lost?
Will Gonzo a infamouse party hampster be able to turn down a free drink?

Will the dark lord win in his battle to **** the site and raise the money for his *** change?
Will MR Pickels finally finish his novel titled No **** A Life story written in all organic ink.

Will Justin Bieber finally fly into the side of a mountain!

Tune in next time hampsters to the shocking finally  Gonzo And The Like Button Of Doom.

Yeah it really ***** when ya dont get a happy ending just ask John Travolta.

Till next time hampsters stay crazy
Atrayee Nov 2012
Only if you knew…
How it bleeds inside
The baby born of blood and flesh
Just a hideous beast ruined by time.
Single dame- thousand names
Only if you knew,
How the ice burns my throat
How the wills and wants went cold…

Only if I knew,
What the skies hold for me
I didn’t touch the blade,
But the stains don’t fade away..
Why the contrition of yesterday
Still ****** my soul’s edges
Why the sweet reminiscences,
Still a gloomy haze?
Why the memoirs of divinity
Have turned in immoral disgrace?
Why the reaper can’t sing in its solace?
Thee heart keep running but lost in its pace
Why each passing moment moans for the albatross?

Only if we knew…
The curiosities of life
And anxieties open and wide
Don’t stop the eyes
Now open and searching life
Taking my chances,
Hiding my grievances
I risk the curve
Once was jilted and deserted from love
I bask in the glow, soak in the sun
Step out of the low
The Satan takes no pity
Leaves the beast with an impaired heart
Now the eyes are shut, the dark creeps in
The clouds come and lo! they win
The stars now astray in a veiled sky
Feeble and faint
Again leave the beast forsaken
But animal instincts they call it
It strives again..
Only if you knew…
Em MacKenzie Sep 2018
Bear with me, I need to gather up the nerve,
to completely shower you with the love that you deserve.
You're thinking how to best throw the ball into a curve,
and I'm sinking, drowning in the words I still reserve.

We're sailing through the air
like rose petals from your hair,
lining the path to a room we can not enter.
We're beautifully torn
but the petals lack the thorn,
but still they ***** me and I bleed;
beauty claims the role of my tormentor.

Live with me, I'm not sure I can do it on my own,
keep me breathing, if you got an extra lung to loan.
I've been seeing stars and speckles in this twilight zone,
this struggle's repeating, look at how damaged I am,
and how quick I've grown.

We're sailing through the air
like rose petals ripped apart bare,
leading us to a door we could never open.
Our connection was born
but the petals lack the thorn,
the ****** and cuts come from all left unspoken.

The bouquet of your skin has dissolved
and the stems stretch further than we admit.
If nothing is started, it can't be resolved,
and I'm holding baby's breath; my stomach a deep pit.

I'm trying to solve a puzzle of invisibility
but my hands are broken and I lack the ability,
to decipher if the hues of grass in the pieces change shade,
if there's a side that's greener or just shadows cast on each blade.

We're sailing through the air
like rose petals without a care,
leading us into a trap we can't escape.
I tried my best to warn
that the petals still had a thorn,
it just seems now that it's a different shape.
You see a few years ago
I was part of define fitness yeah
And I thought it was weird the way
They treated me
They wanted me to be a rich ****
They wanted me to sell my art
Basically on the road at trash and treasure
They pushed me around like I was a piece of meat mate
They didn’t care about my safety
They just wanted me to just
Enjoy being slim
Maybe I do but in my own way
Not drinking salty water or beef stock no way
Just eating the food I like you know oh yeah
You see it is hard to be like them
If they treat you like a rich ****
You know taking you out wiping
The poor man out of you
You see I had it made
Before I joined define fitness
I enjoyed doing things
And having fun yeah
Making me lift weights
Heavier than my own weight
Define fitness is an organisation
Full of rich ******
You see I had it best
Before I had them
I had to do two squats after one pull of vacuum
Eating everything with 10 shakes of salt on
Putting salt in my water
Like I am drinking out of the sea
I had it best
Before I had them
I could’ve broken my back
You see I was slack
I won an award but if I wasn’t good
The next session
He would say I will take your medals away
Which I think they are a bunch of rich ******
Sure it is good to exercise but mate
Were pushers
I hated them they made me feel like a ****
You you you
I had it best
Before I had before I had before I had them
Time after time I wanted to leave them
And go back to solo exhibitions in
The art hall
And not sell them at trash and treasure
Like a loser does
I had it best I really had it best
Before I ever had define fitness
Treating me like a rich ***** of an adult
And not just a nice adult I want to be
******* DEFINE FITNESS
really how sweet is the rose that ****** one to many times?
You know the one that wilts but never dies
thinking its over you go to see if its all rite
but how sweet is the rose that makes you cry
bring her some flowers
act like you love her
see if she wants to get back together
you've pricked her small finger
still her heart lingers
because what is a rose without its thorns
She reverts back to the written not spoken to speak
because to her feelings she hides them to keep
just to keep you around and to see your bright eyes
but how sweet is the rose that only ****** and never dies?
Simon Soane Sep 2015
Some people say they don't like social networking
on mobile phones,
"it distances us from human connection"
they bleat and moan,
"takes us away from natural converging,
curtails face to face ties from emerging,
subdues us in a swamp of technology,
this engagement with messaging is surely a folly."
And as they depart they say,
“give me a person over a mobile msg anyday.”
Now don't get me wrong eye to eye communing is amazing
and it's not the last reserve of a luddite to prefer tactile phrasing
or to think sweet nothings into a there ear is best
but that doesn't mean there is nothing in mobile caress.
Because you can meet someone at a festival, and feel a sweet spark
that thunders through the roaming larks
and then when you part after a few days
think, "oh, that was awesome, I enjoyed their ways,
they made me laugh and gave me jumping smiles,
****, it's a pity between us there are miles and miles."
But when you arrive home and charged up a message pings
"you back now?" I see it and start to feel sing.
So we take our phones and chat all the next day,
getting to know each other in a happy appy way,
giggling at your words, beaming at the next
growing through lightning at each little text,
learning more in these screen chats;
you go to lots of BBQs and love dogs and cats,
you dye your hair and are calamity stricken
your top fajitas are finger lickin,
you know Mandarin and are ace at Catchphrase
and you have an inclination for New York days,  
you can analytically discuss scenes from C Street,
you can charm the customers at a store meet and greet,
you can decipher the nuance in The Bistro goss,
you can put up with **** from ****** at Argos.
You have a mate who picks up Mark Ronson's pooch,
you've saved a big crustacean when been on a mooch,
you can relate a song to Odysseus using sheep to save his men
and watch Mr G the musical over and over again,
you stay up/get up to watch the Super Bowl,
you type faster than a thought on a roll,
you've danced with Pete Barlow's ship mate from Corrie,
you can drive a car and a van, I recks you could handle a lorry!
You have loads of friends and often verge on more dislocation,
I want to be near you, whatever the location.
I want to pull you out of a hat
and see you stand on my welcome mat,
see, mobiles are good because it's good to feel that.
But if some quantum physicists are to be believed, after perusing their hefty tomes,
somewhere in infinite there is a place with no mobile phones,
and a boom of synchronicity has to be carried on by pen on paper
and there are days and days tween a tumbling heebie jeebie butterfly caper,
and then it's sent with a hope that it won't be lost in the post,
and be not read, like a bottled message uncorked by the coast.
Maybe a letter and no phones is better for starting a fizz
but right now mobiles make this what it is;
if not for them would I feel this close to you?
Or be writing this to you?
Right now I like feeling close to you,
and I like writing this to you,
to you Lou.
Hi!  The middle part pertains specifically to a person I know but you get the gist!
Peace! x
Meteo Aug 2015
Myths

They were not statues
and now you see what they see
looking back at you


Man

Her tongue, was so sharp
dissevers men from their ******
kisses them goodnight!

Our blind date went well
Next time leave my mask at home,
and her eyes attached.

Scratched, stained, double locked.
Basement corner, light bulb off.
Refrigerator.

Won't let him hurt you.
I promise, now go and hide,
Daddy is coming...

I don't remember,
I keep having these blackouts.
Sorry I hurt you.


Movie

Make-out Point, moonlight...
Turn their car radio on,
leave my hook behind.

50 ft. Woman,
dreams of a fifty foot world.
Curse my two left feet.

Empty, shiny man
His axe hacks you limb from limb
You hear a heartbeat

Wound too tight, tied down
Whisper lies, impale your skull
What is a real boy?

"Last person on earth,
dif'rent faces in mirror."
- Frankenstein's Monster


Miscellaneous

appeared as a zit
it grew, no concern for it
it spoke! *******!

Lamprey fingertips
Coarse hair on infected tongue
Lotus seed ******

My beast sounds like love,
vanity to a monster,
hero to a ghost.

from Horrors Grotesque,
the existential monster
fears little carpals.
K Balachandran Dec 2011
Cactus,
you sadist--
****** and draws blood?
do it.
Jack Ghaven Nov 2014
I somehow enjoy the pain
Of countless needle ******
Like I love to watch the rain
As it falls on my window and sticks
The outcome worth the process
So much more than I can express
Tattoos and rain somehow went together in my brain when I sat down to write one day. Funny how the mind works.
dana green Aug 2013
Three years ago four words crossed the threshold of my ear lobes and hypnotized me into a comatose state. only to be awaken by the sound of their sweet puncturing i rewinded these words with hungry haste
rewind rewind
play
these words swan through my canals
  relaxed as they finally found a home once more;
a home they might have already unpacked in,
                                                            p­erhaps in another life.

As they peeled their cloaks and unfolded into the folds of my lobes they sighed with content,
for my revelation was their new beginning
finally finding meaning once again in a universe where you cant live if you don’t have money,
  a sick sweet sour fabricated fact that penetrates the core of their solar plexis
                                leaving them unholy when the money structure takes over
                                holy when thought towers once again

With the ability of a person to move forward these words do no harm inflated with hope perfection honesty, embracing a utopia,
a now reality that you cant find on your starched TV.

Three years ago four words locked in a brassy compass whispered to me change the way you dream the way you perceive and what you do everyday and make sure you let your feet drag the mud behind you as you tow through the thick swamps of hate on the uprising paddleboat plays of justice.

Without her stark voice without The wandering jewess, Jesus-like Judith playing spells on my ears life would not have found a place where it holds comfort in the tempest.
These words like a shelter are my umbrella
but no ordinary umbrella covers here no,
no this umbrella knows when to open its arms to pour oms down my neck when drops are warm like skin on skin
and sunshine is bold like in black and white stills.

When wine is under trees these words will reflect in the crystalline stream I found in my inner cosmos when I was fourteen.

The people will have risen and Cain will have been banished and lovers will still lie limpid and hungry for the words of the storm eyed woman to ring like bells in towers above their heads again.

They are looking for paradise but they don’t know they are already in paradise, paradise now, paradise is now
They are searching for the words they have already heard they just don’t know what has occurred and sweat drips down their stems as they run in their minds to the revolution that has already freed us from the legacy of Cain.
Not for all,
But for us.
      A revolution of the mind.

These words will wake up sleepers and make the banks run after the money no one cares about.
These words are almost too holy for me to say out loud in only one voice they play and in one voice they say,
“TO DO USEFUL WORK”
Those words sing like they are of the angels like they have wings
Those words take their homes not only in my folds by in the white blood cell donuts of my fingertips, defending me from the ****** that say art cannot be my food.

The wandering jewess, Jesus-like Judith carved those words out of freshwater pears for me to drape around my neck like the arms of an infant crossed over the nursing chest.
My fingers wrap around those words like they are the scripture they are the word of my god cleansed by the salt water winds of wooden ships rummaging for rapture and something more than themselves.


Sometimes, wanderers find a home when alphabet fingerprints find a match to their long lost story

And sometimes, the UV rays hit your lens just right so that you can pass through a prism and come out a rainbow

And sometimes, gumballs come out the color you want,

the one that you patiently cranked for.
Emma Dec 2018
I test the nib of the fountain pen against my finger,
Testing its sharpness, its edges.
Then I place the point against the pale moonlight of my flesh,
And push it slowly between two ribs, skin parting reluctantly.
I carefully work it deeper into the hole created by the head, the nib disappearing into the red secrets of my insides,
Rivulets of blood running past the smooth black edges, designed to be gripped comfortably, ergonomically while writing,
Red falling down past the grasping circle of my white skin.
The tip ****** my heart, still beating too slowly, too wounded, and with a twist blood fills the compartment made for ink.
I am made of paper white and ink black anyway.
Valsa George Jul 2017
In my yard stands a tree
tall and sturdy
lone like a hermit,
regal like an empress
her roots dug deep
her branches touching the heavens
peeking behind the skies veil
She has a coy dalliance with the Wind
Sometimes he comes tickling
her tender parts, whispering
sweet nothings in her ear
Overall she is still
Still....................
like waters without ripples

She stands upright
brooding over the saga of struggle
from a sapling to a towering giant
Indeed a tryst with destiny!

Under the summer sky
braving the smarting beams
she remained uncomplaining.
Below the thundering clouds
bearing a thousand needle ******
she stayed nonchalant.
When the wind swept across
bending her branches in all directions
she stood on firm feet unwavering.

She tells a tale of struggle and survival
She had stood there before I was born
Now she displays every scar and every stripe
on her knotted bark as a proud trophy

Sometimes I feel her pain
when wet and dripping in pouring rain
or scorched in the sun’s fiery rage
Yet she holds an umbrella over all
who come to her in sun and rain
This is a poem to highlight the beauty of trees and to show how they are important to each one of us.... Also the need to be like trees giving shade and shelter to others, holding an umbrella over many heads!
Cass Jan 2014
I think back to when everything was simple, when he was alive and we were all whole but then he broke us and we never fit back together.
Life used to be carefree tentative smiles and excitement over coffee shops and we all had so much potential and drugs were the plastic bottles in our bathrooms, taken with caution.
I think of how many friends i used to have, and how everything has been superficial since we all put ourselves in plastic boxes on unreachable shelves
These days I have no motivation and I want to see the sun. Happiness is as fleeting as the snow on the ground before the wind sweeps it up high above he trees.
I used to be the snow, and I didn't care where I landed. That's why I wasn't very surprised when he took advantage of my innocence and unstable hold on reality. But that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't still shudder when people come near me, or wonder if I look broken to them.
I see him in school and I remember his eyes, innocent, as they ask for forgiveness, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that he had taken the last thing that meant anything to me, or that he was the last straw when I made that fateful decision last year, or that I STILL wake up gasping from having nightmares starring him, or that he causes me to stay up late into the night feeling completely alone. That he stole my already feeble ability to say "no." But I'm wiser now, so I forgave him even though his arms felt like needle ****** when he hugged me.
Recovery is long, and some might say I'm not recovered at all. It's been a year but I still think about death every day. I'm in love, but I hate myself every second I'm not with him. But none of that matters, because now I know that I will always choose pain over oblivion.
I've found a delicate balance that can be destroyed by one gust of wind, but I'm trying to be better, and that's more than I've ever been able to say.
I don't want to say that a song saved my life but the song is his voice when he tells me he loves me, and the screams in my head when I don't want to continue, because at least I know I'm alive.
Sometimes I miss the people who have left me and the girl I used to be, but it's over now, and it's best not to dwell on things that I can never change. Because recovery isn't the number of days passed, but allowing time to heal you.
It's allowing yourself to feel better, because only you can give yourself that permission. It's learning to love yourself, and to accept everything in stride. But most of all, recovery is forgiveness.
Forgiving others for what they've done to you, but more importantly yourself, in any condition, the way the shore forgives the tide which leaves but always comes back for more, because the ocean loves the sand more than we can comprehend, and that's how we should all love ourselves: unconditionally and during all weather.
Alucinari Mar 2014
The bourgeoisie?
I loath them,
and I hope they buy my poems!
The critics?
They know nothing,
and I hope they hail my poems!
The intellectuals?
Dumber than pigeons,
and I hope they canonize my poems!
Unabashedly,
I'm not afraid to admit it:
I write for fame and riches,
and nothing really more.

Yes, yes, make no secret of it,
I wish only to shock you,
arouse and repulse you,
****** you,
with mindless,
gore-splattering violence,
and heart-throbbing ***,
along on every page.

****** and *****, gore, and blood,
how else are my sales to flood?
It's art for arts' sake,
or something to the effect of that,
whatever makes me edgy,
socially relevant,
to scholars postmodern,
housewives bored,
and teenagers yearning,
to read ***** words.

So keep it then in mind,
my lovely readers you,
I very much like infamy,
and piles of money too;
be sure to buy my books,
praise me,
“Fresh and new!”
So that I may hire cooks,
to save time writing verse,
the very verses you adore,
lambasting the very rich and poor.

Rampant materialism,
spiritual decay,
what else do you
*******
want me to say?
A saint of the lowly,
the offbeat too,
voicing the obscure,
and the unheard and the
blah, blah, blah,
whatever it is,
I really don't care
quite honestly,
bluntly,
I'm being true,
I write for the fame
and the riches,
not you!
Hopefully blatantly satiric. :)
Lendon Partain Mar 2013
I'm just getting in the bath,
Someone else wrote the letter,
I don't want to make a. Mess.

Draw me the water
I point at the tap
Burden no family
Hold my head under icecaps.

Merkel Cells, diluted sensation,
The end of fingertips cant feel your
Flesh.
Shriveling in the cold,
Shivering to stop freezing,
But I cant. What am I doing?
Can I want this now, errectores pilorum erected.
Have I set motion to,
Cogs in a watch I cant adjust.

my lungs mark absolute zero
this is me sitting in chemistry class
english
10th grade
asking sam to suffocate with me
every alvioli is pinned by ****** as thick as knitting needles
my chest is permafrost
my sternum, antarctica
the ribs hollow out
capillary beds lose all the haem
out of their erythrocytes

I'm losing St. Elmo's Fire.

The baths still panting out,
Water roars, gushing spout.
Proud the current sweeps me through,
The porcelain lining this white hell bathroom.
It's bone cannot hide from my blood,
As if I'm isotope 226 of Radium.
Heat seeking marrow.
My serum is Hodgkins Lymphoma,
Tearing through sheeting tile,
Like a young cancer child,
Afflicted,
Leukemia,
No chance,
No good blood left,
To let.


Soon, it will all be gone, and the rivers that
freeze in my arms, and the ribs that are icicles
form, and the atrial canal is not like Venice,
it is the Rhine in winter, the Volga during
the solstice.

Spring will never come again.
Spring slipped its head into the bath water, like my own.
This is about a movie i watched about a guy who wrote suicide notes for people, he said 30 percent actually do it.
Michael R Burch Mar 2021
MODERN SONNETS

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse and experimental sonnets.



Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch

There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her,
                                   and is not the same.
I revere her and enlist this sacred fire
to keep her memory’s exalted flame
unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.

On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles ...
They sleep alike—diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the “surgeons.”
                                               Sleeping, all.

Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
if accidents of coloration, gall
my heart no less.
                            Amid thick weeds and muck
there lies a rose man’s crackling lightning struck:
the only Rose I ever longed to pluck.
Soon I’ll bed there and bid the world “Good Luck.”

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, then by Voices Israel, Other Voices International, Verse Weekly, Black Medina, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Promosaik (Germany), FreeXpression (Australia), Poetry Super Highway, Inspirational Stories, Trinacria, Pennsylvania Review, Litera (UK), Yahoo Buzz, and de Volkskrant Blog (a Dutch newspaper)



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now—
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness—time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?—insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask—

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?

Published by Borderless Journal and SindhuNews (India)



Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.



The Composition of Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”—W. B. Yeats

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant, ...

sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze

that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.

Published by The Lyric and Contemporary Rhyme



Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem should be a wild, unearthly cry
against the thought of lying in the dark,
doomed―never having seen bright sparks leap high,
without a word for flame, none for the mark
an ember might emblaze on lesioned skin.

A poet is no crafty artisan―
the maker of some crock. He dreams of flame
he never touched, but―fakir’s courtesan―
must dance obedience, once called by name.
Thin wand, divine!, this world is too the same―

all watery ooze and flesh. Let fire cure
and quickly harden here what can endure.

Originally published by The Lyric

The ancient English scops were considered to be makers: for instance, in William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makiris.” But in some modern literary circles poets are considered to be fakers, with lies being as good as the truth where art is concerned. Hence, this poem puns on “fakirs” and dancing snakes.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden―
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray―

whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.
Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.

Originally published by Southwest Review



Marsh Song
by Michael R. Burch

Here there is only the great sad song of the reeds
and the silent herons, wraithlike in the mist,
and a few drab sunken stones, unblessed
by the sunlight these late sixteen thousand years,
and the beaded dews that drench strange ferns, like tears
collected against an overwhelming sadness.

Here the marsh exposes its dejectedness,
its gutted rotting belly, and its roots
rise out of the earth’s distended heaviness,
to claw hard at existence, till the scars
remind us that we all have wounds, and I ...
I have learned again that living is despair
as the herons cleave the placid, dreamless air.

Originally published by The Lyric



The City Is a Garment
by Michael R. Burch

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,―
the city is a garment stretched so thin
her festive colors bleed into the night,
and everywhere bright seams, unraveling,

cascade their brilliant contents out like coins
on motorways and esplanades; bead cars
come tumbling down long highways; at her groin
a railtrack like a zipper flashes sparks;

her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool
and from their cleavage winking lights enlarge
and travel, slender fingers ... softly pull
themselves into the semblance of a barge.

When night becomes too chill, she softly dons
great overcoats of warmest-colored dawn.

Originally published by The Lyric



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

Published by The Chariton Review (as “The Knitter”)



in-flight convergence
by michael r. burch

serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city                  extend
over lumbering behemoths shrilly screeching displeasure;
they say
that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command

here the streetlights that flicker
and those blazing steadfast seem one
from a                distance;
           descend?
they abruptly
part                    ways,

so that nothing is one
which at times does not suddenly blend
into garish insignificance
in the familiar alleyways,
in the white neon flash
and the billboards of Convenience

and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance
as we thunder down the enlightened runways.

Originally published by The Aurorean and nominated for the Pushcart Prize



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms ... she would say
that we’d loved, but some book said we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
by yielding all my virtue to her grace.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”



Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.

Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
blown far to the lees
as fierce northern gales sever.

Come down, or your hearts will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours and spring returns never.

I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, Byron, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Keats, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Shelley, Whitman, Wordsworth, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone.



Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They ***** to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair ...
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.



To Flower
by Michael R. Burch

When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.

We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?

The agave knows best when it’s time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes

in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,

she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

Published by The Chariton Review (as “The Knitter”)



Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed―
why should such tattered artistry be banned?

I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."

Originally published by The Chariton Review



The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

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.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Love Has a Southern Flavor
by Michael R. Burch

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...

Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations’ dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ...

Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



Redolence
by Michael R. Burch

Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.

Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.

And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.

Published by The Eclectic Muse



Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch

These are the narrows of my soul—
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.

Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.

Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned

why it is named:
Mare Clausum.



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron―
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful―
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.

If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax―their circumstance
as humble as it is?―or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?

Originally published by The Eclectic Muse



Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes―the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air―
too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ...
two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other―fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.



Huntress
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire

Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep
across a crevice dropping deep
into a dark and doomed domain.
Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane.
Rain falls upon your path, and pain
pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause
and heed the oft-lamented laws
which bid you not begin again
till night returns. You wail like wind,
the sighing of a soul for sin,
and give up hunting for a heart.
Till sunset falls again, depart,
though hate and hunger urge you―"On!"
Heed, hearts, your hope―the break of dawn.

Originally published by Sonnetto Poesia



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.

Originally published by The Lyric



Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets' wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:
to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,―
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs
seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun's pale tourmaline.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes―
I can almost remember―goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me
rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...

... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...

... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees ...

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...

... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” — W. B. Yeats

For all that we professed of love, we knew
this night would come, that we would bend alone
to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
an eerie presence on encrusted logs
we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.

The books that line these close, familiar shelves
loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.

I do not know the words for easy bliss
and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark,
long-unenamored pen and will it: Move.
I loved you more than words, so let words prove.

Published by Sonnet Writers, Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore) and Vallance Review (Canada)



how many Nights (i)
by michael r. burch

how many Nights we laughed to see the sun
       go
down ...
your hair a frightful, dizzy golden crown ...
your skirt up to your thighs, displaying these
and others of men’s baser fantasies ...
that little pouting flower, slightly parted,
with nothing intervening, nothing thwarted ...



how many Nights (ii)
by michael r. burch

how many Nights we laughed to see the sun
       go
down ...
because the Night was made for reckless fun.
Your golden crown,
Your skin so soft, so smooth, and lightly downed.

how many nights i wept glad tears to hold
You tight against the years.
Your eyes so bold,
Your hair spun gold,
and all the pleasures Your soft flesh foretold.

how many Nights i did not dare to dream
You were so real ...
now all that i have left here is to feel
in dreams surreal
Time is the Nightmare God before whom men kneel.

and how few Nights, i reckoned, in the end,
we were allowed to gather, less to spend.



Come!
by Michael R. Burch

Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?

When my womb has conformed to the chastity
your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,
will you finally be pleased that my *** was thus rendered
unpalatable, disengendered?

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so
have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow
with the approval of God that I ended a maid—
thanks to a *****?

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?

“Come!” won fifth place in the Writer’s Digest 2012 Rhyming Poetry Contest, out of over 9,500 overall contest entries.



This is a sonnet despite the nonstandard stanza breaks. It was inspired by Dylan Thomas's poem "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower."

There’s a Stirring and Awakening in the World
by Michael R. Burch

There’s a stirring and awakening in the world,
and even so my spirit stirs within,
imagining some Power beckoning—
the Force which through the stamen gently whirrs,
unlocking tumblers deftly, even mine.

The grape grows wild-entangled on the vine,
and here, close by, the honeysuckle shines.
And of such life, at last there comes there comes the Wine.

And so it is with spirits’ fruitful yield—
the growth comes first, Green Vagrance, then the Bloom.

The world somehow must give the spirit room
to blossom, till its light shines—wild, revealed.

And then at last the earth receives its store
of blessings, as glad hearts cry—More! More! More!

Keywords/Tags: poem, poetry, spring, stirring, awakening, spirit, power, force, grape, vine, wine, growth, bloom, blooming, blossom, blossoming



Herbsttag (“Autumn Day”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.

Published by Measure, Setu (India), The HyperTexts, 3 Penny Paintings and The Society of Classical Poets



Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.—Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl
                                              (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
                            It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
                                And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
                                     Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I’d reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush

my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.



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 joys are wan illusions 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.



The Forge
by Michael R. Burch

To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,

then bend this way and that, and slowly cool
at arm’s-length, something irreducible
drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool

of water so contrary just a hiss
escapes it—water instantly a mist.
It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ...

And then the driven hammer falls and falls.
The horses ***** their ears in nearby stalls.
A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles.

A sound of ancient import, with the ring
of honest labor, sings of fashioning.

Published by The Chariton Review


See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs,
and deepens on itself, as though mirth took
some comfort there, then burrowed deeply in,
outlasting winter. See how very thin
her features are—that time has made more spare,
so that each bone shows, elegant and rare.
For life remains undimmed in her grave eyes,
and courage in her still-delighted looks:
each face presented like a picture book’s.
Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes.



Flight 93
by Michael R. Burch

I held the switch in trembling fingers ... asked
why existence felt so small, so meaningless,
like a minnow squirming feebly in my grasp ...

... vibrations of huge engines thrummed my arms
as, glistening with sweat, I nudged the switch
to OFF ... I heard the klaxon’s shrill alarms

like vultures’ shriekings ... earthward, in a stall ...
we floated ... earthward ... wings outstretched, aghast
like Icarus ... as through the void we fell ...

till nothing was so beautiful, so blue ...
so vivid as that moment ... and I held
an image of your face, and dreamed I flew

into your arms ... the earth rushed up ... I knew
such comfort, in that moment, loving you.

Published by The Lyric



If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...

You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your ******* ...

Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...

Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.

Published by Romantics Quarterly



To Please The Poet
by Michael R. Burch

To please the poet, words must dance—
staccato, brisk, a two-step:
so!
Or waltz in elegance to time
of music—mild,
adagio.

To please the poet, words must chance
emotion in catharsis—
flame.
Or splash into salt seas, descend
in sheets of silver-shining
rain.

To please the poet, words must prance
and gallop, gambol, revel,
rail.
Or muse upon a moment—mute,
obscure, unsure, imperfect,
pale.

To please the poet, words must sing,
or croak, wart-tongued, imagining.

Originally published by The Lyric



The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...

Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...

“O, let down your hair!”—we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...

was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.

Published by Romantics Quarterly and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



Once

for Beth

Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name ...

Once when her ******* were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips would more wildly insist ...

Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant ...

Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed—
this impossible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.

Published by The Lyric, Writer’s Journal, Grassroots Poetry, Tucumcari Literary Journal, Unlikely Stories, Poetry Life & Times



These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone, not untouched.
And I am as they were—unsure—for the days
stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze.

Ah, faithless lover—that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart having leapt from the pinnacle of Love,
and the result of each such infatuation ...
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.



Oasis
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.



Melting
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous,
                     so bright,
                                                      so beautiful . . .
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.

Published by Borderless Journal



Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

The night is full of stars. Which still exist?
Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know.
For now I hold your fingers to my lips
and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow ...

once slow to match this reckless spark in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame ...

for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie
in dawning recognition is enough ...

enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.



All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.

[Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.]



A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the darkening autumn, how swiftly life goes—
as I fled before love ...
                                     Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.

I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the specter of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.

O, where are you now?—I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.

Published by Chrysanthemum and Tucumcari Literary Review



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.

Published by Sonnet Writers, Freshet and Sontey (Czechoslovakia)



At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch

“Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.

At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
—perhaps by God, perhaps by need—

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember,
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Published by The Lyric



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man’s tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men’s frozen genes convene ...
there is no answer—death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth’s “highest species”—
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.



Crunch
by Michael R. Burch

A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucous you scrounge from your nose
then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ...

You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere,
sometimes as you ****** encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan ***
and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic.

You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion
to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters:
surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information,
in order to ensure the survival of the species.

Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces;
their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium.
But your cranium
     is not nearly so adaptable.

“Crunch” is a poem about evolution and survival of the fittest which questions where human beings really are the planet earth’s most advanced life forms.



Duet (II)
by Michael R. Burch

If love is just an impulse meant to bring
two tiny hearts together, skittering
like hamsters from their Quonsets late at night
in search of lust’s productive exercise . . .

If love is the mutation of some gene
made radiant—an accident of bliss
played out by two small actors on a screen
of silver mesh, who never even kiss . . .

If love is evolution, nature’s way
of sorting out its DNA in pairs,
of matching, mating, sculpting flesh’s clay . . .
why does my wrinkled hamster climb his stairs

to set his wheel revolving, then descend
and stagger off . . . to make hers fly again?

Published by Bewildering Stories



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt ... I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.



Caveat
by Michael R. Burch

If only we were not so eloquent,
we might sing, and only sing, not to impress,
but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed.

We might inundate the earth with thankfulness
for light, although it dies, and make a song
of night descending on the earth like bliss,

with other lights beyond—not to be known—
but only to be welcomed and enjoyed,
before all worlds and stars are overthrown ...

as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face
and find it beautiful for emptiness
of all but joy. There is no thought to love

but love itself. How senseless to redress,
in darkness, such becoming nakedness . . .

Originally published by Clementine Unbound



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of wanting her himself, so much the lie
that she was meant for him—obscene illusion!—
made him seem a monarch throned like God on high,
when he was less than nothing; when to die
meant many stultifying, pained embraces.

She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces
that tied her to the earth: then she was his.
Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces
and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness—
her ghost beyond perfection—for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.

Published by Katrina Anthology, The Lyric and Trinacria



Every Man Has a Dream
by Michael R. Burch

lines composed at Elliston Square

Every man has a dream that he cannot quite touch ...
a dream of contentment, of soft, starlit rain,
of a breeze in the evening that, rising again,
reminds him of something that cannot have been,
and he calls this dream love.

And each man has a dream that he fears to let live,
for he knows: to succumb is to throw away all.
So he curses, denies it and locks it within
the cells of his heart and he calls it a sin,
this madness, this love.

But each man in his living falls prey to his dreams,
and he struggles, but so he ensures that he falls,
and he finds in the end that he cannot deny
the joy that he feels or the tears that he cries
in the darkness of night for this light he calls love.



Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch

I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
swirling together through Himalayan serene altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhaled breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness . . .

But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!

We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter there will be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.



Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch

With her small eyes, pale blue and unforgiving,
she taught me: December is not for those
unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings
who bicker for worms with dramatic throats

still pinkly exposed, ... who have yet to learn
the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour
their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned
fortress and impregnable bower

from which men must fly like improbable dreams
to become poets. They have yet to grasp that,
before they can soar starward like fanciful archaic machines,
they must first assimilate the latest technology, ... or

lose all in the sudden realization of gravity,
following Icarus’s sun-unwinged, singed trajectory.



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.



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



Elemental
by Michael R. Burch

for and after 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 whose scorching flame uplifts.



Premonition
by Michael R. Burch

Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each casual lover.

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their forced laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...

and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...

and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.

And we know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
carved out to stand like strange totems in sand
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...

You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking sagely above ...

Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.



Leave Taking (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Although the earth renews itself, and spring
is lovelier for all the rot of fall,
I think of yellow leaves that cling and hang
by fingertips to life, let go . . . and all
men see is one bright instance of departure,
the flame that, at least height, warms nothing. I,

have never liked to think the ants that march here
will deem them useless, grimly tramping by,
and so I gather leaves’ dry hopeless brilliance,
to feel their prickly edges, like my own,
to understand their incurled worn resilience—
youth’s tenderness long, callously, outgrown.

I even feel the pleasure of their sting,
the stab of life. I do not think —at all—
to be renewed, as earth is every spring.
I do not hope words cluster where they fall.
I only hope one leaf, wild-spiraling,
illuminates the void, till glad hearts sing.

It's not that every leaf must finally fall ...
it's just that we can never catch them all.



Because She Craved the Very Best
by Michael R. Burch

Because she craved the very best,
he took her East, he took her West;
he took her where there were no wars
and brought her bright bouquets of stars ...

The blush and fragrances of roses,
the hush an evening sky imposes,
moonbeams pale and garlands rare,
and golden combs to match her hair ...

A nightingale to sing all night,
white wings, to let her soul take flight ...
She stabbed him with a poisoned sting
and as he lay there dying,
she screamed, "I wanted everything!"
and started crying.



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.



Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official—zenlike Art—
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile becomes mock porcelain.

Till in the end, the smile alone remains:
titanium-based alloys undestroyed
with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains
of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed

us most about the corpses rectified
to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.



www.firesermon.com
by Michael R. Burch

your gods have become e-vegetation;
your saints—pale thumbnail icons; to enlarge
their images, right-click; it isn’t hard
to populate your web-site; not to mention

cool sound effects are nice; Sound Blaster cards
can liven up dull sermons, [zing some fire];
your drives need added Zip; you must discard
your balky paternosters: ***!!! Desire!!!

these are the watchwords, catholic; you must
as Yahoo! did, employ a little lust :)
if you want great e-commerce; hire a bard
to spruce up ancient language, shed the dust

of centuries of sameness;
                                             lameness *****;
your gods grew blurred; go 3D; scale; adjust.



Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



130 Refuted
by Michael R. Burch

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red ...
— Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Seas that sparkle in the sun
without its light would have no beauty;
but the light within your eyes
is theirs alone; it owes no duty.
And that flame, not half as bright,
is meant for me, and brings delight.

Coral formed beneath the sea,
though scarlet-tendriled, cannot warm me;
while your lips, not half so red,
just touching mine, at once inflame me.
And the searing flames your lips arouse
fathomless oceans fail to douse.

Bright roses’ brief affairs, declared
when winter comes, will wither quickly.
Your cheeks, though paler when compared
with them?—more lasting, never prickly.
And your cheeks, so dear and warm,
far vaster treasures, need no thorns.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

. . . quiescent unions . . . thoughts of bliss, of hope . . .
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars . . .
like childhood’s long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions . . . slip and bra . . .

Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare

to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.



Hymn to an Art-o-matic Laundromat
by Michael R. Burch

after Richard Moore’s “Hymn to an Automatic Washer”

O, terrible-immaculate
ALL-cleansing godly Laundromat,
where cleanliness is next to Art
—a bright Kinkade (bought at K-Mart),
a Persian rug (made in Taiwan),
a Royal Bonn Clock (time zone Guam)—
embrace my *** in cushioned vinyl,
erase all marks: ****, vaginal,
******, inkspot, red wine, dirt.
O, sterilize her skirt, my shirt,
my skidmarked briefs, her padded bra;
suds-away in your white maw
all filth, the day’s accumulation.
Make us pure by INUNDATION.

Published by The Oldie, where it was the winner of a poetry contest



If Love Were Infinite
by Michael R. Burch

If love were infinite, how I would pity
our lives, which through long years’ exactitude
might seem a pleasant blur—one interlude
without prequel or sequel—wanly pretty,
the gentlest flame the heart might bring to bear
to tepid hearts too sure of love to flare.

If love were infinite, why would I linger
caressing your fine hair, lost in the thought
each auburn strand must shrivel with this finger,
and so in thrall to time be gently brought
to final realization: love, amazing,
must leave us ash for all our fiery blazing.

If flesh’s heat once led me straight to you,
love’s arrow’s burning mark must pierce me through.



Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.

We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.

Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals “love’s” damaged images: its dreams ...
and ******* limply, screams and screams.



Renown

for Jeremy

Words fail us when, at last,
we lie unread amid night’s parchment leaves,
life’s chapter past.

Whatever I have gained of life, I lost,
except for this bright emblem
of your smile . . .

and I would grasp
its meaning closer for a longer while . . .
but I am glad

with all my heart to be unheard,
and smile,
bound here, still strangely mortal,

instructed by wise Love not to be sad,
when to be the lesser poet
meant to be “the world’s best dad.”



Late Frost
by Michael R. Burch

The matters of the world like sighs intrude;
out of the darkness, windswept winter light
too frail to solve the puzzle of night’s terror
resolves the distant stars to salts: not white,

but gray, dissolving in the frigid darkness.
I stoke cooled flames and stand, perhaps revealed
as equally as gray, a faded hardness
too malleable with time to be annealed.

Light sprinkles through dull flakes, devoid of color;
which matters not. I did not think to find
a star like Bethlehem’s. I turn my collar
to trudge outside for cordwood. There, outlined

within the doorway’s arch, I see the tree
that holds its boughs aloft, as if to show
they harbor neither love, nor enmity,
but only stars: insignias I know—

false ornaments that flash, overt and bright,
but do not warm and do not really glow,
and yet somehow bring comfort, soft delight:
a rainbow glistens on new-fallen snow.



Over(t) Simplification
by Michael R. Burch

“Keep it simple, stupid.”

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful,
or comforting, or horrifying. Move
the reader, and the world will not reprove
the idiosyncrasies of too few lines,
too many syllables, or offbeat beats.

It only matters that she taps her feet
or that he frowns, or smiles, or grimaces,
or sits bemused—a child—as images
of worlds he’d lost come flooding back, and then . . .
they’ll cheer the poet’s insubordinate pen.

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful.



The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,

when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,

when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...

There is no dismaler time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears

beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.

Keywords/Tags: modern, sonnet, sonnets, free, verse, song, traditional, romantic, romanticism, art, artisan
He smelt like smoke
as he leaned away from me,
texting himself with my phone.

We left the campfire outside,
in our shoes by the door
our socks overlapped in a tangle of limbs.

In that leftover guest room,
on the bottom bunk of the microwaved bed,
I remembered why I thought I knew what love was.

He was tired and needed a nap,
I was restless and cold.
Trapped inside because of violent temperate rainstorms.

This boy owed me stubbed toes,
thorn ****** through my jeans,
nicknames and rubber soles.




This was the boy who had always smelt of smoke,
who knocked over dead trees for me,
who lied about being able to rock climb.

This was the boy who went swimming in the ocean
before summer had properly began
when it was still much too chilly.

I taught him a new card game,
he beat me at badminton.
We played capture the flag and threw pinecones.

We sold cookies on the side of the road,
ate dusty blackberries,
traded innuendos and bad jokes.

This was sea-urchin boy,
slug boy,
the boy with the bird's nest hair.




This boy grew taller,
dropped his voice like a used bus pass,
looked past the top of my head.

He laughed when i stepped in a mud puddle,
dared me to walk in bare feet.
This boy suddenly went mountain biking.

I talked extra loud, in hopes that he would overhear me,
offered him rootbeer straight from the can.
Ate pretzels and learned to read his mind.

We shared our childhoods like penny candies,
switching all the peach ones for strawberry.
we agreed these are the best years of our lives.

He layed beside me, underneath as many covers as we could find,
taking up too much space and he knew it.
my cartoon boy.




My hand-drawn boy,
With smoke coming out of his ears
moved away.

We didn't talk again
svdgrl Apr 2014
Here is a thimble.
Your finger is protected from ******,
when sewing a passionate garment.
Yet the blood of a tailor,
is a blessing in dark garb.
Discard metal and thread carelessly.
My skirt is wine red and parched.
JM Romig Apr 2015
I
The phone was screaming in my pocket
its voice was muffled by the pile of clothes
on top of it

The hotel water was almost too hot
it blushed my scalp
and cascaded down my face
in a way that should have felt like baptism
but didn't

After what felt like an eternity
the call went to the black hole
that is my neglected voicemail
now at over a hundred missed calls

I didn’t want to talk
not to Dad, not to Mom,
not to my fiancé,
and definitely not to some reporter
trying to make our ****** up family
the topic of the nine o’clock news

II
The pipes in the wall
clunked around for a second
as I turned the ****, cutting the water off
I stepped out of the shower
somehow feeling less clean than when I entered

For a moment I stood there,
towel over my head
in complete darkness

I closed my eyes and saw him
standing across from me
his eyes, locked with mine
dad’s gun in his shaking hands -
pointed directly at my head
unblinking, full of hatred, anger
and fear

They’ll call him a monster
and knowing what he’s done,
I won’t be able to say they’re wrong

III
Sympathizers will say that the divorce
messed him up somehow
or that he inherited our mother’s mental illness
or that he played too many first person shooters –
which is just ******* stupid

Lying on the hotel bed,
I nakedly examined the ceiling
mapping out the distance between water stains
like a cartographer

The last time he called me
he was in tears,
because some ****** from his school
beat him to a pulp
and shoved his face in dog ****

I can’t help but dwell
on something I said to him that night:

“People like that don’t change
they become ******* adults
and keep kicking people around
because they can
Because they’re rich and we’re poor
and they don’t want to see people like us
we remind them that the world isn't perfect
and doesn't revolve around them”


I don’t want to believe
that I planted the seed,
that the one time he listened to me –

IV
Six people died
most of them, kids no older than seventeen
one teacher, and a janitor - tagged by a stray bullet
two kids have been in critical condition
for the last three days

He must have been terrified
in those last moments
before the cops riddled him with holes

He must have regretted it
or at least regretted
not having an escape plan

He never did think things through
unlike me,
connecting the countries on the ceiling
drawing imaginary lines
of cause and effect
and trying to figure out what it means
to be a big brother
in the absence of a little one
Napowrimo 4-7
Thomas Newlove Oct 2016
The world needs a hero.
Someone who can steer us
In the right direction.

The world is ******,
Out of luck, divided by factions,
Borders, rules, laws and orders,
Created by selfish *****.
***** politicians.
Men who treat human beings like fractions. Corrupt.
The kind of over-the-top villains you read about in comic books.
Or maybe it came to be by the Almighty all-seeing ****.
Another dastardly, ******* who is as ridiculous as he sounds or the world looks.
Who decides who lives or dies like a dictator murdering for sport or kicks.
He (because it's always a "he") picks which child kicks the bucket
And which rich, white man gets the luck.

The world needs Batman.
Not a bad man with a bad plan
To rid the world of different colours, customs, looks.
We don't need several bland, blonde shades of white.
We need the Dark Knight.
Someone to fight and rid the Joker from his rise.
Someone to take back what was taken, what they took.
Bad jokes everyday that make you choke
On the water that you **** as you watch the morning news.
A fish dangling on the media's hook.
You can't breathe but contradictorily you can't help but be amused
At the crazy things he's said or done.
The media controls our mind, our thoughts.
We've been bought by the capitalist system that we took
To be our salvation.
We need to look forward as one world, one nation
And fix all the massive cracks and little nooks.
And pray that when it's time he doesn't win.
And pray that the Earth doesn't reject it's kin,
By punishing the people who did it wrong.
We need to learn from our perpetual mistake song
And act before the world dies
When big business lies, and the waters rise,
And we continue to drive and live off burgers and meat pies.

We need a hero who can fix the mess
Who looks like Christian Bale or Adam West,
Who can fight for human rights and save the day,
And still have time for dinner by candlelight
With ladies without groping them for kicks
For not all men exclusively think with their *****.
Just the ones with big egos, small brains and smaller ******.

So we need action, we need a plan!
Some way to finally stick it to the Man.
A way to fix environmental disaster,
A way to feed the starving and the masses
Without death and destruction fattening our *****
And eating up the planet on a platter.
We need to find a way to cure disease
And stop the greedy, bring them to their knees
And act to put our collective minds at ease.

So what's my grand suggestion for this plan?
When you vote, you vote with what feels right
Not what's comfortable or written on a t-shirt -
At first it could be difficult and may hurt,
But it's essential for the future to be bright.
Look to the skies at every possible night,
And give the stars and clouds a thorough scan,
And when you find that eerie, striking, stark light
That issues the coming of a dark knight
Make sure you give your vote to Batman.
Bit of a rough beat-poem. I got the idea from a tweet that said: "Clowns terrorising the street. A real life billionaire villain running for president. We need you Batman"
Bill Oct 2011
Ever see two sappy ****** in the a park holding hands no ******* clue there on the verge of sugar coated
insanity that twisted mind **** known as love.
Yeah you ignore all the warnings of sanity ***** it im in love!

You just cant get enough of each other you **** like two rabbits
and it's perfect but thats never good enough the way it is.
Oh **** no cause then after you sample ya gotta commit  and unlike suicide
there isnt a happy ending.

Then one of you starts to wonder hey ya think are they cheating?
Well if they are tahn im sure as hell going to!
Like two kids you have to out do the other.

Hey I ****** your sister!
Yeah well I ****** your brother and your ******* cousin.
Yeah now it makes sense why he's been so dam happy.

Love is the poisen that ***** up the pie children like it or not it is.
It's like the sober ***** at the party who usedto be fun till he found Jesus
or some other superhero and wants to tell you how better his life is now.

When all truth the guy wants to crack you over the head steal your beer
but his head between a pair of big ***'s and say **** being sober lets drink till we hit the floor.

Yeah sure you may think Im a ***** and that love is everything thjat makes this marble roll.
Yeah and if thats so Santa Claus is coming to town and he's bringin Elvis and Tupac and there
gonna have ******* with  Lady Ga Ga   While ****** Doo films it.

Love does exist of course.
Sure I see the old farts who been togather for so long they dont even have to tell
each other how much they dislike the other.

Love is a moment nothing more.
And like red wine in the hand of some old lush you just pray
it doesnt get spilled on the carpet cause it's hell to get out.

But for the young and horney out there enjoy the fun that happens befor that
std kicks in  cause kids sometimes love hurts and really ****** burns.
Pedro Tejada Apr 2010
I was once God's Picasso painting
(the Guernica era).
Chuck Jones' illustration
of the tortured artist,
laid out like Wile E. Coyote
on a bed of scalding rocks
and a white flag screaming "SURRENDER"
clenched with both palms.

If it were feasible,
I'd have dove head first
into the smoky center of the sun
if it meant my audience understood
the shrieking woes I had to bellow through
to reach their overwhelmed palates.

But Tragedy is the sitcom foil
that has long outstayed its menopausal welcome,
and I would much prefer a haunting.

To Hell with those
who repulse the flies with
the vinegar of exploitation,
gawking as their spit seeps
through seven layers of collected scars,
who ventilate the wrists
to keep the audience comfortable.

Real aesthetic power
comes from a shower
of light hail on the spine,
the moments a ghostly hand
****** you on the finger
with quietly hidden truths
always whispered from a field away.

It's far more bracing,
the lump in the throat,
not the electrical gasp of shock.

It's a far greater sign
of a forthcoming apocalypse,
the angel weeping in pain,
not the footsteps
of the wailing banshee.

The wisp
over the wallop.
Hannah Sep 2020
The thing that's annoyingly tragic is,
This cactus has plenty of adjectives,
So why can't I rhyme,
Like I do all the time,
And find myself right where the magic is?

I can't figure out a limerick,
About a cactus and its ******,
God-**** it, it's stumped me,
I've been trying for centuries-
Or has it just been a few minutes?
For practice, I've been writing limericks about random objects. This is what I came up with for a cactus.
Egalad Apr 2014
I tried to tint my hair red to light this night
But it is dull and stringing out amidst my plant-stained fingers
I tried to dissolve away the lines upon my skin to glow with luminosity
But they are wedged deep and have left gouges of pin-****** behind
I tried to exhume the dead and the dry from my face to better breathe
But instead it filmed over stinging and suffocates

I tried to forget you in order to be free of this
But I am not cleaned of you so easily.
Peanut Jul 2015
A toast! let's celebrate!
It's time to commemorate
As I demonstrate
And iterate
******* friends that I'd love to hate

Those ******* ******
With their bags full of tricks
They throw stones and sticks
Like ******* lunatics

They're bullies on steroids
What to expect?
Break my bones, calls me names
With no signs or ounce of respect

**** them
and their memes
**** them
by all means
**** them
those merciless machines
And **** them
in between

So let's toast! let's celebrate!
For this poem that I create
A tribute has been made
To my ******* friends I love to hate
Tribute to all ******* friends out there :)

— The End —