"sickled" poems
We gathered our water
and packs at daybreak
to hike hand in hand
toward the distant ruin—
a tall stone chimney planted
on otherwise empty acreage,
a kudzu-covered tower,
the ghost of a farmhouse
now a home to field mice,
black beetles and bats,
with bricks the color
of weathered blood,
vertebrae stacked
a century and a half ago
by a stonemason’s craft,
still solid and bonded
despite the slow decay
of arthritic mortar.
How long have we
walked together?
The morning
is all we have
left to ponder.
We walk for hours;
the chimney grows
larger at our approach.
I want to ask you
a question about
the night we met,
what you said
just before I held
you for the first time,
but then I catch sight
of my hand and realize
I am walking alone,
moving inexorably
toward a ruination
of my own making.
How could I have been
so careless? Unable
to stop, every step
strips something away:
my hair thins and falls,
as white and weak
as sickled wiregrass;
another step and my
body atomizes into
the stuff of stars,
pollen scattered
on a rising wind.
So this is what it
feels like to decay.
By the time I reach
the ruin I am mostly
cinder and ash,
a sorry vestige
sown in a quiet field,
a forgotten landmark
that strangers will visit,
if only to contemplate
how the evening fog
spindles like smoke
along the enduring
column of my spine.
Feb 9, 2017
Feb 9, 2017 at 4:30 PM UTC
Vivid forget me nots feign sleep,
their tired eyes tinged pink.
The soap and chlorine
at Lyme Regis bay
doth stand to make me think
About the way the rushes grow
and what lurks amount the reeds,
what gently dazzles
behind closed doors
and what we doth concede.
Is the laurel leaf unfathomable?
Is nature that way too?
For I feel that I don't understand
what every body seems to.
The humbled bumbles rumbled buzz
Satin saints upon our door
We wonder what was here,
And what was there before.
The streaming stained glass
waterfalls, were they always there?
The sickled moon stands amorous,
clotted clouds about his hair.
Stately sit the beaded stars
in a wash of sky,
And still I sit, Still I sit,
Sit and wonder why.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM UTC
It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch
If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;
if shadows fly
the sickled sky,
while children toss their heads
uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!
If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;
if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams
of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!
If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise
to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,
while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies . . .
it's Halloween!
Keywords/Tags: Halloween, graveyard, shadows, sickle, moon, witch, witches, goblins, serpents, spirits, ghosts, sibyls, Devil
Apr 5, 2020
Apr 5, 2020 at 5:32 AM UTC
The throne of a metropolis is on the far side
atop the lake
that wrinkles the sun,
beneath a mountain
green with sickled pines;
The people use their boughs as scythes.
The people use trees to cut down
more and more,
and burn whatever's too pesky
to stick around.
In a backyard of a house in the suburbs
people get bored playing cards,
watching tv,
getting drunk in the evenings.
They party like pagans going crazy
over a peerless future,
and an impermanent past.
Sometimes a new bonfire is started
where the old one died,
sometimes the old one will flare up
and scorch the sky beautiful;
a smoky curtain on which the tongues of stars
can make good on all the promises
made on them.
And people kiss around the fire.
Hug,
make up,
joke.
The sealed souls of the people open.
At the end,
they regret it.
This newness of life.
They swing their wooden scythes at the night,
still furry and wet
with bark and sap,
cursing god in fury, fury, fury,
trying to cut down the stars too.
These people that take and destroy,
they whittled the throne of the Metropolis
out of ivory from Africa.
Aug 25, 2012
Aug 25, 2012 at 12:33 AM UTC
*Let me not to the intuit of true poetry
Cast aspersions. Art is not art
When it conceit finds,
Or bends with public senses
To be misused:
Oh, no! Tis an unfinished tome,
Of written prose fixed on ink and stone,
A beacon for generations to behold
Spoken for itself
And never owned.
Verse and prose yield not
To times whims,
Though ink stained digits
Decay within
Her sickled blade
Reduceth all to dust.
Our compulsion alters not
With her frigid certainty
But endures it out, even
To the edge of eternity.
If this timeless effort 'folly,'
And upon me proved,
I have never lived
Nor no one ever
Truly mused.
~~~*
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 15, 2014 at 11:58 AM UTC
Don't speak to me of those droughted days
when you reigned over me for twenty years.
Your dark clouds planted themselves
above my garden like seeds wanting
to rebirth a strangled youth.
I sickled down row after row:
your bindweed, your choke pear.
Purple flowers strung about my neck;
those bitter fruits, I swallowed whole:
a peck of yoke, two bushels of anguish.
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 4:18 PM UTC
came you pinkly curving over curving rush
by flaming lipped in sleeping flowers
the aching stem; the caving hush
from easy darkness there sloping towers,
the falls deeply leaning on pelvis *******
moonlight coiling rolls and peaks
a column steaming at each terminal's cleft
whose each glowing timber cloyingly reeks
of my wreak, and the uncarefullest youth
who the stupid *** of creaking motion
is frailty distilled in instant truth
and mocks, by beauty, the immortal ocean
toward ecstatic dying we slowly leap
from the sickled moon where darkness creeps
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 4:36 AM UTC
carnal lightening reaped my brain in verves of
sickled fever, emotion sloughing clean
my tortured psyche.
and who was I to challenge
this narcotic self ablution –
yet, what of my resolve to linger
undisturbed
in bias mental disarray?
pathetic hypotheticals
engorged my blood
as nothing new.
the tension burning scars within this
manic unenlivened carcass
grew until
my hybrid self assaulted what was once
unfailed but often wrong integrity
as swifter than a scarlet blade
my conscience was absconded
to a heaven: peace, release, and ease.
had I commanded armies to retreat?
my palsied mind
was finally worth its ****** ground
and tissues thick with matters
fed on independence
lost among the strain.
I must remember where I left my genius.
Jul 11, 2015
Jul 11, 2015 at 8:05 PM UTC
at the top
of the National Museum,
there is a bed of Highland Gorse,
tamed by a rope of metal, and
given Latin names.
***** moon white branches
barely hold
sickled leaves which
fall into gloam drenched soil.
transplanted, and
awkwardly placed,
between two concrete slabs,
it looks and sounds alien to the city.
displaced, amongst the dull
incomprehensible squeal of
tourists and gulls, the heavy
roar of dim traffic, muted
bagpipes and the occasional
camera click.
looking upwards,
the shallow blue north
of an uncluttered sky,
and the thin
uneven line of an aircraft,
divided in two.
Mar 25, 2018
Mar 25, 2018 at 3:43 PM UTC
today i listen farther to music almost nearer
at the sickled median
of fluff and ice
and
"shhh",
Apr 8, 2011
Apr 8, 2011 at 7:43 AM UTC
I the lonely meadowlark
Perched upon the thistle
Waiting the sickled mower to pass
I the cracked egg
Fetal heart slowing, slowing
Death before the hatchling birth
I the hare crouchant
Scarce aware the shadow’s dive
Screeching beneath the talons
I the wind-torn tree
Branches scattered, bleeding sap
Beetles explore the shredded bark
I the fawn uncertain
Edging the splattered highway
Mother shattered in the lane
Jul 29, 2021
Jul 29, 2021 at 11:47 PM UTC
when
kramnik
defeated topalov
there were riots
in the streets
of elista
elated crowds
spilled into
the squares
convulsing
to crown
a new king
wild to be
the first in line
to dine
as they do
on caviar
and *****
oh the stories
that were born
of that evening
when order
was eventually restored
and all the pieces
carefully returned
to their proper colors
a slow white moon
sickled through the evening sky
Oct 14, 2024
Oct 14, 2024 at 11:29 PM UTC
have you ever slept slowly,
holding all hand to hand,
savouring the softness,
dark of night.
they say there is a new moon,
i saw it sickled, bright. they say
that all will come right, while somethings
are wrong.
have you ever slept late,
not minding at all, that
things move slowly.
have you ever checked the date,
to see that time has passed
quite slowly.
sbm.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 2:58 AM UTC