Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Gentle raindrops fall like velvet kisses
On my windowpane
As I look at shooting stars while making wishes
I hope come true once again

The moon above shines down on me
With his lovely face
Sometimes I wish that I could fly
Up there and take his place

This world is spinning round I know
A bit too fast for me
At times I wish it would slow down
Before its face I leave

Last of all I make this one wish
Upon a star or two
To hold you in my arms once more
And tell you I love you
Copyright *Neva Flores @2010
www.changefulstorm.blogspot.com
www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/HerVigil
Angie Sea Nov 2011
I stepped in from the door frame
And the zap delight
As the scattered light
Through the not quite transparent windowpane
Hid upon us
And my eyes caught
A gentle rain tear
Trickle over the modest curve of your lips
Lifted me
louis rams May 2014
The torrential rains kept coming down
Playing its melody on the cold hard ground
It sounded like the pitter pater of tiny feet
As I watched from my kitchen seat.
Then I saw and heard the raindrops against my windowpane
Adding another musical note to the game.
Then came the whistling of the wind
And everything started to blend in.
It was a symphony from the heavens above
So we could hear all of GODS love.
I sat in total awe of this splendor that I saw
Even in the darkest hour, the LORD will show his mighty power.
What greater gift to man – then when he shows his helping hand.
051614
Livi M Pearson Feb 2016
She stared past the windowpane
Studying the rain drops
As if she was outside
Floating along the puddles
She would jump in as a kid
Smiling as if the clouds would part
But now
She feels each rain drop
Gently graze her cheek
As she remembers
The black umbrella on the pavement
And her heart staining the concrete red
Causing a path to open wide
And her strength to override

And she remembers
The long beep
The white halls
The blurry vision
As the words repeat
"Shes gone"
The blue eyes she adored
Trying not to let go of her
As they slip to dream forever

She remembered
Her dreams
A poets dream
To never forget
The ink spots
And how she loved
To sing the words
The watery words
The flowed down her soul like rivers
Drowning her in blues
That formed the sky she looked upon daily

The windowpane was the only place
Where she could see
The other side of the smile
The other side of free

A place where she could remember
What she chose to forget
Inspired by my brother joe
e Jul 2014
So you've decided to cut your losses
leave here before it gets any more complicated
and you know I won't stand in your way
love should be voluntary
not a war,
not something I should have to earn
not something I should have to win.

So before you leave,
before you stumble out that door
won't you say something hurtful
make it sting to the core
say something that will singe
and leave a mark on my heart.

Because one day
should melancholy
unexpectedly
breathe life to your memory
I don't want to regret
the ghost of someone
who was gone too soon
like breath
lost on the windowpane of my soul.
Brad French Mar 2017
Rain falls quietly on my windowpane
Drowsiness overtake my own sedation
Truthfully I'm lost dropping down in vain

Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime
Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime

Yet finding peace in time
Is dropping down softly
For you and me to enjoy in summer time

Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime
Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime

Whatever happens during the storm
I'll be there, and I mean no harm
Listen to Zeus's masterful charms

Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime
Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime

Oh rain falls quietly on my windowpane...
Scribing  my pains away into the night
Charmed by the God of Rain

Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime
Clouds cry sometimes
Often sublime in a lifetime

Don't worry loved one
Your not the only one
Oh, listen to the rain, its begun
Well here's a new form I rarely use. Lyrics are quite new to me.
Sam Conrad Feb 2014
My tears run down
My face
Like
Rainedrops down
A windowpane
This is more like windowpain,
st64 Apr 2013
1.
'Prayer is a free outgoing call to G-d
No battery,
No charging,
No network problems.

Always a good signal
Endless talk-time.'
So, keep praying ...and

Happy Day!



2.
Does your heart really have to break a little before you can do anything creative?

But first, to curb dismal overflow
Yes.....

I must soar......



3.
There's no rider on a white horse here
Lament not rain on your windowpane
Would you mind if I told you that....I

What means a room full of flowers?


Wakey-wakey...

                          :(too late):

feelingfaint....



4.
Thank you for keeping on your lighthouse
For closing the door (gently) in my face
For helping me reach (some) rescue
For teaching me my place
For reminding me.....

Yes, you may.
Bye now, no more words from me.


Yeah, Happy Day.
In-deed!




S T, 25 April 2013
Does the heart really have to....?

Let's pray, shall we :)
Michael R Burch May 2020
When I Was Small, I Grew
by Michael R. Burch

When I was small,
God held me in thrall:
Yes, He was my All
but my spirit was crushed.

As I grew older
my passions grew bolder
even as Christ grew colder.
My distraught mother blushed:

what was I thinking,
with feral lust stinking?
If I saw a girl winking
my face, heated, flushed.

“Go see the pastor!”
Mom screamed. A disaster.
I whacked away faster,
hellbound, yet nonplused.

Whips! Chains! *******!
Sweet, sweet, my Elation!
With each new sensation,
blue blood groinward rushed.

Did God disapprove?
Was Christ not behooved?
At least I was moved
by my hellish lust.

Does God judge human beings for the ****** desires he presumably gave them? Is the purpose of religion called Christianity to torture us for being human with human lust, passion, and desire? At puberty do the gates of hell and damnation swing wide open for us? Keywords/Tags: God, religion, Christ, Christianity, lust, passion, desire, hell, damnation, puberty, mrbigrew mrbgrew



Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

I came up with this epigram after reading the Bible from cover to cover at age eleven.



who, US?
by michael r. burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there's no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of "no Room! "
and Puritanical scorn...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same —
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame...

"who's to blame? "

In the poem "US" means both the United States and "us" the people of the world, wherever we live. The name "jesus" is uncapitalized while "Room" is capitalized because it seems many evangelical Christians are more concerned about land and not sharing it with the less fortunate, than the teachings of Jesus Christ. Also, Jesus and his parents were refugees for whom there was "no Room" to be found. What would Jesus think of Christian scorn for the less fortunate, one wonders? What would Jesus think of people adopting his name for their religion, then voting for someone like Trump, as four out of five evangelical Christians did, according to exit polls? Keywords/Tags: Jesus Christ, children, abuse, hypocrisy, Christian, Christianity, religion, USA, racism



A Child's Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don't bring me toys, or games, or candy...
just... Santa, please...
I'm on my knees! ...
please don't let Jesus torture Gandhi!



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and Plunder?

For he'll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



***** Nilly

for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life's a pickle, dilly.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you'll not act illy.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly?



Red State Religion Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

I’d like to believe in your LORD
but I really can’t risk it
when his world is as badly composed
as a half-baked biscuit.



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see...



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u'd blaspheme if u could
because ur God's no good,
but of course u cant:
ur just a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant) .



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He's lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that's His fashion.

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he's a sinner;
give up ***, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.

In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man's Ego, precipitous Peak! ,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably.

Originally published by The Chimaera and Lucid Rhythms



Evil Cabal
by Michael R. Burch

those who do Evil
do not know why
what they do is wrong
as they spit in ur eye.

nor did Jehovah,
the original Devil,
when he murdered eve,
our lovely rebel.



I've got Jesus's face on a wallet insert
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

I've got Jesus's face on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt.
And I uphold the Law,
for Grace has a Flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.

I've got ten thousand reasons why Hell must exist,
and you're at the top of my fast-swelling list!
You're nothing like me,
so God must agree
and slam down the Hammer with His Loving Fist!

For what are the chances that God has a plan
to save everyone: even Boy George and Wham! ?
Eternal fell torture
in Hell's pressure scorcher
will separate **** from Man.

I'm glad I'm redeemed, ecstatic you're not.
Did Christ die for sinners? Perish the thought!
The "good news" is this:
soon my Vengeance is His! ,
for you're not the lost sheep He sought.



jesus hates me, this i know
by michael r. burch

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
"little ones to him belong"
but if they use their dongs, so long!
yes, jesus hates me!
yes, jesus baits me!
yes, he berates me!
Church libel tells me so!

jesus fleeces us, i know,
for Religion scams us so:
little ones are brainwashed to
believe god saves the Chosen Few!
yes, jesus fleeces!
yes, he deceases
the bunny and the rhesus
because he's mad at you!

jesus hates me—christ who died
so i might be crucified:
'cause if i use my **** or brain,
that will drive the "lord" insane!
yes, jesus hates me!
yes, jesus baits me!
yes, he berates me!
Church libel tells me so!

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
first Priests tell me "look above, "
that christ's the lamb and god's the dove,
but then They sentence me to Hell
for using my big brain too well
and understanding half the Bible
(if god is love) is clearly libel.
yes, jesus hates me!
yes, jesus baits me!
yes, he berates me!
Church libel tells me so!



lust
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god's creation
then spoke for the Beast:

he called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne'er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
"the ***** jezebel."

my sweet passions condemned
by ungenerous men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, "yay, aye-men! "...

together we learned why Religion is hell.



Tillage
by Michael R. Burch

What stirs within me
is no great welling
straining to flood forth,
but an emptiness
waiting to be filled.

I am not an orchard
ready to be harvested,
but a field
rough and barren
waiting to be tilled.



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.



Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and white is white
and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

A madman does not choose his words;
they come to him:
the moon's illuminations,
intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now,
and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell,
and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen,
or cut off your ears,
for I Am weary.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.



Love is her Belief and her Commandment
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love is her belief and her commandment;
in restless dreams at night, she dreams of Love;
and Love is her desire and her purpose;
and everywhere she goes, she sings of Love.

There is a tomb in Palestine: for others
the chance to stake their claims (the Chosen Ones),
but in her eyes, it’s Love’s most hallowed chancel
where Love was resurrected, where one comes
in wondering awe to dream of resurrection
to blissful realms, where Love reigns over all
with tenderness, with infinite affection.

While some may mock her faith, still others wonder
because they see the rare state of her soul,
and there are rumors: when she prays the heavens
illume more brightly, as if saints concur
who keep a constant vigil over her.

And once she prayed beside a dying woman:
the heavens opened and the angels came
in the form of long-departed friends and loved ones,
to comfort and encourage. I believe
not in her God, but always in her Love.



You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch

You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened . . .

You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching . . .

You paid love no notice,
though she lay in my arms
as the stars rose in swarms
like a legion of poets,

as the lightning recited
its opus before us,
and the hills boomed the chorus,
all strangely delighted . . .



Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch

Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.

Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.

When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.



don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved
(like your Heart)
and that even Light is bent
by your Gravity.

I dedicated this poem to the love of my life, but you are welcome to dedicate it to the love of yours, if you like it. The opening lines were inspired by a famous love poem by e. e. cummings. I went through a "cummings phase" around age 15 and wrote a number of poems "under the influence."



The One and Only
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

If anyone ever loved me,
It was you.

If anyone ever cared
beyond mere things declared;
if anyone ever knew ...
My darling, it was you.

If anyone ever touched
my beating heart as it flew,
it was you,
and only you.



Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

for Anaïs Vionet

Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather’s house—
actually his third new wife’s,
in her daughter’s bedroom
—one interminable summer
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas ...

Lacking the words to describe
ah!, those pearl-luminous estuaries—
strange omens, incoherent nights.

Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendors.

Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser’s fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and “civilization.”

Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander’s corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey.

"Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant."
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.



Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch

for Anaïs Vionet

Desire glides in on calico wings,
a breath of a moth
seeking a companionable light,
where it hovers, unsure,
sullen, shy or demure,
in the margins of night,
a soft blur.

With a frantic dry rattle
of alien wings,
it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato
and flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.
And yet it returns
to the flame, its delight,
as long as it burns.



Playmates
by Michael R. Burch

WHEN you were my playmate and I was yours,
we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and the sorrows and cares of our indentured days
were uncomprehended . . . far, far away . . .
for the temptations and trials we had yet to face
were lost in the shadows of an unventured maze.

Then simple pleasures were easy to find
and if they cost us a little, we didn't mind;
for even a penny in a pocket back then
was one penny too many, a penny to spend.

Then feelings were feelings and love was just love,
not a strange, complex mystery to be understood;
while "sin" and "damnation" meant little to us,
since forbidden cookies were our only lusts!

Then we never worried about what we had,
and we were both sure—what was good, what was bad.
And we sometimes quarreled, but we didn't hate;
we seldom gave thought to the uncertainties of fate.

Hell, we seldom thought about the next day,
when tomorrow seemed hidden—adventures away.
Though sometimes we dreamed of adventures past,
and wondered, at times, why things couldn't last.

Still, we never worried about getting by,
and we didn't know that we were to die . . .
when we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and I was your playmate, and we were boys.

This is probably the poem that "made" me, because my high school English teacher called it "beautiful" and I took that to mean I was surely the Second Coming of Percy Bysshe Shelley! "Playmates" is the second poem I remember writing; I believe I was around 13 or 14 at the time. It was originally published by The Lyric.



****** Analysis
by Michael R. Burch

This is not what I need . . .
analysis,
paralysis,
as though I were a seed
to be planted,
supported
with a stick and some string
until I emerge.
Your words
are not water. I need something
more nourishing,
like cherishing,
something essential, like love
so that when I climb
out of the lime
and the mulch. When I shove
myself up
from the muck . . .
we can ****.



Impotent
by Michael R. Burch

Tonight my pen
is barren
of passion, spent of poetry.

I hear your name
upon the rain
and yet it cannot comfort me.

I feel the pain
of dreams that wane,
of poems that falter, losing force.

I write again
words without end,
but I cannot control their course . . .

Tonight my pen
is sullen
and wants no more of poetry.

I hear your voice
as if a choice,
but how can I respond, or flee?

I feel a flame
I cannot name
that sends me searching for a word,

but there is none
not over-done,
unless it's one I never heard.

I believe this poem was written in my early twenties, around 1980.



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.

Published by The Lyric, Contemporary Sonnet, The Eclectic Muse, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Setu (India) , Victorian Violet Press, A Long Story Short, Glass Facets of Poetry, Docster, Trinacria, PS: It's Poetry (anthology), and in a Czech translation by Vaclav ZJ Pinkava



Our English Rose
by Michael R. Burch

for Christine Ena Burch

The rose is—
the ornament of the earth,
the glory of nature,
the archetype of the flowers,
the blush of the meadows,
a lightning flash of beauty.

This is my loose translation/interpretation of a Sappho epigram.



teacher
by michael r. burch, age 17

teacher, take a look at my life,
for it has just begun
and u think that i am “misinformed”
merely because i'm young;

but the truth is often hidden
(what lies lurk behind ur eyes?)
and maybe Puff can tell u
where the Dragon flies.

teacher, take a look at my life:
urs is a dull-edged knife
(the white-hot blade long blunted).
now ur as cold as ice.

still, when u come to class,
act like u know it all,
for if u show insecurity,
surely wee will folderol.

I wrote "teacher" after hearing the song "Old Man" by Neil Young. "Wee" is a pun, not a typo.



These are my translations of Holocaust poems by Ber Horvitz (also known as Ber Horowitz); his bio follows the poems.

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray ...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.

The birds have fled
far overseas;
"Tomorrow I’ll migrate too,"
I said ...

These gloomy autumn days
it rains and rains.
Woe to the bird
Who remains ...



Doctorn
"Doctors"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Early this morning I bandaged
the lilac tree outside my house;
I took thin branches that had broken away
and patched their wounds with clay.

My mother stood there watering
her window-level flower bed;
The morning sun, quite motherly,
kissed us both on our heads!

What a joy, my child, to heal!
Finished doctoring, or not?
The eggs are nicely poached
And the milk's a-boil in the ***.



Broit
“Bread”
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness. Why?
On the hard uncomfortable floor the exhausted people lie.

Flung everywhere, scattered over the broken theater floor,
the exhausted people sleep. Night. Late. Too tired to snore.

At midnight a little boy cries wildly into the gloom:
"Mommy, I’m afraid! Let’s go home!”

His mother, reawakened into this frightful place,
presses her frightened child even closer to her breast …

"If you cry, I’ll leave you here, all alone!
A little boy must sleep ... this, now, is our new home.”

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness all around,
exhausted people sleeping on the hard ground.



"My Lament"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Nothingness enveloped me
as tender green toadstools
lie blanketed by snow
with its thick, heavy prayer shawl …
After that, nothing could hurt me …



Ber Horvitz aka Ber Horowitz (1895-1942): Born to village people in the woods of Maidan in the West Carpathians, Horowitz showed art talent early on. He went to gymnazie in Stanislavov, then served in the Austrian army during WWI, where he was a medic to Italian prisoners of war. He studied medicine in Vienna and was published in many Yiddish newspapers. Fluent in several languages, he translated Polish and Ukrainian to Yiddish. He also wrote poetry in Yiddish. A victim of the Holocaust, he was murdered in 1942 by the Nazis.



Departed
by Michael R. Burch

Christ, how I miss you! ,
though your parting kiss is still warm on my lips.
Now the floor is not strewn with your stockings and slips
and the dishes are all stacked away.
You left me today...
and each word left unspoken now whispers regrets.



Describing You
by Michael R. Burch

How can I describe you?
The fragrance of morning rain
mingled with dew
reminds me of you;
the warmth of sunlight
stealing through a windowpane
brings you back to me again.
This is an early poem of mine, written as a teenager.



This Distance Between Us
by Michael R. Burch

This distance between us,
this vast gulf of remembrance
void of understanding,
sets us apart.

You are so far,
lost child,
weeping for consolation,
so dear to my heart.

Once near to my heart,
though seldom to touch,
now you are foreign,
now you grow faint...

like the wayward light of a vagabond star—
obscure, enigmatic.
Is the reveling gypsy
becoming a saint?

Now loneliness,
a broad expanse
—barren, forbidding—
whispers my name.

I, too, am a traveler
down this dark path,
unsure of the footing,
cursing the rain.

I, too, have felt pain,
pain and the ache of passion unfulfilled,
remorse, grief, and all the terrors
of the night.

And how very black
and how bleak my despair...
O, where are you, where are you
shining tonight?



Confession
by Michael R. Burch

What shall I say to you, to confess,
words? Words that can never express
anything close to what I feel?

For words that seem tangible, real,
when I think them
become vaguely surreal when I put ink to them.

And words that I thought that I knew,
like "love" and "devotion"
never ring true.

While "passion"
sounds strangely like the latest fashion
or a perfume.

NOTE: At the time I wrote this poem, a perfume named Passion was in fashion.



Consequence
by Michael R. Burch

They are fresh-faced,
not innocent, but perhaps not yet jaded,
oblivious to time and death,
of each counted breath
in the pendulum's sway
falling unheeded.

They are bright, undissuaded
by foreign tongues,
by sepulchers empty and waiting,
by sarcophagi of ancient kings,
by proclamations,
by rituals of scalpels and rings.

They are sworn, they are fated
to misadventure and grief;
but they revel in life
till the sun falls, receding
into silent halls
to torrents of inconsequential tears...
... to brief tragedies of tears
when they consider this: No one else sees.
But I know.
We all know.
We all know the consequence
of being so young.



Cycles
by Michael R. Burch

I see his eyes caress my daughter's *******
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe...

And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers...
and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.

I see Another again—hard, staring, and silent—
though long-ago forgotten...

And I remember conjectures of ***** lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares...

Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard—
with a long, ineffectual stare
that years from now, he may suddenly remember.



Dancer
by Michael R. Burch

You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,

waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.

Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.

They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled

of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,

of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.

They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh

for ages,
stages
slipping by.

You pause;
applause
is all you hear.

You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.



Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch

There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were cannon shots' soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise...
and then... annihilation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were nights our hearts conceived
dawns' indiscriminate sighs.
To dream was our consolation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood's salt libations...

Daredevil, dry your eyes.

Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.

Daredevil, dry your eyes.



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



Damp Days
by Michael R. Burch

These are damp days,
and the earth is slick and vile
with the smell of month-old mud.

And yet it seldom rains;
a never-ending drizzle
drenches spring's bright buds
till they droop as though in death.

Now Time
drags out His endless hours
as though to bore to tears
His fretting, edgy servants
through the sheer length of His days
and slow passage of His years.

Damp days are His domain.

Irritation
grinds the ravaged nerves
and grips tight the gorging brain
which fills itself, through sense,
with vast seas of soggy clay
while the temples throb in pain
at the thought of more damp days.

I believe I wrote the first version of this poem around age 16, or so.



Fairest Diana
by Michael R. Burch

Fairest Diana, princess of dreams,
born to be loved and yet distant and lone,
why did you linger—so solemn, so lovely—
an orchid ablaze in a crevice of stone?

Was not your heart meant for tenderest passions?
Surely your lips―for wild kisses, not vows!
Why then did you languish, though lustrous, becoming
a pearl of enchantment cast before sows?

Fairest Diana, as fragile as lilac,
as willful as rainfall, as true as the rose;
how did a stanza of silver-bright verse
come to be bound in a book of dull prose?



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch

Meg, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I'm with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy...



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 their 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. I wrote this poem as a teenager, after reading Shakespeare's sonnet 130 and having "issues" with it.



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.



Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you—
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

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

eternally present
and Sovereign.



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her . . .
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

I believe I wrote this poem around age 20, in 1978 or thereabouts. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Light verse and nonsense verse …

Less Heroic Couplets: Mini-Ode to Stamina
by Michael R. Burch

When you’ve given so much
that I can’t bear your touch,
then from a safe distance
let me admire your persistence.



The Trouble with Elephants: a Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

An elephant never forgets
which is why they don’t make the best pets:
Jumbo may well out-live you,
but he’ll never forgive you
so you may as well save your regrets!



The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On ...)
by Michael R. Burch

Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts
at “meter,” I crossly concluded
I’d use each iamb
in lieu of a lamb,
bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded.



Trump’s real goals are obvious
and yet millions of Americans remain oblivious.
—Michael R. Burch



Cover Girl
by Michael R. Burch

Cunning
at sunning
and dunning,
the stunning
young woman’s in the running
to be found **** on the cover
of some patronizing lover.

In this case the cover is a bed cover, where the enterprising young mistress is about to be covered herself.



First Base Freeze
by Michael R. Burch

I find your love unappealing
(no, make that appalling)
because you prefer kissing
then stalling.



Paradoxical Ode to Antinatalism
by Michael R. Burch

A stay on love
would end death’s hateful sway,
someday.

A stay on love
would thus BE love,
I say.

Be true to love
and thus end death’s
fell sway!



Antinatalist Poems

Habeas Corpus
by Michael R. Burch

from “Songs of the Antinatalist”

I have the results of your DNA analysis.
If you want to have children, this may induce paralysis.
I wish I had good news, but how can I lie?
Any offspring you have are guaranteed to die.
It wouldn’t be fair—I’m sure you’ll agree—
to sentence kids to death, so I’ll waive my fee.



Bittersight
by Michael R. Burch

for Abu al-Ala Al-Ma'arri, an ancient antinatalist poet

To be plagued with sight
in the Land of the Blind,
—to know birth is death
and that Death is kind—
is to be flogged like Eve
(stripped, sentenced and fined)
because evil is “good”
as some “god” has defined.



veni, vidi, etc.
by Michael R. Burch

the last will and testament of a preemie, from “Songs of the Antinatalist”

i came, i saw, i figured
it was better to be transfigured,
so rather than cross my Rubicon
i fled to the Great Beyond.
i bequeath my remains, so small,
to Brutus, et al.



Lighten your tread:
The ground beneath your feet is composed of the dead.

Walk slowly here and always take great pains
Not to trample some departed saint's remains.

And happiest here is the hermit with no hand
In making sons, who dies a childless man.

Abu al-Ala Al-Ma'arri (973-1057), antinatalist Shyari
loose translation by Michael R. Burch



There were antinatalist notes in Homer, around 3,000 years ago...

For the gods have decreed that unfortunate mortals must suffer, while they remain sorrowless. — Homer, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is best not to be born or, having been born, to pass on as swiftly as possible.—attributed to Homer, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

One of the first great voices to directly question whether human being should give birth was that of Sophocles, around 2,500 years ago...

Not to have been born is best,
and blessed
beyond the ability of words to express.
—Sophocles, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It’s a hundred times better not be born;
but if we cannot avoid the light,
the path of least harm is swiftly to return
to death’s eternal night!
—Sophocles, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: birth, control, procreation, childbearing, children,  antinatalist, antinatalism, contraception



Yasna 28, Verse 6
by Zarathustra (Zoroaster)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lead us to pure thought and truth
by your sacred word and long-enduring assistance,
O, eternal Giver of the gifts of righteousness.

O, wise Lord, grant us spiritual strength and joy;
help us overcome our enemies’ enmity!

Translator’s Note: The Gathas consist of 17 hymns believed to have been composed by Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, Zarathushtra Spitama or Ashu Zarathushtra.



Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals
by Michael R. Burch

"I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble." — Mark Twain

Making sense from nonsense is quite sensible! Suppose
you’re running low on moolah, need some cash to paint your toes ...
Just invent a new religion; claim it saves lost souls from hell;
have the converts write you checks; take major debit cards as well;
take MasterCard and Visa and good-as-gold Amex;
hell, lend and charge them interest, whether payday loan or flex.
Thus out of perfect nonsense, glittery ores of this great mine,
you’ll earn an easy living and your toes will truly shine!



Less Heroic Couplets: Crop Duster
by Michael R. Burch

We are dust and to dust we must return ...
but why, then, life’s pointless sojourn?



Less Heroic Couplets: Shady Sadie
by Michael R. Burch

A randy young dandy named Sadie
loves ***, but her horse neighs “She’s shady!”



The couplet above is based on the limerick below:

Shady Sadie
by Michael R. Burch

A randy young dandy named Sadie
loves ***, but in forms fancied shady.
(I cannot, of course,
involve her poor horse,
but it’s safe to infer she’s no lady!)



Less Heroic Couplets: Just Desserts
by Michael R. Burch

“The West Antarctic ice sheet
might not need a huge nudge
to budge.”

And if it does budge,
denialist fudge
may force us to trudge
neck-deep in sludge!

The first stanza is a quote by paleoclimatologist Jeremy Shakun in Science magazine.



The Limerick as Parody

Marvell-Less (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Mr. Marvell was ill-named? Inform us!
Alas, his crude writings deform us:
for when trying to bed
chaste virgins, he led
off with his iron ***** ginormous!



Marvell-Less (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Andrew Marvell was far less than Marvellous;
indeed, he was cold, bold, unchivalrous:
for when trying to bed
chased/chaste virgins, he led
off with his iron ***** ginormous!

When reading the second version of the poem, the reader can select “chased” or “chaste” or read them together, quickly.



I Learned Too Late
by Michael R. Burch

“Show, don’t tell!”

I learned too late that poetry has rules,
although they may be rules for greater fools.

In any case, by dodging rules and schools,
I avoided useless duels.

I learned too late that sentiment is bad—
that Blake and Keats and Plath had all been had.

In any case, by following my heart,
I learned to walk apart.

I learned too late that “telling” is a crime.
Did Shakespeare know? Is Milton doing time?

In any case, by telling, I admit:
I think such rules are ****.



Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
by Michael R. Burch

At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...
But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.

The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more *****-y!



Limericks

There once was a poet from Tennessee
who was known to indulge in straight Hennessey
for his heart had been broken
and cruelly ripped open
by an ice-hoarding Dame of Paree.
—Michael R. Burch

A coquettish young lady of France
longed to have ***** men in her pants,
but in lieu of real joys
she settled for boys,
then berated her lack of romance.
—Michael R. Burch

A virginal lady of France
longed to have a ménage in her pants
but in lieu of real boys
she settled for toys
& painted pinkies to make her bits dance.
—Michael R. Burch

There was a young lady of France
Who’d let cute boys root in her pants:
Where they'd give her the finger
And she'd let them linger
because that's the point of romance!
—Michael R. Burch

A germane young German, a dame
with a quite unpronounceable name,
gave me a kiss;
I lectured her, "Miss,
we haven't been intro'd, for shame!"
—Michael R. Burch

A germane young German, a dame
with a quite unpronounceable name,
Frenched me a kiss;
I admonished her, "Miss,
you’ve left me twice tongue-tied, for shame!"
—Michael R. Burch

A germane young German, a dame
with a quite unpronounceable name,
French-kissed me and left my lips lame.
I lectured her, "Miss,
That's a premature kiss!
We haven't been intro'd, for shame!"
—Michael R. Burch

Although I prefer
onions
to bunions,
I still primarily defer
to legal ******.
—Michael R. Burch

Cancun Cruz
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a senator, Cruz,
whose whole life was one pus-oozing schmooze.
When Trump called his wife ugly,
Cruz brown-nosed him smugly,
then went on a sweet Cancún cruise!

Anchors Aweigh!
by Michael R. Burch

There once was an anchor babe, Cruz,
whose deployment was Castro’s bold ruse.
Now the revenge of Fidel
has worked out quite well
as Cruz missiles launch from his caboose!

Canadian Cruz
by Michael R. Burch

There was a Canadian, Cruz,
an anchor babe with a bold ruse:
he’d take Texas first
and then do his worst
to infect the whole world with his views.

Keywords/Tags: light verse, nonsense verse, doggerel, limerick, humor, humorous verse, light poetry



Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.

Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all

for children, however tall.
And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call

the one who was everything.
That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all

for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.

And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.
No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.



Final Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

Sleep peacefully—for now your suffering’s over.

Sleep peacefully—immune to all distress,
like pebbles unaware of raging waves.

Sleep peacefully—like fields of fragrant clover
unmoved by any motion of the wind.

Sleep peacefully—like clouds untouched by earthquakes.

Sleep peacefully—like stars that never blink
and have no thoughts at all, nor need to think.

Sleep peacefully—in your eternal vault,
immaculate, past perfect, without fault.



Published as the collection "When I Was Small, I Grew"
eng jin Apr 2018
chug a choo,
here goes the west-bound train
skimming brooks and hopping lakes
wheeling its way
into the fading rays
some head home,
some to a new hope
can one sit calmly on a rumbling train?
through the windowpane
up in the sky
a timid star shines
Anna Jan 2014
"Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day -- wham! -- there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to **** you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.

In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality. My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most ******* god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake.

That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal -- unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.

And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know. There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, 'Gradually and then suddenly.' When someone asks how I lost my mind, that is all I can say too."
Alexander Coy Aug 2016
You're at your desk, sitting
on your favorite wooden
stool; the one with
the diamond shaped
chip on it's side

The sound of your
fingers dancing
across squared
platforms of symbols

and digits

A woman's voice can be
heard in the background;
as well as the clanking
of porcelain against
aluminum (all doused
in what seems
to be water)

You're a woman yourself,

But this doesn't bother you
in the least; because outside
the skin, inside the marrow,
flows an everlasting glow

the kind that gets you up
morning after morning;
gives you permission to
go, love, cherish

and hold

And as you get up from the desk,
the sun shining through the windowpane,
your blouse is lifted, revealing
a diamond shaped scar;

the only one you used to
despise having as a
child
Amanda Kay Burke Nov 2020
Long nights consume the slivers of day
Darkness is the Alaskan way
Has the song sung in summer flew away with the birds?
Our have we just forgotten the words?
Been in the shadow cast by winter's arrival
Since then the cold has been my rival
Branches break the sky up like pieces of glass
I look upwards as I walk waiting for danger to pass
Over hills the moon hangs in late afternoon
Hovering like a half-inflated balloon
Commitment to visibility not faltering a bit
Sometimes partly hidden but never completely quits
Dreams of warmer weather weave strands throughout my brain
Trying to ignore the snowfall exclaiming outside the windowpane
Putting all effort into embracing the ice
I can't be the only one who thinks some sunshine would be nice
I swear I was born in the wrong state hahaha
Ben Jones Feb 2013
Lord Henry Dickenbottem
Lived among his peers
A mind of deepest arrogance
Concealed between his ears
He spent his nights in gross misconduct
Lounging in his secret quarters
Mistress, maid and washerwoman
Ousted mothers, secret daughters
Hiding sordid love affairs
His endless line of ******* heirs
***** Henry Dickenbottem
Stalked above the stairs

Lady Mary Dickenbottem
Did her wifely duty
The slenderest of all her kin
Considered quite the beauty
Though in the dusk the candle burned
Alone, she stitched a pallid face
And in the dark she sought its words
To gain her shallow masters grace
Guiding will and fooling eyes
Beseeching of the dead to rise
Demon Mary Dickenbottem
She the pure despise

Master Neville Dickenbottem
Best of all his class
Beaten all the school boys
And bedded every lass
Allies of the strongest kind
And making merry of the weak
The liberties were his to take
And never one he wouldn’t seek
His gaze surveyed that which he ruled
All logical and water cooled
Nasty Neville Dickenbottem
Devil-fire fuelled

Young Jemmima Dickenbottem
Innocent and slight
Playing on the borderline
And darting out of sight
Only ever at her ease
When no one else was close about
And etched upon her baby face
The guilty shadow of a doubt
Always blamed if something broke
And speaking just above a croak
Shy Jemmima Dickenbottem
Tangible as smoke

Old Mother Dickenbottem
Lounging in her chair
Lavender and nicotine
Are fighting for her hair
Beware, at night she ventures forth
So best keep safe your tiny tots
She’ll creep up to the windowpane
And ****** them, sleeping, from their cots
Humming in discordant tones
Nimble fingers, cold as stones
Hungry Mother Dickenbottem
Gnawing on the bones

Dear Major Dickenbottem
Five years in the ground
Hoarded every ha’penny
But frittered every pound
Long he served his king and queen
A gentlemanly thing to do
He left the port with many men
And brought back homeward very few
He died away in foreign lands
Of syphilis and swollen glands
Dead Major Dickenbottem
Killed by wandering hands
You are encased in your world of flower;
Whilst I suffer in the pit below
that wolf at the door is me.

He is the leader of my pack
and when he howls others follow in tick tack
tight formation, his howl has rendered cowards
to fits of madness, coward!

I am that too he says? hahaha!
A fit of vortex light burning brightly over there, you fool!
Screams the wolf,
'you do not know the box you have opened!'

'I do!'
I have opened the post it says sickness and fit,
a spice awakening in Sheffield, and not just the drugs
not working in Manchester,
as Ashcroft once sang banging his shoulders
into every passer by, why? For the hell of it,
take no prisoners, proper Manc wolf style.

And I will burn your souls with words, O burn those bridges burn;
I will crush you with every click of the typewriter
you seek to burn me, call me drunk and ****** and fool,
I forget you! ha! Neit papa! Neit Mama!

Da Christopher! I have made such art and wonders
so see I am not to be taken lightly.
I have danced with death, not once but twice
and lived to tell the tale, captured foes forever
their grimaces frozen in time.

In the dead of night when I have no desire
for both shallow words and drunken wounds and late night calling-
your 'fatal fallacies'
I will burn these images and all the old
word scribbled in spider handwriting
by me that eldest poet, and soul.
That fire shall bring solace.

I hate you, as much as I hate myself;
forever smoking in the corner
and laughing at deaths wings,
as it winks at me underneath
cloaked eyes of shallow indifference -

Off with you and your 'perfect' life too.
Bitter wolf blinks, and cannot sleep,
Oh look how I am red and rendered, insomnia
red eyed and twitching, shocks all over sighs the poet,
Never call me again, drunken witches. Vampires
and bloodsuckers.

Alive still and struggling against the call
of it. Defiantly myself, whilst others crawl
to the windowpane of the widows to cradle the light.
I am encased in darkness, and search for my window-
fools allay me from my path, winding, twisting to
love.

I am burning. This fire it will not cease, this is
the end. My first friend, thrown to the fire,
her fate is sealed, she is undoubtedly married.

My pack is pleased, and giggle in the night,
drunk on the strength of passion! and *****!
ACC WOO AGH
Nein Nein Nein
Neit! Da! Da!

I grin through bared teeth,
Always gnashing and grinding.
A poem about an angry and bitter wolf howling and burning  to find a light under the moon. Moody hahahahaha
Natalie Sym Aug 2012
Faces pressed up against the windowpane of my soul
They are trying to peek into my life
All that they can see are the roses of innocence and the rainbows of happiness
They do not look close enough to see the snakes of betrayal that are coiled in camouflage around the stems of those roses
They do not pry long enough to understand that the wisps of clouds that float so closely to those bright rainbows are the white lies that have materialized to form and ocean of deception and I am drowning in the middle, stranded
No one stops by long enough to learn that the crumbling ruins that they admire so ardently for their barren beauty are the result of what a hardened heart looks like when it decides to break down the barriers it has hidden behind for so long
These faces are merely tourists; I should not be surprised when they leave me
I should expect it; I should accept it
Yet how can I accept the fact that I am merely considered to be an attraction, pretty to look at but easily forgotten. Why should I be the acting freak show that gets the round of applause yet when all is said and done and the families go home to their superficial lifestyles, I am left alone in a litter filled theatre sterile of trust and of friendship.
I only tell you these things now so that you may see
No one has ever bothered to get to know me
Until you
Donall Dempsey May 2016
LISTENING TO YOUR FAVOURITE PIECE OF MUSIC

Oh you were so
quiet

I hardly heard you
tiptoe silently in

settle yourself
amongst the strings

talking to me
now in cello
now in violin

the heartbeat of a drum

the exchange of laughter
between  glockenspiel & xylophone

making a point
with either

the tiny ******
of a triangle

or the crash of a symbol.

I listen to you talk
to me in music

the candlelight
grows dim & then

as softly as you came

you leave

leaves

(fluttering against
the windowpane) .

I feel you leave
leave before the movement ends

footsteps
in the silence of my memory

me nearly

forgetting

that you've died

listening on
until the end

as the music

cries.
And this is the poem that brought forth this listening....

FAIRY TALE

I sit by your bedside
watching your dying.

Only Love
nails me to this pain.

I unable to escape
your dying.

I tell you
Irish legends
& Hans Christian Anderson

as you become
again

(if only for a little while)

the child
you used to be

once upon a time

when wonder & delight
were new
as daylight.

“Tell me Lir! ”

“Tell me the Children of Lir! ”

I tell
of how

they are turned into swans
& the loneliness of eternity.

I too knit nettles
to break the spell

throw the garment over
your cancer’d body

so you can
return again
to being

the human
I have known.

This dying is cruel
beyond belief.

An insult
to your life.

I love you so much I would **** you
if I could **** you
but I...can’t.

I want every breath
of you

not to be your last.

You journey to your death
dancing with your pain

my little mermaid
my little ballerina

I guard
your dying

a Constant
Tin Soldier

as you become
foam

foam
on the sea.

Just a day ago
******* a sultana

I held
on the tip of my fingertip

telling me to call your name.

“I love
living in your voice! ”

“So nice...so nice! ”

And I a blind Prince

wandering now
lost in the fairy tale

of your Death.

I close
your eyes.

kiss the last warmth
of your lips.
JL Nov 2012
You stand in the morning rain
Wearing your plastic shoes and faux
Fur wrap

I am baffled
And I press against the windowpane
to glimpse

Raindrops pelt
and my skin is cold

Like a peacock the black umbrella opens
and you light a cigarette in the rain
(the umbrella held in the crook of your arm)
You are a demon I am sure of this
Smoke pouring from your nostrils and
Dark red lips

You do not wave
but a taxi stops
You turn with some sudenness
towards the window that I watch from


My eyes catching yours
In the cold rain  
Dark green things they are
Peering deeply
Peeling back
Each layer
and a whisper only I can hear
"Is this a dream?"

The taxi door shuts
And the headlights
Through puddles the tires
Churn
I had a dream that I worked in an old department store, and then I saw this woman. I forgot about the dream when I woke up, but I drove by the old Sears and it came back to me all at once.
st64 May 2013
choo choo

next stop.....perdition

(no, not really...no-one believes this Stygian opacity)


1.
look how Time doth ravage thee
look what it did to thy visage
in smithereens, lies youth
it so artfully takes away
what is held so dear

rivers and streams
valleys and hills

arching to ecstatic heights
plunging to abysmal lows

into the ravine of chance
stirred by the spoon of Time
slowly around the cauldron
brews the self-same mixture
then poured into chasms of forgetfulness

using the eternal sledgehammer
it
smashes the foundation of thought
grinds the nutmeg of speed
pulps the fruit of mentality
slows the pulse of sensation

and pardons none.


2.
what was once sensuous and voluptuous lips
now are merely two dry slits on your face

once stared-into eyeballs, now glass over
vitreous cataracts steadily grow, ****-like

toned into lithe elastic bands now stretch
away into forever, a pale platform to walk on

life's morn is encompassed by years' slanting
clouded and bedimmed by mists of age

butterfly's existence outweighs a man's
by mere night-veiled windowpane of true sight

draw the curtains; close the shutters; screen the eyes
the time has come to shed all blinkers and face the sun.



3.
crimp
sag
limp
drag

mud cracks down a dipping dale
scalding pain sears sore half-foot

yes, time is but a disease
ravaging all
without fear or favour

sunken eyes
slower reflexes
tardier mind
scraggly body


hides not
condescends not
forgets not

the glimmer of ....
a time of ...


4.
cathedral invites the walker in
cool and calm recesses
sit silent
wait....

then *they
walk in, carrying
one who had but a lucky half-score lot

clear soprano note becomes a rudderless bleat
announcing the folly of stifling ego

now shorn of burning frost of circuitous fervour
beams of mercy cast a final look-see
jump the barriers of
time
to
carry thee off.



pipe *****-stops are pulled out



(art thee ready?  platform number 5)



S T,  9 May 2013
How age doth touch the brow of one and all.

Looking at pictures of and being inspired by the writing of esteemed Anglo-American writer W. H. Auden (born in 1907, York, UK - died in 1973, Vienna).


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
    doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Hilda Jul 2014
Not only in sweet melodious song
Of robin trilling at fresh break of dawn.
Thy love and Presence I now find
In floors unswept and tattered blind
From wearisome day and night void of sleep
Which causest the merriest heart to weep.
In dismal November's drizzling rain
Which beating against broken windowpane,
A funeral dirge from sad yesterday;
Solemnity of knells—hopeless decay.


~Hilda~
© Hilda July 30, 2014 6:50pm
Dog Years Jul 2018
On an old windowsill of a crooked windowpane in a beaten house
Lies a window-moth on a ***** window cloth.
drained, defeated, and done
Time and again,
It tattered its wings and shattered its face,
plunged at the glass, losing its grace.
She's drawn to a dim light
spilled through a cracked window
into the darkness of the room.
Like a waking terror of the night,
With one half there and the other out of sight.
Hallucinating a pathway through fantasy
  Seeking clarity in rays of insanity
Contained by a glass and wooden frame.
painfully numb,
with an urge to move forward
A consuming obsession,
to make it to the Moon.
That lambent orb in the skies
A brilliant ball full of lies
Ignorant to the impenetrable mass,
or the number of miles between the moon and glass.
No matter how much it desires,
No matter how much it tires,
Nor thee amount of blood she taranpires,
The glass is unbreakable,
the goal unattainable,
The truth unbearable.
The Godforsaken feeling,
of seeing, and believing,
yet never achieving.
inspired by night terrors, where one is conscious in sleep and can do almost nothing to get away. Reminds me of a moth chasing a light, unaware of the glass window keeping it there
Landon Green Jan 2014
Wild orange green trees
     Blowin' in the chilly wind
There must be something to me
     That does sit and bend
A bell that does not ring
     During a infrequent quiet bliss
A dog that does not chew
     At the bones of harmony’s miss

Loud white green mockingbird
     Singing in misguided hymns
It’s a big sad shame to me
     That love don’t bend heavy at the limb
No apple blossoming
     During that good old summer dream
No façade I can find
     Bustin’ open at the seams

Unyielding angry closed friend
     Yelling in the rain
Sorrow seems to accompany me
     When I am all alone
No person to keep a garden
     In the deep scarlet sun
No deep unhappy person
     Has a medal that company’s won
st64 Mar 2013
1.
I heard the sound of your crying
from a bird.

Animals have souls, too.

Like the moat round Mont St. Michel
The size of the soul
Shrouded by
Accidents of life.


2.
Cobwebs and wax round the candles.

The woods are alive
Pariahs have eyes thrown at them.

Why **** the floor so?
Don't sit with your back to the doorway
Monkey's monocled eyes stare back,
glass orbs, while
Empty chair a-rockin' - a-rockin' - a-rockin' - a

Puppets dance
No solace in the shades
Don't follow the shadows
Which lurk and lead...

Marionettes and tin soldiers
On pedestals long forgot
A dead child's toy chest
A lion in a tallish glass cage.

Little drummer boy, rusted
Plays agitated drum
To match heart beat of......fear
Of drying sweat ....on upper lip.

Dusty frames on the wall
Interfere with flow
Handprint on window frame
Dog barks warning.

Spectre's trudge in mud
Closer...closer...from grave waters
Scream in windowpane: a figure holds
A face of anguish, trapped eternal.

Letters on the wall
Writ in heavy blood
Silhouette of an axe
Windy.....Branch tap on window frame.

Brass door handle turning
Staircase winding up to forever
Gargoyles leer
Leaves on the dry floor....wet footsteps.....


3.
Who knows who dwelt in this place?


Who's hanging from the ceiling?
Whose body....felt that pain?



4.
Then, into head flits one 'I love you'
Of gentle memory
On the lap of the mind
Of a lover
Of a friend.

Grey skies, musky odour.



5.
Then...

Wielding weapon to defend
Against....
The....








Self.



6.
Stop SCREAMINGGGGGGGG!





Star Toucher, 28 March 2013
Ok.
Now, wake up.....lol

Suppose we could not love, deer.

Be kind, gentle and compassionate....don't judge in haste.
Mikaila Aug 2013
In the heart, most people are temporary.
They roll off like tears shed and fall away,
Not forgotten, but finished.
But some people...
Some people have no horizon.
Some people are forever.

When I met you, you were vast.
I saw the ocean in your eyes.
I heard waves crash in your voice,
Rough and low and musical like the tide.
You're like a storm on the ocean,
And I drowned in loving you.

I didn't know what it was,
Didn't know what to do.
How could I?
You were the first.
Before I met you I'd never
Wondered if somebody's lips were soft to kiss
Wished I could reach out and touch anyone's cheek with my fingertips
Just to feel the warmth of life beneath their skin.
I never treasured the sound of anybody's pulse
As they hugged me
Until I met you.

I'm afraid I floundered,
Like a moth who had seen the moon in the waves
And tried to kiss its cheek
Only to stick to the mirror like water
And flutter madly, trying to stay afloat.

I learned, slow.
I grew.
I knew though, underneath I knew
I'd never get over you.

As the years blurred by
Like raindrops sliding down a windowpane
You were a constant in my heart,
Faint but vital.
As I shed my skin painfully and became...
Calmer, I suppose,
Less hopeful, less wildly passionate,
You lingered,
And the thought of you changed as I did,
But the love never left.

It's absurd, really, that I love so instantly
And so permanently.
But...
I saw your eyes four years ago
And my entire world changed.
I saw your eyes and I wanted to see only them
For the rest of time
The way I can stare at the path the moon makes along the sea
For hours and never tire of its subtle beauty.

I was afraid of you,
Of the power you had over me.
I just shrank back, stood aside and watched you be who you were,
Awed.
I quietly loved you like I'd never loved anyone,
And when you were gone I found that the thought of you
Was not.

And since then it has remained in my mind,
So constant and so quiet, like the white noise whisper of the surf on the sand at midnight,
That I hardly notice it anymore.

Back then, I could have fallen to my knees at your feet.
Back then, I couldn't help but be the fool
Who trailed at your heels
Because I was held there by gravity.
Back then, I couldn't hide a thing.
But now...
I've learned how to go under.

Many times since then, I've felt the fire of salt burn in my lungs,
I've lost my sight of the surface.
I've drowned in a love so deep
It soaks up all the light and consumes any heat,
Crushes the air from my lungs.
Many, many, many times I have felt death
Dashed upon the rocks by brutal storms and black waves.
And as I struggled
I saw your eyes in my head,
Grey and deep and beautiful
Like clouds finally breaking into soft rain,
Like a flower unfurling.
And I kept on.

And eventually, I learned to weather the storms and currents of my passions.

I learned.
To breath deep when my head breaks the surface,
Not to fight the undertow when it wraps its icy fingers around my ankles and yanks.
To show you what you can handle seeing from me,
And to accept that maybe I can't give you anything
But a reverence in my heart and a place in my mind
Where the thought of you will always be
Like a soft summer rain in the morning,
So light and fine that it hangs like mist for a moment before floating to the grass.

Some people are forever.
Some people never leave your heart, your mind, your soul.
Whenever I see you again,
It is like coming home.
It doesn't matter anymore that you don't love me.
I love to see your face,
Your eyes like a rainstorm,
Little lightning strikes of mischief or inspiration crackling within them.
Your little mannerisms and ways of standing that grab at my heart.
I love to hear you speak,
Notice the words you choose
That nobody else ever thinks to use,
And the rise and fall of your husky voice
With the rhythm of a tide against a shore.

I love to be near you
And appreciate every moment of you,
Here in my head.
I am good, now, at weathering the elements:
You see not the poetry that flows across my mind,
Words in a rush that break in swells over my head
And find a push and pull to sway me like a current.
You see not the magnetism, the urge to reach out to you,
Nor the tenderness that I've trained to lie still in my heart.

It only sleeps, you see, like a dog curled at the hearth:
My passion for you surrounds me when I see you,
In ebbs and flows and eddies,
But passively, dreamily.
It feels like standing at the bottom of the sea for a moment,
Anchored but suspended just barely
With my feet hovering on the sandy bottom,
Being tugged gently to and fro by the water.

I let it wash over me, my ardor, but I do nothing,
Only enjoy how soothing it feels, to know I can love so deeply.  
For I have learned that souls don't need air beneath the sea,
And so I have forgotten to struggle, struck motionless by silence and peace.
When I see you now, I treat you like the old friend you are,
Someone cherished, someone missed,
But calmly so.
And underneath loving you has become that.
I lived with my head above the water for so long,
Fighting, striving,
And now all it is is that I have realized
That that was only the surface,
And there is so much more.

I love you like the ocean.
Wild, desperate, powerful and chaotic
As the waves that dash themselves upon the cliffs, white and foamy and brutal,
But also silent, restful, calm and deep
As the underneath is, slow and blue and graceful.
The battle and the surrender,
That is how I love you.
Both at once, like the sea is.
Vast, like the sea is.
The fight hardly matters, the losing of it,
The nevermore-
I love you in a way that needs no possession, no validation.

Ever changing, but eternal nonetheless,
Like the sea is.

Some people have no horizon.
Some people are forever.
Mikaila Sep 2013
The streets outside my window are deep black,
Slick with silver rain,
Illuminated completely, every so often, by a sudden violent flash.
And I think in flashes like that
At this late hour.
I think in strobes
Of your face.
I don't know why I wonder what you're doing.
I don't know why I wonder
How your skin would look
Lit by a sheen of rainwater
In those flares of white lightning.
What shadows would deepen your collarbones
And how your eyes would look,
Half lit with their part mischievous, part vulnerable glint.
I don't know why I keep stumbling into the thought of you
As I travel my mind in the dead of night.
I wonder if her lips are soft.
And I shake myself,
Think it would surely be wrong to find out.
You and I are so oddly close
So suddenly
And I could lose that.
And here there is not much else I have
To lose.
And yet
I think in flashes tonight.
A glimpse of skin in my mind,
Skin and words and rain ssssliding down the windowpane.
A burst of feeling that I blush my way out of
In the dark
And try to turn platonic.
In these past days, I've tried to bend my heart's gaze away
But I keep stealing little glances,
Truth be told.
I am curious. I am fascinated. I am drawn.
And it is late, and I am uncertain,
And outside the rain comes down with wanton savagery,
Total abandon,
And something in me leaps at the sound
And calls for me to answer it.
Something inside me surges like lightning,
A white hot bolt singing through my bones
Making them ache sweetly,
And I want to come down, as well.
With total abandon.
Just fall.
I try to shut it off,
But only casually, only halfheartedly.
In the deepest part of me,
I rejoice that I barely know you,
For there is so much to discover, so much to see.
In the private room of my mind,
I am shamelessly captivated.
Who are you?
What are you?
I want to know. I want to know everything.
I want to read your soul.
Rain your words down on me like a sudden storm,
I want them all.
I want them worked into my skin, slow.
What am I saying? Who are you?
Who knows:
Who are you
So immense
So enigmatic
That I must think of you only in parts,
In little glimpses?
That I fear the way I
Must
Think of you?
Who are you
That I am stirred and uneasy
That my thoughts arc toward you as if pulled by gravity?
Who are you
That I am so caught
And so unprepared?
You see...
I so rarely meet anybody
I want to feel with.
Dylan Anthony Apr 2012
Listen, you, who sit in the damp grass as the
sun arrives over the shadow of a broken day, The forecast
extirpates all the hate in this land grown up
too late but still clinging on to the month of may
Bird watchers,
        Bike riders,
                Bank robbers,
                         Blues singers
together make this world vibrate, accentuate
the hair of each and every nape after nape, I contemplate
how this day will end, which roads to mend, which twig to bend, but I,
I light up with the glow that could only come after a rain, all my stains
removed and thrown through the windowpane
I jump out, fall back and arrive in my final scene
Lights crash, crash through this day, beauty between,
If you don’t already have this engrained in your brain,
                *The brightest rainbows come after the rain.
anastasiad Nov 2016
'cisco' 2900 Set Integrated Products and services Hubs (ISR), designed to strength the next thing associated with branch-office advancement, features unequalled total cost with ownership cost savings and multi-level agility in the sensible incorporation involving security, wireless, and program expert services.

Like a well-liked 'cisco' switch merchandise, Cisco 2900 collection offers an upgradable mother board that allows proprietors to up-date computer hardware as more strong solutions turn into available while not having to purchase a new the router. 'cisco' additionally draws environment friendly people using their EngeryWise double electric power resources, which usually cheaper energy and support crucial redundancy needs. It truly is once in a while important to adjust this specific impressive marketing device, repairing the item for you to manufacturer go into default settings.

To be able to totally reset your Cisco 2900 hub, age.g. 'cisco' 3925, Cisco 3945, a few 'cisco' 2900 end users get discussed the idea like that:
Pertaining to "3945 wireless router private data recovery"
Issue:
"Hi Presently there,
I'm sure that this password must be changed once we all login to 'cisco' 3945 wireless router however neglected to achieve that plus it certainly not letting everyone to attach utilizing standard username/password.
Can easily an individual assist me to in obtaining this particular resolved??Inches ---From vnirmal112

Solutions by people
"You can but you aren't required to modify the username and password at the first try you sign in towards 2900. Do you think you're seeking to hook up while using the games console interface and also telnet?"

"Logged on to switch by way of console...was approximately in order to arrange a brand new router...I received a specific meaning proclaiming that i cannot account the next time only have on modify code, that we discovered immediately after recording away from solely :*(..."

"I am managing Twelve.Several.Twenty four.Should you haveanother expensive minute card, place a unique IOS upon it as well as shoe the idea start to see if you possibly could get involved.The opposite action you can take is to try the actual username and password retrieval and then determine when you can get into like that. Would you ever determine virtually any passwords with it?In .

Also discouraged with this particular 'cisco' 2900 resetting? Directions make it easier to recast 'cisco' 2900 string in greater detail
System 1
Just one. Get into "config-register 0x2102" with the router's order prompt windowpane. This allows you actually access to world-wide setting function.
A pair of. Enter into "show version.Inch The reaction should really study:
router# configure airport terminal
modem (config) #config-register 0x2102
hub (config) #end
router#
Replicate this "show version" demand.
The particular reaction must right now study "will often be 0x2102 from next reload."
A few. Type in the order "write remove.In This will likely get rid of the actual start-up construction.
Five. Once again install the software program by entering the particular "reload" control. Will not help you save when caused.
The system exhibit should really examine:
router#reload
Process setting may be changed. Help save? (yes/no): in
Continue using load? (confirm)
Concur that you would like this re-install so that you can continue.
5 various. Wait for an re-install. The particular dialogue box will probably understand:---System Configuration Dialog---
Want to enter in the preliminary settings discussion? (yes/no)
The hub is reset.
Approach A pair of
One.Enter the receive "config-register 0x2142.Inch
The particular reaction must go through:
Router (config)#config-register 0x2142
Replicate this "show edition get.In .
Your reaction must currently go through "will always be 0x2142 during future refill.In
A pair of. Reload the application by entering the "reload" receive. Usually do not preserve when caused. The machine really should understand:
router#reload
Method construction has become changed. Save? (Yes/no): deborah
Progress with refill? (Affirm)
State that you'd like this load in order to carry on.
3 or more. Wait for once again install. This dialog package may read through:
---System Setup Dialog---
Do you need to enter the 1st settings dialog? (Yes/no)Get into "no.Inch
Five. Affect the settings signup setting in order to 0x2102. Enter in "config-register 0x2102." Get into "write ram.In This will likely overwrite the functional settings.
Five. Enter the "reload" order. The program settings discussion look just as before. Your router is definitely reset to zero.

http://www.passwordmanagers.net/resources/How-to-Cleverly-Use-the-NSIS-as-a-ZIP-Password-*******-54.html ZI­P Password *******
Davina E Solomon Sep 2021
The dough is molten at oven spring,
like a prayer to the historicity of things ..

Have we not imagined yesterdays
in the ritual of bread ? While our pasts

lay embezzled, on the tongues of men, the
sentiment of centuries colluded in germ,

echoing through heirloom remembrances
those floury philosophies of change.

While I stretch dough to gaze past
a windowpane, as far back as Khorasan ..

they were other names then, another
elasticity in time. Faith is a memory

of settled people in lands of milk and
honey, where every drought, every flood

spawns a new religion .. and the wheat,
always begs the same old question:

Are we there yet, in the fertile crescent
of opportunity ? The grains haven't changed

in their stolid countenance - long, subtle,
germy, cosseted. In the granaries of kings ..

they are willed by royal decree, never to die
in an eternal future and like humankind,

who score bread in the cuneiform of hearts,
grain is always thirsting to seed the land.
http://davinasolomon.org/2021/09/19/incandescent-bread/
Cheri Lynn Dec 2013
Water drops slid down
on my bedroom windowpane
and I wondered if I'd ever feel something good again.
I remember just that night as if it's happening right now, obsessed with asking why, asking when, and asking how.

Feeling absolutely lonely, left me like a hollow shell,
No more cares or worries to be shared, I had no stories left to tell.
I felt like life had left me, like my rib cage split in two, and ever since that night...
I realize now...
I dreamt of you.


It's funny how life's trials can inhibit us
to see the innate good in people
or what's truly meant to be.
We all become so jaded and so strictly "Bulletproof"
that we shut out all our senses and resign to just aloof.
But the point that I'd been missing
is now shining crystal clear...
I had to face these trials just so I could meet you here.

So please say that you'll hear me when I need to call your name,
and please don't ever fear me, I promise you it's not a game.
Everyone who ever passes through has their own side to tell,
Each and every one of us has suffered our own hell.
I won't pretend to have the answers
or to know the reasons why,
but the way this path's unfolding seems commanded from the sky.

Apparently, my voice was heard.
Gods had messages to tell.
A warden to protect my heart...
They sent me Gabriel.
Shashank Virkud Jul 2011
Facing you
through a windowpane,
you were mad
'cause I hadn't
kissed you yet.

When I got there,
you know I didn't care.
You know I wasn't scared.

Slow me down or
spin me sideways,
for I will always
be around.

Racing you
through the rain,
I was glad
'cause you hadn't
had a regret.

When you got there
you were unaware,
you were unprepared.

Slow me down or
spin me sideways,
for I will always
be around.
blushing prince Jun 2017
“Have you been to the Melrose café?
I heard they have the best lunch there”

“I always go downtown for coffee
helps you avoid the goons
and the smell of trash coming in through the door”

Francis St.
The neighborhood with the crooked spine streets, the intolerable hunchback it was in the armpit of Korea-town.
The snake stealth slither you acquired to get to the 7/11 down the street without your teeth being pulled out by a gun. In the 80’s the back wall of that convenience store was littered with
no-do gooders, the typical teenage gangster with ironic ****** white shirts and a mouthful of *****. An army with no motive.
Buzzards learning how to haunt instead of hunt.
In the afternoons it was speculated that they melted into the hot cement, an intimidating presence that smoked marijuana and made their cars jump.
With fear?
warmth?
happiness?
Who’s to say.
But times have changed. The hungry graffiti on the wall became the emblem of what had been, and what had survived. It was no longer us vs. them, it was me vs. you.
There’s a hostility that sinks into the earth and made the children more aggressive in playgrounds that endorsed healthy living; a melting *** reserved only for the diversely attacked and passive aggressive scrutinized bunch.
I lived on that street in the peach palm, salmon slapped building where I witnessed a domestically abused woman with a shattered nose smear her blood across the windowpane of the front door while I checked for the mail. Her hair was bleached and it hung dead on her scalp like sun rays that had gotten seasonal depression. Her face was a gauzy mess of a nosebleed. I felt for that woman the same way I felt for the slugs that people threw salt at. A sadistic addiction for soft things; There were bruises where there shouldn’t have been and I felt like the imperfections on the wall looking but unable to be seen. And I wondered if she could see me. She crouched on the corner of the steps and waited. I didn’t know what for. I could hear sirens, I could hear footprints of her abuser coming closer and picking her up like a rag doll. Opening the door and disappearing into the night with the sound of high heels slowly going mute. I stayed there until the blood dried. The next day the stain was gone and I wondered about all the other blemishes around the building and if they had the same disgust to them. Were the discolorations on the carpet of the hallways just violent memories?
I could smell the poverty inside that apartment. It clung to me like it held on to anyone.
I was guilty of it creeping into the beds of my nails while I tried in futility to wash it off.
Despite all the books I read, all the times I refused to step out of my room in fear of experiencing too much I was not saved from observing a lot of things. There was a cathedral church a couple blocks away that you could see outside the living room window and when the sun set. It almost felt like the presence of god looming just beyond, always assuring me that yes, I had not been abandoned but it wasn’t abandonment I worried about but about becoming what was inevitably seeping into the tap water, into the people with the olive skin that can’t unlatch their own cages.
Of becoming the shadow of a civilization that revels in the darkness.
I wanted to be a pageant queen on television with the pink lipstick instead of a statistic on the news of most likely dropping out of school and hiding in the crevice of welfare.
I wanted the palm trees without the choke-hold. I wanted the cool California weather without the open fires on July 4th, the firework setting flames to nearby homes telling me that this was the hell that came with freedom. The American dream was served in the oven and why won’t you accommodate to these standards you ask me and I don’t know how to reply.
While other kids played in their backyards and learned how to ride bikes, I learned how to survive, how to walk the streets without being murdered. These are good skills that transfer into college resumes.
So the roots of trees would come out of the ground like fists and demand reparations, they would sneak into the pavement and break car windows with the intention of stealing radios that they sold for a good penny. They carried knives and cackled at the neighborhood watch because all eyes were on them and yet nothing changed but I want to change, I want to change you chant.
Nothing will be the same since I lived in Francis st.
Named after the saint with the smugness in his smile and the gluttony blistering out of his dress.
Will you comfort me in my hours of need oh gracious one?
will you drink these sins like Catholics drink Jesus' blood on Sunday morning?
Is this blasphemy a reason to instill death between the hours of 2 and 4:30?
I’m always chasing on my knees for the knowledge that is taken away from the destitute culture that the ghettos become. I wanted to go back to the mud and dig all those lives that crossed mine and tell them that they could run after their intelligence. Save them from the quicksand. That one doesn’t have to be shot at a party for being raised by criminals. That cars that drive slow at night don't always have bad intentions.

But if I do, I’m afraid I’ll sink


I’ll sink
md-writer Mar 2016
I’m sick of it,
The blasted hordes like dried-out gourds
Screaming, cawing for more water.
Feed the flesh, delight the eyes
Give us our shining fantasy. With flippancy
Strip down past all the layers of
My skill my voice my person,
And then take me, break me, make me
Into someone I am not.
Into something that is not.

Pull the paints out.
Imperfections had their day
Yesterday.
Today we’re going all the way.
Make or break you,
Take and shape you:
Tonight you’ll be the idol of the world.

Set the lights, hold your poise.
There’s a goddess on the stage tonight.
Not a person. Not a voice.
It’s the *** doll’s dance tonight.

But we’ll call it art.

I’m sick of it,
The cursed curve,
Numbers up, so clothes come down; and to think I started out
So innocent.
But the eye of the tiger is broken,
The clearness of crystal is crushed -

and those shards just make the perfect dress!

Crystalize, sterilize,
Put me on a different plane.
Separate, distillate,
Don’t let them see your pain.
“If you have to show you’re broken,
It’s gotta be so you can gain.”
Strip away. Everything.
Don’t show them who you really are.
We need an image for the covers
Not a person. Not a windowpane
Into your soul.

So break free, defying,
Undying.
You’re like a god.
No more trying. True flying
Means no more rules for me.
Don’t let them try to
Defy you:

You are now allowed to breathe free.

But only if you push the line. Flaunt your paints and shine your sparkles, leave behind your decency. You stand before a watching globe It is your job to entertain. So really, you are not your own.

The masses are the masters, though they pay.

So no, there’s no way out for you. There’s only forward
Which is downward. And no chance
To just be you. Because
Your freedom isn’t free.

They just can’t take a faulty human. It would be a let-down,
A break-down.
So let us shove you in a box.
Tell you how you have to be.
If you’re gonna keep your money
And your parody of free.
Then take the stage
Play the part.
There’s no more music
No more art.
Just a mad house, a cat house
Diced up platters serving meat.
Kiss my chains, take my gains,
For all my pains
I still ain’t free.

But still. We’ll call it art.
Can we all just take a moment to hate on the modern music industry (fed and created by the general consensus of consumption) and the abuse it puts (especially female) artists through?
Alaska Jul 2016
And every single day, I'm sitting in the bus, my head against the windowpane.
Watching the cars passing by, following the raindrops running down the windows with my eyes.
Listening to those beautiful words coming out of my earbuds and the mouths of my favorite artists.
My eyes are closed and people might think I'm sleeping, but really, I'm just thinking of everything you said to me and how you looked me in the eyes.
I'll try to remember the moments when I felt safe, because they're so rare, remembering is a very special thing to do.

— The End —