Halloween Poems Ii
Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch
Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here?among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire?
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?
Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch
after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley
I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.
I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me?progenitor of life
with its foul breath.
Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.
Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically?her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure
to a consuming emptiness.
We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture?
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts
to the first note.
Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.
Need is reborn; love dies.
Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch
The night is dark and scary?
under your bed, or upon it.
That blazing light might be a star ...
or maybe the Final Comet.
But two things are sure: your mother’s love
and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit!
the Horror
by Michael R. Burch
the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads
the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”
Belfry
by Michael R. Burch
There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.
There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.
There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.
There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.
Duet
by Michael R. Burch
Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad!
How worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we laughed together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .
Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement?in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us?our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .
Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .
No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .
Horror
by Michael R. Burch
What I ache to say is beyond saying?
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.
No, there are no words for the horror
as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...
What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.
Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch
We are all dying, haunted by life?
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.
With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.
We are the dying, enamored of “life”?
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.
We have only one thought?Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.
We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.
Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch
Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.
But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.
So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!
I lie, pallid vision of man?the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.
I love her beyond and despite even shame.
Keywords/Tags: Halloween, supernatural, dark, scary, horror, surreal, magic, gothic
Copyright © Michael Burch | Year Posted 2020
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