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Poems about Things that Break III
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old habits, our hearts, and sometimes Love itself.
 
 
 
The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch
 
Whatever we became climbed on the thought
of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings
ten thousand miles above the breasted earth
that had vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ...
 
I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling
my human form about; I writhe; I writhe.
Invention is not Mastery, nor wings
Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides
and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ...
 
Oh, some will call the sun my doom, but Love
melts callow wax the higher atmospheres
leave brittle. I flew high: not high enough
to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers.
 
 
 
Old Habits Die Hard
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
 
The habit of breathing
is an odd tradition. 
Why struggle so to keep on living?
The body shudders,
the eyes veil,
yet the feet somehow keep moving.
Why this journey, this restless, relentless flowing?
For how many weeks, months, years, centuries
shall we struggle to keep on living, keep on living?
Habits are such strange things, such hard things to break!
 
 
 
Having Touched You (The Boy in the Bubble) 
by Michael R. Burch
 
What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.
 
And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west, 
another remained
 
suspended in memory
like a flower
in crystal
 
so that eternity
is but an hour
and fall
 
is no longer a season
but a state
of mind.
 
I have no reason
to wait; 
the wind
 
does not pause
for remembrance
or regret
 
because
there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget...
 
Forget that we were very happy
for a day.
That day was my lifetime.
 
Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine, 
 
the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root
and I grew.
 
Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife, 
and yet I can bear it, 
having touched you.
 
I wrote this poem as a teenager after watching "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" with John Travolta playing a young man with a defective immune system who risks death for a chance at love.
 
 
 
Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch 

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel; 
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You'll heal
if I do not. The coffee's hot. You speak: 
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love's warm Ideal, 
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here? 
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
 
 
 
Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
 
I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot. 
 
 
 
Dark-bosomed clouds
pregnant with heavy thunder ...
the water breaks
?Michael R. Burch
 
 
 
As grief reaches its breaking point
someone snaps a nearby branch.
?Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
 
 
 
Lightning
shatters the darkness?
the night heron's shriek 
?Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
 
 
 
Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.
?Sappho, fragment 130, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
 
 
 
My heart is unsteady as a rocking boat;
besieged by such longing I weaken with age
and come close to breaking.
?Otomo no Sakanoue no Iratsume, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
 
 
 
Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
 
My era’s obscuring mirror  
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.            
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.
 
 
 
Mirror Images
by Michael R. Burch
 
She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us ...
 
tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief ...				
 
ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered ...
 
and if you were to ask her,
she might say?
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,
 
and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.
 
Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Modern War Poems
 
 
 
Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch
 
I never touched you?
that was my mistake.
 
Deep within,
I still feel the ache.
 
Can an unformed thing
eternally break?
 
Now, from a great distance,
I see you again
 
not as you are now,
but as you were then?
 
eternally present
and Sovereign.
 
 
 
Published as the collection "Poems about Things that Break"
 
Keywords/Tags: break, break up, breaking, breakings, farewell, shatter, shattered, shattering, delicate, fragility, fragment, touch, cruelty, brutality, abuse, stress, love, pain, relationships, society, sorrow, solitude, sad, relationship
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