Apocalyptic Poems I
These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems ...
The Vision of the Overseer’s Right Hand
by Michael R. Burch
“Dust to dust ...”
I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color . . .
There a skeletal figure
groped through blonde sand
for a rigid right hand
lost long, long ago . . .
A hand now more white
than he had wielded before.
But he paused there, unsure,
for he could not tell
without the whip’s frenetic hiss
which savage white hand was his.
Originally published by Poetry Porch
Man Retreats into Savagery
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 an arctic 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.
Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch
A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."
Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.
Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."
Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.
This road is neither long nor wide . . .
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.
Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch
Davenport tomorrow ...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.
Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.
There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.
The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.
They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science ...
after all, what is life?
Davenport tomorrow ...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.
Burn
by Michael R. Burch
for Trump
Sunbathe,
ozone baby,
till your parched skin cracks
in the white-hot flash
of radiation.
Incantation
from your pale parched lips
shall not avail;
you made this hell.
Now burn.
This was one of my early poems, written around age 19. I dedicated the poem to Trump after he pulled the United States out of the Paris climate change accords.
Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch
for Trump
Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.
At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.
It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause
between odd bites to sniff through the scat,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...
Evil, the rat.
No One
by Michael R. Burch
No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he smiles on a bed soft, green and lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.
No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.
No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.
Bikini
by Michael R. Burch
Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s bright eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise ...
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something old, and odd, and wise.
Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and, with tentacles like Medusa's squirming,
it feels the cloud blot out the skies' ...
then shudders, settles with a sigh,
understanding man’s demise.
Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch
Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go . . .
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.
Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin . . .
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will “win.”
Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through . . .
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters,
deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way,
or will.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Charon 2001
by Michael R. Burch
I, too, have stood?paralyzed at the helm
watching onrushing, inevitable disaster.
I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster
damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film
becomes mucous-insulate. Always, thereafter
living in darkness, bright things overwhelm.
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
Keywords/Tags: Apocalypse, Apocalyptic Poems, Prophecy, Prophetic Poems, Proclamation, Future, Futuristic, Broken Future, Vision, Visionary, Omen, Omens, Sign, Signs, Earth, Earth Day, Mother Earth, Humanity, Climate Change, Global Warming, Environment, Extinction, Nature, World
Copyright © Michael Burch | Year Posted 2021
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