Because Her Heart Is Tender

Because Her Heart Is Tender, for Beth by Michael R. Burch She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget” dove-white on her car’s window (though the wren, because its heart is tender, might regret it called the sun to wake her). As I slept, she heard lost names recounted, one by one. She wrote in sidewalk chalk: “Never Forget!” and kept her heart’s own counsel. No rain swept away those words, no tear leaves them undone. Because her heart is tender with regret, bruised by razed towers’ glass and steel and stone that shatter on and on and on and on ... she stitches in damp linen: “NEVER FORGET!” and listens to her heart’s emphatic song. (The wren might tilt its head and sing along because its heart once understood regret when nestlings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ... love's reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.) She writes in adamant: “NEVER FORGET!” because her heart is tender with regret. Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, Nietzsche Twilight, The Eclectic Muse, Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine, and Other Voices International Because Her Heart is Tender (II) by Michael R. Burch Because her heart is tender there is hope some God might mend her, … some small hope Fates might relent. Because her heart is tender mighty Angels, come defend her! Even the Devil might repent. Because her heart is tender Jacob’s Ladder should descend here, the heavens open, saints assent. Because her heart is tender why does the cruel world rend her? Fix the world, or let it end here! Double Trouble by Michael R. Burch The villanelle is trouble: it’s like you’re on the bubble of beginning to see double. It’s like you’re on the Hubble when the lens begins to wobble: the villanelle is trouble. It’s like you’re Barney Rubble scratching itchy beer-stained stubble because you’re seeing double. Then your lines begin to gobble up the good rhymes, and you hobble. The villanelle is trouble, just like getting sloshed in the pub’ll begin to make you babble because you’re seeing double. Because the form is flubbable and is really not that loveable, the villanelle is trouble: it’s like you’re seeing double.