Brief Flings: Epigrams

Sweet Centerless Sixteen by Michael R. Burch Inconsolable as “love” had left your heart, you woke this morning eager to pursue warm lips again, or something “really cool” on which to press your lips and leave their mark. As breath upon a windowpane at dawn soon glows, a spreading halo full of sun, your thought of love blinks wildly—on and on ... then fizzles at the center, and is gone. Thirty by Michael R. Burch Thirty crept upon me slowly with feline caution and a slowly-twitching tail; she waited three decades for the winds to shift; now, claws unsheathed, she lies ready to assail her defenseless prey. 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. 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. Her Preference by Michael R. Burch Not for her the pale incandescence of dreams, the warm glow of imagination, the hushed whispers of possibility, or frail, blossoming hope. No, she prefers the anguish and screams of bitter condemnation, the hissing of hostility, damnation's rope. The Heimlich Limerick by Michael R. Burch for T. M. The sanest of poets once wrote: Friend, why be a sheep or a goat? Why follow the leader or be a blind breeder? But almost no one took note. Nuclear Winter: Solo Restart by Michael R. Burch Out of the ashes a flower emerges and trembling bright sunshine bathes its scorched stem, but how will this flower endure for an hour the rigors of winter eternal and grim without men? Where our senses fail, reason must prevail. —Galileo Galilei, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Farewell to Faith I by Michael R. Burch What we want is relief from life’s grief and despair: what we want’s not “belief” but just not to be there. Farewell to Faith II by Michael R. Burch Confronted by the awesome thought of death, to never suffer, and be free of grief, we wonder: "What’s the use of drawing breath? Why seek relief from the bible’s Thief, who ripped off Eve then offered her a leaf?" To live without philosophizing is to close one's eyes and never attempt to open them.—René Descartes, translation by Michael R. Burch Keywords/Tags: sixteen, first kiss, lips, puppy love, infatuation, flirt, flirtation, thirty, age, aging, maturity, time, raw, potential, barren, field, tabula rasa, blank slate, palimpsest, describing, you, description, fragrance, perfume, odor, rain, dew, sunlight, warmth, light, nuclear, winter, radiation, ashes, life, reemerges, without, men, Armageddon, Apocalypse, extinction, event, female, preference, dreams, imagination, possibility, hope, anguish, screams, condemnation, hostility, damnation