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
Copyright © Michael Burch | Year Posted 2020
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