Halloween Poems Iii
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 lies in grasses greenly 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.
NOTE: This poem's No One is a cross between an angel and a demon, God and the Devil, a warlock and a goblin.
Bikini
by Michael R. Burch
Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white 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 pale and wise.
Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and with tentacles about it squirming,
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh,
knowing man’s demise draws nigh.
Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch
Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.
Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.
Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.
The Witch Contraire
by Michael R. Burch
Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,
I sought Her ...
finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.
Yet her name was like prayer.
Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere
within me and about me.
Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.
Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.
Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch
You come to me
out of the sun?
my dark twin, unreal . . .
And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel . . .
And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.
East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch
Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.
He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.
She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale?
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.
*
A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.
*
An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says?“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”
East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch
He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.
Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.
He took what he could
till she afforded no more.
Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.
He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to whore,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.
Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch
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.
Keywords/Tags: Halloween, eve, supernatural, horror, dark, gothic, paranormal, evil, witch, witches, crone, crones, Jack the Ripper, goblin, warlock, angel of death, fear
Copyright © Michael Burch | Year Posted 2020
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