Sonnets Lxxi-Lxxx

Sonnets LXXI-LXXX Because You Came to Me by Michael R. Burch Because you came to me with sweet compassion and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair, I do not love you after any fashion, but wildly, in despair. Because you came to me in my black torment and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment they melt, I am undone. Because I am undone, you have remade me as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me and bower me, somehow. Break Time by Michael R. Burch for those who lost loved ones on 9-11 Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel; add artificial sweeteners to conceal the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak: of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance. The TV drones oeuvres of high romance in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal, its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel toward some dark conclusion? Disappear to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here? I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear. 911 Carousel by Michael R. Burch “And what rough beast... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”?W. B. Yeats They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why the reeling azure fixture of the sky grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.” They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize, and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud. The voice of terror thunders from a cloud that darkens over children adult-wise, far less inclined to error, when a step in any wrong direction is to fall a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call, their voices plangent, honking to be shot... Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide, as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride. At Cædmon’s Grave by Michael R. Burch At the monastery of Whitby, on a day when the sun sank through the sea, and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free, while the wind and time blew all around, I paced those dusk-enamored grounds and thought I heard the steps resound of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede who walked there, too, their spirits freed ?perhaps by God, perhaps by need? to write, and with each line, remember the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember, scorched tongues of flame words still engender. Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet. I lay this pale garland of words at his feet. Originally published by The Lyric Radiance by Michael R. Burch for Dylan Thomas The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil? for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet; each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil, dark images impacted, rooted clay. The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning? the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame that leashes and excites its turgid surface... then squanders years imagining love’s the same. Belatedly he turns to what lies broken? the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts, among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking one element that scorches and uplifts. Huntress by Michael R. Burch after Baudelaire Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep across a crevice dropping deep into a dark and doomed domain. Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane. Rain falls upon your path, and pain pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause and heed the oft-lamented laws which bid you not begin again till night returns. You wail like wind, the sighing of a soul for sin, and give up hunting for a heart. Till sunset falls again, depart, though hate and hunger urge you?"On!" Heed, hearts, your hope?the break of dawn. Published by The HyperTexts and Sonnetto Poesia (Canada) Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad) by Michael R. Burch He did not think of love of Her at all frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads (nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small at last to be invisible. He smiled (the fables erred so curiously), and thought bemusedly of being reconciled to human flesh, because his heart was not incapable of love, but, being cursed a second time, could only love a toad’s... and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats... and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted, his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted. Because She Craved the Very Best by Michael R. Burch Because she craved the very best, he took her East, he took her West; he took her where there were no wars and brought her bright bouquets of stars, the blush and fragrances of roses, the hush an evening sky imposes, moonbeams pale and garlands rare, and golden combs to match her hair, a nightingale to sing all night, white wings, to let her soul take flight... She stabbed him with a poisoned sting and as he lay there dying, she screamed, "I wanted everything!" and started crying. Caveat by Michael R. Burch If only we were not so eloquent, we might sing, and only sing, not to impress, but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed. We might inundate the earth with thankfulness for light, although it dies, and make a song of night descending on the earth like bliss, with other lights beyond?not to be known? but only to be welcomed and enjoyed, before all worlds and stars are overthrown... as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face and find it beautiful for emptiness of all but joy. There is no thought to love but love itself. How senseless to redress, in darkness, such becoming nakedness... Originally published by Clementine Unbound Keywords/Tags: sonnet, sonnets, meter, rhyme, form, love, desire, compassion, despair, torment, sun, rain, grief, loss, romance