Dark Aubade Poems

in the flares of twilight
This gloomy night of patience will burn someday
We are the niche of hope, says the ashes of dawn
For every painful thorn...

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Canticle: an Aubade
Michael R. Burch

Misty morning sunlight hails the dawning of new day;
dreams drift into drowsiness before they fade away.
Dew drops on the green grass...

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what a strange place
we find ourselves in.
trapped in the open

we are free within

we ask for spare change
and currency as we stake
out our places downtown

dreaming our...

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Looking back, one thing comes clean-glass clear
you were always there for me subduing every fear.

I tried to do my duty, be a husband strong and...

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A single white rose bloomed near the grave stone,
Swaying in breeze against dark cloud and rain,
In the vast churchyard she stood all alone,
To brighten resting...

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Did you suspect the quark, in the dark knit-work of matter?
Did you unravel the mysteries of the pyramids?
Did you guess the coral, seahorse and pearl,...

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The Goldfish Bowl


Once injected with water, sorrow becomes colorless and tasteless
Inside the glass bowl, all lives
only live seven seconds

The same route, again and again --
The...

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Abide
by Michael R. Burch

after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"

It is hard to understand or accept mortality—
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or...

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A new day perhaps, of immeasurable tin, sound of din
A hurricane noise, a thrall of riotous cuts, although thin
The blood-curdle choke of rage from before
Now...

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The thorns have come for me
Her deadly flower walks
There's more for taking me
to deadly hallow docks

What once was gracing me
now trecherous goary blocks
When now I...

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Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the...

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Alone here in the dark 
searching for a mated star of bright
I hug the street lamp 
and pray for night's respite...

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Waiting for a brisk autumn wind
swept away the heat wave
Put out the fire-like light day after day
It roams the city as cheap love
 It drills...

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a lone car on a highway at 5am
its headlight beams knife the dark
no exit wounds
just a flash of steely light pushing 
deeper and deeper into...

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In the nicotine of your kiss, 
My skull cracks
Like a woodpecker’s migraine. 
You chew my passion endlessly,
And an orchid blooms in your belly,
With violet whispers.
I...

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