Best Fissured Poems

Instruction
by Michael R. Burch

Toss this poem aside
to the filigreed and the wild tide
of sunset.

Strike my name,
and still it is all the same.
The onset

of night is in the despairing skies;
each hut shuts its bright bewildered eyes.
The wind sighs

and my heart sighs with her:
my only companion, O...

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Too long since smooth sapling skin
bent supple with the slightest breeze;
now stretched, fissured and furrowed -
bored, burned and bent - 
sliced, scarred and carved, yet
I have lived wonderfully and fully.

Old limbs that once swung
a laughing child and sheltered
more than one forbidden kiss;
the only witness to...

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Son of the soil protect this land
this gift our forefathers blessed.
With gnarled fingers they dug deep the earth
 To bring forth food and ore from
 a land warm and supple
Poured forth milk to nourish us all.

Son of the soil protect this land
Nurture the soil, replenish...

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A HEART OF GOLD
A
Symbol of a
Seraphic being you are,
For to the hopeless, without a
Behest a chest of hope on a platter
Of silver you offered, and the cold
Maimed, with your fur, warmth
You gave.

To
The feeble minded
In the battle against cruel fate.
Courage for conquest you gave.
To the ravenous...

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There's a time to chase the world,
and a time for the world to chase you...
the distinction between destiny and damnation
can become ambiguous as a dream
on the edge of twilight
when the world is watching you ruthlessly,
hungering for your nude heart,
restless to weigh and rent
the miracle of...

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The night would steal his love away 
across the bridge of the moon. 
He knew that it might try one day, 
But it has come that bit too soon. 

It cut itself a creature, 
From its own satanic cloth, 
And a rider plucked from Hades...

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Five excruciating months I’ve spent
inside this corset made of steel.
It binds the soul beneath 
my broken column.

See me standing here
naked before this bleak and arid landscape,
fissured like the furrows 
of this barren yellow plain
on which a child to call my own
will never play.

See my flesh...

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I sit here steeping in the History 
of Our Land, a class, my eyelids dense.
Our Flag hangs in the corner of the class
Red and White folds in deluge, licking the
framed portrait of our Thomas Jefferson,
our founding father, the slave holder. 
My teacher, stern at his...

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The gathering storm rattled snakelike over distant hills,
Heads of dust and debris thrown as charcoal relief
To the vast expanse of the sky;
In the drought of reason, heat radiated a stillness,
Diseased and brooding, motionless as fissured statues
Or corpses in their time of desiccation.
The old grudges quickly...

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As sunrise steals slowly over the horizon
I peep above the soil joyful and smiling
A blade of grass in a meadow 
because the sun shines only on me

I’m a single cloud twisting and twirling
Amid swirling white and scudding folds
Sunlight gleams shining through
The brightest beam o’er me...

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Lines broken and crossed,
Weathered skin, 
Sun baked,
Fissured knuckles,
Short nails,
Old breaks
Crooked finger
Worn tips, 
Scars,
Wrinkles,
Big surface veins,
Hair, 
Blood blister,
Hard calluses,
Softened calluses,
Fresh scratches,
Small slivers,
Stained,
but ...
Awesome.
 
My hands.

Thank you, Lord....

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Descending,
  I manipulate and manoeuvre for the updraft
  Spluttering,
  I spiral down, then briefly up again, to glimpse a glowing sky
  Flapping,
  I fall forever faster, flat-eagled
  Plunging, 
  I watch the unwelcome gloom envelope my horizon
 ...

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HELL IS COLD
Dirge,
Deluge of thoughts,
Sleepless nights,
Fissured heart, depict
Your skewed companionship.
Now I am on board the ship of solitude,
Shore of quietude of heart bound, for freedom
From the serfdom of your sickly love.
But my solitude a symbol of hell you called and
For your absence, in  loneliness...

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Monster

just before the kill
corner of eye
mirror shard
piece of something
i had sculpted
from betrayals
beatings
in the pit of my
nightmares
what are you?
i turned to stare:

“I am the Monster
made in your image
beaten boy
abandoned baby
till death do I march
in defense of schemes
here at your bequest
roots of shattered dreams
do not mock me
I...

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MultiCultural Teaching and Listening

All major educational challenges,
for both consumers and producers of communication,
call for best outside/inside compassion practices
rooted in cooperative awareness of nutritional flow patterns,
contrasted against toxic stagnation entropy, apathy,
and flowering as WinEgo/WinEco-health values.

For example,
racism and sexism and ageism and narcissism's generic anthro-centrism,
from back when...

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