Best Frailer Poems

In a house too huge for them to maintain,
a man hunched over with back pain lives
with a disabled daughter and
his very elderly wife.
A recent heart attack
has left her frailer
and meaner. The
doctor “says”
she will
die.

Not
willing
to get up
or walk for years,
she had atrophied.
Refusing sponge baths, meds,
or a private...

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I wish that I had the heart to hate you. 
I wish that I feel the way you do.
I wish that I could dismiss of my conscience
And I could do the heartless things you do.
I wish that I could make you feel as I do,
As...

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The Journey Of Marriage

Grand party, grand clothes, grand decor and grand style!
Well-wishers and greetings cheering the dulled hearts 
Silver jubilee's are celebrated by partners with affected smiles
Wars behind doors and eyes literally gnawed out by painted talons
The tongue's wrath suffices enough to dig the other's...

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Dad Revisited- Once More


Last night I sat up in bed and prayed a little longer,
I asked god to send dad back for just one more  day with great fervour.

Dad was waiting for me in the verandah as soon as I reached,
Seated on his cane...

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From heaven I fell in drop to swell,
Upon the waves of Loch Fyne.
From rain to girl, sand born in pearl
thus formed was I divine.

When first formed, I was Unicorn
And no name had such as I
But then the moon, the belewe moon
appeared and Rain rose I.

From...

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Twinkly bunch with loaded school bags
Ambition injustice and itching their backs,
Cunning those faces in front of the gate
Heedful pupils well-chosen apparently late.  
A fistful primary breeziness
Shared with smiles, tears and silliness,
Together they brawled, together they fiddled
At times they often complained to be differentiated.
Kiddo little...

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Asunder have all my classical forms and themes been torn,
Who tore them?
Who destroyed them to bring the poem down to the earth? 
Yes, I did.
It is I who is now cold like a fully unthawed polar ocean,
No longer a wrathful wrangler,
No longer bold.
The neatly shaped...

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She was taken away from me,
At such a young age,
We were just newlyweds,
When she fell deathly ill,
To an unknown sickness.

The doctors could do nothing,
But hope that the sickness would pass,
Each day; she grew frailer and sicker,
Till the sickness consumed her,
And she no longer could hold...

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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...

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Poems for Poets VIII


Fireflies
thinking to illuminate the darkness?
Poets!
—Michael R. Burch


BeMused
by Michael R. Burch

You will find in her hair
a fragrance more severe
than camphor.

You will find in her dress
no hint of a sweet
distractedness.

You will find in her eyes
horn-owlish and wise
no metaphors
of love, but only reflections
of books, books,...

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POEMS FOR POETS X

US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our...

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A weakness wound its wicked way inside
where thoughts of “us”, not love, do dwell and swell,
and formed a nest of twigs to stay the tide
yet cresting waves of righteousness rebelled.

“Stray not,” he said " for look on how I writhe."
Of fire formed made thane to...

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My mother, who is eighty-five
Has had a very rough year.
So I planned a special Christmas gift
Though it's November and nowhere near.

Fourteen years ago I took her to see
John McDermott perform here in town.
She was over the moon for this Scottish tenor.
Now another concert had come...

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Out here, happ'ness 
impales no frailer scorn
Onto the breath, than 
prints of foot reborn....

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Thou wert frail, frailer still thy fate,
Had reasons fair to feel nigh riled,
Your sad eyes sure had looked for me, 
O my ill-fated child.

I was too far to welcome thee,
My child, had little time to wait,
Get admired in father’s fond arms,
And ye left, gone from...

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