Best Worm Eaten 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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I'm tired of fishing for truth, 
and catching only, 
Worm eaten boots 
And plastic flim-flam,
of egotistical minds, 
This river is polluted! 
With a million fallen dreams,
 And spineless fish, 
That cannot see, 
So I raise a glass 
To the strangers. 
To the outsiders. 
Who swim...

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Rugby SCRUM* DANCE for Divorced and Dis-abused Wedding Guests

(Packs made up of eight « players » (see note below) may be formed indifferently : either segregate the sexes or mix them up. No sweat ! Only keep children away !)

First Half

Step up
Both parties, now 
Take...

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Today I wandered through a grove.
An ancient and dilapidated place,
decaying as groves are wont.
A wind-snapped branch here,
a worm-eaten stump there.
Until the whispering wind
softly muttered in my ear,
“This is not your first time here.”
But all is different now,
        ...

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Sonnets XC-XCVII

Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official?zenlike Art?
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile...

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My mind is like a haunted house,
and you are the restless spirit;
the poltergeist inside of it.
But in fact, it’s not really you:
it's just the remain of a once-called-precious vestige     
of my love for you.
          On everywhere...

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Shamir infection,

    wormwood,worm eaten human,

           the Souls destroyer......

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Belated
                  confession
                  won't heal your wounds
     ...

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I once was a beautiful lass
	who captured every young man’s fancy
A nymph of the high Southern class
	who practiced a belle’s necromancy.

They worshipped my haughty fine grace
	they catered to temper and whim
A moment to gaze on my face
	sent rent hearts to pain, prayer, and hymn.

But now...

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Poems about Poems VI

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood?
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the Muse
with reprimands of Dr. Seuss.

The best book of the age sold two,
or three, or four...

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I love to visit the church; to wander in the graveyard…
Flitting fleet-footed amongst the copse of corpses, 
The grey stone groves of death – 
I love those humble long-suffering tombstones,
They rear their bleak blackened heads towards the eternal sky 
And remind me of the redeeming...

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Medieval Poems



Wulf and Eadwacer
(Old English circa 990 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My people pursue him like crippled prey.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
We are so different!

Wulf's on one island; I'm on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens.
Here, bloodthirsty curs roam...

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Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here?among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of...

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In humans narcissity, indifferent continually partly?
Caring effacing cursing raving 
In-continuity..' Maybe? Am I trite? 
Light entertainment;T V trials expose's
Speak of sensuality, tease by promiscuity
In a questionable proximity a proxy place
An invisible divide.. Presides rabidity 
This is a worn; worm eaten valuless society
That only wants the...

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Salve
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9-11

The world is unsalvageable ...
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as we do,

that our bodies are wise

in ways we refuse
to comprehend,
still...

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