Midnight Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
I.
A measureless rhythm rules the night—
few have heard it,
but I have shared it,
and its secret is mine.
To put it into words
is as to extract the sweetness from honey
and must be done as gently
as a butterfly cleans its wings.
But when it is captured, it is gone again;
its usefulness is only
that it lulls to sleep.
II.
So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night,
to the moans of the moonlit hills'
bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill
with the nightjar’s shrill, cryptic trills.
But I will not sleep this night, nor any …
how can I—when my dreams
are always of your perfect face
ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace,
framed by your tear-drenched pillowcase?
"Midnight Lullaby" has been set to music by the award-winning New Zealand composer David Hamilton.
Keywords/Tags: lullaby, lullabies, music, musical, song, child, children, childhood, baby, babies, midnight, night, rhythm, sleep
Every time I piss on that little plastic stick I lose something.
An archer struck down on a battlement, a coin from a rich mans pocket, not enough to really feel it but enough to know it's gone. Something is.
Every time I let him cum in me I’m waving my white flag. Even if i ask him to, beg him to, I admit defeat.
To be a mother is to lose. From the point of conception to your last breath, you lose.
Your body is theirs to live in and reap for all they need.
Your thoughts are theirs, on them, or their thoughts.
Your health is in those tiny hands of theirs
.
And your love, your careful, gentle love, now raging red like an overfed hearth, will be theirs.
Whether they want it or not. Whether they take it or not.
It will rip from you and follow them like a curse.
And still, I ask him to, beg him to and admit my defeat. I piss on that plastic stick and hope, deep down, it will be my undoing.
Happy times and childhood games
Laughter echoes in the sunshine
That's the joy that childhood claims
But for the children of Gaza, there's only death and darkness.
Bombs snuffed out their tears and fears
The world keeps silent... what a shame
Innocent children who have done no wrong
They are just collateral damage to the powers that be
The genocide continues without skipping a beat
Those responsible should be charged with war crimes
It's the new world order on apartheid streets
Bombs keep falling as mothers weep...
O soil of Gaza, within your belly lie the souls of our children,
Their flesh you consumed without a conscience,
Their blood runs deep into your hidden streams,
Yet you boast of swallowing their tender bones.
You paved a path for our their deformed limbs,
Without pity, you grant their innocence a bed.
We weep, yet you pretend our tears are sweat,
While you take joy in burying our children.
The bombs they hurl on your blossoms explode,
Cutting lives short, dismissing our children's future.
You turn their gun-shattered bodies into your fertility,
But of what use, when their limbs lie withered?
O soil of Gaza, vomit out the souls of these children,
—
in innocence they entered your gluttonous belly.
Their days are better above you than within you,
So why did you allow your greed to take them away?
When the elders declare a war,
they have lived their lives.
Wars thundering through the
centuries,
Death is present to reap,
it’s the children who fall.
They haven’t walked enough,
in childhood’s discovering journey.
The bombs, the drones,
the guns,
the screams of fright,
it’s the children who fall.
Dust plumes in the hellish rampage,
and in the rubble they are dead,
mothers, fathers wail to God Who
weeps on His heavenly throne.
Psyches bleed, ravaged by grief.
Wars trample and crush the flowers
of innocence,
as the butterflies search for them,
it’s the children who fall. ~
Beneath the dusty streets where children play
the twilit baneful torture tunnels lay
where many innocents are laid to rot
among them, some still breathe but countless not.
Among the dusty streets, the children act
their role to maximize a shock impact
on our naive, jaundiced media types
greedily turning up to earn their stripes.
Amidst the dusty streets, the children shield
the homes where missile launchers are concealed;
not one child wished to execute this role;
expect to pay the devastating toll.
In dusty streets, now innocence is lost
and children’s lives are nonchalantly tossed,
by tribes with little desire to debate,
upon the altar of ancestral hate.
baby is crying
the three year old is “why-ing”
daddy fell off his pulpit
one eye spied red-blooded male
thought it okay to take life
They are not headlines,
not numbers
stacked in columns of loss.
They are children...
running with paper kites
stitched from the scraps of yesterday,
drawing suns with broken crayons
on walls that no longer stand.
Their laughter once rose
above the call to prayer,
a fragile hymn
against the roar of falling skies.
Now, quiet shows them before their time
how to carry grief in tiny palms,
how to tuck emptiness close
as though it had been cradled in their chest all along.
Yet—
in the rubble,
a doll without arms still wears a smile.
In the dust,
tiny feet trace games
on streets the world has forgotten.
Hope is stubborn.
It hides in their eyes
flickering like a candle
protected from the wind,
whispering to us
if we tune our hearts to
their quiet voice,
...that childhood
should be a garden,
not a graveyard of dreams.
Remember them.
Not as shadows of war
but as children who deserve
to wake beneath an unbroken sky.
Childlike innocence free of filters
expressing raw emotions of joy anger boredom
society's norms soon to censure
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Children of Divorce
Divorce
A curse
On a family
Who once was happy
Never to feel the same
Feeling like they are to blame
For this never ending game
Just wanting to be the children they were before
But they will always be the children of divorce
Children of divorce
In the quiet corners of my mind-
A fuzzy friend named Cubby still resides.
Years ago, when I was three,
He tumbled into my life, so warm and free.
His legs once jiggled, full of beads,
Now gently limp, shaped by years and needs.
Stitches faded, fur rubbed thin,
Yet love, not fabric, holds him in.
Psychology whispers: attachment, security,
But Cubby is more than theory-he's memory's purity.
He's comfort on restless nights,
A silent listener to childhood's frights.
One summer day, a suitcase closed-
Cubby missing, my heart exposed.
Tears spilled all the way back home,
I felt so lost, so all alone.
But surprise! My brother's gentle tease:
He'd tucked Cubby away, aimed to please.
The ache of loss became relief so sweet-
Reunion turning sorrow to heartbeat.
Why do we long for what can't speak?
Why do soft things make us weak?
Perhaps in Cubby, I see a part
Of something gentle in my heart.
He's more than cotton, thread, and fur-
He's childhood's echo, comforter.
Psychology says it's just a phase,
But Cubby's love, it never decays.
we surf the channels
some shall shrug and look away…
this is not my child
We watch while we cry
as children of Gaza die…
deny genocide
Child of Gaza
thy innocence in ruins…
buried in despair
Gaza’s children
our hearts a hole carved
as babes of Gaza starve
just fatality—unacceptable!
Genocide of Palestinian's
starve the children
bomb their land
while we surf the channels
some shall shrug and look away…
this is not my child is what they say
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil,
Is for good men to do nothing.”
It's a quote routinely attributed to Edmund Burke.
"I have no right to post this.
Here in my ivory tower where nothing is amiss.
I eat when hungry and drink when I thirst.
Feel pity for those babes, but I always come first." The Poet.
A child is precious no matter where they be.
So who could inflict such agony?
They say the end is near,
If the crying stops by a child so dear,
Sweet might has no strength left to cry.
The mother must sit and watch the babe die.
Donations given but aid cant get through.
Great suffering by hunger, if the aggressors only knew.
Why the society doesn’t speak about
The persecuted children of Hindus in Pakistan
The persecuted children of Hindus in Bangladesh
The persecuted children of Sikhs in Afganistan
The persecuted children of Christians in Islamic state
The persecuted children of Yazidis in Iraq
The persecuted children of Persians in Iran
The persecuted children of Druze in Syria
The world doesn’t revolve around Gaza
Laced with fake news and misinformation
Jihadis play the victim-card with children on the pedestal of falsification
So, wake up world
And don’t get twirled
In the propaganda of false whirlwind
Specific Types of Children Poems
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