Just as the eve has come
The joy of mourning has become undone
We tell ourselves each day is one
Expectance is the claim of none
A harrowed trail of battled drums
The humming sum of rains to come
Acceptance is the aim to some
While rejection feints the cause of shun
Epiphanies are all but done
The roar of morning has just begun
Harrowed hum will become
Gently probing her vulnerabilities
seeking only the slightest advantage
He parries her feints most delicately
awaiting an opening to do some damage...
When she, shockingly, reveals a secret so deep
then casts aside his sword to weep
and declare: A man who jousts with a lady fair
is mete to unseat in her heart's affairs
Distances (II)
by Michael R. Burch
There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.
She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.
She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something...
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.
At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.
Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia and Lone Stars. Keywords/Tags: love, relationship, relationships, communication, distance, distances, convention, books, bookstores, art, literature, poetry, writing, chasm, abyss, divide, Faust, Frost, clean break
Violets
by Michael R. Burch
Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to an indiscreet height
and you laughed,
abruptly demure,
outblushing shocked violets:
suddenly,
I knew:
everything had changed.
Later, as you braided your hair
into long bluish plaits
the shadows empurpled,
the dragonflies’
last darting feints
dissolving mid-air,
we watched the sun’s long glide
into evening,
knowing and unknowing.
O, how the illusions of love
await us in the commonplace
and rare
then haunt our small remainder of hours.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Muse Apprentice Guild, Victorian Violet Press, Boston Poetry Magazine, and Poetry on Demand
How can it be he is no longer here?
How can it be I do not hear that voice
His presence haunts me from his battered chair
Though I have money and no needs to bare
I feel the grief, the affect of his choice.
How can it be that he has vanished here?
What is the world when loss turns to despair.
When every sheet by weeping is made moist?
His presence haunts from his beloved chair
Now we learn the symbol of the hare
Unpeaceful, hunted, jugged or humdrum roast
How can it be when love should counter fear?
Into the real, we stand and longtime stare
We’re begging, blaming, badgered, shamed and gassed
Some presence feints with ours in death’s own lairs
Now the world of man has long surpassed
The time we could blame God for what we ‘ve missed
How can it be that He is never here?
His absence haunts: symbolic, suffered, real.
How can it be he is no longer here?
How can it be I do not hear that voice
His presence haunts me from his battered chair
Though I have money and no needs to bare
I feel the grief, the affect of his choice.
How can it be that he has vanished here?
What is the world when loss turns to despair.
When every sheet by weeping is made moist?
His presence haunts from his beloved chair
Now we learn the symbol of the hare
Unpeaceful, hunted, jugged or humdrum roast
How can it be when love should counter fear?
Into the real, we stand and longtime stare
We’re begging, blaming, badgered, shamed and gassed
Some presence feints with ours in death’s own lairs
Now the world of man has long surpassed
The time we could blame God for what we ‘ve missed
How can it be that He is never here?
His absence haunts: symbolic, suffered, real.
February Feints
February creeps across the mud
chuckling
knowing it is not her milieu
snickering
as she tats snowflakes
whistling
as she scatters them
icily
on freshly chilled winds.
©2/19/2018
submitted to – STANDARD CONTEST NO 70
sponsor – Brian Strand
Gilded pols with verbal jousts disarm
With statistical ballasts constituents charm
On opponents deceptive feints, sound the alarm
Scout for votes in city, dale, and farm
Broker deals that bolster their position
Deceptive adds initiate their political inquisition
Bribe voters of every walk and station
Recount votes with cunning derision
Conveniently forget every token promise
Accept all gratuities without malice
With honey and wine, fill every lobbyist chalice
Satiate ego with fatuous, frivolous dalliance
Job Interviews
Infinite feints
for a lane
to go driving.
Still there’s
no opening.
Jump shot
pumped from afar
spits in the net,
sole sound.
The bucket is made,
but the ball
the ball is still bouncing.
Donal Mahoney
Who'd dare the exacerbation of the cloud
and cut the fire for the grave;
tell the Epaulette he's a bum;
break the choking silence
and burst the truth for the street?
Night, night oh barbaric night
pregnant with cordite blood and brine
humiliate the essence of life and living
as the grumpy ravenous sword
plant dirges in every field:
the Epaulette.The overlord.The fear.
Mourning morning night morning
talking stars would be in the pen
a-roosting with the cockerel
to plant feints in opposing maths
to see the yet unseen day of light.
The roads are hasty avowals
where Erebus holds the sceptre sway
where life's like a pebble in the sea
where masks cruise with the law in the lawless
leaving in their wake,requiem mass blood and tears.
Who'd break the silence?