Apocalyptic Poems Iii
These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems about the earth, climate change, global warming, extinction events, and mankind's role on an endangered world ...
Polish
by Michael R. Burch
Your fingers end in talons?
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.
Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.
You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.
Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch
Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?
Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for living?
Blind, unforgiving,
unworthy of heaven
or this planet red, reeking and reft?
NOTE: While “hoofed” is the more common spelling, I preferred “hooved” for this poem. Perhaps because of the contrast created by “love” and “hooved.”
Modern Appetite
by Michael R. Burch
It grumbled low, insisting it would feast
on blood and flesh, etcetera, at least
three times a day. With soft lubricious grease
and pale salacious oils, it would ease
its way through life. Each day?an aperitif.
Each night?a frothy bromide, for relief.
It lived on TV fare, wore pinafores,
slurped sugar-coated gumballs, gobbled S’mores.
When gas ensued, it burped and farted. ’Course,
it thought aloud, my wife will leave me. Yours
is not so damn particular. Divorce
is certainly a settlement, toujours!
A Tums a day will keep the shrink away,
recalcify old bones, keep gas at bay.
If Simon says, etcetera, Mother, may
I have my hit of calcium today?
Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch
A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.
We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.
Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams ...
and masturbating limply, screams and screams.
Originally published by Sonnet Scroll
Stump
by Michael R. Burch
This used to be a poplar, oak or elm . . .
we forget the names of trees, but still its helm,
green-plumed, like some Greek warrior’s, nobly fringed,
with blossoms almond-white, but verdant-tinged,
this massive helm . . . this massive, nodding head
here contemplated life, and now is dead . . .
Perhaps it saw its future, furrow-browed,
and flung its limbs about, dejectedly.
Perhaps it only dreamed as, cloud by cloud,
the sun plod through the sky. Heroically,
perhaps it stood against the mindless plots
of concrete that replaced each flowered bed.
Perhaps it heard thick loggers draw odd lots
and could not flee, and so could only dread . . .
The last of all its kind? They left its stump
with timeworn strange inscriptions no one reads
(because a language lost is just a bump
impeding someone’s progress at mall speeds).
We leveled all such “speed bumps” long ago
just as our quainter cousins leveled trees.
Shall we, too, be consumed by what we know?
Once gods were merely warriors; august trees
were merely twigs, and man the least divine . . .
mere fables now, dust, compost, turpentine.
They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch
“We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”?George W. Bush
We will not forget ...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment),
still flashing grins they could not quite repent ...
Nor should they?anguish triumphs just an instant;
this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope?the shriveled chrysalis
that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then grope about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. “Survive”
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s
awakening ... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Veiled
by Michael R. Burch
She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us . . .
tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief . . .
ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered . . .
and if you were to ask her,
she might say?
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,
and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.
Intimations
by Michael R. Burch
Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.
Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.
Published by Katrina Anthology
Keywords/Tags: Apocalypse, Apocalyptic Poems, Prophecy, Prophetic Poems, Proclamation, Future, Futuristic, Broken Future, Vision, Visionary, Omen, Omens, Sign, Signs, Earth, Earth Day, Mother Earth, Climate Change, Global Warming, Environment, Extinction, Nature, Predator, Humanity, Tree, Trees
Copyright ©
Michael Burch
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