Short Burnish Poems

Autumn beams burnish
Gilded leaves adorn canvas
Cooling waves tarnish...

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Sparkle 
to opals do they lend 
shine 
to emeralds they offend 

exude 
the missive they can send 
glow 
despair they often mend 

burnish 
surpass and do not bend 
heal 
put right before the end...

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A moment (Tanka)

Rain as wet silk falls
On a rosebush which burnish
Until gray sky smiles. 
And there is golden sunlight 
On my cottage whitewashed walls.

Haiku 
Stillness of soft rain 
Dogs sleep in haylofts and sheds
Dream of hunting boars...

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I believe that a good deed never dies. 
Once performed, it is not fated
to fall to the ground and wither. 
Instead, like gold leaf, it is gently applied
as a burnish, to gild the walls of heaven, 
its light shining in us, like an ember
that glows when kissed by the breath of memory....

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We may never take the languid road
and play beneath the purple moon
or sing in the shadows of the cool blue sea
and crush the sky with our bare feet
We may never hold all our hopes in one hand
or dance without gravity's kiss on our lips
but as long as we burnish each other's spark
We'll breathe and ignite symbiotic hearts......

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I have earrings shaped like acorns
And I poked them through my ears
As a welcome to this season
And my joy when it appears.

Though the leaves have yet to burnish
I await those golden hues,
For to live without those ochres
Is an option I’d refuse.

There’s a nip there in the morning;
Time to drag the sweaters out
For the crispness and the colors
Are what autumn’s all about....

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“Better to burn out than fade away”
Indifferent complicated muster fading
Still the better just to fade, I say:

Observe the final glimmer glowing
Dissipated TV figures into silence vanish
Pushed away like breath the slim existence

Still most appear on vapors final blow
Leaving body burden burnish badly
So the living languish winding woe


Quotation attributed to Neil Young...

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Bite this flesh of yellow burnish,
Suck deep of citrus and see, if
The beauty of the textured surface
Can be endured in reality.
Screwed up eyes and peeling lips,
The tremored hiss of breath, inhaled
As shudders rattle bones,
A chill, a shadow cast of death,
Yet look again, and beauty hungers,
Invites, beguiles, begs for this, unquestioned
Love devoted and purblind,
Embittered by Lucretia kiss....

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Subjects can their Bad Kings banish:
Their Lords that image tarnish 
By being decisive and mannish 
While proving them a clannish 
After bribing schnapps of the Danish 
And deceiving wine the Spanish!

Subjects must the details furnish 
Of the wrongs by Monarchs to banish 
And if they wish some garnish 
Or the entire narrative varnish!

Subjects should Terrible Kings punish 
Their faults ceases to burnish 
Their eulogy for The–Without–Blemish....

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Autumn, the burnish of her hair
  Trapped devil flecks of pitchfork red,
Cascading shades of setting suns
  Billowing on the satin bed.
Lithe puma she stretches,
  Lissom flesh as fluid milk,
In the scarlet of her parting lips,
  In the rust motes of her eyes,
In the pallor of her cherished skin,
  Sex and sweetness symbolise.
Red as the bleed of Shepard clouds
  Burning the twilight fields,
Autumn, the burnish of her hair,
  Beauty, her yield of yields....

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Town planners would us astonish, 
When they rocks and hills demolish, 
So as to new cities polish,
Their smart dwellers make less foolish
And it all turns out Bad Rubbish;
Reason to them all admonish
And Town Planning just abolish…

Town planners should themselves furnish
With what would a terrain burnish,
Not sensitive eyeballs punish;
Town planners watched by all eyes 
Can’t afford to be that unwise.
As they neighborhoods garnish,
Their image sadly tarnish....

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In translucent silence
sapphire-capped minarets
stand like ardent rose buds
under glint of a firefly moon.

Gone are birds of day
like ruby breasted dawn
spilling ashes of roses
on a saffron horizon,
rhododendrons and azaleas floating
up high to burnish
the mosque's ghosted towers.

Through night's brisk lapis
the hushed teal dome bides
wafting apple breezes
as walls and turrets lumber,
shielding the tiled plaza
until morning steeps the landscape
in the aura of peacocks....

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