It softens the edges of cruelty,
makes judgment feel like care,
makes exile look like protection.
It wraps the blade in velvet and calls it mercy.
I have stood in rooms full of warmth
and felt nothing but frost inside my chest.
Because warmth without understanding is suffocation.
Because heat without truth is manipulation.
They smiled as they sentenced me.
They prayed as they cast me out.
They said it was for my own good.
But I saw the fire in their eyes,
and it was not holy.
It was hungry.
Heat demands conformity.
It melts difference.
It punishes the cold for daring to remain solid.
But I did not melt.
I did not bend.
I did not become what they needed me to be.
I am the frost.
I do not lie.
I do not soften.
I do not hide.
In the cold, everything is revealed.
The breath. The wound. The truth.
There is no illusion in frost.
Only clarity.
So let them burn.
Let them bask.
Let them believe their heat is holy.
I will remain.
Sharp.
Clear.
Unmelted.
Because heat is a lie.
And I am the truth it cannot touch.
Categories:
unmelted, anti bullying, care, character,
Form: Free verse
Over obscure wasteland cloud hovered unmelted,
the desert deprived of tuneful rain languished
until you arrived with the whistling breeze,
the oasis resonated in the ripples of lacustrine symphony.
Cadenced joy cascaded in deranged depression,
in the dwindling dunes fervent flowers bloomed.
In sensuous tune the vibrant sky’s spectrum dissolved,
the harmonic hues of twilight gleamed your grandeur.
For me lost in the desert of desolation,
searching for missing passion in migrant mirage,
within the abandoned channel meandering indolent,
the murmur of your music echoed in yearning flow.
The melodic flight ended with the folding of wings
in the nest of memory weaved with strings of sonata,
ringing the whisper of the departing zephyr,
turning into the sound of music when doves cry.
Categories:
unmelted, analogy, eulogy, song,
Form: Free verse
It seemed this was the February
of continual cold and snow,
many days stuck safely in the house
save for the morning expedition out,
to clear a path for the birds and my dog and I;
not too much
just enough of a path to walk.
Not sure which of us was more cautious
the birds, the dog, or I.
Today,
as February nears its end
and the sun has returned
we venture
just a little further out.
My dog realizes the possibility
of walking atop the unmelted snow
suddenly, we have all the yard to peruse
and steadily we go until
we slip and slide as if on frozen ice
and each of us
takes a slippery and chilly spill.
Back inside
bruised and cold
we both realize we don't like
walking on the snow.
Categories:
unmelted, angst, animal, snow,
Form: Free verse
My heart was February ice
Kneeling to barren, cursed winter
Beneath weak, broken sacrifice
White skies cracked, and springtimes splinter
Through summer's youthful, blurry run
My heart was February ice
Unmelted, I defied the sun
My cup too proud for water's price
Austere solitude must suffice
So long, I slept in my cold tomb
My heart was February ice
Until your passion gave it bloom
As polar rivers part and thin
Your brown eyes, warm as cayenne spice
Thawed my frozen flames - even when
My heart was February ice.
2/10/20
For 'Distant Refrains' contest
Sponsor: Joseph May
Shared 1st Place
Categories:
unmelted, heartbreak, loneliness, recovery from,
Form: Quatern
All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch
Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade—all afterglow.
[Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.]
Categories:
unmelted, extended metaphor, for her,
Form: Verse
Glacial on the inside
Frozen memories
of a lost, tropical paradise life
Frostbitten feelings slowly moving
to the other bipolar side
Icy reflections of striated emotions;
dark moods,
lighthearted nostalgia aurora views
temporarily soothes
Sparkling snowflakes —
crystalline sadness swirl deeper inward
everyday
a new layer of coldness
ignite the igloo beating hearth
Sub-zero lonely, empty pulse desires
buried inside an Arctic aorta:
The pulmonary permafrost side of hell on earth
Solitary cold is the fire
that burns within
A desolate fortress of denial
is never warmed by the freezing flames
The cold dawn of bliss
is eternal midnight burning
underneath an avalanche of anguish
Love snuffed cold fire ...
the icy cries keep neverending smouldering
Always ready to soul shatter burst
into a raging blizzard of unmelted tears again
Categories:
unmelted, angst, feelings, sad love,
Form: Free verse
He watches and wait,
the prey unaware of his gaze
But he hungers no longer for flesh
He chases after the spirit of the wind ...
White Wolf in the snow blend,
and alongside him is D. White his friend
White by White,
two pillars of snow frost
Unmelted friendship
Together in the winter forest,
they observe the evergreens forever rising
And with boundless joy,
they pursue the spirit of the wind again
White Wolf leaping ...
airborne in ecstasy
D. White leaping high as well
Poet friends of the forests, on the muse chase together,
following the spirit of the poets trail
A tribute to my two talented beloved poet friends,
White Wolf and Darren White
Categories:
unmelted, friendship, how i feel,
Form: Free verse
O MINE VALENTINE
We are a twine of
lines...vines
limbs
hair
fingers
sheets
blankets
couches
streets
signs
misgivings
mistakes
retreats
agressions
2 chairs
2 drinks
a fire
an oven
a burner
a melted finish
and a perpetually unmelted finish
longings
clutchings
graspings
open doors
unopened doors
closed doors
slammed doors
cracked open doors
wide open doors
tears
cries
beggings
wishings
promisings
spinning wheels
rising roads
falling rain
calls
texts
silence
long extended open unbracketed Silence
dark thick silence
light bright silence
hopeful silence
cresting like a star being born silence
....we begin again
Categories:
unmelted, love,
Form: List
Dawn is not yet rested upon the tree tops.
The ancient night of our souls lingers
protracted in the adamantine winter.
Dew buds are unmelted;
the road is swallowed up by dark.
Yet this time above all others is Apollo’s, for he returns!
Even now he grips the horizon with strong hands,
dragging it back a great distance.
The morning shouts of brumal crows are gladdened.
A blur of purple spreads into violet efflorescence.
Birds wheeling high above like fine specks first see his new chariot.
Our souls long drear are new lit by his arrival.
Hope springs anew.
Chickadees sing their spring song in warming rays!
Categories:
unmelted, nature,
Form: Blank verse
Urn was carring the snow
unmelted
like the soul of night.
It was a very strange winter
like araucaria puzzle.
Who was dragging the evergreens
over the chaste cliff ?
All the incogerent roots have broken
the placenta for new gods.
Millionaires ?
The marriage of basil at dusk
with a paperweight, unleaving the road.
I was hearing the footsteps of dawn,
though sky was not listening to knocks.
Satish Verma
Categories:
unmelted, art,
Form: ABC
Its beauty yet again plunders me,
Into magnificent realms that hide
Deep within my every thought
Where I ,like a new tenant,
Seek comfort to reside
In the warm abodes of Winter.
It has come yet again
With its white painted sky
Like a dripping white towel
Whose waters slowly subside
Like a pain that has been eluded,
Avoided, denied
Its gusts that blow across
The many prolonging miles
Bringing all windows to shudder
Like lost whispers and voices
Found and compiled
Into a vague resonance.
Its unmelted snow
That at every corner lies
Lingering for the tepid
Sun of Spring to rise
To melt away
Like an unwanted memory.
And all that it holds
Is but a fraction that glides
Within,
A sheer reflection of the world
Outside
The snow, wind and rain of
The season inside
Categories:
unmelted, introspection, nature, seasons
Form: Lyric
I want to see again
Your two white breasts bare
And virginal
On the north and south lattitudes
Of your unmelted chest
I want them stiff and pointing upward
Like white mountains
Their milk fozen in the nipples where the sun
Laps like oceans with lazy tongues
I want my forest thick as dreams
Of ancient archetypes
Eating carbon dioxide gas for dinner
Etherizing this jiggolo of progress
That urinated on farmlands
Leaving them burnt in the acid
Vectors of hunger.
So much of our tragedy is beyond permutation,
Ecology is not a study it's life's preservation.
I want all this against the fear
Of ancient history
And none who warned us now is Noah
Building anything to avert
The rape of my mother again, and again,
My sisters sacrificed to dregs of earth.
Categories:
unmelted, nature
Form: Free verse