Shell
Half-filled
Seeking form
An echo of
Soul
Lost.
Life changes come in little increments
along a fated journey fraught with twists and turns.
But once in a while
changes come on sudden and dramatic
like the day you passed away.
A fatal blow ~
the instant when I became unwhole
a widow
a casualty of love.
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Veil of midnight, shroud of ache,
A hollow heart begins to wake,
Unfed, unwhole, in shadow curled,
Craving life within this world.
A wraith unseen yet bound to thirst,
The agony—a wicked curse,
Flesh untouched but essence bled,
Hungering for what is shed.
Through trembling dark and frigid moan,
I grasp at souls, yet stand alone,
Each stolen breath a fleeting glow,
Still starving deep in depths below.
Ravishing grimness, wretched plight,
A suffering that breeds delight,
To drink, to drain, to taste the soul,
To feel—then lose—control.
In tortured pangs, my hollow cries,
A thirst that burns, that never dies,
No blood will sate, no flesh repair,
Only whispers in the air.
The void consumes, yet I remain,
Bound by hunger, wracked with pain,
A phantom lost, unseen, yet near,
Feeding off your trembling fear.
And when the night betrays the dawn,
Another voice—another gone,
A feast of echoes, dimly bright,
Devoured whole before the light.
In a thriving city a boy was born,
growing up melancholy and forlorn,
thoughtful, with a poet's sensitive soul,
he knew he was different and unwhole.
His life would be both rose and piercing thorn.
He took to the road, and he travelled far.
In the Summer of Love, he found his star,
and for the first time, he felt happiness.
a strange new world felt like a warm caress,
San Francisco and electric guitar.
His smile, like the sun, would light up the sky,
but that California Sunshine high
would almost break him and lay him down low.
But those days are gone, and so long ago.
Now, we can only cry, and wonder - "why?"
Sisyphus’ Silence
I sit, a silent, carved-out zone,
A soul entrapped, unlit, unwhole,
The majority’s tide grinds flesh to bone,
While others’ feelings wallow, roll
In mud that clings, a river’s drone.
Sisyphus slumps at mountain’s base,
Scowls at the stone, then dares a smile,
“Nevermore” hums through empty space,
The gods, once loud, now mute, exiled.
Rivers run from the corners of his eyes,
Heavy currents ramping over high cheeks.
No longer present is the stoic guise,
Evidence of a broken heart from deep within it leaks.
Windows of a beaten soul,
Once distinctly opaque.
Now, a heavy broken heart that's unwhole,
Barely standing is a man who has felt a heartquake.
Dear moon child,
Shining in the darkness, you’ve always had to be
Facing every struggle and turmoil, constant calamity
Your light so evident in the darkest of hour
Beauty that blossoms, fulfilled like a flower
For even when unwhole, you light up the night
Never failing to appear, such a lunar sight
Divine moon child, keep on standing strong
When you come into yourself, you can do no wrong
LIGHT VERSE AND NONSENSE VERSE IX
Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch
Meg, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I’m with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy ...
The Less-Than-Divine Results of My Prayers to be Saved from Televangelists
by Michael R. Burch
I’m old,
no longer bold,
just cold,
and (truth be told),
been bought and sold,
rolled
by the wolves and the lambs in the fold.
Who’s to be told
by this worn-out scold?
The complaint department is always on hold.
Alas, Sir Munchalot!
by Michael R. Burch
You ate too much,
your common lot;
you munched too much,
so now you’ve got
a gut.
Hadrian’s Elegy
by Michael R. Burch
My delicate soul,
now aimlessly fluttering ... drifting ... unwhole,
former consort of my failing corpse ...
Where are we going—from bad to worse?
From jail to a hearse?
Where do we wander now—fraught, pale and frail?
To hell?
To some place devoid of jests, mirth, happiness?
Is the joke on us?
Keywords/Tags: heart, humor, humorous, irony, light, light verse, nonsense, joke, truth, future, soul
marooned -- unwhole as i am
a piece of me missing
adrift in its emptiness
throbbing in angst
furious at the impending silence
yet clinging to it like i never want it to lift
hovering in limbo -- life being too short
to be caught in this game of catch-22
AP: Honorable Mention 2023
I now see every perspective of how it was.
But there is no denying I learned long before
How to love someone despite both of our flaws.
Lessons learned thru all that made me "feel" more.
The past becomes cosmic echoes of the futures
In which we were always meant to meet each other.
The present shows how I am crafting the sutures
Of an embroidered scroll of stories of times we were together.
There are characters who I project onto, what we used to be,
Seemingly silly shows soothing my soul,
Showing me how to move on gracefully,
But sometimes I find myself feeling so unwhole.
Then suddenly there were those vivid dreams,
In which I found myself deeply longing
For that someone who I know is more than what he seems,
The one who always leaves me wanting.
My mind is leaden with the crush
of pain—a numbness of the soul
that's not an adrenaline rush;
but leaves me feeling yet unwhole.
Unwhole! Unwhole! And afflicted.
How goes this night unpredicted!?
Look beyond this thick façade,
You'll find four seasons in my soul,
But take away a piece of Winter
And you'll leave me cut, unwhole.
Anonymous whispers, blowing secrets,
softly blown air through lips, syllables
like sidelong glances down cafeteria tables,
avoid directness, avoid contact, see,
girls nearly women don’t speak of love in the same sentence as sex,
girls in tight jeans, hair slicked certain, lips rosebud red, tight,
mouths moving, practiced phrases of shared intimacies,
lowly blown secrets lying between each other, between the
legs of their lovers, fast fleeting moments of heated fluid,
banging winding paths toward popularity.
girls nearly women, see in me your truth, the ineffective no,
the bruised and unwhole, the wild youth
reigned in too early.
I can find no galaxies in your eyes
So desperate, fervently, I may seek
No single star, no glow, fills your dark skies
No lovely nebulae of which to speak
There is no life, pure life, that swells within
No world where brilliant light may shine, may glow
In your eyes, none can sing and none can sin
No dazzled sounds like hell or heaven go
No hidden words for they beyond to read
Instead, blank pages cover up your soul
And ink unseen hides victories, misdeeds
That your tale ever be untold, unwhole
For could your eyes hope everything to retell
The blazing words that on my own lips fell?
A Victim is what it is...
Torn apart and unwhole
Feeling helpless and all alone.
Looking over one's shoulder
Never to know...
To run to hide one knows not where.
Is he here or is he there?
This stalker of the night...
I feel his presence,
I see him not.
I know he's there lurking in the night.
Is there justice in the land?
Cries the victim of the night.
As the night fades away
And the dawn turns to light
The victim still knows
He's just waiting for the night.
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