Poems About Poems Iii

Poems about Poems III Radiance by Michael R. Burch for Dylan Thomas The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil? for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet; each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil, dark images impacted, rooted clay. The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning? the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame that leashes and excites its turgid surface... then squanders years imagining love’s the same. Belatedly he turns to what lies broken? the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts, among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking one element that scorches and uplifts. The Wonder Boys by Michael R. Burch for Leslie Mellichamp The stars were always there, too-bright cliches: scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew as baffled poets winged keyed kites?amazed, in dream of shocks that suddenly came true... but came almost as static?background noise, a song out of the cosmos no one hears, or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys, lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared. They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke of words poured from their overheated hearts. The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope... You will not find them here; they blew away? in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung by fingertips to satellites. They strayed too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young, their words are with us still. Devout and fey, they wink at us whenever skies are gray. The Composition of Shadows (I) by Michael R. Burch We breathe and so we write; the night hums softly its accompaniment. Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn leads onward, and we smile, content. And what we mean we write to learn: the vowels of love, the consonants’ strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape? curved like the heart. Here, resonant, sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass like singing voles curled in a maze of blank white space. We touch a face? long-frozen words trapped in a glaze that insulates our hearts. Nowhere can love be found. Just shrieking air. The Composition of Shadows (II) by Michael R. Burch We breathe and so we write; the night hums softly its accompaniment. Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn leads onward, and we smile, content. And what we mean we write to learn: the vowels of love, the consonants’ strange golden weight, the blood’s debate within the heart. Here, resonant, sounds’ shadows mass against bright glass, within the white Labyrinthian maze. Through simple grace, I touch your face, ah words! And I would gaze the night’s dark length in waning strength to find the words to feel such light again. O, for a pen to spell love so ethereal. These Hallowed Halls by Michael R. Burch I. A final stereo fades into silence and now there is seldom a murmur to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls. I stand by a window where others have watched the passage of time?alone, not untouched. And I am as they were unsure for the days stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze. II. Ah, faithless lover? that I had never touched your breast, nor felt the stirrings of my heart, which until that moment had peacefully slept. For now I have known the exhilaration of a heart that has vaulted the Pinnacle of Love, and the result of each such infatuation? the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above. III. A solitary clock chimes the hour from far above the campus, but my peers, returning from their dances, heed it not. And so it is that we seldom gauge Time’s speed because He moves so unobtrusively about His task. Still, when at last we reckon His mark upon our lives, we may well be surprised at His thoroughness. IV. Ungentle maiden? when Time has etched His little lines so carelessly across your brow, perhaps I will love you less than now. And when cruel Time has stolen your youth, as He certainly shall in course, perhaps you will wish you had taken me along with my broken heart, even as He will take you with yours. V. A measureless rhythm rules the night? few have heard it, but I have shared it, and its secret is mine. To put it into words is as to extract the sweetness from honey and must be done as gently as a butterfly cleans its wings. But when it is captured, it is gone again; its usefulness is only that it lulls to sleep. VI. So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night, to the moans of the moonlit hills' bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill with the nightjar’s shrill, cryptic trills. But I will not sleep this night, nor any... how can I?when my dreams are always of your perfect face ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace, and a tear upon your pillowcase? VII. If I had been born when knights roamed the earth and mad kings ruled savage lands, I might have turned to the ministry, to the solitude of a monastery. But there are no monks or hermits today? theirs is a lost occupation carried on, if at all, merely for sake of tradition. For today man abhors solitude? he craves companions, song and drink, seldom seeking a quiet moment, to sit alone, by himself, to think. VIII. And so I cannot shut myself off from the rest of the world, to spend my days in philosophy and my nights in tears of self-sympathy. No, I must continue as best I can, and learn to keep my thoughts away from those glorious, uproarious moments of youth, centuries past though lost but a day. IX. Yes, I must discipline myself and adjust to these lackluster days when men display no chivalry and romance is the "old-fashioned" way. X. A single stereo flares into song and the first faint light of morning has pierced the sky's black awning once again. XI. This is a sacred place, for those who leave, leave better than they came. But those who stay, while they are here, add, with their sleepless nights and tears, quaint sprigs of ivy to the walls of these hallowed halls. Published as the collection “Poems about Poems III”