In my dream, I fell through the floor,
Whispers of a father I can’t ignore.
His hands were warm, but his eyes were cold,
Behind that mask, a truth untold.
I reached for him, but he slipped away,
A shadow where his love should stay.
A laugh that shattered, sharp and cruel,
The mask of love, a twisted fool.
Am I alive, or just a ghost he made?
I can’t recall the promises he betrayed.
All that’s left is the hollow air,
But the mask? Oh, it lingers there.
Death kissed my lips and took my hand,
Guiding me through a world so strange,
Where we never parted, never knew the pain,
Where love was never lost, never estranged.
What joy we’d have known, what life we’d have lived,
If only you had not gone away.
I would have held you close, forever near,
In a world untouched by cold decay.
But death’s embrace is all I was granted,
A walk with him, through memories undaunted,
Where you and I remain unbroken,
In the shadows of what might have been.
Bound
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14-15
Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.
Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.
Published as “Why Did I Go?” in my high school journal the Lantern in 1976. I have made slight changes here and there, but the poem is essentially the same as what I wrote in my early teens.
These are poems about sinking, poems about drowning, poems about loss, and poems about new discoveries we sometimes make while feeling lost...
Sinking
by Michael R. Burch
for Virginia Woolf
Weigh me down with stones…
fill all the pockets of my gown…
I’m going down,
mad as the world
that can’t recover,
to where even mermaids drown.
Door Mouse
by Michael R. Burch
As Thomas said,
"Look homeward, angel"
and every now and then
I run along the
arroyos and narrow paths
of an earlier time.
Sometimes meeting myself
halfway in
sometimes not.
Noticing the changes
in windswept tides.
Still seeing
those original bones
pulled over
the truth and past
drowning in
yesteryear's music
knowing fully
that one can't go home again
but knowing still
it's always there
off the beaten path.
Yellow dust on a bumble
bee's wing,
Grey lights in a woman's
asking eyes,
Red ruins in the changing
sunset embers:
I take you and pile high
the memories.
Death will break her claws
on some I keep.
Memory of you is . . . a blue spear of flower.
I cannot remember the name of it.
Alongside a bold dripping poppy is fire and silk.
And they cover you.
Two blind men met. Said one: "This earth
Has been a blackout from my birth.
Through darkness I have groped my way,
Forlorn, unknowing night from day.
But you - though War destroyed your sight,
Still have your memories of Light,
And to allay your present pain
Can live your golden youth again."
Then said the second: "Aye, it's true,
It must seem magical to you
To know the shape of things that are,
A women's lips, a rose, a star.
But therein lies the hell of it;
Better my eyes had never lit
Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell.
So noble were the five I found to dwell
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me
And no great praise is thine; but if it be
That truth unveil in dreamings before dawn,
Then is the vengeful hour not far withdrawn
When Prato shall exult within her walls
To see thy suffering. Whate'er befalls,
Let it come soon, since come it must, for later,
You talk of riders on the flat, of nerve and pluck and pace --
Not one in fifty has the nerve to ride a steeplechase.
It's right enough, while horses pull and take their faces strong,
To rush a flier to the front and bring the field along;
Bur what about the last half-mile, with horses blown and beat --
When every jump means all you know to keep him on his feet.
When any slip means sudden death -- with wife and child to keep --
It needs some nerve to draw the whip and flog him at the leap --
