Zz5 Miscellanea Zz5 Poem by Michael Burch

Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she sees are the nights of despair stars endure.
Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems sure.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end...
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.

The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as she sums all things past, and to come.
Only flesh does not last.

Eternally, night and day rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.

Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, frailer than the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.

Keywords/Tags: life, death, flesh, mortality, time, sand, hourglass, ash, loss, night, moonlight, stars, rain, grass, despair



Longing
by Michael R. Burch

We stare out at the cold gray sea,
overcome
with such sudden and intense longing...
our eyes meet,
inviolate,
and we are not of this earth,
this strange, inert mass.

Before we crept
out of the shoals of the inchoate sea,
before we grew
the quaint appendages
and orifices of love...

before our jellylike nuclei,
struggling to be hearts,
leapt
at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun,
then watched it plummet,
the birth and death of our illumination...

before we wept...
before we knew...
before our unformed hearts grew numb,
again,
in the depths of the sea's indecipherable darkness...

When we were only
a swirling profusion of recombinant things
wafting loose silt from the sea's soft floor,
writhing and sucking in convulsive beds
of mucousy foliage,

flowering,
flowering,
flowering...

what jolted us to life?



Mending Glass
by Michael R. Burch

In the cobwebbed house—
lost in shadows
by the jagged mirror,
in the intricate silver face
cracked ten thousand times,
silently he watches,
and in the twisted light
sometimes he catches there
a familiar glimpse of revealing lace,
white stockings and garters,
a pale face pressed indiscreetly near
with a predatory leer,
the sheer flash of nylon,
an embrace, or a sharp slap,

... a sudden lurch of terror.

He finds bright slivers
—the hard sharp brittle shards,
the silver jags of memory
starkly impressed there—

and mends his error.



Shadowselves
by Michael R. Burch

In our hearts, knowing
fewer days—and milder—beckon,
how are we, now, to measure
that flame by which we reckon
the time we have remaining?

We are shadows
spawned by a blue spurt of candlelight.
Darkly, we watch ourselves flicker.
Where shall we go when the flame burns less bright?
When chill night steals our vigor?

Why are we less than ourselves? We are shadows.
Where is the fire of youth? We grow cold.
Why does our future loom dark? We are old.
Why do we shiver?

In our hearts, seeing
fewer days—and briefer—breaking,
now, even more, we treasure
the brittle leaf-like aching
that tells us we are living.



Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

'We will walk taller! ' said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

'Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster, '
cried glib Punjab.

'After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway, '
flamed Vijay.

'My family is relatively heavy,
too big even for a pig-barn Chevy;
we need more space, '
spat What's His Face.

'What does it matter,
dirge or mantra, '
sighed Serge.

'The world will wobble
in Hubble's lens
till the tempest ends, '
wailed Mercedes.

'The world is going to hell in a bucket.
So stick it and get outta my face!
We own this place!
Me and my friends got more guns than ISIS,
so what's the crisis? '
cried Bubba Billy Joe Bob Puckett.



beMused
by Michael R. Burch

Perhaps at three
you'll come to tea,
to have a cuppa here?

You'll just stop in
to sip dry gin?
I only have a beer.

To name the 'greats':
Pope, Dryden, mates?
The whole world knows their names.

Discuss the 'songs'
of Emerson?
But these are children's games.

Give me rhythms
wild as Dylan's!
Give me Bobbie Burns!

Give me Psalms,
or Hopkins' poems,
Hart Crane's, if he returns!

Or Langston railing!
Blake assailing!
Few others I desire.

Or go away,
yes, leave today:
your tepid poets tire.



Numbered
by Michael R. Burch

He desired an object to crave;
she came, and she altared his affection.
He asked her for something to save—
a memento for his collection.

But all that she had was her need;
what she needed, he knew not to give.
They compromised on a thing gone to seed
to complete the half lives they would live.

One in two, they were less than complete.
Two plus one, in their fractious huge home
left them two, the new one in the street,
then he, by himself, one, alone.

He awoke past his prime to new dawn
with superfluous dew all around,
in ten thousands bright beads on his lawn,
and he knew that, at last, he had found

a number of things he had missed—
things shining and bright, unencumbered
by their price, or their place on a list.
Then with joy and despair he remembered

and longed for the lips he had kissed
when his days were still evenly numbered.