Fun Poems for the New Year

By Michael R Burch

NEW YEAR’S COIN FLIP
 
Rise and shine,
The world is mine!
Let’s get ahead!
 
Or ...
 
Back to bed,
Old sleepyhead,
Dull and supine. 

A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR THE MADNESS OF MARCH HARES
 
March hares,
beware!
Spring’s a tease, a flirt!
 
This is yet another late freeze alert.
Better comfort your babies;
the weather has rabies.
  
 
SONG CYCLE
 
Sing us a song of seasons—
of April’s and May’s gay greetings;
let Winter release her sting.
Sing us a song of Spring!
 
Nay, the future is looking glummer.
Sing us a song of Summer!
 
Too late, there’s a pall over all;
sing us a song of Fall!
 
Desist, since the icicles splinter;
sing us a song of Winter!
 
Sing us a song of seasons—
of April’s and May’s gay greetings;
let Winter release her sting.
Sing us a song of Spring!

THE UNREGAL BEAGLE VS. THE VORACIOUS EAGLE
 
I’d rather see an eagle
than a beagle
because they’re so damn regal. 
 
But when it’s time to wiggle
and to giggle,
I’d rather embrace an angel
than an evil. 
 
And when it’s time to share the same small space,
I’d much rather have a beagle lick my face! 
 
 
OVER(T) SIMPLIFICATION
 
“Keep it simple, stupid.”
 
A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful,
or comforting, or horrifying. Move
the reader, and the world will not reprove
the idiosyncrasies of too few lines,
too many syllables, or offbeat beats.
 
It only matters that she taps her feet
or that he frowns, or smiles, or grimaces,
or sits bemused—a child—as images
of worlds he’d lost come flooding back, and then . . .
they’ll cheer the poet’s insubordinate pen.
 
A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful.

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers.

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