Tag: The HyperTexts

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Poetry

Autumn & Me

Poetry by Michael Burch

Art on Autumn by Sybil Pretious. 
An Illusion

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound of falling leaves
and the scent of new-mown grass;
I held out my arms to her and she passed

into oblivion ...


Leaf Fall

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth’s gravitron—
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn’s cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colourful—
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we’d feel today, should we leaf-fall again.



Childhood's End

How well I remember
those fiery Septembers:
dry leaves, dying embers of summers aflame
lay trampled before me
and fluttered, imploring
the bright, dancing rain to descend once again.

Now often I’ve thought on
the meaning of autumn,
how pale moons eerie mornings enchanted dark clouds
while robins repeated
gay songs sagely heeded
so wisely when winters before they’d flown south ...

And still, in remembrance,
I’ve conjured a semblance
of childhood and how the world seemed to me then;
but early this morning,
when, rising and yawning,
I found a grey hair ... it was all beyond my ken. 


A Vain Word

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the darkening autumn, how swiftly life goes—
as I fled before love ...
                                     Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.

I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the spectre of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.

O, where are you now?—I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.

Michael R. Burch has over 6,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. His poems have been translated into fourteen languages and set to music by eleven composers. He also edits The HyperTexts (online at www.thehypertexts.com).

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Categories
Poetry

Ides of March

Poetry by Michael R. Burch

 
 Hearthside
  
 “When you are old and grey and full of sleep...”  — W.  B.  Yeats
  
 For all that we professed of love, we knew
 this night would come, that we would bend alone
 to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
 of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
 an eerie presence on encrusted logs
 we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.
  
 The books that line these close, familiar shelves
 loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
 too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
 as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.
  
 I do not know the words for easy bliss
 and so my shrivelled fingers clutch this stark,
 long-unenamoured pen and will it: Move.
 I loved you more than words, so let words prove.

(Originally published by Sonnet Writers)
  
 Love Has a Southern Flavour
  
 Love has a Southern flavour: honeydew,
 ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
 we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
 the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...
  
 Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
 wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
 that will not keep their order in the trees,
 unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ...
  
 Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
 the constellations’ dying mysteries,
 the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s
 resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ...
  
 Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
 as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

(Published by The Lyric, Contemporary Sonnet, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Setu (India), Victorian Violet Press, A Long Story Short, Glass Facets of Poetry, Docster, Trinacria, PS: It’s Poetry (anthology), Borderless Journal (India), and in a Czech translation by Vaclav ZJ Pinkava)

 Infinity
  
 for Beth
  
 Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
 Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
 that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
 then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
  
 Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
 on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
 Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
 have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue.

(Originally published in broadsheets by TC Broadsheet Verses then subsequently published by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Poetry Life & Times, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse)
  
 Autumn Conundrum
  
 It’s not that every leaf must finally fall,
 it’s just that Spring can never catch them all.

(Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Deronda Review, Jewish Letter (Russia), Verse Weekly, Brief Poems, Deviant Art, Setu (India), Stremez (Macedonia), and translated into Russian, Macedonian, Turkish, Arabic and Romanian)
 
 Piercing the Shell
  
 If we strip away all the accoutrements of war,
 perhaps we’ll discover what the heart is for.
  
(Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Deronda Review, Art in Society (Germany), Jewish Letter (Russia), Brief Poems, Poem Today, Complete Classics, Deviant Art, Setu (India), Stremez (Macedonia), Fullosia Press, and translated into Russian, Macedonian, Turkish, Arabic and Romanian)

 Not Elves, Exactly
  
 (after Robert Frost's "Mending Wall")
  
 Something there is that likes a wall,
 that likes it spiked and likes it tall,
  
 that likes its pikes’ sharp rows of teeth
 and doesn’t mind its victims’ grief
  
 (wherever they come from, far or wide)
 as long as they fall on the other side.


   (Originally published by The HyperTexts)

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Michael R. Burch has over 6,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. His poems have been translated into fourteen languages and set to music by eleven composers. He also edits The HyperTexts (online at www.thehypertexts.com).

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Categories
Poetry

Companions

By Tom Merrill

Companions
 
Composing the flock I thought I heard
     When wonder drew me out the door,
A solitary mockingbird,
     Busily being more,
 
Absorbed in his little crowd of sounds,
     A parody of me,
Was gathering in his singleness
     Some songs for company.

First published in The HyperTexts

Poems by Tom Merrill have recently appeared in two novels as epigraphs. He is Poet in Residuum at The HyperTexts and Advisory Editor at Better Than Starbucks.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL