These are Halloween poems by Michael R. Burch. These include Dark, Eerie, Haunting and Scary poems about Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Mummies, Reanimated Corpses and "Things that go Bump in the Night" ...
Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch
Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack ...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?
Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound,
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?
It is a bit spooky to consider that one day we will all be skeletons! "Thin Kin" is the #11 monster poem of all time, according to Aesthetic Poems.
The Witch
by Michael R. Burch
her fingers draw into claws
she cackles through rotting teeth ...
u ask "are there witches?"
pshaw!
(yet she has my belief)
Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch
Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking our blood,
this child, this harlot
born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,
dreaming of blood,
her fangs—white—baring,
revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring ...
"Pale Though Her Eyes" is the #4 monster poem of all time, according to Aesthetic Poems, after "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Vampire" by Conrad Aiken, and "Ghost" by Cynthia Huntingon. "Pale Though Her Eyes" is also one of the eight best vampire poems, along with my poem "Vampires" and poems by Charles Baudelaire, Ernest Dowson and William Butler Yeats, according to Pick Me Up Poetry.
This is my personal choice for the scariest poem in the English language. I do not recommend reading it to young children ...
A Lyke-Wake Dirge
anonymous medieval lyric (circa the sixteenth century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A Lie-Awake Dirge is “the night watch kept over a corpse.”
This one night, this one night,
every night and all;
fire and sleet and candlelight,
and Christ receive thy soul.
When from this earthly life you pass
every night and all,
to confront your past you must come at last,
and Christ receive thy soul.
If ever you donated socks and shoes,
every night and all,
sit right down and pull yours on,
and Christ receive thy soul.
But if you never helped your brother,
every night and all,
walk barefoot through the flames of hell,
and Christ receive thy soul.
If ever you shared your food and drink,
every night and all,
the fire will never make you shrink,
and Christ receive thy soul.
But if you never helped your brother,
every night and all,
walk starving through the black abyss,
and Christ receive thy soul.
This one night, this one night,
every night and all;
fire and sleet and candlelight,
and Christ receive thy soul.
A Lonely, Bonely Skeleton
by Michael R. Burch
This might be a fun play to act out, with children as the “victims”!
Skeleton:
I’m just a lonely skeleton,
a lonely, bonely skeleton.
I’m just a homely skeleton,
so why do you fear me so?
I’m just coming close for a hug!
There’s nothing to fear, you know.
(The skeleton advances with a big, lurching step toward the children. If possible, their parents should be coached to keep them from escaping.)
Chorus:
He’s just a simple Skeleton,
a lonely, bonely Skeleton.
He’s only a homely Skeleton,
so why do you fear him so?
Skeleton:
Please! Please stop running away!
Stand still, and let me advance.
I’m just coming close for a kiss
and maybe, perhaps, for a dance.
(The skeleton advances with several big, lurching steps toward the children.)
Chorus:
He’s just a simple Skeleton,
a lonely, bonely Skeleton.
He’s surely an honest Skeleton,
so when he cries Come!, why go?
Skeleton:
Alas, I fear that I fooled you!
You were far too fleet-footed to catch!
But now that I have you cornered,
you’ll make a nice late-night snack!
(Smacking, slurping, munching and crunching sounds.)
Chorus:
He’s just a simple Skeleton,
a hunger-y, lumber-y Skeleton.
He’s just a slumber-y Skeleton,
who woke up from death too slow
and needed fresh meat to grow.
Now he hunts by pale moons a-glow
with his devious ways and woe.
(If anyone performs this mini-play, please do let me know the results, and if possible record it and post it where other people can also see and enjoy it. I will be glad to link the performance to my popular Halloween and Dark Poetry pages, which get thousands of visitors each year.)
Vampires
by Michael R. Burch
Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them ...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross—such common things.
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.
Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.
We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he earnestly prays to find us ...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.
Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch
The Halloween monsters, incensed,
keep howling, and may be UNFENCED!!!
They’re angry that children with treats
keep throwing their trash IN THE STREETS!!!
You can check it out on your computer:
Google says, “Please don’t be a POLLUTER!!!”
The Halloween monsters agree,
so if you’re a litterbug, FLEE!!!
Kids, if you’d like more treats this year
and don’t want to cower in FEAR,
please make all the mean monsters happy,
and they’ll hand out sweet treats like they’re sappy!
So if you eat treats on the drag
and don't want huge monsters to nag,
please put all loose trash in your BAG!!!
NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.
The Werewolf Forsakes Humanity
by Michael R. Burch
What I ache to say is beyond saying—
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.
No, there are no words for the horror
as an arctic wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...
What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.
It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch
If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;
if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads
uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!
If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;
if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams
of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!
If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise
to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,
while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies . . .
it's Halloween!
Ghost
by Michael R. Burch
White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.
Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.
Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.
Epithet for a Halloween Bag Lady
by Michael R. Burch
Horrible hag!
What’dya do with my bag?
You’re such a skag!
Fine and dandy!
Give me my candy,
Abishag!
Scalawag!
Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch
He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s—
quizzical, mesmerizing.
He cocks his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and although I hear,
he says nothing that I understand.
The moon shines—maniacal, queer—as he takes my hand and whispers
Our time has come . . . and so we stroll together along the docks
where the sea sends things that wriggle and crawl
scurrying under rocks and boards.
Moonlight in great floods washes his pale face as he stares unseeing
into my eyes. He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine,
and my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.
His teeth are long, yellow and hard. His face is bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.
"Solicitation" is the #13 monster poem of all time, according to Aesthetic Poems.
All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch
What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term “banshee”) and, eventually, to the Druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgan le Fay and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.
In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;
when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;
when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;
we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil’s
fen ...
if nevermore again.
Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch
Like angels—winged,
shimmering, misunderstood—
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.
They are as they are ...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.
Their eyes—hypnotic, alluring—
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather ...
to see, to touch, to feel.
Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.
Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch
The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her ...
How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?
Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.
The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch
O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!
The poem above was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.
Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)
Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato
Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
—Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus
Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
here, dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
—Michael R. Burch, after Simonides
Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch
Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
—the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore—
mark her passing again.
And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her breasts and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.
The waves will never rape her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure ...
She sleeps, forevermore!
She sleeps forevermore,
a virgin save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely covered
by the restless, surging sea.
And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way ...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.
He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea ...
their skeletal love—impossibility!
How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast—
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.
The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch
Our Halloween is an inheritance from the ancient Celts. The Celts believed that the "otherworld" can sometimes merge with the "real world," so that elves, fairies, witches, warlocks and other fantastical entities are able to either help or harm human beings.
Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:
Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.
They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.
They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.
Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
The Abyss
by Michael R. Burch
Love, the abyss
where pale Lorelei dwell,
swells with bright music —
the music of hell.
For the sirens there lure
countless men to their doom,
crying, “Give us a child!”
in the luminous gloom.
And who can resist
their cries — wild & untamed —
or the flash of a breast,
its pink nipple inflamed?
So the young men all leap
in their lemming-like urge
to thresh their soft shells
where the dark waters surge.
Now many lie shattered
on the sharp, hidden rocks
where they succor the spawn
of some wily sea-fox.
Lures of the Lorelei
by Michael R. Burch
These are the rocks where the Lorelei combs
her wind-tangled hair as the dark water moans,
and her uncanny hymns echo softly between
worlds fashioned of stone and strange algaed dreams . . .
Here men hear her songs, as they always have done,
as they dream to be one with the pulse of the foam . . .
as they also now long for her sleek, slender arms—
sweet relief from their ships, mules, wives, shanties and farms!
But what does she offer them—is it love?
As she croons her desire, is she moray, minx, dove?
Or merely a mystery: an enigma, like death,
to men bent on drowning, unhappy with breath?
Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch
Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here—among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire—
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?
Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch
after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley
I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.
I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me—progenitor of life
with its foul breath.
Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.
Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically—her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure
to a consuming emptiness.
We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture—
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts
to the first note.
Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.
Need is reborn; love dies.
No One
by Michael R. Burch
No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he smiles on a bed soft, green and lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.
No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.
No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.
Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch
The night is dark and scary—
under your bed, or upon it.
That blazing light might be a star ...
or maybe the Final Comet.
But two things are sure: your mother’s love
and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit!
the Horror
by Michael R. Burch
the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads
the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”
Belfry
by Michael R. Burch
There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.
There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.
There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.
There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.
Duet
by Michael R. Burch
Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad!
How worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we laughed together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .
Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement—in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us—our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .
Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .
No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .
Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch
We are all dying, haunted by life—
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.
With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.
We are the dying, enamored of “life”—
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.
We have only one thought—Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.
We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.
Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch
Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.
But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.
So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!
I lie, pallid vision of man—the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.
I love her beyond and despite even shame.
Eden
by Michael R. Burch
Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone—unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ...
Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch
There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson,
the very color of blood,
that bloomed in that garden.
The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers,
men have forgotten it now,
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.
Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”
The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there,
four horrid dark creatures—chattering, bickering.
Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair;
he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.
Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.
Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.
“We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.”
As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm.
“Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
“Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.”
“There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .”
“But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.”
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . .
“Ah, but red is the color of blood!”
Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.
Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)
I think the octopus is evidence of three things: that there are aliens, that they live among us, and that they are infinitely wiser than we are ...
Bikini
by Michael R. Burch
Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s bright eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like entangled hair where cold currents rise ...
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something curious, old and wise.
Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and, with tentacles like Medusa's squirming,
it feels the cloud blot out the skies' ...
then shudders, settles with a sigh,
understanding man’s demise.
Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch
Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.
Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.
Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.
Contraire
by Michael R. Burch
Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,
I sought Her ...
finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.
Yet her name was like prayer.
Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere
within me and about me.
Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.
Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.
Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch
You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal . . .
And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel . . .
And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.
East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch
Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.
He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.
She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale—
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.
*
A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.
*
An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says—“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”
East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch
He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.
Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.
He took what he could
till she afforded no more.
Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.
He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to whore,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.
Originally published by Penny Dreadful
Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch
for Trump
Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.
At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.
It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause
between odd bites to sniff through the scat,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...
Evil, the rat.
Temptation
by Michael R. Burch
Jesus was always misunderstood . . .
we have that, at least, in common.
And it’s true that I found him,
shriveled with hunger,
shivering in the desert,
skeletal, emaciate,
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.
And it’s true, I believe,
that I offered him something to eat—
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.
Hardly the great “temptation”
of which I’m accused.
He was a likeable chap, really,
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God—
how hard He is to know,
and impossible to please.
I left him there, the pale supplicant,
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave,
imploring his “Master” on callused knees.
Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)
Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch
The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun . . .
We are nonplused, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant . . .
We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,
and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade—
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.
Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch
I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . .
Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned,
complaining that I am no longer “pure?”
I threw myself before you, and you frowned,
so full of noble chastity, renowned
for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark
I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips
were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark
to light the cold dominions of your heart.
What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim
upon these territories, cold and dark,
do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light
my heart in death and leave me ashen-white,
as you are white, extinguished by the Night?
Liar
by Michael R. Burch
Chiller than a winter day,
quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams,
eyes wilder than the crystal spray
of silver streams,
you fill my dying thoughts.
In moments drugged with sleep
I have heard your earnest voice
leaving me no choice
save heed your hushed demands
and meet you in the sands
of an ageless arctic world.
There I kiss your lifeless lips
as we quiver in the shoals
of a sea that, endless, rolls
to meet the shattered shore.
Wild waves weep, "Nevermore,"
as you bend to stroke my hair.
That land is harsh and drear,
and that sea is bleak and wild;
only your lips are mild
as you kiss my weary eyes,
whispering lovely lies
of what awaits us there
in a land so stark and bare,
beyond all hope . . . and care.
This is one of my early poems, written as a high school sophomore or junior.