These are poems about shadows, poems about darkness, poems about shades in the form of ghosts and spirits...

Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge...then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

چھوٹا سا اک گاؤں تھا جس میں
دیئے تھے کم اور بہت اندھیرا
بہت شجر تھے تھوڑے گھر تھے
جن کو تھا دوری نے گھیرا
اتنی بڑی تنہائی تھی جس میں
جاگتا رہتا تھا دل میرا
بہت قدیم فراق تھا جس میں
ایک مقرر حد سے آگے
سوچ نہ سکتا تھا دل میرا
ایسی صورت میں پھر دل کو
دھیان آتا کس خواب میں تیرا
راز جو حد سے باہر میں تھا
اپنا آپ دکھاتا کیسے
سپنے کی بھی حد تھی آخر
سپنا آگے جاتا کیسے
There is a quaint town, where
Were lesser lamps and darkness,
Many trees and houses some,
Covered by vast distances.
In expanses of loneliness,

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.

 

discombobulated, harried, and lobotomized
state of body, mind, and spirit triage.

Onset of dark shadows signalling edge of night
occurs earlier as the world turns 
beckoning, hinting, robbing passage
regarding days of our lives,
where the young and the restless,
plus the bold and the beautiful
exhibit variations on a theme
titled one life to live.

Within my figurative neck of woods
boughs bend forming roods,
where all across the United States
except Arizona and Hawaii
troubadoors festooned nsync
with generational matriarchs

These are apocalyptic poems about possible dark futures for mankind and the planet he depends on for life and sustenance. Are we condemning our children and grandchildren to live underground, like moles, if they live at all?

Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?