Every year, at the scheduled arrival of March,
Mother Nature became seasonally enraged,
Like a lion, an unjustly imprisoned beast in a cage,
Like a cancer patient walking on the last stage
For the last time - the last baby is now aged;
Two seasons are about to rush, crush and crash.

Every thing started with the hauling and yelling winds
Slapping their huge feathers on all windows,
Mother Nature’s heavily breathing on different rows
Of the trees that refused to be scattered all over like the sands

Winter came early:
the driving snows,
the delicate frosts
that crystallize

all we forget
or refuse to know,
all we regret
that makes us wise.

Spring was delayed:
the nubile rose,
the tentative sun,
the wind’s soft sighs,

all we omit
or refuse to show,
whatever we shield
behind guarded eyes.

Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



Ballade of the Bicameral Camel
by Michael R. Burch

These are poems about fall, falls and falling, whether in love or literally ...

Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.

These are Romantic poems (with a capital R) that I have written under the influence of feminine beauty and poets like Sappho, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Kevin N. Roberts, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Dylan Thomas.

She Gathered Lilacs
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She gathered lilacs
and arrayed them in her hair;
tonight, she taught the wind to be free.

She kept her secrets
in a silver locket;
her companions were starlight and mystery.

"Listen" is a prophetic poem I wrote around age 17 or 18, then revised and completed around 20 years later. 

Listen
by Michael R. Burch
also published as Immanuel A. Michael

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.