This poem collection explores various themes through short lyrical poems, including the fleeting nature of beauty and life, relationships, intoxication and its aftermath, predation and the cycle of sustenance in nature. The poems employ vivid imagery and metaphor to convey complex emotions and observations on the human condition.

1. Burke 1
Kelly Burke
Final Portfolio
Poetry Writing
ENGL 3050-01
Ted Mathys

2. Burke 2
Is
It is the music written on optics,
the city beneath our
feet, words strangled back pipes, and
yellow of ages bygone.
It is the elegance of the ballroom,
dignity of the circle,
divine architecture, stillness before
the spark.
It is the pit of charged void,
shell of blank longing, space
of invisible musings,
preview of what shall
come.

3. Burke 3
Name
One
by one
the leaves all
fall from far above,
gracing the shaded moss beds
overlying my heart, marked only
by the stone edifice
upon which is
scrawled one
title.

4. Burke 4
Two Lovers
My two lovers both
love souls.
The lover of my body loves
cheap photonic kinds that shine
bright but fizzle fading
just as fast. He doesn’t realize
they won’t last.
They will never become
matter and he will never become one of
their ilk.
The lover of my soul has loved me since
inception, before darkroom of life forced me
from the womb. One day
I will cast off my fear to grab his icy hand,
joined body and flame ever burning.

5. Burke 5
Next Morning
First comes the ecstasy:
Crystal bottle of crushed cherries and garnet
Was the first venom pounding through our veins.
Cheeks rosy, eyes gleaming, teeth dazzling in dim light,
Breath of ages slithers across my flesh,
Leaving ruddy ruts in its wake.
Then comes the pain:
Spinning room and heaving heart,
Something was… I must have been a wreck.
Sight fading, sense fading, I was fading.
I couldn’t feel him
Though he was buried in my neck.
Last is confusion:
Awakening, the golden burn of morning
clawed at my skin,
Banished by cold and dark alone,
I sealed the shades, he was nowhere,
Fled like a shadow into the night.
I cupped my face and groaned.
What are you left with?
Nothing but the hunger for
what you can never get back.

6. Burke 6
Shiori
Perched in woven cradle, I feel the
Struggle far down gossamer strands. Tugging
rumbles through my body. But you are
far more interesting, so tedious and crafty in malice
you spread through the web.
It is all the same to the
kind which speaks sans a tongue,
with fingertips daintily groomed to
go upturn lives and
the peace of the entire system. You faintly smile
as you inscribe,
yet it is me you fear.

7. Burke 7
Mocking Life
Toxins rush across the floor
in search of supple flesh,
roaring, “Despair and kneel,
for invincible am I!
Always rearing,
rotting bark and grinding stone,
melting flesh and sipping bone,
ever victorious among my spoils!”
Weaving spider cackles, “Sad thing you are,”
glutted abdomen and knotty legs reeling from her gorge.
“Eat forever, never filled,
finest flavors all for the tongue-less, the taste-less.
No thrill of stalking
no joy in capture,
no face, no clan,
no life in life.
I’ll spare my kneecaps.”

8. Burke 8
Cycle of Sustenance
1. Trap
The orbits of hollow eyes did gape
as I the contents of the form
began to bind from side to side across.
A cry from bound captive, so deep
and guttural, fast interrupted process keen.
“Be silent if ever you desire
a cease to sting, a way to carry on
past darkened tunnel fibers winding to
abyss of both conditions prime with pain.”
I spoke with limbs, with clacking jaws outstretched,
reeling tremors bringing violent
essential oil to surface through the bones.
2. Feed
I dip my mouth into the bundle tight,
sigh of silk untangles past my teeth.
I suck the nectar up cavity
awaiting rust of iron most vital.
The twitch of corrugated clamoring
digits let me know that I carry on.
3. Fat
Distributing through my innards compounds
across the swollen, flooded abdomen.

9. Burke 9
I blink my eyes in sets ever slowly,
the racing of my heart projects a tune
of lying still, of hunt, of feed,
of glut, of drain, of everlasting toil.
The cycle shall wind back to bite again.

10. Burke 10
Ornament
My darling, my dearest,
I gift you this:
Taken from the charnel,
and plucked from skull
of kind or cruel,
of creature or of royal,
One orb of white, of milky blue,
shot throughout with red,
saved from the rot
and fires hot
that simmers all to ashen bed.
I’d seen it once, just months ago,
Bobbing through the lane,
in summer’s heat and
wrapped in meat,
impossible to obtain,
And so I waited night and day,
I knew it was to come,
no meat-shell lasts for long out
here, before the brain goes numb,
and limbs go slack and tongue curls back
and meat-shell bobs no more.
So when they dumped it there, you see,

11. Burke 11
I didn’t wait a breath,
to steal within
that mortared den
of bone and fragrant death,
and out of socket the ornament pops,
I believe you know the rest.
Now receive my darling sweet,
This token of my heart,
away cast me not for
it’s my lot
to forever part
bone from flesh and
flesh from bone and
eyeballs from their meat.

12. Burke 12
Sparrow-Beak
You turn from
me
and embrace the
other
voices, infinitely frenetic, emanating
patterns you vainly chase, you poor
delusional prophet of
universal order,
Forever sealed within the
solution, the
fallible formula for
peace ardently sought as
You accuse the perpetrators of your persecution
unearned, of no
value to me and
anguish to foreign parties
who grapple for
the way out.
Whisper to me once more the
stories ungenerously warbled
from sparrow-beak,
corroded with dull delivery,
wavering through a chip earned to soon.

13. Burke 13