Burke 1

Kelly Burke

Final Portfolio

Poetry Writing

ENGL 3050-01

Ted Mathys

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

Burke 13