Michael Shayne Fletcher

Michael S. Fletcher is our February Editor's Pick Poet

You can email Michael at: msfletcher@on-nets.com

TANGO WITH DEATH

I walk on this death kissed ground alone
Only the rotting corpses below know I’m here
Their secrets crudely hidden, buried amongst bone
Dark thoughts rap round my minds greatest fear 

Haunting rattles shake skeletons awake
Ancient coffins cough dust from their wood
I see my death from this journey I take
The souls now awoken where one man stood

If I run quickly now I may stand a chance
But where can I go without making them alert
I hear the reaper calling for this final dance
He’s near I hear his heavy feet waltzing through the dirt

Run, run, run for you life my inner voices scream
Which direction do I flee? East I think is best
God let me wake up from this cruel hellish dream
I’m now frozen in mid flight, I should have taken west

Deaths hands are upon me ready to take the lead
This ghoulish quick step is now to begin
A ghostly breath upon my lips isn’t what I need  
This final tango can’t be my greatest sin

When the music stops my heart beats no more
My next journey to the light will be soon
Then my knuckles will a tap on St Peters door
My final escape from this hell sent goon

Bright smiling pearly gates beckon to me inside
Proudly now I enter knowing I made it home
And that soul-claiming reaper has gone with the tide
Perhaps to seek another poor soul to tango with alone

A STRANGER COMETH

Who are you to tell me about life?
I know enough about its presence to understand its shallow defenses
Your sly melancholy pestilence mean little to me
Your selective beacon shines for the blind not the seeing.

Who are you to tell me about right and wrong?
I know enough about it to understand its choices come with unrestrained consequences
Its rainbow of colours paints on a blank canvass to me
Its aura screams out abusive obscenities to the colour-blind deaf

Who are you to tell me of Love?
I know enough about its thorns to place it to my heart carefully
To understand it’s coldness withers amongst warm embrace
Its compassion blends amidst the weight of decision
Its determined blow delivered can be a heavy one upon a fragile chest

Who are you to tell me all the troubles in the world?
I know enough about its righteous behavior to understand where my place lies in its cool domain
Its uncaring sadness scatters over the forgotten heroes of yesterday
Your message I teach my children will be one of measured hope

Who are you stranger?
I feel I know enough about you to know you are my conscience
To understand your message is value learnt and self managed
And your meaning is pointless if I do not heed my childhood lessons
Your wisdom I shall teach my children  shall be wasted if they do can not remember your name…
And the conscience I once owned will be sold to the highest bidder on Ebay

THE WRITER
 
Reaching across an empty void of my windowless dwelling
Ideas scamper into the darkest corners of my mind
Moving ever so further away from my creative grasp
Coffee mellows my pitiful figure,
aroma soothes my emptiness
 
Words Bounce around in a tired mind
aching to burst out
Ideas are chained against the overflowing walls of inner thoughts
They struggle to break loose from the shackles that hold them
Sounds of the night laugh at my sad disparagements plight
 
I strive to break free from my own made battle of blank defense
Ideas shake free one at a time,
releasing my once captured words
Once paralyzed hands move slowly across the sea of plastic squares
Each tapping wave of pressure strikes the shores of my illiteracy, 
pounding letters into words,
words soon become sentences,
as the crashing tide smashes the glass prism
into mere morsels of sand, 
ensuring my souls release
 
Directed will opens the doors to my once imprisoned dwelling
Committed intellect shapes the bouncing creations in flight
Newly formed revelations preach their seeded reversionary presence
Speed gathers the words and throws them across a once black screen
 
Coffee no longer mellows my pity,
night no longer laughs at me
I am the spirit of the ink,
the controller of the electronic discharge
Once strangled ideas multiply as their manifestations grab air
To begin with hidden nothingness,
to emerge finally as a writer once more…