Flowers of the soul are kind
They are our greatest treasure.
They bring about
such peace of mind
Beatitude and pleasure.
In love you will surely find
Beauty beyond measure!

The light through
stained glass windows
Makes love that's unalloyed.
The heart soaks up the colors.
Somehow they fill a void.

There's vibrancy of spirit.
There's unity to share.
There's peaceful loving pardon
There's music in the air!
You can find rest from worries
There is no doubt or fear.
Only sweet redemption
Yes! All those things are here!

If your being has a yearning
For joys which can't be told
Come and smell the blossoms

The flowers of the SOUL.

SoulSurvivor
Catherine Jarvis
9/11/2020

i live inside a bubble, fly with me into this bubble
life used to be a hustle, but it ain't anymore
gotta make summin' or gotta take summin'
come fly with me, my cubies are shining whitely

i reside on a planet which is full of whole ones
re'in up for all the phantoms, their fandoms
art nouveau balcony, bluely shimmering rooms,
you enter the hallway like dreams, embers in ya eyes

brother, i am all-night like owls, heavily religious
by the end of the day, i will be ******* the devil
we call that fly night, for everyone staying on it
luridly white marbles, everybody trippin', trippin'

our bubble is like frippin: frippin freely
and i'm skating through the garden, jeezy
today's my birthday: 500 peace of cake
my heart's racing, amg, i'll be waiting in the snow

fly with me, into this bubble, bubble
i wanna be higher than ever, higher
with me, there is no struggle, struggle
i'll take you with me, bubble, bubble, bubble

i'm praying, while i'm driving, and when 'm praying
i am thinking and i talk myself into a coma
raising in a 911, our bubble, bubble
stay with me inside that bubble, bubble

i am trustworthiy, since i been dealing with souls
but sometimes i freak out and jump out of my window
cause i read my palm lines and learned, when i'll die
so i grew myself a plumage, like birds, for our bubble

don't come lookin' for me, i'll be waiting in the snow
or under miami's sunset, nuns will be sinning
dem lyrics are for dogz, dem lyrics are for sinners
i want to come right now, just like a coup d'etat

cubies filled with magic, come into my bubble
the crowd is filling the castle and stars
are raining down, you close your eyes
you close your eyes, escaping into the night

fly with me, into this bubble, bubble
i wanna be higher than ever, higher
with me, there is no struggle, struggle
i'll take you with me, bubble, bubble, bubble

My scarfaced TSA prince
I see you on imvu and
I just want you
Loving
As we talk my
Body aches for you
My heart aches for when we can work
Together
And be together
I pine for your presence
Your love
And touch

Survivors
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of 9/11 and their families)

In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:

a shiver of “empathy.”

We too are “survivors,”
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death

like a turtle retracting its neck.

Published by The HyperTexts, Gostinaya (Russia), Ulita (Russia), Promosaik(Germany), The Night Genre Project and Muddy Chevy; also turned into a YouTube video by Lillian Y. Wong. Keywords: survivors, victims, families, 911, 9/11, terrorist, attack, terrorism, empathy, sympathy, truth, horror, death, survive, survival

911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”

They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,

far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot ...

Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.

Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Mindful of Poetry, Gostinaya and Scholasticus/Fullosia Press. Keywords/Tags: 911, war, violence, retribution, twin towers, terror, terrorism, east, west, dreams, nightmares, error

Salve
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of 9-11)

The world is unsalvageable ...

but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as we do,

that our bodies are wise

in ways we refuse
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat,
drink ...
even multiply.

And so we touch ...

touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions

in this night of wished-on stars,

caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.

We are not lovers of irony,

we
who imagine ourselves
beyond the redemption
of tears
because we have salvaged
so few
for ourselves ...

and so we laugh
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.

Keywords/tags: 911, war, survival, survivors, recovery, love, *******, ***, tears, redemption, bodies, flesh, touch, caresses

Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.

Keywords/Tags: 911, victims, survivors, grief, loss, heal, healing, tear, tears, coffee, break, time, milk, artificial, sweeteners

Mending
by Michael R. Burch

I am besieged with kindnesses;
sometimes I laugh,
delighted for a moment,
then resume
the more seemly occupation of my craft.

I do not taste the candies;
the perfume
of roses is uplifted
in a draft
that vanishes into the ceiling’s fans

that spin like old propellers
till the room
is full of ghostly bits of yarn ...
My task
is not to knit,

but not to end too soon.

This is a poem for the survivors of 9–11 whose families lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks. Keywords: 911, survivors, victims, first, responders, passengers, firemen, police, heroes, terrorist, attacks, World Trade Center, Flight 93, Pentagon, White House

Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, on the first anniversary of 9-11

She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget”
dove-white on her car’s window (though the wren,
because its heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her). As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: “Never Forget”
and kept her heart’s own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers’ glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on ...
she stitches in damp linen: “NEVER FORGET”
and listens to her heart’s emphatic song.
(The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when nestlings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
love's reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.)

She writes in adamant: “NEVER FORGET!”
because her heart is tender with regret.

Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Eclectic Muse, Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine, and Other Voices International. Keywords/Tags: villanelle, 911, terror, terrorism, never, forget, heart, tender, regret, heroism, patriotism, courage, sacrifice