What peace is spoken of?
What normalcy?
More war? Further widening the gap
Between the rich & the poor?
Another mean-nothing speech,
Full of thoughts and prayers
Never to be carried to term?
Bills brought to the floor
Only to be stalled by their authors?
Flirting with failure
From manufactured crisis, and with
Pointless battles over culture.
Never have the oppressive been more direct
In their inability to lead
Views, values, beliefs;
Scavenging their remains
Akin to common vultures.

This Distance Between Us
by Michael R. Burch

This distance between us,
this vast gulf of remembrance
void of understanding,
sets us apart.

You are so far,
lost child,
weeping for consolation,
so dear to my heart.

Once near to my heart,
though seldom to touch,
now you are foreign,
now you grow faint . . .

like the wayward light of a vagabond star—
obscure, enigmatic.
Is the reveling gypsy
becoming a saint?

Now loneliness,
a broad expanse
—barren, forbidding—
whispers my name.

I, too, am a traveler
down this dark path,
unsure of the footing,
cursing the rain.

I, too, have felt pain,
pain and the ache of passion unfulfilled,
remorse, grief, and all the terrors
of the night.

And how very black
and how bleak my despair . . .
O, where are you, where are you
shining tonight?

Keywords/Tags: distance, gulf, apart, divide, foreign, faint, gypsy, saint, loneliness, broad, expanse, barren, dark, path, black, light, shining

I stand there
teeth rattling, head chattering
watching the world slide not so gently
from a place I didn't know to a clear ----
hi.
how are you.
doin fine.
the sky's awfully blue

Silver light’s broad smile,
Breeze murmurs season’s greetings;
‘Surrender to peace’

we sink half an inch every year
"soon, we'll be up to our ears
in water"

not a creature of fury, just of habit
the moon pulls her to churning, to crashing.
hotter water temper tantrums
rush the brine into our basements
soaking scrapbooks in salt
until it crystallizes faces

and yet i cannot blame the marsh

for reclaiming what was never ours
and taking even what was as penance.
but i refuse to condemn us
for shaping shorelines into lives
because things are so much clearer
when they turn with the tides.
we’ll grow gills in time,

we have to.

the ones who stay on land
could never handle shifting sands
don’t know we cling onto the inlet
with white-knuckled hands.
they never grew from buried roots,
seeds are just flotsam in the sea
so they’ll call Frank O’Toole crazy
when he can’t bring himself to leave.

You come in broad daylight
To make love to me
To get a refreshing taste
And leave
with an unfinished story

At night
You pour yourself on me
Your sticks like fingers
Your chain like arms
Wrapping around me
Leaving
its love marks