What little of you, bound by sacred oaths — we find two
spirits, familiar with the gales that lift us toward our
aspirations.

Do we not yearn for shared laughter, as the key for
equal peace?

This laughing note to our mutual harmony?

A melody of joy that ought to resonate, yet is drowned out
by the cacophony of man's war cries, throwing us off our
intended pitch.

Where have the noble minstrels gone, strumming a melody
to caress our beat souls—to exquisite listeners?

While the architects of unjust conflicts gaze down upon the
turmoil, their hearts untouched, as everything we cherish
slips away into the chasm.

Depression is like a bottomless pit
Once you fall in
You can almost never get out

You claw at the walls of the deep hole
Using all of your strength
To climb to the surface
The effort is grueling
But you have a spark of hope
That you're strong enough

But a stone falls from above
Catching you off guard
And you fall once again
Landing ******* the cold floor
Right back where you started

Your body is weak and exhausted
The attempt to save yourself
Is taking its toll
You lie on your back
Gazing up at the light
Coming from the entrance of the chasm
But you are too weary to try again
So you lay there
As your hope fades away

Like water falling over a crest
A swift rapid descent into a black hole
The paradox known as my life

Disguised as a pseudonym plunging
Ever deeper into a swirling
Of emotions into depths unknown

Cascading over cliffs at ever greater speed
Feeling out of control
Coalescing into a bottomless pit

The sheerness of the sides
Ever sharper the deeper I fall
Leaving no way out

Holding my breath
For the inevitable free fall
Into a chasm of darkness

Is this my destiny or fate
Or just another nightmare among many
That I will endure

Until...

Andreas Simic©

Baseline fractures
Faults in the earth
Inevitable crevices, unfathomable
Depths, and the-
                         -another?
                              Baseline fractures



Darkest shores
A dozen dead mourners
Grey lights and
A land without corners

Horizons twist bitter
Into themselves
The world descends further
Out of the shelves

From dust a baseline
From dust a hall
From dust to dust
It's just a hall

Right at the contour,

Decorative canyons of dire, descending ornaments,

Occluded with mixed smoke signals.

Those heading to their number beds,

Pray to the analytical gods,

"Dear Lord, bell curve distribution. Please, please, please..."

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as if she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.

Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia, Lone Stars. Keywords/Tags: distance, distances, convention, books, bookstores, art, literature, poetry, chasm, abyss, divide, Faust, Frost, clean break

Break me into chasm
then let the love pour in—
flower into deep well—
stem the umbilicus
of what you could say
you knew of me—

the privilege of living
inside your own head—
and me,
something made of sand,
a wink—

something of one
of many lives ago,
though how well
you knew me—
as did he—
how well they saw me—
and maybe no one did.

We were lovers
in a past life.
And now
I am obscure as
lost Atlantis, origin
of the fairy tale—
fragile
as gossamer and
the Holy Grail.