My legs are heavier than I am used to,
Except it feels so familiar,
I think this happens every night when I try to run in my dreams,
And its like forcing each step forward through thick syrup
Hardening wet concrete
A rapidly thickening slurry coating me.

I am weighed down by it, down on my knees now, hoping that grabbing the ground and pulling myself forward will increase my momentum
Ripping out handfuls of grass trying to get the earth to treadmill beneath me
Clay under my nails, more slurry, more layers,

The earth is a part of my lungs now
Wet pink webbing hardening from the outside in
Thin tendrils brittle and breaking off, sun-dried,
Cracking and dusty and making its way up my throat
A river bed of mud consuming the space in my mouth,
I reach in with my fingers and scoop out the muck and throw it but it keeps coming,
Filling and refilling my mouth, faster than my fingers can dig it out
Thick like dentist's putty, coating my tongue and teeth like taffy

The fear is always there
The fear mixed with the drowning feeling, drowning in wet clay,
Suffocating and afraid
That it will still be the same even when I wake up

Like an aberration
A colossal of ways  
Is when the moonlight
Meets the sun raise  

                                           Time-lined asphalt
                              Orb shadowing the dawn
                          Avoiding flickering wounds
                                                   By moving on

Like a neighbor
A wall mould to clay
That is the burden
Between night and day

A mirror the size of the sky reveals
That I need to change
Though i was made in the image of my God
I was also made in the image of dirt
And molded by the red clay beneath it
And it stained all my clothes
And It stained in the curves of my brain
And through my fingertips
They bleed red
Cause I am *****
I could pray away the red
But it appears on my knees as I kneel
And I know what is real
But i can't hear the voice
And giving every inch of me
Of something I can't see
Is harder than giving every inch of me
To something that's bad for me

As
you soften yourself
life soaks its fancy
into your very bones

As you stiffen
your skin
its bite be
a fire upon the skin of clay

The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and grey,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak and scarred and lone,
for seas reflecting distant suns
and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown,
for waltzes ending in a hush,
for rhymes that fade as pages close,
for flames’ exhausted, drifting ash,
and petals falling from the rose, ...
I raise my cup before I drink,
saluting ghosts of loves long dead,
and silently propose a toast—
to joys set free, and those I fled.

Originally published by Contemporary Rhyme. Keywords/Tags: toast, death, time, passages, dreams, clay, flesh, ash, sun, sunset, age, grave, end