The first-ever satellite images of you

Stranded upon pain inflicted desolation

The process of coming to pieces:

Nocturnal carnivorous planetoid

Moon in your mouth

They hint at remarkably renewed unfriendliness

It’s the same face we all see

Precious and cracked

Your isolated body orbiting

In its bitter ******

Where no sunlight ripples through

The string dangling between your legs

All the children hidden underneath your navel

Have fled down to Earth

To live or die in documented nightmares of their own

A pile of mud
moving, re-animated:
you watch a trail of stink

—striking everyone's senses—
I'm leaving behind.

A man of mud walks toward you,
sliding smooth
on the façade of a greasy pavement

coming at you
longing, to solicit
your pity

—my body crumbles
at each step I ****** towards you
while watching myself being torn apart.

I stretch my arm, and then my stiff fingers,
each soaked in tears,
to grab whatever I can out of you.

I disintegrate into emptiness
at every attempt I make
—all futile, meaningless.

My muddied lips
set apart to plead,
but only a screeching noise

comes out,
squeaking,
like that of a mouse.

You,
the one with a shovel
—sharp is the blade—

scream at me,
whacking my clay-man body
with your murderous tool

you hold so tight
—this sight of Mudman
must be hideous indeed

to those pupils of innocence,
burning brightly
with consuming hatred.

    Lying on the floor
    flattened, unaccepted,
    the muddied lips

    that survived the shattering blow
    are squirming still.

    You grind them under your heel
    merciless.

Besieged
by Michael R. Burch

Life—the disintegration of the flesh
before the fitful elevation of the soul
upon improbable wings?

Life—it is all we know,
the travail one bright season brings ...

Now the fruit hangs,
impendent, pregnant with death,
as the hurricane builds and flings
its white columns and banners of snow

and the rout begins.

Keywords/Tags: Life, flesh, disintegration, atrophy, soul, elevation, wings, winter, bright season, fruit, pregnant, snow, rout, tempest, blizzard

She was a spectacular tree.
People called her the flame of the forest,
for she was obviously striking, vivid and classy.

I need not narrate the superlative majesty
of the flame – tree, for one time or the other
we have all been breath-taken by her peerless glamor.

What matchless artistry!

I am here to quickly share
my ruminative gloom for that lovely assembly
of flower, leaf and wood, which grandly stood
in a grove of possibilities, and possibilities can be
such a torment, such a calamity.

❋

For years galore, caterpillars of choices
had been steadily eating away at her core.
They came from different directions,
at different trajectories,
with varied objectives
and fluctuating proclivities.

Sometimes, they came rushing in as family,
and sometimes they came slowly,
a little formally, a bit watchfully,
somewhat officially.

At times they came in fiery fascination
and yet, ever so often, they were charged
with marauding indignation.

Many times they arrived as blazing ambition,
but more often than not, combusted the flamboyance
leaving behind an ashen illusion.

Oh.....those craving larvae
of oblique, wily opportunities.

❋

The foliage was feverishly guzzled
till photosynthesis was no more possible.
From my distant window from where I had once
watched her variegated flair,
I felt the Poinciana moan in simmering despair.

❋

With biting sensitivity, I still look on, a tad tearfully,
as she continues to tumble into conscious torpidity.

My words may slip and sway, as with each wilting leaf
after each withering floret, she progresses towards
an abject decay;
imploding methodically, and transposing gradually
from being the flame of the forest
to being a sprouting forest of flames.

latent energy I wish I had: cold hands
stick to themselves in subzero, sticky with
regret and stagnancy: too many stags running about
harbingers of doom and gloom
eden's garden disintegrating at the sight of
the new bloom: wind beating in my eyes
turning around trees and warping leaves
train stations leading nowhere
thoughts compressed into bullets
and backwards thinking: could you tell me where we are, please?

The departure gives meaning to the absence.
Because absence alone means
     
               disintegration.

And holding on to absence
               Putrefies the heart.
Because you are giving pieces of yourself
    To a black hole.

So when they left,
         You were gifted with a decision:


To move to the left, where nothing feels right
Or to dream of the right, where they never left