love precipitates
selfishness evaporates
~ true love’s gentle rain






Mark Toney © 2021

clear blood bleeds
runs as river goes
fills all hills
makes the red roses grow

the angels are crying
while the devils are laughing
who stop that crime?

the world turned his back
let Israel goes wide
do as the plan
and the mock may hide
they try to hide

the plants will up
growing carrying blood
increasing the anger revolt
one day, anger will evaporate
making great cloud
destroying every mount
making the solid so worst
and the tallest is youngest
the giant will be stunt
no one can not stop that
no one will not even open his lips
stop that
now
or the future carries bad result

I could live a thousand years,
         but the rain will always

have more stories in one droplet
        than the lifetime of humanity.

I shed a tear,
                              evaporating  

it joins the story,

          and then I die..

The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember ...
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh,

our soft cries, like regret

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...

now that I have forgotten her face.

Published by Poetry Magazine, La luce che non muore (Italy), Carnelian, Triplopia, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Poetry Life & Times, The Eclectic Muse, Strange Road, Inspirational Stories, Kritya and Centrifugal Eye

Keywords/Tags: Memory, effects, affects, hair, ringlet, neck, moonlight, vapor, evaporate, bra, clips, wire, lace, flesh, dimpled, kisses, erase, name, face

The roaches on my doorstep
They show nights of neglect
Follow me to darkness for I’ve not yet wept
Sweep me under doormats and follow path
The untimely death was apart of the wrath
Breaching the veil I’ve not yet pushed through
Legs start to quiver at those thoughts of you
Will I be met by the moon
Or shall she lay dormant
Whispering to stars of my utter torment
Clawing at life she has found her strife
Not until mourning will I be cut by son’s knife
Whisked away the smokes of today
Unable to lay safely in the bed I have made
Clothed in mindfulness
I shriek at joy
Just another game; and I am the toy

I'll never be solid with the fluidic
relationship of our evaporation.

I lapse towards you never wanting
to be without a touch, but I fall.

Why cant a embrace you without letting
you go, before we graze momentarily.

But in our sorrow a gleam of light shimmers,
and I linger between fluidic and rainbows.

I just want to fall towards you, but this is
a silent gaze never reaching you whole

I used to water my speculation,mixing it with liquid imagery..
then I'd blend it around with subtle stirrings of my thought.
Watching it change from a blank emotion, to something more.
Collecting I used my fingers clasping a way to collect a thin
film of musing swirls and then I'd gently blow..

Little shimmers would collect, floating delicately around
my head. Rainbows of perception, gently encompassing
a moment of a clear rendition. but a reflection only stains
the image held for so long till it dulls in moments before
evaporating in to tears of mist decaying into oblivion.

But then that place where my perceiving waters gently
flowed now seemed more arid than what was previously
perceived. No longer did rainbows form spherically..
No I was just a salt lake of tears, collecting white flakes
of bleached nothingness. My moment was weak, last week
I was serenading imagery now I'm just a dry lake bed.

"My words floated, but now there just dry renditions of
a drought going on in my thoughts"  

*"Were sometimes to thirsty, not realizing that we drank
to fast and the basin of our thoughts have run dry"

I'm low on energy
But I've got fire in my heart
I want to wake up from this sleep
My head is filled with water

I was a woman of water
A river for a body
to flow like a current.
I was meant only to sweep men off their feet.
But never do anything but slip through their hands.
Used only as something to mop up.
But I found a man made of fire.
That turned my voice into a voice.
It was no longer a trickle.
He took my rocky heartbeat.
And turned it into a heartbeat.
Then one day,
His flames turned into a fingertip.
One that caressed my jawline
And whispered to my riverside cheekbones
Telling me to become an ocean.
To drown.
Have a fierceness of a tidal wave.
To crash anyone who hurts me.
His hand touched me like a hand inside a wishing well
And I grew the size of the Atlantic.
I carried him with me, but his flames came back.
Turning me back into a river
A creek
A puddle
A girl.
I held hands with a campfire
Burnt my skin into submission
And evaporated.
Like I’m supposed to.