You’ve grounded yourself to match the subtlety of the earth’s morning shadows

Your heart feels swollen, it’s filled with love for the little things

And you can longer separate yourself from the line that divides love and hate

So you live your life using every lens available to look at foreign objects

And you find yourself overlooking a sea of borders, so you divide yourself into fragments

And now you stare at your reflection,
what are you besides fractals of foreign colour?

What are you besides lost in translation, waiting for a narrative?

So you rinse away the lines that separate your hopefulness and hopelessness

And you look towards the sea, somewhere in the distance, foreign shadows begin to erase the continental divides in your mind

And you take your first breath as someone....

....not something.

I learned a foreign language
It lives within my soul
I learned a foreign language
It filled a bottomless hole

I learned a foreign language
Carved it on my heart
I learned a foreign language
It gave me a fresh start

I learned a foreign language
It’s light as a feather
I learned a foreign language
It’s strength keeps us together

I learned a foreign language
You can learn it too
I learned a foreign language
It’s inside all of you

Green forests
Dark places
Romance and lies
I'm sorry that I came to this alien planet
I don't belong here
My heart belongs
To dry grass
And smoky summers
Not this green
Rain filled place
That only sees the sun
In the last three days of summer
I'm sorry that I don't belong on this alien planet with you
The darkness envelops me
Trapping me in a hazy greyish blue fog
I am pushing away the tendrils
Of murky gloom
That find me when I am running after you
I don't belong to this alien planet
That is only seen through the dark green trees
Follow the river of my mind
Into the cascading waterfall
The cliff that follows the Divide
I am sick and twisted
But not in the right way
I am sorry that I cannot stay
On this alien planet
A world so blue

I am upside down
Tossed this way and that
I am twisting with the beat
Of this song that is life
I am a dancer
That picks up on the winds of time
Follow the path
That leads to your demise
Welcome the alien planet
Where skies are a dull grey
The land is dark green
And cloud cover is constant
Where the mist of time
Takes over your mind
Welcome to the Alien Planet
This is where you reside

they came as teens
from West Africa,
feet dancing from rhythms
uncivilized.  

they came to live,
to learn, to make
the most of life;
eager to leave
the place that birth
them life.

they went to schools,
later university, sat on desk
once sat by whites;
learning to pronouns
words with flair
nostrils to sound alike.

they absorb the culture,
sang the creed,
then, got some rights.
to never decreed, nor
intercede from whence
they arise.

comfort
is such a foreign zone
that I long for,

a land that I can't seem to
be able to spot
on any map,

people tell me
its borders are indefinite,

and i tell them,
please take me
to the mother
I have never known.

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

can you believe all the little things that had to happen for us to meet?
every step, every breath i took to find you.

i don't believe in fate.

can you believe all the little things that had to happen for us to be torn apart?
it started with a bat and ended in a pandemic.

i don't believe in fate.

Coconut, coconut, coconut,
Crack!
Stained white on the inside,
Brown on the out.

Hit it on its head,
Slash it apart.
Nourish it with spices,
Of a Southern past.

Fuzzy to touch,
Lined in coir.
The remaining path
In defining who we are.

Droplets of the Ganges,
Drowned in the Thames.
A conflicted soul,
In search of a cleanse.

Coconut, coconut, coconut,
Crack!
That one's spoiled!
So send him back.