Every Man Has a Dream
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Every man has a dream that he cannot quite touch...
a dream of contentment, of soft, starlit rain,
of a breeze in the evening that, rising again,
reminds him of something that cannot have been,
and he calls this dream love.

And each man has a dream that he fears to let live,
for he knows: to succumb is to throw away all.
So he curses, denies it and locks it within
the cells of his heart and he calls it a sin,
this madness, this love.

But each man in his living falls prey to his dreams,
and he struggles, but so he ensures that he falls,
and he finds in the end that he cannot deny
the hope that he feels or the tears that he cries
in the darkness of night for this light he calls love.

Keywords/Tags: Man, Dream, Love, Vision, Fantasy, Aspiration, Hope, Sin, Madness, Cell, Prison, Real, Reality, Touch, Tangible, Contentment, Comfort, Consolation, Prey, Trapped, Snared, Prisoner, Captive, Hope, Fears, Tears, Elusive, Elusiveness

The perfect woman
looks like me and you
breath down her neck
hairs standing tall
unholy mistakes rewritten
on the bathroom wall
The sharp heel stabs to ****
her own heart with.

Mistakes, I'm guilty
of faking a smile with you.

Just when I thought I had forever
I got lost in my emotions
and now I cry because I know that you are no good for me.
But I hate feeling so alone
so of course I hit up your phone
You say come over ; you always get the best of me
Yet you bring out the worst in me.
Now we're done and all I can taste is you.
I whimper to myself because was it worth the pleasure?
Before coming here I felt like I diamond
but as I leave I feel like buried treasure.
I always told myself this wouldn't last forever
We eventually lost the real connection.
Then I realized there's no use in all this time we're spending
Holding in all the anger at the bottom of the ocean
I hoped you'd be my savior
the *** had me distracted
unaware of your behavior
I knew that I was drowning but I didn't know you were the
Anchor.

They might as well have said
that March was canceled
Because that's what I heard
When they announced
There would be no basketball
No basketball
Those were the words that echoed through the college campuses, the dorm rooms, the high school gyms, living rooms, and sports bars
around the world.
So no sweet sixteen
No final four
no watch parties
Or wagers being placed on
Your favorite teams
March always comes in like a lion
But this time
It came in
Like a giant rhinoceros
With social distancing
And excess hand washing
This virus
This 100 year plague
Has turned our every day lives
Upside down
And forced us all
into a new world order
A new world
Where sports is
No longer king
No longer a priority
And no longer important
And I don't even
Like basketball
Really not many sports
To begin with
But I'm very much
A fan of tradition
And giving kids
A chance
At a last hurrah
A final dance
A final prom
If you will
But no basketball in March
Is like
Telling everyone
With a birthday in the month
That they were never born
Its as if all the scores,
All the stats, all the records broken
Never existed
When you tell us
There will be no
March Madness

I sit down at my desk,
Staring blankly at the sheet in front of me.

Pure white,
a fresh start.

The pen in my hand twirls gracefully,

Not a word written on the paper.
My ideas were foolish, after all.

Until the pen moved on it’s own.

Long, flowing lines graced the page,
grazing the edges,
but not spilled at all.

The pen halted for only a minute,
as I admire the beautiful world it’s created.

But the pen does not stop, nor does it have mercy.

Dots and lines
Strokes of memory
Brushing it’s tortuous path

The ink held no mercy, and in mercy’s place came agony
the agony tying the strings of ink together until it became a messy puddle
even after all space was filled.
The pen swung
back
and forth
tearing at the paper
My  perfect  world  a   mess    of ink
    and   paper    
and             guilt

Lies are beautiful,
With their assortment of colors,
Ranging from a crystalline white
To a dried blood brown-black.
From purity, for saving someone
from the pain of the truth,
to lies of pure fun,
that stains the ground we walk on.

And so I coat myself in black and blood red,
Making lies and creating fun,
Only for myself.
Or at least that’s what I’d like to think.
The pure black seems to almost
                   flow
              like a river
     out through my lips
and to everyone around me.
It’s toxic, bringing pain like flesh being
torn.
I love it.
I crave every agonizing minute
of lies that spew and grow and
writhe like a growing parasite.
A beautiful parasite of shining
black
and luxurious oily blue.

It can’t be helped to love such
mesmerizing
colors.
So here I spill
and paint the world in my ink.
The ink of lies,
And the paper the truth.
Of course, everyone wants
to fill said paper
with color.

So we spill inky lies to the ground
to create a world worth living in.
A wonderland of gorgeous, asymmetric chaos.
Lies are truly beautiful, if you see the creativity
behind the lie.