What’s the difference between *** & making love?
& can you make love to strangers?
And make it so beautiful that it
Still wakes them up at night sixty years later?
Even if you didn’t know her first name?

god does not love me
i think he doesn’t even know my name,
yet i still wonder what he’d call me by once i arrive
at the gates of afterlife,
would he disregard what he wrote in the book of life,
look me in the eye
and call me by the name
my parents christened me with
instead of human number 99560000c, earth #05?

but who am i fooling;
i am but a donut flying across infinity in lightspeeds
one moment there, a moment later swallowed by the hungry monster who awaits
in the black hole

am i a snack for idle gods?
a cut of chicken running from the jaws of earth, unaware
that it is merely flopping from one bowl to another,
flour to egg to crumbs—
a breading offering for the deities

most people have come to accept that, i think
as i jump yet again into the bowl of flour
but i am not most people, as i refuse to believe
the reality that i am but a speck of dust fleeting through life,
an insignificant bug easily quashed by the stinking
foot of infinity,
that old hag.

life is temporary
too much breading does not do any good
i will soon be the trillionth dumped into that pool of hot oil

but **** if i’m not going to try scorching the tongue of a god,
and while i’m at it,
be the most delicious flying donut in the galaxy.

One will not live to see the end
of the geopolitical drama,
the existential dilemma—

the small choices people make that change their lives.
They ought to be terrified but they’re blithe
because you can’t know what you’re doing until it’s done.

Acting silly, solving problems.
Scientific method, situation comedy.
Dinosaurs. Sore losers.

Kayak on the Hackensack.
Malebolge. Hoboken.
It was dark in there! It was dark!

You can’t say to people I think I’m dying
because we all have that feeling,
it’s so ubiquitous it’s not worth mentioning.

For your given name
take Destiny.
But survive.

Saturday’s the sweetest
day. You’re off the clock.
Participation’s optional

weedsmoking, videogameplaying,
tvwatching, anonymouslawnmowing,
whatif whatnot oldtimer.

Pass the ******* ball!
I say to Ray who never passes.
The past isn’t dead, it never even passes.

Short sleeves today?
Prepare for a powerful anesthesia.
The afterlife is now.

Dust
by Michael R. Burch

Flame within flame,
  we burned and burned relentlessly
    till there was nothing left to be consumed.
    Only ash remained, the smoke plumed
  like a spirit leaving its corpse, and we
were left with only a name
ever common between us.
  We had thought to love “eternally,”
    but the wick sputtered, the candle swooned,
    the flame subsided, the smoke ballooned,
  and our communal thought was: flee, flee, flee
the choking dust.

Keywords/Tags: dust, ash, spent flame, smoke, spirit, corpse, common, name, divorce, separation, parting

I thirst with
an ache for
something I
cannot name

So in death I shall
quench my thirst

Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch

There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her,
                                      and is not the same.
I still love her and enlist this sacred fire
to keep her memory exalted flame
unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.

On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles ...
They sleep alike—diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the “surgeons.”
                                                    S­leeping, all.

Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
if accidents of coloration, gall
my heart no less.
                              Amid thick weeds and muck
there lies a rose man’s crackling lightning struck:
the only Rose I ever longed to pluck.
Soon I’ll bed there and bid the world “Good Luck.”

Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Black Medina, Voices Israel, Other Voices International, Verse Weekly, Poetry Renewal Magazine, Mindful of Poetry, The Eclectic Muse, Promosaik, Famous Poets & Poems, The Wandering Hermit, FreeXpression (Australia), Inspirational Stories, Poetry Life & Times, Sonnetto Poesia (Canada), Trinacria, Pennsylvania Review, Poems About, Litera (UK), Yahoo Buzz, Got Poetry, de Volksrant Blog (Holland)

Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, Auschwitz, rose, Sharon, name, forgotten, sacred, memory, flame, briar, thorns, reddening, sunset, thistles, nettles, innocent, innocents, surgeons, blood, crimson, petals, weeds, muck, lightning, blitzkrieg, strike, struck, attack, war, violence, ******, death, bed, grave, goodbye, farewell, good luck