Here I am again
Cracked and broken
Heart ripped open
By the claws on the ends of my fingers
They are never coated in blood
A tidy sort of chaos
A mess-less, gutless dissection
Hollow space resides within
Emptied of everything
Shall we count the scars
Or will that bore you
To hear of the surgeries that came before
The operations and treatments
Self directed and self prescribed
By a med school dropout
Disgusting derelict defect
Split neatly into near halves
Tethered by a final pathetic stitch
That I am longing to rip
Free

Holidays are usually exciting.
But for people who are depressed,
Holidays can be exhausting. Excruciating.
They can be so stressed
Trying to wear a happy face,
They might have a hard time
Eating anything on their plate.
So, if you feel this way,
I have a challenge for you.
It's called operation happier holidays.
Instead of protecting them,
Tell your loved ones if you're not okay.
They may be upset, confused, or even angry at first.
But almost everyone secretly wishes
For their loved ones to be happy and healthy. So do it for them.
But do it for yourself too.
Because you deserve to be happy.

Just Smile
by Michael R. Burch

We’d like to think some angel smiling down
will watch him as his arm bleeds in the yard,
ripped off by dogs, will guide his tipsy steps,
his doddering progress through the scarlet house
to tell his mommy “boo-boo!,” only two.

We’d like to think his reconstructed face
will be as good as new, will often smile,
that baseball’s just as fun with just one arm,
that God is always Just, that girls will smile,
not frown down at his thousand livid scars,
that Life is always Just, that Love is Just.

We just don’t want to hear that he will shave
at six, to raze the leg hairs from his cheeks,
that lips aren’t easily fashioned, that his smile’s
lopsided, oafish, snaggle-toothed, that each
new operation costs a billion tears,
when tears are out of fashion.
                                                O, beseech
some poet with more skill with words than tears
to find some happy ending, to believe
that God is Just, that Love is Just, that these
are Parables we live, Life’s Mysteries . . .

Or look inside his courage, as he ties
his shoelaces one-handed, as he throws
no-hitters on the first-place team, and goes
on dates, looks in the mirror undeceived
and smiling says, “It’s me I see. Just me.”

He smiles, if life is Just, or lacking cures,
Your pity is the worst cut he endures.
But hack him down and still he’ll always rise,
lifting his smile to the sun or the star-filled skies.

Published by Lucid Rhythms, The Eclectic Muse and Victorian Violet Press, then nominated by the latter for the Pushcart Prize

Keywords/Tags: Angels, baseball, ****** reconstruction, surgery, operation, God, scars, tears, courage, mirror, smile, date, dating, dog, attack, dogs, happy ending

I was a rich tycoon who was obsessed with greed.
I wanted more and more money even though it was something I didn't need.
Something happened to me and I'd like to explain how but I can't.
My personality completely changed after I had a heart transplant.
Instead of wanting to make more money, I'm giving money to the poor.
Things completely changed after my operation, I'm nothing like I was before.
I own four apartment buildings and I was a slumlord.
The tenants hated me, I wasn't a man who they adored.
The apartments weren't fit to live in but I had all of them repaired.
In the past, I didn't give a **** about my tenants but now I care.
I learned that my new heart came from a man who was only twenty years old.
Before he died of cancer, he was the salt of the earth with a heart of gold.
He gave money to charities and always put his needs before the needs of others.
When I got his heart, I also got his personality and I think of all men as brothers.
I don't know how this happened but there is one thing that I do understand.
I've become a very good person because I received the heart of a good man.

Where was I before my Birth
Who brought me? In this life

Some say My Parents
Gave me my Life

I think they only Ate
The Forbidden Apple

They just performed their basic Karma
And received me as a gifted Product

I was shipped without any User Manual
And without any Standard Operating Procedure

My parents worked round the clock
Gone through all the other manuals

At last they applied their mind
And prepared their own Manual

They also defined their own
Standard Operating Procedure

And I was handled and serviced
As per their Manual and SOP

Now I think, I am grown up now
But the question still remains as it was

Are we all only Products?
If Yes, Who Manufactured Us?

Where are the Original User Manuals?
Where are the Technical Manuals?

Where is the Standard Operating Procedure?
Why I was shipped to this mother Earth?

Some of my friends suggested a simple answer
'God made us and You too. But you are *****'

This answer posed other questions to me
Who made God?  God Made God?

Or the Humans made God for their own purpose?
Where are the temples of God made by Insects?

Suppose If God made us? Why he is so greedy?
Like the capitalists of proprietary companies

Why we are a strict proprietary Products?
Even proprietary products are supplied with Manuals

If God can't make us Open Source, At least he should
Supply the Manuals, Supply the Standard Operating Procedure

Or He is also too much selfish like each one of us

Dreams are not the stuff of poets
We can do better, should not chase them
Dreams are the stuff of lost souls
and though some of them can write
I do not know why we reward it
with forgetful immortality, when the Gods
they have abandoned dreamers
to the desert of the real
my spine does not know of dreams
my tail lashing even in its rest
this whip-crack vertebrae does not forget
and the Gods can get ******