"For your body, I shall give
Beauty and body anew respired .
It shall shine from all your soul and heart
Take the shape that others desire.

All I ask in return,
A simple thing in all duress
You wear this body, fashioned for you
Fashioned of gore and my shadow glass."

i met another stranger tonight.
in the shadows of online chat rooms,
it’s been two hours and we’re convinced we’re in love.
inappropriate photos and
a suicide pact later,
we’ll never speak again.
though i’ll text the stranger in the morning
but it’ll be in the afternoon where they are.

I've got my book and I've got my blade
a drop of blood until a pacts been made
in ten years time the price is paid
my soul in its hands
far far away.

Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

"This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh."—Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl
                                                    (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
                               It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
                                      And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
                                         Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse

NOTE: This is a poem about a couple committing suicide together. The “eerie pact” refers to a bible verse about the rainbow being a “covenant,” when the only covenant human beings can depend on is the original one that condemned us to suffer and die. That covenant is always kept perfectly. Keywords/Tags: Gentle, heart, flutter, aflutter, death, dying, suicide, euthanasia, pact, tears, hospice, hemlock, arsenic, rest in peace

Furious as possible,
He set out, avoiding each obstacle, seeking
An answer, stamping out all he would
That kept him from being able to
Be in question or be skeptical.
In the end if all went well,
She came down to him and let
him out of his minds cell.
He'd been rusting away in thought,
A lolling image sitting high in a loft.
Then but to any despite his anguish,
He couldn't explain how he got there.
Once he had a grand vision,
His life on the go, simple, peaceful
Without and within.
But there was this strange force that
Would never stop following him,
It was beyond a river, it 'let the fear in.'

Giving in to temptation was his new name.
She brought him vegetables on plate,
With a strange piece of meat that was quickly
Thrown away. But he ate it all in spite,
They turned him to the door, he said good,
Keep alive. You never know when they will
Come to take you away. A vision of a sort,
Is it worth taking a chance,
Setting wild, or rather to slow decay?

I curse that person angry as can be!
It is this version of which I can never
Be free. Yes I take nothing light,
Tossed aside without a chance because
He'd never fit in, he had nothing but lack.
Turning away, never to return or do
This ever again or be so, she and I made a pact.

One thing I know is that we're never going back...

Shaking hands
with the darkest
part of my thoughts
is like making
a pact with the devil