Who first formulated.
Who lifted the veil.
Who first experienced.

Who came from the fog.
Who cleared it.
Who first expressed.

Who emerged from the ocean.
Who walked from the it.
Who first stood.

Who learned to swim.
Who communicated with electric.
Who befriended fire.

Who surfed the waves.
Who noticed the channels.
Who remained.

Who stayed sailing.
Who returns.
Who was chained.

Who saw flame.
Who sees through illusion.
Who was framed.

¹Who unleashed the climate.
²Who dismantled the electrical field.
³Who stemmed magma's reign.

⁴Who cracked the boulder's pebble.
⁵Who called forth the dust.
⁶Who found refuge in lit-dark.

Who built an arc.
Who bridged & arced.
Who lead beneath, under arch.

Who sailed to & fro to warn & to gather.
Who rebuilt & continued to tinker.
Who melded distinct & different peoples.

Who stayed on a boat.
Who resided on a mountain.
Who lived within one.

Repair the world that's broke n with a wrench,
For never can't a fixer.  Can't afford
To fix a mental meaning with a *****,
Though all the world's a floor of concrete poured.
Restore the restoration of the world,
And everything returns to right its place:
The lone construction worker spins betwirled
With bluebirds singing friendly in the face.
Time flies, and so do flying jəllyfish.
Since tempos fugue it, carp the dying day.
Go find a star and make a walrus wish
That aliens would pray away the gray.
The grass is greener if the other side
Where gerbils love and noon has never died.

Lay me down,
leave me until I rot.
Go check the stained bed
and remove the corpse.

In a hole of fire throw it in,
let flames purify what once was me.

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

Destroyer of all
Tare down every wall that's every stood.
Blow away every obstacle.
Shatter my dreams.
Crush my hopes.
Leaving room for creation.
Rebuilding walls,taller,thicker,harder.
Creating new obstacles of unimaginable proportion.
Showing the dreams witch will create my reality.
My hopes only building the motivations to go on.
The destruction of my worst, leaves only my best.
Soon a new better me.