You’ve heard what I’ve sung,
You’ve read what I wrote,
But can that get
To the heart of all my hopes?
 
So I run away, I smoke;
Getting by
With desperate gropes.
And I groan,
                   and I moan,
                                      but ****, just cut the ropes!
And these chains, that maim,
They’re gone, just like smoke,
My skin no longer cut up
                            Like dandruff
Think soap.

there's a drink called sweet burgundy
and then another drink called hennesy,
a ****** fine congac

as she sat down
with a glass of hennessy
waiting to die
and typed out her last livejournal entry

where she counted out the pills for us
and told us the names and colors of all three

names and colors i can't remember now

When doubts and fears are like an ocean,
I clamor to the sand -
A billion tiny grains of  deafaning voices.
I use them as soap and bleach
Against my skin to wash away the waves
Which crash against my soul.
I dig the sand with dirtied palms as far as I can go,
Deeper into the liars pit
Until I reach what lies underneath, of
Which I find regret.
So I lock my fingers into a cage and press
Into the regret, and choke it
At the bottom of the pit I dug myself,
But like spit through teeth
It shoots on through my grasp defiant and proud,
Where it buries me in its place.

elders carry stories
of themselves foaming
at the mouth
like rabid dogs

like the language they spoke
was *****.

Nuns with sharp rulers,
sharply ruled the catholic schools

No choice, but to
submit and Americanize
with cheeseburgers and denim

lonely tears for home
   missing the
  gentle breeze of pine and juniper trees

while forgotten brothers and sisters hang with
touchy pastors whose love for Christ
told them to be quiet.

Our love is soap.
Our love is clean clothes on the dryer by the radiator.
Our love is coffee and cream with a spoonful of hope.
Our love is a gammon roast and a baked tater.
Our love is clean dishes and foamy dish rags.
Our love is fighting for the water in a tiny shower.
Our love is our journeys to the grocery store with all our reused plastic bags.
Our love is watching you play video games hour after hour.
Our love is lemon flavored body wash getting in my eyes.
Our love is being too stubborn to quit.
Our love is the thought of me leaving making me unable to cope.
Our love is getting up and sorting it.
Our love is soap.

Part one done

adverts on now

waiting for part two

Soap.
Today I bathed in black water,
Rinsed with the sewage we call society, and dried off in governmental regulations.
You call yourselfs clean based on the record of your criminality and the color of your skin?
You use a plastic kind of soap the produces no clean but like a camera it captures and preserves what's inside.
So you can play bath time with your bubbles, pretending you own yourselves for a night, but after your bath comes bed time. You will wake up tomorrow and find your still owned by the government and, your soap was just plastic.
So you need to bathe again.
Don't forger to lather, rinse, and repeat.

Chris burk

6pm on a summer night.
I hear mom through the kitchen window
Hollering us home from the field.
We race one last time to the house.

Hungry for adventure.
Hungry for competition.
Hungry for dinner.

Bursting through the back door,
Dad yells up the stairs.
We won't forget to wash up.

Taking turns at the sink.
Helping the little onto the stool.
Blowing bubbles with the handsoap.
Close my eyes and inhale...

Warm Ginger and Honey.

I open my eyes to see myself.
My reflection is almost 20.
Washing up with the same soap,
But this time I bought it myself.

Nostalgia.

-[h.r.]

It is 16 and a half years into the new century. We have avoided any world wars and I still use bars of soap. I will make it into the next century or die trying.