i live in a brightness
of worlds
paper-thin

a screenshot of
malleability
introduces my reckoning

today, the serpent
lays hold of
the egg
and starvation
is kept at bay

belly full
cut the cord
the descendants
hang heavy

all my life i've wanted
a reason to
die well

tonight, I hear it
in the sirens...
I hear it
in the coyotes...
I hear it
in my soul...
tonight, I hear it
in plain sight--
as clear
as a daisy

i was allowed
to slow down

to see my life
in a different gear

to venture a guess
towards life in payment
of a different path

i was
hungry
and hung-up

i was held-up
with my pants
down

i was a man
living his life
in the modern
mouse-trap

and nobody
cares about the
man in the
modern
mouse-trap

forget about the
cheese...

find your way
own way
out

the starving child with filthy hands
reaches quietly towards me for anything i can give
knowing from experience that cries will fall on deaf ears

i turn my face away
refusing to feed the pathetic creature
because i want some semblance of superiority over something for once in my life

because when i was starving
not for food, but for something far more filling
i too was left wanting
and i need someone to feel that desperation too

because i want that child to learn as i did
that the world is a cruel place
and that you need to learn how to feed yourself
or perish in slow starvation

because when you give away all that you have
leaving nothing for yourself to gnaw upon
you are no better than the starving masses you serve
and death is far better than what you deserve

the child and i will starve together

When we are fed with lies
We lose our taste for truth.
We growl and moan at our starving kin,
As we march so hungry into the grinding teeth of war.

Cleansings
by Michael R. Burch

Walk here among the walking specters. Learn
inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave
to bone this tightly if their hearts believe
that God is good, and never mind the Urn.

A lentil and a bean might plump their skin
with mothers’ bounteous, soft-dimpled fat
(and call it “health”), might quickly build again
the muscles of dead menfolk. Dream, like that,

and call it courage. Cry, and be deceived,
and so endure. Or burn, made wholly pure.
One’s prayer is answered,
“god” thus unbelieved.

No holy pyre this—death’s hissing chamber.
Two thousand years ago—a starlit manger,
weird Herod’s cries for vengeance on the meek,
the children slaughtered. Fear, when angels speak,

the prophesies of man.
Do what you "can,"
not what you must, or should.
They call you “good,”

dead eyes devoid of tears; how shall they speak
except in blankness? Fear, then, how they weep.
Escape the gentle clutching stickfolk. Creep
away in shame to retch and flush away

your ***** from their ashes. Learn to pray.

Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, ashes, crematorium, chimney, smoke, gas, chamber, Auschwitz, starvation, walking dead, mass graves, genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, antisemitism, fascism, cruelty, brutality, inhumanity, horror

"I'm not hungry"
How many times have
I said that?
This time, it's the
recent woman in my life.
She wants to savor
the buzz.
Food would interfere.
I know it all too
well.
The hell of not
eating to maintain
the high.
Food absorbs.
I used to go
six to ten days
without a bite.
The light goes out.
The brain begins to
eat itself.
She's starving.

i ate a four-leaf clover and
consumed its luck, which died in me.
i lied in the quick, quiet field,
killing the grass,
looking to set myself free.
i drank and i drank
from every river, every creek,
my thirst unsatisfied until it had every sea.
my touch burned down forests,
my glance slaughtered meadows,
when climbing and looking for everything, anything,
i killed every tree.

in my quest for satisfaction,
i murdered the sky,
and yet nowhere have i found the fulfillment
i believe key.
thus, starved for complacency,
i continue my fruitless killing spree.