I'm breaking like glass in my eyes.
Red painful barriers and flickering sight.
How much longer till my body will have dry bones?
Zombie walking, alien clown.
I'm still travelling.

I can't push myself through the pressure.
If I do, I will definetely break my eye.
So I stay up staring.
Maybe I will just float away.
I'll pray for it as I push my fist against my chest.
Gently touching the parts that are still intact.
Hoping it will be worth it.
Let's stay in this trance.

Let's walk
Let's float.
I will go on and find you.
And everything else will find me.
Cause it has to push deep inside.
Tear me open.

Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.

Keywords/Tags: 911, victims, survivors, grief, loss, heal, healing, tear, tears, coffee, break, time, milk, artificial, sweeteners

I misplaced a tear drop
                                   into a jar full of collected rain.
  
Cloudy thoughts sway me forward to face the day
   ahead

Each Color a Scar
by Michael R. Burch

What she left here,
upon my cheek,
is a tear.

She did not speak,
but her intention
was clear,

and I was meek,
far too meek, and, I fear,
too sincere.

What she can never take
from my heart
is its ache;

for now we, apart,
are like leaves
without weight,

scattered afar
by love, or by hate,
each color a scar.

Keywords/Tags: love, scar, cheek, tear, intention, departure, separation, meek, sincere, heartache, leaves, falling, scattered, color, blood, scab, scabs

Today the birds chose to sleep.
Today the sun began to cool.
Today I didn't feel the need to live.
And today my soldier came back.

There wasn't a single tear from the skies.
Silence. Second silence. Third silence.
But no silence could ever heal my heart.
So I cried for an eternity. Then two. Then three.

Waiting for him to calm me.
Waiting for someone to calm me.
Waiting for sleep to calm me.
Waiting in silence for an eternity.