You kept on pressing down
as if my heart couldn't break at all
As if the pressure you applied
would not take it's heavy toll

You kept on pressing down
as if my body could absorb
Every blow and every insult
rebounding off your inner wars

You kept on pressing down
not believing I'd react
But now it's me who's pressing down
and you who's on your back

The field's on fire

wrath
and natural selection

loose in the commons

dying to ****
killing to die

this is no dress rehearsal
no prank

the breath of life
melts

into playground psychosis

triggering
the finger of a false god

summoned in the blackness

to try and choke humanity's
guiding flame

(but on it burns)

And you didn’t hold the kittens
They held you
In the upstairs of your barn
Behind one of the hay bails

Where summer was endless
lake days
holding hands
Climbing trees
And exploring

All of it made us feel like we never needed anything else
But we didn’t know anything else
Where even in the winter
The wood stove was there to help us keep our sunshine
Warm
And
Excited
Who could run the fastest
Who had the most secrets
We were
Terrified
Of the neighbors dog
And how he tore at our heels
If we weren’t fast enough
We were terrified of our older brothers
And how much our bodies didn’t belong to us

Both our fathers were too loud
And our mothers too meek
We
Were each other’s only escape....


There were red ones
That grew just out of the deer’s reach
Behind the best climbing tree
Littered with pots and pans as high as the eye could see
But the special ones
The yellow ones
Required some adventuring
We braved the feared boundaries by your neighbors where that Rottweiler could reach us
Just for something a little sweeter than what we had
But it was never as scary as going home
We would rather risk the snarling demon
Than go home and hear the screaming
Than go home and go to sleep
Only to wake up
And try to convince ourselves What happened in the night

Was a dream.

I was on my way to the ground

Face first, pavement bound,

Felt like atlas with the sky on me,

Expectations made me try to flee

My shoulders buckled and my knees gave out

You had to chuckle while I had to shout,

"The world is unfair, I'm stuck on this maze".

Yet you remained completely unfazed.

You looked in my eyes and you told me the truth:

To be happy is to fight nail and tooth

What good is to wish, what good is to hope?

If nothing is done, except that bottle to cope?

Course snow hits my face enough to muddy my brain.

more lies just in case, they suspect you're insane.

There is no one to blame except the one with the pen

You were never alone I was your friend...

And As long as you promise my heart to mend.

I'll promise you:

If you carry the sky then I'll carry you"

the weight dropped to the floor,

The sky was falling, and I care no more.

For As long as you're right next to me,

I will forever be...

Free.

911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”

They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,

far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot ...

Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.

Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Mindful of Poetry, Gostinaya and Scholasticus/Fullosia Press. Keywords/Tags: 911, war, violence, retribution, twin towers, terror, terrorism, east, west, dreams, nightmares, error

War is Obsolete
by Michael R. Burch

War is obsolete;
even the strange machinery of dread
weeps for the child in the street
who cannot lift her head
to reprimand the Man
who failed to countermand
her soft defeat.

But war is obsolete;
even the cold robotic drone
that flies far overhead
has sense enough to moan
and shudder at her plight
(only men bereft of light
with hearts indurate stone
embrace war's arctic night).

For war is obsolete;
man's tribal gods, long dead,
have fled his awakening sight
while the true Sun, overhead,
has pity on her plight.
O sweet, precipitate Light! —
embrace her, reject the night
that leaves gentle changelings dead.

For each brute ancestor lies
with his totems and his "gods"
in the slavehold of premature night
that awaited him in his tomb;
while Love, the ancestral womb,
still longs to give birth to the Light.
Which child shall we ****** tonight,
or which Ares condemn to the gloom?

Keywords/Tags: war, children, violence, guns, war and peace, destiny,  god, gods, brute, brutality, ******

She was my first artist,
a painter of purple pains,
peruser, abuser, and pursuer
of passionate stains,
taking my flesh canvass
and raising red welts.

As the master of other mediums
she could reduce me
to feeling more than lonely,
and disconnect this homely
child.

Till, the world
was a window that I could
never break through
and depression was
the only avenue
I ever really knew.

She was the first artist,
and taught me the craft,
but as an adult
I sit back and laugh at that
and tell the shadow of
the mother I once knew,
that I will not be taking up
the family artistry.