Hot tears and bad thoughts
Dark room and bright clocks
Soaked pillow and stuffy nose
Pitch black through the window
Can't breathe, I'm alone.
Please! This doesn't feel like home!
Sad suicidal scenarios in my head
Wish they were my life instead

Everyday I wake up
I pour up a cup
Of that Crown brown
****** expression down I frown
Wish I could see my grand pappy
I hope you know I ain't happy
With ya presence gone
I cry from dusk to dawn still drawn
By your energy I know.you hear me
I remember back in 92
When you showed me how to tie my shoe
Young nigguh with no path in my mind
Now that ya demise I changed my mind
Wish more folks had thought like you
But they didn't know who I was messing with
Devils is spawning out the darkest pits
my brain stayed blitz
Ya went right after Uncle Douglass went
Though I rep heartless
But my heart couldn't part from this
It's full.of pain tears stains
On ya casket when it began to close
Stuffy nose stricken body suddenly froze My soul feel to the bottom of my diaphragm
Got **** I took big slam a grand slam
Now the four corners of earth are
No longer loaded atmosphere bloated
Wish I could take away all your agony
And tragedy
You felt since Grandma died and cried
For over 40 years 1000s of days
and Lonely nights
But im.just vibin' in my own zone
Cuz one day ya hear and the next ya gone

Now that I'm twenty seven
Im.still searchin' for Heaven
with peace on my mind
But hands on the mac-eleven
I'm ready for war
violence provoked by anger
Everywhere ya go be prepared
To face danger
I wanna know why God put me hear
Through this grief and sin
And when another love one dies
I feel like I'm going in
the ground I know everybody gotta time
But meanwhile.im.gone grind
But how can I grind when I got grimes
Weighin' in seems like every ghetto is destined
For the pen
Some.gettin' life to mild sentences
They say the courts is fair but
Nobody wants to defend
My peoples been livin' this struggle
Since the start of life I see nothing but strife
I stay loyal to.my Nina and wife
Even though society deceased
I still.hope for peace
But it really means war
As I take soar like an eagle
Roll through my barrio in a Buick regal
**** another brother shot dead in cold
With his head blown when will we learn
And the family hearts begin to burn
shakin' my head thinkin'
Life's too short Cuz one day ya hear and baby the next ya goneeeeeeeeee

The rain falling from a tree lands with a weight
It is comfort, the outside world reminding me it's real
There is more than the airless, dry aired, stuffy rooms of school
There is a whole world to explore.
If I ran into the middle of the moor, and closed my eyes
Breathless
The roar of traffic could almost be the sea
Northern, icy, blue-green-grey.
In my kind it tickles the priory on a stormy night.
I wonder what it would be like to be somewhere hot
Where warm, humid air and bright light was outside
And icy cold white expanse was in.
Those grey clouds are more than the grey tinge of copy paper.
The black of tarmac is more than board pen
The spiny trees are real, no words come from their branches
All are familiar, and yet outside provides comfort.
Inspiration.

I impatiently waited tables
trying to earn enough money
to keep my apartment
filled with cheap beer
and expensive drugs.

There wasn’t much else to do
in that stuffy little town
with one intersection.
The air was fine
as long as you didn’t breathe.

I watched my friends and neighbors
watch me from a close distance,
separated by a parking lot
and an eternity of sins
that no one wanted to talk about.

When I was 18,
I kissed a boy
and told him we were going
to get married some day.
He laughed at me.

I picked out a tux anyway.
It was white. I wanted to wear white.

The sheets were soft and crumpled underneath my back and my mind was wandering even though this wasn’t the time for that, and I thought about how much I always loved the feeling of bare skin against sheets, year round, even when it was far too cold for it to be a reasonable thing to do. There’s something **** about just being naked, as simplistic as it sounds. With only his skin, my hair, and the sheets touching my body, I felt exposed but I also felt strong, which was an interesting mix of emotions. I knew I should have been more fixated on what was going on (he certainly was) but I always feel somewhat disconnected from my body and having someone else touch it made it feel even more foreign. It wasn’t unpleasant to have his hands all over me, maybe just a little disappointing and I suddenly wanted to push him off me and go for a walk outside where the air could fill my lungs. Stuffy. It was stuffy in his room, I thought. The distinctly boyish smell of deodorant and sweat mingled with the fake perfume of the candle I remembered to bring and it was was suffocating me. Outside, I could hear his little brother playing loudly in the yard and I wanted to be a little kid again but instead I was inside in a darkened room doing things that seemed too adult for my body and things I used to tell myself I would never do. I liked his brother; he was a sweet kid and last spring I took him to the park a few times when the older boy on top of me had work at the bodega down the street. It felt ***** to hear his childish yells and I wanted more than ever to leave, but the strange more-than-friends relationship with this boy meant that he wanted this once in a while and I liked him more than I had admitted to anyone yet. The cracks in his ceiling were familiar to me by now and once, after we--******? made love? I still didn’t know what to call it-- he told me that the first night I came over, drunk and crying, he had to run to peel off the glow in the dark stars that had still been up, a remnant from his childhood, and I found this endearing and I had kissed him again for that. One of his hands was running through my hair now and I stroked his chest, which was leaner and tanner than my bluish-white hands. In the back of my mind I thought I might love him but it could have been his body between my thighs. I could never be sure.

she gazed
out of the window
wondering
what was there.
this stuffy house
bored her wild mind.
this she could not bear.
she implored to explore
adventure to find...

He's drunk on cheap power and knowledge,
stolen from his father's wooden drawer.
Now he's taken too much, too soon.
He doesn't know where to put his hands,
slurring, his words, spilling as he stumbles.

With the *****, it comes up and out.
A force greater than he is prepared for.
His overeagerness was embarrassing, he and it are ignored.
Florid-faced and flushed, his shame and he retreat to suffer,
snuffed out, sniffling in the stuffy, stifling silence.
His nose, once up in the air, is now in the corner.

Now you know, baby,
learn to hold your liquor and your tongue.

I sit here, gazing into my cup of finished coffee, the foam still at the bottom, slowly disappearing. I can't bring myself to look away from the foam. As I look closer, I seem to be falling right off my seat at Starbucks, and into the coffee cup before me. Falling through the foam feel really weird. I decide to check my phone. It's 4:59. This is the most unimportant fact in the book of life. Time is very interesting. Without time, I don't know. Finally, I land on my **** in the middle of a corn field that turns slowly into a very cold and stuffy room filled with pianos. I suddenly realize I am now a boy because I feel my ****. From the weight, I can approximate that it is about 9 inches. That's pretty big for a white boy of 12. I have been writing music my whole life and have always wanted to play piano.   I have never played before but I know how to write music. The room that I am in is filled with the sound of a grand piano playing. I have no idea how I know this since I have never played piano before. But I follow the sound to the back of the shop where I see an old woman with grey hair all down her back. She is hunched over a huge grand piano and she is playing is though her life depends on it. Her ***** stamp reads: "Where there is will, there is way". There is spelled "they're". I push my horn rim spectacles up the bridge of my nose, suddenly realizing I aspire to be Percy Wesley. The glasses I am wearing are totally fake and don't even have lenses. I look in front of me at the woman again. Her fingers move across the piano keys like spiders, her hair blows in the wind that is not there because we are inside. I can't stop thinking about two things. The first thing is that there is something important in the briefcase I am suddenly holding, and the other is the woman's ***** stamp. Deciding that my brief case in more important, I open it up. It is filled with countless sheets on music that I have written for piano. I wonder what they sound like because I have never played piano before. I reach out to tap the woman on the shoulder, and with baited breath due to nerves, I tap her. The music stops. The piano store suddenly smells increasingly like coffee. The old spider like woman begins to turn around until she is looking at my fully in the face. I finally see that she is not a woman but a man. She is actually me when I am 99, the year when my psychic told me I would pass on. I place the piano music before of my future self, feeling very nervous. He smiles at me like he knows my whole future. As the room begins to smell more and more like coffee, he begins to play the music sheet I wrote. It sounds like everything I have ever imagined. As I begin to float upwards, I ask,
"what does the ***** stamp even mean?" "I reply to myself, " stay in integrity." I am no longer a boy. I am looking deeply into my coffee cup, trying to figure out what to write, as I listen to the piano playing through the speakers above me.

You know nearly nothing of my life
beyond the few whens and hows
that have been told to you
small stories that sit comfortably
in the eye of a needle
plucked from the pincushion
of whole existances
you don't know where I come from-
only the stuffy history book pictures
and anecdotes
that have been outlived
you don't know these people
beyond the stacks of stereotypes
you shuffle us in to
And the culture, my culture-
Our beautiful contradictions
and spectacular calamities -
You believe you understand us
but what you know is so much less
than we ever have been

we opened its stiff windows
and the room above the kitchen
could breathe again.
hot and stuffy like a car
with its doors sealed tight
in the middle of July,
the summer air
rushed into its lungs
as if it had just taken
a first breath from an inhaler.
meaningless,
useless,
simply a "spare"
used only for things to be seen
once or twice a year;
soon to be a room full of strangers
only to be seen
once or twice a year.

'do you hear that?' i whispered
signalling to the birds beginning their slow rise with the morning sun
the 4am glow on a tuesday morning in mid-june

i see the outline of your figure as you bring yourself closer and press yourself against me
'you're the one who has to go to work'
she teases as she kisses me again

she sends a shiver down my spine
and chills though my bones
in the stuffy room filled with the heat of our breath
and the warmth of the summer air

another hour passes and we are still awake
we sang with the birds and our hands danced
until the light became brighter
and trickled ever stronger into the room

we drift off into a soft sleep
to the sound of the waking birds still singing their morning songs
sweetly she rests on my chest
unmoved by the noise

again we awake at 7am
i slip away from the bed and ready myself for the day
hiding in the corner of the room quietly so i don't disturb
but i catch her subtle sleepy glances in the mirror

the bright sun now beating through the gaps in the curtains
she is illuminated in all her glory
more radiant and more beautiful
than the warm summers day that awaits beyond our four walls.

Sixtys the new thirty
so I've bought myself a bike
a Harley with a heart of chrome
to replace my shopping trike

no more bingo nights for me
my engine gunning loud
I've joined with the Hells Angels
and left the knitting crowd

No more standing in the rain
with my bus pass and my brella
im off to find myself some fun
with a rather younger fella

My hair net now an helmet
painted to look like flames
and notches on my fuel tank
cause I can't remember names

So clear the road I'm coming
and I won't be slowing down
cause I'm taking back my freedom
from this stuffy little town

Lock up your single men
hide them safe and sound
because the boys will all be men
if by this gal there found

My Harley roars and I'm away
another notch I've carved
so sixty the new thirty
at least then it's been halved.

fluffy stuffy
kitty kat poo
they are too
cute for you
they sit in a box
like a fox
watching over
the clover
he watches it like a hawk
who sits and plays with a mop
he has a great time
until the fox comes and kills the hawk
UH-OH

I am losing my mind in this heat
Can anyone rock on some crazy beat
Let's do a hip hop rain dance
So we all can feel a little less tensed
Rain God, hear us through
We dance from our heart, that's true
O'Cmon, don't be so stubborn
Just shower hard in our urban
I honestly can't think straight
Soon we'll turn into human bait
Baked in this burning sun and heat
O'please can you give us rain as a treat
Things are moving in slow motion
There's salty smell coming from the ocean
It's getting too stuffy, why can't it snow
A little cooler, but I really don't know
Tropical Fiji, why are you getting hot
It's like sitting in an oven or being stirred in a ***
All my energy seems sapped in
I am feeling hot, I am suffocating within...


©sim

she was a bird, kind of. The kind that was easy to free, you know those ones you hear outside your window on a late spring afternoon, when the sky isn’t quite yet pink but you know it will be soon, and it’s kind of a sad time.

She’s that kind of bird – the little plain brown ones that wait on the trees and suddenly you look out and it’s staring at you, giving you this sort of look that goes, “I know what you are doing and I can see you, deep inside you.” It’s sort of chilling,

but it gives you a warm feeling too, until the tips of your toenails, and you feel very stuffy.

She was that kind of bird. She would often just sit there next to you while you were drawing something, with her hand under her chin, legs crossed, leaning forward. And you would lose all focus of what you were drawing and realize that whatever it was, she would be twenty times more interesting to draw.

So you would casually flick your notebook to a new page and contemplate a few sketch marks, outlining her jaw – and what a jaw. And you would just stare at that jaw and the curve you drew on your paper, and they would look nothing alike. But you hate erasing, but you hate what’s on the paper, and you just can’t take it and you get all frustrated and all the while she’s just sitting there with her hand under her chin, legs crossed, leaning forward, and you mean to jump a little and stand up and stare at her directly in the face,

but you realize that wouldn’t be so nice. And you realize you’re acting slightly stupid, so you keep your poise and take off your shoes and socks, and it’s so nice by the fountain so you dip your toes in a little bit.

Then she turns her head a little too quickly toward you when she notices your toes in the water, and you turn toward her, surprised. She searches your face, your eyelashes, your hands, sighs and leans backward and lies down on the cement, her shirt stretching up a centimeter or two above the waistband of her pants, exposing a white thin cookie piece of her belly.

And then you want to draw her belly, except you can’t see her bellybutton which is the main part, and you get more frustrated, and all the while she’s just lying there staring up at the sky, with her legs uncrossed and her arms splayed out to either side of her, and all the while her blue and brown jacket is – oh no, she’s taking it off, oh no, and now you want to draw her arms except you can’t because you’ve pretty much just proven to yourself within the last few minutes that you can’t draw her at all. It’s so impossible, so you just don’t even open your mouth, and the water is making the bottoms of your toes wrinkly and it’s actually a little cold, so you look at her hair.

So you look at her hair rolled out clumsily on the cement and it’s beautiful, and it’s so unfair what she is, and you don’t even know what to do with yourself.

A jet-ski, jetty bound, disturbs the waves,
While not too far away, on the seabed
Lies the hungry blacktip and hammerhead,
As a nurse explores the undersea caves.

Harvey wouldn’t capture Marlin here,
Just a glance of turtle, seaweed green,
Gasping at the stuffy air, marine,
Gazing at a sunset he should fear.

The sharks hunt for prey in mere hours.
A flock of ching-chings squawk away,
As mosquitoes come out to play,
Darting between darkening flowers.

Through mosquito nets I take a peek,
In oasis that I realise,
Snuggled in a palm tree lies
A curled green parrot, sound asleep.

I’m grateful for everything I’ve been given
you say, squeezing my hand. And I stare
at your perfect skin.
Your words sound like forever, but eternity
isn’t something I’ve read about.
Stuffy hymns sung on pitch
but with no inflection.
Your voice is flat,
and it’s then I’m glad
I wore this dress.
I have seen loss-
and that’s something your naivety
can’t grasp.
I scratch at the skin,
because it’s pulled too tight.
I can still count the stark white stitches.
Still ride my fingers along
the valleys of my arm,
tracing out a maze.
It will never change;
the way it glares when I’m naked
next to you.
Next to you I always feel exposed.
Keep wishing to be invisible,
but you won’t close your eyes.
Don’t kiss my skin,
it’s not soft enough.
Don’t turn the light on,
you’ll be disappointed.
You run your fingers
along the canyons of my arm,
trying to smooth away my imperfection.
But I cover it up.
I put up barriers;
I protect you-
you’re not ready to accept the damage
I’ve sustained.Too harsh
for your blindly faithful eyes.
Still numb-
your efforts would be wasted.
My fingers caress privilege
when they graze your chest,
but me,
I’m patched together,
my feelings handed out piecemeal.
That’s what I keep trying to tell you.
There are just no parts left
for me to give.
You can touch me all you want,
but you can’t bring life back ;
forever petrified in place.
Don’t thank me, I’ve given you nothing.
Nothing delicate left here for your lips to taste.
Don’t thank them, They’ve made you believe
in perfection,
in salvation.
There’s nothing sacred left here for you to worship.
My skin still too cold, your words all fall flat.

You’re not sad, that’s what you feel.
It may be a chemical imbalance; maybe a bottle of jack.
You can’t remember when the happiness felt real.
You want the sunshine back.
Just like my stuffy nose I know this will end,
Because I am not sad, that is not something I can comprehend.
I am not the things I feel or the words I say because that’s not what my body shows.
I am my actions and my space as my heart begins to plateau.
You’re not so two dimensional despite the lies you let yourself believe.
To let the world hold your worth so tight is something so naïve.
You are not your sadness or your anger or pride,
You are more than the hell raging somewhere deep inside.
I am more than this poem.
I am more than what I’m willing to show them.

she ran
from non-existent footsteps
paranoia
kicking in
from a lack of meds.

a white
metal
locked
shack.
with the stench
of bodies.

a stuffy nose
at the worst time
promised her demise.

a peek
in the window
peaked
her curiosity.
with only a splash of red.

another window
left open
to air out the stench
led to
no-longer-****** bodies

and she screamed
but not for very long
because the knife
peirced her neck
and the scream
turned into silence.

These are poems about dogs and doggerel about dogs...

Dog Daze
by Michael R. Burch

Sweet Oz is a soulful snuggler;
he really is one of the best.
Sometimes in bed
he snuggles my head,
though mostly he plops on my chest.

I think Oz was made to love
from the first ray of light to the dark,
but his great love for me
is exceeded (oh gee!)
by his Truly Great Passion: to Bark.



Epitaph for a Lambkin
by Michael R. Burch

for Melody, the prettiest, sweetest and fluffiest dog ever

Now that Melody has been laid to rest
Angels will know what it means to be blessed.

Amen



This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/moderniz     ation by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my companion such joy
he shudders with sheer delight.

Among all languageless creatures
he alone has seen through man entire—
has seen beyond what is good or bad in him
to such a depth he can lay down his life
for the sake of love alone.

Now it is he who shows me the way
through this unfathomable world throbbing with life.

When I see his deep devotion,
his offer of his whole being,
I fail to comprehend...

How, through sheer instinct,
has he discovered whatever it is that he knows?

With his anxious piteous looks
he cannot communicate his understanding
and yet somehow has succeeded in conveying to me
out of the entire creation
the true loveworthiness of man.



My Dog Died
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My dog died;
so I buried him in the backyard garden
next to some rusted machine.

One day I'll rejoin him, over there,
but for now he's gone
with his shaggy mane, his crude manners and his cold, clammy nose,
while I, the atheist who never believed
in any heaven for human beings,
now believe in a paradise I'm unfit to enter.

Yes, I somehow now believe in a heavenly kennel
where my dog awaits my arrival
wagging his tail in furious friendship!

But I'll not indulge in sadness here:
why bewail a companion
who was never servile?

His friendship was more like that of a porcupine
preserving its prickly autonomy.

His was the friendship of a distant star
with no more intimacy than true friendship called for
and no false demonstrations:
he never clambered over me
coating my clothes with mange;
he never assaulted my knee
like dogs obsessed with ***.

But he used to gaze up at me,
giving me the attention my ego demanded,
while helping this vainglorious man
understand my concerns were none of his.

Aye, and with those bright eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd gaze up at me
contentedly;
it was a look he reserved for me alone
all his entire sweet, gentle life,
always merely there, never troubling me,
never demanding anything.

Aye, and often I envied his energetic tail
as we strode the shores of Isla Negra together,
in winter weather, wild birds swarming skyward
as my golden-maned friend leapt about,
supercharged by the sea's electric surges,
sniffing away wildly, his tail held *****,
his face suffused with the salt spray.

Joy! Joy! Joy!
As only dogs experience joy
in the shameless exuberance
of their guiltless spirits.

Thus there are no sad good-byes
for my dog who died;
we never once lied to each other.

He died, he's gone, I buried him;
that's all there is to it.



Bed Head, or, the Ballad of
Beth and her Fur Babies
by Michael R. Burch

When Beth and her babies
prepare for “good night”
sweet rituals of kisses
and cuddles commence.
First Wickett, the eldest,
whose mane has grown light
with the wisdom of age
and advanced senescence
is tucked in, “just right.”

Then Mary, the mother,
is smothered with kisses
in a way that befits
such an angelic missus.

Then Melody, lambkin,
and sweet, soulful Oz
and cute, clever Xander
all clap their clipped paws
and follow sweet Beth
to their high nightly roost
where they’ll sleep on her head
(or, perhaps, her caboose).



Excoriation of a Treat Slave
by Michael R. Burch

I am his Highness’s dog at Kew.
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
—Alexander Pope

We practice our fierce Yapping,
for when the treat slaves come
they’ll grant Us our desire.
(They really are that dumb!)

They’ll never catch Us napping —
our Ears pricked, keen and sharp.
When they step into Our parlor,
We’ll leap awake, and Bark.

But one is rather doltish;
he doesn’t understand
the meaning of Our savage,
imperial, wild Command.

The others are quite docile
and bow to Us on cue.
We think the dull one wrote a poem
about some Dog from Kew

who never grasped Our secret,
whose mind stayed think, and dark.
It’s a question of obedience
conveyed by a Lordly Bark.

But as for playing fetch,
well, that’s another matter.
We think the dullard’s also
as mad as any hatter

and doesn’t grasp his duty
to fling Us slobbery *****
which We’d return to him, mincingly,
here in Our royal halls.



Wickett
by Michael R. Burch

Wickett, sweet Ewok,
Wickett, old Soul,
Wicket, brave Warrior,
though no longer whole . . .

You gave us your All.
You gave us your Best.
You taught us to Love,
like all of the Blessed

Angels and Saints
of good human stock.
You barked the Great Bark.
You walked the True Walk.

Now Wickett, dear Child
and incorrigible Duffer,
we commend you to God
that you no longer suffer.

May you dash through the Stars
like the Wickett of old
and never feel hunger
and never know cold

and be reunited
with all our Good Tribe —
with Harmony and Paw-Paw
and Mary beside.

Go now with our Love
as the great Choir sings
that Wickett, our Wickett,
has at last earned his Wings!



The Resting Place
by Michael R. Burch

for Harmony

Sleep, then, child;
you were dearly loved.

Sleep, and remember
her well-loved face,

strong arms that would lift you,
soft hands that would move

with love’s infinite grace,
such tender caresses!

...

When autumn came early,
you could not stay.

Now, wherever you wander,
the wildflowers bloom

and love is eternal.
Her heart’s great room

is your resting place.

...

Await by the door
her remembered step,

her arms’ warm embraces,
that gathered you in.

Sleep, child, and remember.
Love need not regret

its moment of weakness,
for that is its strength,

And when you awaken,
she will be there,

smiling,
at the Rainbow Bridge.



Oz is the Boss!
by Michael R. Burch

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because...
Because of the wonderful things he does!

He barks like a tyrant
for treats and a hydrant;
his voice far more regal
than mere greyhound or beagle;
his serfs must obey him
or his yipping will slay them!

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because...
Because of the wonderful things he does!



Xander the Joyous
by Michael R. Burch

Xander the Joyous
came here to prove:
Love can be playful!
Love can have moves!

Now Xander the Joyous
bounds around heaven,
waiting for his mommies,
one of the SEVEN ―

the Seven Great Saints
of the Great Canine Race
who evangelize Love
throughout all Time and Space.

Amen



Mary, Mary
by Michael R. Burch

Mary, Mary,
sweet yet contrary,
how do your puppies grow?
With sugar and spice
and everything nice,
and Mama Beth loving them so!



Lady’s Favor: Ye Noble Ballade of Sir Dog and the Butterfly
by Michael R. Burch

Sir was such a gallant man!
When he saw his Lady cry
and beg him to send her a Butterfly,
what else could he do, but comply?

From heaven, he found a Monarch
regal and able to defy
north winds and a chilly sky;
now Sir has his wings and can fly!

When our gallant little dog Sir was unable to live any longer, my wife Beth asked him send her a sign, in the form of a butterfly, that Sir and her mother were reunited and together in heaven. It was cold weather, in the thirties. We rarely see Monarch butterflies in our area, even in the warmer months. But after Sir had been put to sleep, to spare him any further suffering, Beth found a Monarch butterfly in our back yard. It appeared to be lifeless, but she brought it inside, breathed on it, and it returned to life. The Monarch lived with us for another five days, with Beth feeding it fruit juice and Gatorade on a Scrubbie that it could crawl over like a flower. Beth is convinced that Sir sent her the message she had requested.



Solo’s Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Solo was a stray
who found a safe place to stay
with a warm and loving band,
safe at last from whatever cruel hand
made him flinch in his dreams.

Now he wanders the clear-running streams
that converge at the Rainbow’s End
and the Bridge where kind Angels attend
to all souls who are ready to ascend.

And always he looks for those
who hugged him and held him close,
who kissed him and called him dear
and gave him a home free of fear,
to welcome them to his home, here.



Buffy
by Michael R. Burch

Buffy is fluffy
but never stuffy.
Though she runs forever,
she never gets huffy.
The perfect puppy.



Prince Kiwi the Great
by Michael R. Burch

Kiwi’s
a ***-wee
but incredibly bright:
he sleeps half the day,
pretending it’s night!

Prince Kiwi
commands us
with his regal air:
“Come, humans, and serve me,
or I’ll yank your hair!”

Kiwi
cries “Kree! Kree!”
when he wants to be fed ...
suns, preens, flutters, showers,
then it’s off to bed.

Kiwi’s
a ***-wee
but incredibly bright:
he sleeps half the day,
pretending it’s night!

Kiwi is our family’s green-cheeked parakeet. Parakeets need to sleep around 12 hours per day, hence the pun on “bright” and “half the day.”

Keywords: dog, dogs, canine, love, loyal, loyalty, friendship, companionship, bark, barking, soul, soulful, sweet, bossy, angel, angels, heaven, Rainbow Bridge

It's been so long, but I still remember how it feels
To sit in a stuffy classroom, clicking my heels
Because there's no place like home and I want out of my confinement
To sit endlessly and pretend to care about another mind numbing assignment
With the tap of fingernails vigorously typing out a text
Shifty eyed, watching some amateur get caught and secretly hoping you're not next
The murmur of whispered plans for the weekend
And how desperately your body craves to sleep in
Elaborate excuses planned out to explain why you forgot your essay was due
The lies are getting crazier because the teacher has heard everything that's not new
Lunch is served but the food is cold, unidentifiable, and uncooked
There's no way through the sea of gossiping teens around your locker to get your books  
Your next class is the one teacher with a voice that's a little too monotone
And then the next is the one that always thinks she hears a phone
You worth is measured by a letter
And how many times you promise to do better
It's a system that's designed to break you
But you never let anyone see how much it shakes you
And at the end of the day it's gone by hideously slow
And you dread how you have to repeat it all tomorrow.

i’ve dated boys who didn’t make me laugh,
boys who took me to stuffy museums and bland restaurants
and told me i should be veiling my hair in church
i thought i was doing the right thing, i thought
my parents would be proud of me,
i thought maybe i could conjure up
some kind of feeling in my stubborn heart
that would make it worth my while,
everything i was always
supposed to want
in one

instead,
i found you:
a boy who likes silly accents and sneakers and
telling jokes that turn me
into puddles at his feet,
who lives with his mother  
and makes art from obscure things,
who paints just to get the words out and
never matches his clothes
bright eyes begging me to follow, making it up as we go along,
who needs the rule book, who has time to read?
and if there is a better way, we don’t need it;
we’ll take the mess. see,
we’re already there, and
if there is a better way, i wouldn’t know it

I cry at night
Every night
It seems

I can't tell you why
I don't know why
I cry at night

Maybe it's where I feel safest
Or maybe it's where I can hide
Every night I cry

Tears just roll
My nose gets stuffy
When I cry at night

I try to escape
Think of happiness
But still I cry

My heart feels broken
It hurts at night
That's why I cry

At night
Every night
I cry

Oh stuffy how you are so soft
So perfect and held aloft
On your soft cushion of stuffing you sit
Even as i age and grow my first zit
Oh stuffy how you are so great
So perfect and the size of a plate
The perfect companion
Through the treacherous
Canyon of age.

Never let me enter the haze
For i shall be lost in a daze
Waiting for the phase
Of being old to slowly encroach.
Never let me enter that haze
And remind me of the days
Where books ended in rhymes
And we played in our minds
Never let me forget the time
When time simply forgot to tick
Stretching between naps and noms.
Reminding me of my first tooth
This is an ode to youth