Tunneling thoughts like rain
Craning through light clouds
Unsuspecting victims.

The fear
The tears
The temper tantrums;
                                           A kind of rebuttal

That won't let our feet find land
We adjourned to rehearse,
but our efforts were null and void

Only to appease with flames
that licked our shriveled bodies

D r
       i    p
                 p  i  n
                             g  
                                              Kerosene

Tainted like ink                  Spilled on
Reams of paper
ruined like Christmas
A house warmed by          Open flames

fallen candles                     Adorning
A naked kitchen                 My limp body,

Splayed beneath the oven      
                                               As
darkness indulges,             It
consumes
The smoke,                          Fills                
                                               Each crevice
                                               In your mind

Can you ever fight it
Burn your way back
To blissful ignorance.

What is real to me
Is not real to you

The weight on my back
You can’t see from your angle

I must be so bored
To complain so **** often

As my spine starts to give out
Pain trickles down each vertebrae

I must want attention
When you ask why my feet ache

I tell you how a man filled my backpack with stones

Oh!
You know who i’m talking about!
What a ******* right?

Oh.
He would never do such a thing

Well,
Because,

He’s never done that to you.

That must mean my story’s not true.

I must be so sick
And ****** in the head

To be crying at night from the soreness years later

You’d think i’d adjust to the workout
Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.

Who would want to be around someone with such a bad limp?

It’s just easier to stay in bed.

Then the pain is just mine.

And nobody gets to have an opinion on if it’s real or not.

When you come
Into my space
It makes me want to hide
And take my bones
And memories
And things I never
Speak of
And climb inside
A closet that leads to Narnia
Or somewhere else
Than here
Cause when you come
into my space
So does every single
Fear.

    So stay away.

                         -L.Frost

Survivors
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of 9/11 and their families)

In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:

a shiver of “empathy.”

We too are “survivors,”
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death

like a turtle retracting its neck.

Published by The HyperTexts, Gostinaya (Russia), Ulita (Russia), Promosaik(Germany), The Night Genre Project and Muddy Chevy; also turned into a YouTube video by Lillian Y. Wong. Keywords: survivors, victims, families, 911, 9/11, terrorist, attack, terrorism, empathy, sympathy, truth, horror, death, survive, survival

My moods swing.
Sharp left,
sharp right,
spinning,
spiraling.

This time has me losing my footing,
sinking,
floating off,
untethered.

Breathe.

Remember,
you can swim.

This is hard.

Some days,
I
try
to survive.

Other days,
I
am
drowning.

Breathe.

It will be okay,
again.

You will be okay,
again.

We will be okay,
again.

Remember,
you are a survivor.

We are survivors.

Salve
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of 9-11)

The world is unsalvageable ...

but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as we do,

that our bodies are wise

in ways we refuse
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat,
drink ...
even multiply.

And so we touch ...

touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions

in this night of wished-on stars,

caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.

We are not lovers of irony,

we
who imagine ourselves
beyond the redemption
of tears
because we have salvaged
so few
for ourselves ...

and so we laugh
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.

Keywords/tags: 911, war, survival, survivors, recovery, love, *******, ***, tears, redemption, bodies, flesh, touch, caresses

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