Bleeding Heart
By Christopher Zurcher

flog me into submission you daily beast of ambition
beating your head against the concrete wall
of emails, text messages and phone calls.

my bleeding heart is no match for the blood you make run
from my forehead, my chewed hang nails, my nose, my heart,
my gums.

why don’t you take it out and show it to me in a broadcast not of beauty but of what’s happening in Africa or the Middle East? bleeding heart.

make me sick again and again with human rights abuses and corporate greed that pollutes the water that quenches the thirst of hundreds of millions of people, you beast, bleeding heart

quenches the thirst of you and me, our children and theirs. bleeding heart.

tell me it’s all in the name of nutrition, flavor, price savings and clean water and air – it’s cheap after all. bleeding heart.

it’s cheap when we pick it up at the supermarket stocked with aisles and aisles and aisles and aisles and aisles in which we lose ourselves among endless varieties of poison, a disease-making cauldron packaged as a fruitopia eutopia. bleeding heart.

my kid screams when he sees the labels of the things he wants, squeaks with feigned happiness and glee.

my kid screams when he holds the plastic that killed someone in its being made and will kill someone else in its disposal.

my phone rings. I pick it up and hand it to him.
he squeals again.

It’s his mother.

By Christopher J Zurcher

Chapel and Church and
College and Orange and
Court and George and
York and Howe and
Elm and Grove
There’s a misery on the street,
a happiness, a melancholia, a wondering,
a freezing in the winter,
and a melting in the summer.
A little bit on one street
a lot of another world … a whole nother universe on another.
Where some screams are like a baby
or a woman … or a man
or a car, or an ambulance, or a bus, or a train
or just a bad commercial air conditioning unit
next to a parade with bagpipes and sirens.
Music and life.
Glee, and sadness.
A couple holds hands,
She whispers something to him.
His voice is not a whisper, though, nor does he scream it out loud.
A crowd celebrates on the Green
Another protests at City Hall
A child, waiting at the bus stop with his mother
watches and wonders
whether what those crowds are doing,
what those two groups of people are doing,
are one and the same and
just separated by half a city street.

It landed heavy and wet on the ground
Piled up inch by inch
Morning expectedly silent

Plowed only once, no cars were on the street.
The governor said stay home at all costs.
It was still slippery and Marion Street was not plowed at all.
The sun was so pink and bright on the snow covered branches I had to try to take a picture of it.
It came out alright.
Plow drivers later raced back and forth, client to client,
Stopping occasionally to help a lucky someone with the snow plow detritus –
Icy boulders so heavy some driveways are impassable.
Once the sun comes out and melts the slippery sidewalks
brownies will be delivered to thank them
Then we return to work.