Best Chariton Poems

My Fourth of July memories are firmly intact.
We always got together with my aunt and uncle.
Which meant our cousins, and we had so much fun.
The...

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A musical throng of 400,000 strong invaded a dairy farm in New York in 1969,
 which set fire to the 70’s; but there was no...

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If I as allowed to go back in time to do one re-do, 
Limited to one change in my past.
Which one would I choose? 
There...

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Small town hospital in Chariton, Iowa, USA
1952
Dr. Yocum had a recurring dream every night for weeks
God was telling him that he had to buy an...

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When Pigs Fly
by Michael R. Burch

On the Trail of Tears,
my Cherokee brothers,
why hang your heads?
Why shame your mothers?
Laugh wildly instead!
We will soon be dead.

When we...

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Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s...

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MODERN SONNETS I

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less...

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1959, Chariton, Iowa, sixty miles south of Des Moines
I was prancing around proudly showing off my snow people pin.
Husband and wife, glitzy with glitter, I...

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Sonnets XVII-XXIV

Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet...

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The State of the Art (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets...

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The Forge
by Michael R. Burch

To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,
 
then...

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Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music,...

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Limited to one change in my past.
Tricky idea
There are so many mistakes I would like to correct.
Wait! Here is the one that started me on...

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My favorite junkyard is in Chariton, Iowa.
A rusty old tow truck at the top of the hill
Painted to look exactly like Mater in the Cartoon.

When...

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A week before the Armistice, you died.
They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s,
then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie
between two privates, sacrificed...

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