Best Clod Poems

The Playbill for the 9/8/01 show at Godspeed Opera House falls from my  palm to the floor. Here I sit, with a drugged hangover...

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so, i got to thinking
about all those words
planted in my language
where fertility grew them
to leave and stalk and pod

the farmer's words scatter
my fields like seed...

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Limericks VI - Religion

Pell-Mell for Hell Mel
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a Baptist named Mel
who condemned all non-Christians to hell.
When he stood before God
he...

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Be my star, 
the twinkle in my life
the little light to my darkness
the diamond in my sky

Be my shooting star,
 take my wishes and soar...

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Under the cloud where the velvet smoke bled,
'Love's a curse' the smiling soul said;
The blood in the dwarf's heart then froze,
When an indecisive liar presented...

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 melting snowball 

Fall-out started with the spring-break competition;
Errors were made as team effort slid downhill.
Then when name-calling sparked a partition,
esprit-de-corps broke to a stand-still.

“Butterfingers!”...

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How Times Have Changed~

We ran so innocently in lush, soft, beautiful grass!
Dreamt of wonderful futures on the finest, fresh smelling sheets.
Mother treated each child as...

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I'm that dog sitting in the rain 
over his best friend's grave.
I've waited fifteen years,
for your spirit to brush against my spirit again, either in...

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At the center of my orbit,
You were Jupiter, huge, remote,
Surface roiled by raging storms.
I was a dim, distant moon --
A tiny ice-bound clod
Eternally held at...

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Anyone who wants to fight me all the time
committee meetings, board meetings.
Facing death was how they knew they were alive
or was it more about allocating...

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This redneck is fixin' to go dancin'
You reckon we get gussied up and go?
I'll be a high flutin' and a prancin'
Is the honky-tonk puttin' on...

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The teacher dies having made her small contribution
to the colonization of other planets by motivating
a boy who would otherwise be a coal miner to become
a...

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Trappings of femininity
Cagey breasts, Alexandrian perfume
An act of seduction
Not stupid in blunt fingernails
Painted rose a caressing owl
Scratches blood and snatches wallet
In crafty hands Love towels...

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Voyagers, convene thyselves to return, among us...
Caesura, crown nigh clod, a sylph unwept,
elision thy silhouette, meno thy minuet...
Thine late occurence on thee, wake of cerise...

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Once the Sinis floppers' nerves acted up in bunches, 
Scandinavians had no way to head off sucker punches.
Sacks of scamming slapstick, slap bass,
and farcefest, thick...

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