Best Entreats Poems

The Bodhi Tree

I am a Bodhi Tree with branches reaching for the sky.
My cooling shade entreats a song, a lovely lullaby.
My roots run deep above and below the blessed ground
Where prayerful spirit looms my ancient trunk is found.

Siddhartha Gautama became Buddha beneath my tree.
In harmony...

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Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By...

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The gate to Monet’s Japanese garden’s open,
beckoning, and green as Giverny’s winter wheat,
but there’s no time to glimpse the pond’s lilies within.
 
Monet’s Rose Cottage-locked to all but the wrens-
though curved trellises invite, and a path entreats;
the gate to Monet’s Japanese garden is open,
 
but...

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Barbarous reason rejoices
and draws strength dispensing death.
Its celebration comes with
cold effigies of blood soaked,
ravaged, masked graves of silence,
leaving any subsequent regret
within the heart of the stonecutter.
The suffocating privacy
of each muddy sepulcher
calls out its loss-but who will listen
through the rumble of the caissons roar?
Fear has no...

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You give me a lift
to those heights I once dreamt of.
You support me in your warm embrace
and the heat comes through the silk and lace.
I cling to you with all my might.
We pass unseen from day to night.

       ...

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Mighty Ocean,

      In your shoal I stand, peering over the swells of your surface.
Your gentle waves roll upon the sand, soothing and massaging
my feet with your deft fingers...ebbing and flowing in rhythmic beat.
Would you be so kind to grant me...

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I love you as I love the sun, 
her blinding rays a blessed truth 
that blaze o'er hill and meadowland 
and sing a song of winsome youth. 

Your warmth puts roaring fires to shame, 
ignites the flame that inward glows, 
it resonates, and sanctifies 
my...

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(Dedication: This poem is for Linda,
aka "A Poet Destroyer" one of my
many friends at PoetrySoup online.)
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A curious soul lives in this space:
Moves with a style that shapes good cheer;
Often she gives a boost to trace
More than a smile to works right here;
Entreats our best to...

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for Juvie, with all my love...


I love you as I love the sun,
her blinding rays a blessed truth
that blaze o'er hill and meadowland
and sing a song of winsome youth.

Your warmth puts roaring fires to shame,
ignites the flame that inward glows,
it resonates, and sanctifies
my happy heart,...

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Every minute, every hour of each day,
my heart entreats you with longing.
I desire your heart trusts what I say
every minute, every hour of each day.
If God exists, I avidly pray
He accords my desire for belonging.
Every minute, every hour of each day
my heart entreats you with...

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Pigeons flutter in the park
eating refuse from the grass.
Noon comes; the hours pass.
Leaves fall; the sky grows dark.
Silence reigns throughout the park.
A crumpled headline, forgotten toy --
and then, -- and then a far-off bark.
In the park, not a single little boy.
Midnight comes; the hours go...

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The birds of pray are on their way, in every beak the Word

(of ptomaine tomes by gnarly gnomes) whose meaning is obscured;

they roost aloof on every roof, obscene but always herd,

to tell the tale of Jonah’s whale and other rhymes absurd -

with shifty eyes, they’re...

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Now that December has descended
with it's roots of ice and skies of snow
our timber fortress is a sanctuary of ethnographic enlightenment
and embassy that entreats the exchange of craftsmanship, 
lately I have been preoccupied with my etymological research,
it is important to President Jefferson, an anthropologist
that we...

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You give me a lift
to those heights I once dreamt of.
You support me in your warm embrace
and the heat comes through the silk and lace.
I cling to you with all my might.
We pass unseen from day to night.


       ...

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After Agnes Krampe 

Upon a lone palm,
they build their communal 
nest —determinedly— but pause
to study the berry-hued
cinder blocks of the hillside 
shanty town, short lives 
stacked on short lives.

One bird watches 
the woman plucking laundry
from a fraying washline
as if shirts were passion fruit
on a vine,...

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