Best Forward Looking Poems

To a Mouse
by Robert Burns
translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sleek, tiny, timorous, cowering beast,
Why’s such panic in your breast?
Why dash away, so quick, so rash,
In a frenzied flash
When I would be loath to run after you
With a murderous plowstaff!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social...

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‘Sankofa’ In 'Safranbolu'

This bird from Ghana’s legends flies forward looking backward
                      In the Twi language twinned with indigenous souls and wisdom
the feathered friend suggests...

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"A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."

			W. Wordsworth
								

I am your grandmother.
I spent 24 years making
parenting mistakes, so I think
I'm pretty well trained now,
pretty worn down, open-minded
and accepting.
I think we'll be good friends.

At sixteen,...

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?Universe interconnected?      
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    Pen's Broadcasting Name
           21st century's Poet
  ...

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Paul said to press on forward
Towards the heavenly prize
For if we run the Christian race
We will come to realize
That in spite of the prisons in our lives
Keeping us in mental and physical chains
With faith in God our course of action
Will no longer be tethered not...

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riding the waves and forgetting
erasing the thought of time from my mind
becoming one with nothingness and it delight
God is here wading in the water with me

riding the waves and forgetting
being taught that i am not the only one
becoming even more schooled of the many facets...

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The Slide Ruler

As regulations rule this world from outside in and my time slowly
                 seeps away on this planet’s realm I gaze in awe at that once modern
instrument of...

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As I sat on the ledge looking up to the sky
I asked my Father the W's
The when's, the what's, the where's, the why's

So many places in this world to see
So many places I'd rather be
Bland, stagnant and repetitious became all to me so boring
Knowing there's...

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The ragged precipice surmounted,
he stands, leaning forward, looking down
into nature's yawning rictus—
pondering flight without wings.

Restlessness in being,
he’s come unhinged in time
whose moments intertwine,
leaving him indifferent to his age.

Neither older than yesterday
nor younger than tomorrow,
life's review passes. Reaching out his arms,
he jumps...and simply floats away....

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You eager commuters
you don’t see me
in the shadows shivering
Remembering that green door and the
warm baking bread smells
A king in a pocket sprung bed
Beside my abdicated queen
And the curly haired prince who
No longer hears my song

You eager commuters
Forward looking
I alone have 
Wealth and friendship
Bottle shaped
No idle...

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For years, the ominous signs were palpable
The deep fraternal mistrust festered and discernable
Propagated by colonial masters to divide and make Rwanda malleable
And left lingering became monstrous and uncontrollable
Snowballing in 1994 into an orgy of murderous hate
As Hutu brothers turned against their Tutsis siblings
For three cruel...

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Looking forward, looking back
Wondering about the future
Remembering the past

Many experiences sent to teach
Many more yet to explore

All that really matters is the present
This is all that is in your control

The future will come, the past will go
Make the most of what you have, in the...

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Shriek through verses
                                          ...

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Once again, we face a cross road
Filled with so many emotions we might just explode
Life seems to be a series of forks in the track
Never able to change our minds, or to turn back
Being chased down the path by time
Haunted by the ticking, by every...

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Byron didn't wait for me.
Across the hall Becky tried not to look.
Chalk was everywhere.
Knuckles was already suspended.
Trailing the varsity jackets I
Oscillated between chic and irreverent.
Someone yelled, "barf!"
Charades and hustlers cover every inch.
How am I going to find my locker?
Oswald points me to "304."
Oblong and wrong...

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