Best Gentled Poems

The old stream doesn’t burble 
like it used to in Spring’s past -
rambunctious in youth  wild it ran
racing the sun and chasing the moon
splashing  leaping  and  tumbling 
over, down and around  rocks in its shallow channel -
giving it rollicking laughter

The...

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When it left the Arctic it was as a wild angry wind
that stormed its way across the ice bound Arctic ocean.
Blowing the snow clad icebergs and whipping up the ocean.
As it crossed Alaska and into Canada it had gentled
now it played games with leaves and...

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Splendor of soft shoulders
caressed by sinking sun
Out my window the western slope
of the thick coated Rocky Mountains
Once upon a clear cold Colorado Chrstmas 
purple brushed horizon flecked with gold
filled my picture window 
Mesmerized I stood staring
at this huge canvas hung in the Louver 
God's and...

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“As God’s spark ensouling organic form,
I am that presence which cannot be named,
felt within as a magnetic bliss storm,
divine pulsation that cannot be tamed,
gentled by His touch, within body framed.
I am that which transcends both space and time.
I am love and light, causing heart to...

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"...one can never leave home... one carries the shadows, the dreams, the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes.. " - Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter, 2008

Healing all my hidden hurts
With music, laughter and light
Sensations of silent winds
Blowing...

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“As God’s spark ensouling organic form, I am that presence which cannot be named,
felt within as a magnetic bliss storm, divine pulsation that cannot be tamed,
gentled by His touch, within body framed.
I am that which transcends both space & time. I am love & light,...

Continue reading...

Chanting from the spirit world enters my soul as I sleep, enslaving me fully into her familiar beat, I dance with abandon, tossing my hair, flipping my feet, in childlike wildness.
Boundless in its pursuit of me, my inner voice incorporates itself into my dream, terribly...

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No Mark
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes, 
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before...

here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.

Heraclitus said we can't step...

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The wind blows through the ocean between waves and the sky
Through the islands where dragon of Komodo lives it will fly
Wild tiger the soul of India it will pass by
While arctic wind with it is on collision course if they meet they’ll form hurricane with...

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A little girl with flaxen hair
Curled up on my lap
She was like a mermaid, lovely
As she chose to nap

At a young age, I knew her worth
Cuddling up in a ball
She smiled elation, such an imagination
As she laughed through nightfall

Whispering light into the heart
Joy seemed her...

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ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers,
packed tightly here
despite once repellent hate?
Here weaponless, they...

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We have to rebirth, the soul of this planet 
and pray it be cleansed and gentled evermore,
but as nails keep piercing 
hands reach to smooth across her scared shroud 

It has to be worshipped 
like the apostle to the apostles,
but with a feast of celebration...

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I heard tell some folks think cowboys built the West.
The only thing I know for sure is I always did my best
to give a man a good days work for an honest wage
ridin' among tumbleweeds and dried brush of sage.
I wear a Colt 45 to...

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after William Carlos Williams

My husband and daughter sleep
blind to the bleach 
of street lamps
and every wellspring headlight sluicing 
the dark

Pre-dawn but this cavity
chants of you —

Don’t smile
Don’t smile
Better to tongue 
the deep, empty groove

I rise, pirouette across
cold parquet
The kitten shadows me 
so we waltz until...

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For My Holly

Silence crashed gray ‘round me in jarring strikes.
		news glued me undone ~ chilled shade blued my sun
Mere seconds flogged me numb with scarring spikes.
                your mind failed its...

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