Best Materiality Poems

When imbalance of life churns hapless poignancy
And the zephyr of inequities breezes melancholy
Dissonance reverberates echoing pathos of grief
Seeking exaltation within metaphysical profundity
As hushed posture conjures up humbling catharsis,
Leaning in quietude, questing paranormal vitality,
Liberating from bounds of mundane, the ordinary,
Energizing calming bliss of unfamiliar, extrasensory.

Mortal soul...

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Follow me, my dear, to mythical shores of hypnotic dream,
Sail on my fantasies, driving passions of your zealous theme,
Afloat on tides of longing, musing on love’s passionate seas,
Vying paradise of bliss, propelling desires love-notions seize,
Savoring you in embrace romantic, ecstatic till the end of time,
Extolling...

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We have brought this upon ourselves:
This virus, this egregore:
This cult of individuality.

	Our right to die and bring others with us!
Truly an inversion of full potentiality:
	Others live so we may make right.
The Sun shines on all, says the Teacher,
And vanity blows among its rays.

Like a mask...

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The river and the almond tree
are sacred totems for me.
They occupy primal ground
in my mind where the stuff
of who I am links 
the esoteric to my history.
I keep them close, hidden from 
the scoff of everyday me, 
dread warden of fact
and skeptical of what strays
from...

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infant life
                                           ...

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Please try and read with the rhythm, flow and spacing I created by use of the lower casing in place of full-stops and commas/breaths. Allow the words to dance...

Snakes and Ladders


I'm not perfect
Never can Be
in this crude and dense 
lower-sense materiality
You are not perfect
Can't you...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles,...

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This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael...

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He searches in the shady sides,
traces of vanished light,
a drift of the felt,
all of nuances and transitions.

Perhaps is it too early;
cold dawn maintains suspended
the pulsation of the heart,
spreading the ashes,
incomprehension of lack,
in the slow progress of space.
He flees,
beyond his control,

While he awaits any tiny sign,
any...

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Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could...

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The Master Passed through the heart of town
The crowd was huge and crushing down
She couldn’t reach him, began to probe 
And finally touched him on the robe

He felt the jolt of energy 
And turned around so he could see
“Who touched me there that I could...

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viewing an object of desire
immersion in materiality
losing ourself therein
slave to the senses
lustful passions rising
our thirst keeps deepening
correspondent to indulgence
poised yet as an animated thought
heart awaiting actual fulfilment 
wherefrom we gradually shift
our attention into the void
smiling at the descent 
of consciousness 
self serving

looking within 
through foggy...

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Is it to be something if nothing it is can be
The wheeling whirring cogs
In the cluttering clatter of atoms and stars
Whirring their physics into oblivion
Nothing more than the sum of all thier predictable parts
With their explosive destinations of entropy
A cascade failure of  universal proportions
And...

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Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a...

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impermanence of
all materiality
is essence of life

souls search for the truth
transcending various forms
till they attain peace

soul needs to traverse
deep inside oneself until
in sync with outside...

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