Best Parnassus Poems

"The Sleeper and The Supernaturalist"


The Sleeper
shone as she walked 
through the Woods

shining alive 
like nothing
natural could

caught 
in the moonlight 
unaware

the innocent
red-caped roses stared
the trees whispered,

"beware, beware"

barefoot softly 
the Supernaturalist 
transfigures instead

from under shine 
she bares 
what exists 

deeper 
beneath 
that cumbersome skin

silently she turns 
watching...

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I searched in vain for inspiration.
I even climbed the sacred Parnassus
Where all the muses reside.
I danced with them
Engaged in endless discourse.
All in vain.

Then I resigned to my fate.
Oh Pythagoras? How I refused
Ever to believe in your metempsychosis?
Alas that meritocracy should be reborn
Reborn to write again,
Reborn...

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When melancholy drowns my interests,               
all seem lost; when black bile's ooze then molests,           
I travel through the valley of this...

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I remember as a young boy
Sitting on top Mount Parnassus
Consumed in writing I enjoyed.
Mostly poetry to express
At the time my innermost thoughts
While below my childhood playmates
Romped and played and most often fought.
And myself trying to translate
Feelings into coherent thought
And writing them down on paper.
I recollect...

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I.

What delight is there, when the wine of youth
     runs out and just the dregs of life remain?
When childhood flowers, and love's fire becomes truth,
     the lusts of adolescence touch the brain;

when youth is gone, and life's...

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I long for your truant inspiration,
     O Muse, for I've felt your absence too long;
     empower me to sing a gay, new song,    
that with pen I may still bring creation!
Reappear, Muse, to my...

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Fair Angels of Parnassus, Muses Nine,
That on its snowy summit gay recline
With other gods, are haply the cynosure
Of poets whom inspires your sacred ewer,
O'erflow'd with the ambrosial Hippocrene,
The haunt of daughters of Mnemosyne, 
And Father Jove who loves these nymphets most,
And of that gelid crest...

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Epigrams by Michael R. Burch



Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch
 
Show me your most intimate items of apparel:
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip ...



Negotiables
by Michael R. Burch

Love should be more than the sum of its parts:
of its potions and pills and subterranean arts.



Her Answer (Sappho,...

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LOVE   FOR    THREE   WOMEN



In bays and headlands of my dreams I hear her sweet laughter:     
She strolls along the beach in morningtimes at low tide bright.    
O, like an unworn dress...

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None can share in full the loss You have known;
     from innocence to experience, You,
fair child, were never meant to be alone;
     to be betrayed by saints who were untrue;
to know the sting of isolation's power,
 ...

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I long for thy truant inspiration,
     O Muse! (I feel thine absence for too long.).
Restore to me the gift of creation
     once more,—that I may sing a new, gay song.
Reappear soon to my great elation,
  ...

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To Lesley do  I owe a big debt
No more over verse will I ever  sweat
Reading her nuanced advice between the lines
My motivation  to versify  sharply declines
It has become clear to me that my rotten rhyme
Is so very close to being a...

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Litter London with latent suicidal tongues
Olympian words rise to claim the covet of crown
National pride perhaps, to hear the dialect sings
Diminished not again by that foreign fang of words
Once strangling memory of native speech.
Nation language everywhere now dancing

Poetry can speak in any voice the same...

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Where art thou, Muse? I seek inspiration!
I have endured your absence for too long:
restore to me the gift of creation
once more, that I may sing a new, gay song.
When you return I'll feel great elation,
for as my muse you can never do wrong
or cause the...

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Erotic Errata
by Michael R. Burch

I didn’t mean to love you; if I did,
it came unbid-
en, and should’ve remained hid-
den!

***

Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch

Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.

***

Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch

Show me your most intimate items of apparel;
begin with...

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