Best Turnstiles Poems

Ghosts of the Sun Dance

1. The Path

A quest dating back through our history
Surpassing the flesh, a spiritual path
Human endurance, road to mystery
Dark trail winding through the gardens of wrath

It echoes through me, this deep ambition
Half century of miles, lifetime compressed 
Much more than a race,...

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I revisit this realm where your actions cannot,
Will not,
Stifle my nascence

Never enough,
Never enough

Forward, 
I tear away my onion skin
Embattled by a loathing humanity

I throw solaced emotions
Upon rusted turnstiles

Spinning round,
Right round,
Round,
Right round

But, you wouldn’t call me baby.

Good. 

Because I was told
That it is better to be...

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“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
–“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” by W.B. Yeats 

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between...

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“Upon Waking”


Slumber has its upsides 
while the outside runs around
like a split fowlyard, 
cacophonous 
pecking at each other 
and at the ground…

Elsewhere, 

like dull background noise
through the fog of dream 
the sound of the gamble 
and its slot machines
discordantly admitting The Others
through the turnstiles;

The Sleeper...

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"Artificial Iris"


Orwell was lurking in the background, somewhere;
the dream was eerily familiar, 
the words and their meanings, read in Syntax,
once read between pages of hardcopy in school 
were aptly ignored - 

however, 
our Overlords were seen 
not to be feared, but très cool

sleep no longer...

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As little boys 
we rode bikes
fast down the dunes,
on the vertical side
of Sand City

Big tires creased
deep furrows 
in the down-slope,
same as boats trailing
wakes upon the swell

At the leeward portion
of the great sand hills
the long bronze 
shadows of late noon 
stretched to east

Meeting low pines
over ice...

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The many legacies I got
Your words that were spoke
A wakeup call being no joke
Utterance with tolerance
Life will have many turnstiles
But always use understanding during while
A detour might seem like a step back
But true vision is what will keep you on track
What matters most?
You have legacies...

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Advancing from the earth to reach up high,
From passageways and subways emerging,
To strain with ribald fingers at the sky,
The virus of the rage distilled and surging.

To spray paint on the tiles cursed to grey,
Chipped and peeling from the ransacked wall,
Created in the night, steam cleaned...

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Match day is here, scarf around your wrist
Dad takes his lad the games never missed
Sea of red winds its way down the lane
Singing the songs that announce the game
The turnstiles click as they hurry inside
Narrow passages opening out wide
The green of the pitch is sharp...

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7/19/2019
This darkness is all I know, 
a widow's wardrobe of funeral clothes.
It hangs curtained under my eyes, 
the seed inside me grows allowing the little girl I was to die.

Insomniac sleep walking down the streets, cautiously hopping turnstiles,
custodians keep mopping up bloody streaks, lil girls...

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Good bugger Clyde
Some look for the hell on the other side,
is it cause, yes cause for some mirth,
the sum of your sins and the good things you've done,
are balanced by time in the earth,
will the Lawyer be fried,
for being nasty and snide,
Reborn Uganda or worse?
Bush...

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Well babe,
 we is in Purgatory being purged during this ride,, 
and the turnstiles are waiting on the other side, 
to see whether its New York or Somalia on the flip side,
or a more subtle hell in the Earth...

to slide, 
this knowledge is all that...

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Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip up, or did they? Is their slip showing, or is...

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This is our observed phenomenon report.
It appears the earth people have a strange sport.
They swing a wooden stick at a horsehide sphere.
When it goes over the fence, it’s “outta here”.
Move counterclockwise on a diamond-shaped field.
Numbers on the scoreboard, a “run” is the yield.
This is a...

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Cloaked in grinding whispers
Such inhabitants feel
Their way
Gallop the day
By thrusting, trusting
Emblazoned minds
Envious looks deflected
As the clan stays on task
The full-time preoccupation
And execution of self-expression
Daring risks trickling
The vacant gutters
Thirsty for adrenalin
And a satisfying gulp
Of shattered dreams
Fashionable product
Underserved and underappreciated
By the sanctimonious angels
Slinging hash in pits
Adjacent to...

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