Best Unaccountably Poems

Last Night 
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
translation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your memory stole into my heart
as spring sweeps uninvited through barren gardens
as morning breezes revive dormant deserts
as a patient suddenly feels better for no apparent reason



Strange Currents
by Amir Khusrow
translation by Michael R. Burch

O Khusrow,...

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My belly of thoughts clings to my backbone
Never hungry, always starving of poetry
Which can not exactly capture your spotlessness
Mama learned me this knowledge of nature:
A full stomach of ideas suffocates the mind of reasons
And hypocritical bellies are full of garbage ideologies
Since them, couldn't set my...

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LOVE POEMS II

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch: original poems and translations about passion, desire, lust, sex, dating and marriage. On an amusing note, my steamy Baudelaire translations have become popular with the pros ? **** stars and escort services!



Le Balcon (The Balcony)
by...

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Where Does the Butterfly Go?
by Michael R. Burch

for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when...

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You know she missed her period and she missed graduation,
And she missed those wedding bells.
And her daddy’s shot-gun missed the boy next door—
Where he’s gone nobody can tell.
It’s a simple operation—her sister recommends it—
Her daddy’s going to foot the bill,
It’s the All-American Ladies Choice…
It’s a...

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Poems of Recanted Bachelorhood

bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch

u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly ALARMING
since my resolve
dissolved!

*

Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch

Beth, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I’m with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy ...

*

What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem about loss
so why do...

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To presume to write to someone about courage
and not complaining, don't importune or make dying people cry.
I've always said Leave me alone with autumn.
Don't stand around my bed, I won't be in it.

Over 7 years after he died, I finally looked
through my father's papers. Couple...

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The idea of a living constitution
has the same forensic indeterminacy
as a committed dream.

I am content to trust this dream to the end
to have it fill my cup of hope all day and night.
I am content to receive its order
to hasten to obey without a pause.

But,...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems IX

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school student and during my first two years of college.

Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of the forming of my soul,
in the dawning of desire, with...

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If it were all a dream
water would flow through from the sea to the earth
And where earth meets the waters mighty crest a shore would stand

If it were all a dream
time would move unaccountably
Like wind though a mill it would pass slowly, and then swiftly...

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The Eager Traveler
by Ahmad Faraz
translation by Michael R. Burch

Even in the torture chamber, I was the lucky one;
When each lottery was over, unaccountably I had won.

And even the mightiest rivers found accessible refuge in me;
Though I was called an arid desert, I turned out to...

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did you know 
in the fog, the secrets 
coil in each reaching tendril
floating in the ephemeral pause, caressing me
knowledge enveloped within
peaceful contemplation
quiet word-games of hidden wisdom
"Where did you leave your game?" The Great One chuckles
and we look out over Its domain
lying on the leaves of...

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Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke

Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imagining watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.
Explicit sex was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.

I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible...

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These are poems about sinking, poems about drowning, poems about loss, and poems about new discoveries we sometimes make while feeling lost...



Sinking
by Michael R. Burch

for Virginia Woolf

Weigh me down with stones…
fill all the pockets of my gown…
I’m going down,
mad as the world
that can’t recover,
to where...

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