Long ovid Poems

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...

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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...

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Unquotable quotes: Poets, Poetasters and Platos – XXXVI

     For James McAuley – in remembrance of a memorable week in Cardiff 1965 

The greatest poet ever is NOT Homer, Lao Tse, Ovid,...

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Fourth canto (first part)

The deep slumber was broken in my head
By a strong thunder, so that I woke up
As person forced to arouse from bed;

My rested eye I moved around then deep,
Erect uprisen, and also...

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Any face of before was there suppressed;
Two and no one the sinner’s wicked face
Was looking; and such way slow pace progressed.

As the green lizard when so strong lambastes
The heat wave of day, then changing the...

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All In The Name Of "Progress"

The wrecking ball long since
demolished boyhood house zen
located at 324 Level Road,
a once nonagricultural,
pastoral, rural residence,
which soulful yen
I called home while
veritably sequestered, quarantined, positioned...
sprawled atop spaciously shingled roof
countless years (B)efore...

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"Sitting with Koans" 

Zazen sits zafu'd in the zendo
with the poetic monkey minds
echoing the sound of two hands clapping
producing sound bites bitten like Botticelli reprising
polishing red apples for eating the shining

listen to the sound of...

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If my poetry moves you to witness to stranger
Just know that I'm touched that you're "sharing my ride,"
For the fact is that giving can be fraught with danger,
But those that it calls feel much warmer...

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OBVIOUSLY 
Obviously, the people who lived contemporary with dinosaurs were intelligent, 
and the footprints indicate that they were quite human as the large toe on 
primates is located closer to the heel to facilitate clinging...

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Though I posted the following poem 
(B)efore (C)ovid, a sense 
of glee donned my being 
the notion arose to trumpet anew
said literary handily crafted endeavor.

Not far from here – Perkiomen Valley -
Schwenksville, Pennsylvania
regular folks going...

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These are nature poems about unusual plants like the moonflower and agave.



Moonflower
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Hayden

Marveling,
we at last beheld the achieved flower—
both awed and repelled by its alienness,
its moonlit petals,
its cloying fragrance,
its transcendence,
its shimmering...

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The morning was breaking and sheep were awaking,  
which was much as the sheep all expected to do 
But this morning's arising was far more surprising –  
a mask fairy had brought them...

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NEW YORK NEW YORK AGAIN
When I go to the Service as soon as I get up
I listen to Frank Sinatra's song
“New York New York”
The city that never sleeps, as me
And I  with pleasure, like...

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For those of a military cast of mind
There are many poems they can find
Which do embellish battlefield glory
In the telling of their story.

But for me there is another field of play 
Where merry pleasure is...

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Presumably ovid,
with qualm,
wit, and wisdom,
as to the smallest orb,
give way to our
very own,
Christendom.

As horn-mad, to
fetch me about,
the Kings, they play
mighty,
their Queens,
a jester and pout.

Though ancient
as jointure, the merry
plenty they must,
with the lyric 
of masterful lyre,
a...

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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...

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Some kind of Boccaccio 
they open The Book, 
borrowing thoughts 
and stories from muses,
for it is a tome 
in its entirety,

each muse, a Page, unamused,
to be plucked from tomb,
those sepia petals thrown up in the...

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A make-up artist?  Um … no thanks.
That’s not my kind of courtship caper.
I want the girl who wrote a paper
on Massachusetts’ failing banks.

You can keep your belly-dancer.
The nimbleness that I would seek
is cerebral: I...

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To Flower
by Michael R. Burch
 
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2;...

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My aunt was a weirdo: she talked to trees, walked around the house naked and used to read me “The Metamorphoses” by Ovid and “The Song of Hiawatha” by Longfellow as a bedtime story. “Oom-ta-ta,...

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I'm the cirizen of another country,
the long penynsula that stretches
into the vast Mediterrean Sea;
has anybody ever seen how lovely
it is with its snow-capped mountains
and verdant rolling hills oveerlooking
towns with castels and churches?
Has anyone ever heard...

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Land of Dante, Michelangelo, Vivaldi, Verdi, Vanvitelli and da Vinci;  
there Julius Caesar spoke these victorious words," Vedi, vidi, vici."
From the majestic snow-capped Alps to the sun-scorched Sicily,
one is astonished by the sea and...

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Sublime Poets of Yore


Sublime Poets of yore;
Chaucer, Homer, Spencer
All in poetry folklore
Tireless toil they bore.

They took a lot of time
To lathe or polish poem
And lavished in rhyme,
Wisdom and wit sublime. 

Hardy, Dickens, Coleridge
All blew a...

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Santa Monica Pier

I remember watching 
the ocean roll on the shore,
wave after wave, 
crashing down on the solid sand
and I idly staring back
wondering if the Atlantic was as blue.

I watched him light a candle
and move...

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No reason to sink into dumps
When your spouse scrams from home without leave
Financial muscle into the red jumps
Joy from chaff you can’t sieve

With a head shrinker you may disagree
When mental health strikes
All trial and tribulation...

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