Long Abhors Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems V

Poetry
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found you—shivering, bare.

They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both...

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Poems about Poems III

Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil?
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but...

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Years ago I wrote this poem to help me understand my god…
To get it straight inside my head…
as I watch what’s happening in God’s name today 
I think it’s time for me to remind myself...

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I’m going to reveal a fact about myself some of you may find odd…
It’s that I am not religious…but I do believe in God.

My God has given me a brain, a heart, a soul and...

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Why is misery said to love company
while depression demands solitude?

And
is it always true that nature abhors a vacuum
or 
sometimes true nurture adores expansion?

Misery,
depression,
anxiety,
negatively respond to trauma.

Negatives do not look for like company
but can positively appreciate...

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They tell us once there was a crow.
Wavering alone in the peril zone 
The feeble is not straight on a clue.
It has been winging since the era of stone.

The crow saw the cost of the...

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We often think of how best to compete in a very tough love market.
How to look
and smell
and sound our healthiest and highest commodified use
to attract the interest of others
with both similar and diverse sight
and hearing
and...

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In "On Fire"
Naomi Klein reminds us
win/lose capitalism invites a cooperative action vacuum
and abhors restrictions on money-accumulating freedom,

But Earth,
healthy global climates,
wealthy ecosystems
invite regenerative win/win climax
of cooperatively nurturing health systems
and abhor inhumane definitions of "wealth"
as privately-held and...

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Do you always have ready excuse
In your pocket for times that life throws you a curve?
What if someone you love ups and dies?
Does it matter at all if they took their own life
Suddenly they’re not...

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Identifying as a Taoist-Christian hybrid,
a polypath feasting on root systems
of East meets West
Right greets Left
Yin embraces Yang
does not make me a good Christian
or a healthy Taoist.

However, these permaculturing designs
on polyculturing 
polypathic neuro-sensory healthy outcomes
do seem...

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These are modern English translations of ancient Egyptian Harper's songs. 

Harper's Song: Tomb of Djehutiemheb
translation by Michael R. Burch

The sky is opened for you,
the earth opened for you, 
for you the good path leads into...

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My Mind, My Choice
                               ...

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21.

I care not a fat hairy fig
For your task to decimate
And predicate my world
With such villainy and hate.

You evaporate the sunshine.
You bring nigh the distant gloom.
Like a pestiferous browsing parasite
Intent on some impending doom.

Crawl! Crawl...

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     Unquotable quotes -  III

When in Rome, do as the Roman Nero.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the vain and the 
       ...

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Nature loves diversity
just as air abhors a vacuum.

Stability lives in staged apposition with diversity
as Yang predicts Yin,
as time moving stably forward
predicts time imagined more diversely
as the history of regeneratively slow-evolving Earth.

Stability, without conjoining diversity,
is a...

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Twas the night before Christmas - came like a flash,
Mob of gingerbread reindeer prodding elves for cache.

The Clausman reigning, doling out orders this stint.
Lady of his, keeps his tongue supplied with peppermints.

The vainglorious list of...

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I don't belong or get along, my ways are different from the rest
as hard as I try it just does not fly, I can never pass that standardized test 
I cannot figure on whom to...

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My muse died today.
Although how could I lose
abuse
or amuse
what was never mine to use
as I see fit,
hear fitness,
feel fitfully?

This muse dies tonight
not from old age
as I had long predicted
must be my sad and unread case,
but...

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A handsome and well groomed man he is
Usually very neat with well combed hair
A middle aged man of relative height
Wearing a warm smile that demands a response
Of wearing a scent I know not.

He is one...

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‘Get the motor running head out on the highway looking for adventure’

Well it is only the council road with potholes but Oliver races his pushbike

Walkman headphones sound ‘Born to be wild’ or Attention Deficit Disorder

But...

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31.
              Salvation

For lack of better judgement...
I perished far sooner than I thought.
Having never made a payment
For the salvation I now sought.

I am...

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Omni-pre-sent


Are we yearning to remember
Are we learning to forget
Living in the mind
shows we're not there yet
Are we earning to remember
Are we turning to regret
The present past
knows we carry the debt
along the line that is cast
beyond...

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IDEA TRAPPERS

I take a semblance of a hen
A hen conceives an egg
And brings forth an egg
The conditions have to be right
Or else there could never be eggs or hens
If that be the end of a...

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I wonder, can I travel back to my old self
find the way I was, come back and rearrange
the shelf full of books
(containing parts of my life
where enthusiasm was not held back and through
power of youth...

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In the court of the Queen,
With her eyes to the ground,
Who is shrouded in darkness
And silence profound

With her skeletal hands,
Wrapped in gossamer skin,
Rest on smoothed out mahogany, 
And gleam through the dim.

There is nothing to...

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