Long Advancing Poems

For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight...

Read More

Alone I arrive, walking from Frederick
over the gaps, across gentle hills
out onto a knoll
overlooking this burnished landscape.
Before me I see countless writhing rows
of indiscernible shapes gathered
in terrible rituals mid fire and smoke
darkening the sun.
From distant...

Read More

Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the...

Read More

Once upon a weedy lawn
At Cedar Oaks Retirement Home
There sat my mother, weak and old
On an afghan knit to block the cold.

It was summer, but in mom's grey eyes
Was winter, when all around us dies.
I...

Read More

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within,...

Read More

The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand...

Read More

Juvenilia: Early Poems VIII

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

Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that...

Read More

There is no argument from myself here, friend, 

If anything, that you can, and do appreciate; just as much as you are applying yourself towards these "seven" efforts' below, that is helpful to all parties...

Read More

This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on...

Read More

America First
speaks a RightWing monocultural intention
currently championed by Trumpians
and Republican Aristocracy of Evangelism 
Tea Partiers,
by xenophobic paranoids
and sociopathic pharisee fascists,
by economically blind
deaf
and angry 
bigoted
terrified shouters;
just the opposite of dumb,
yet not cooperatively mindful either
of our global...

Read More

The Story of History  

Beyond those beaten days’ depleted daylight
Beyond the bathos of a pandemic bondage
With  the resurrected  sashay’s charmed night
Down in the dumps   at the pretentious  proscenium
A ...

Read More

Lost In the Mists Parts I - IV

                           ...

Read More

Bitter Wind 

With the winds beginning in the autumn season, the Soul seems to be a leaf falling towards new pain. 
In the heat of the fire flying with the wind, it inhales us with...

Read More

En-trumped

There are many en-tities. Narrative psychologist speak of living and telling 
a story. Our lives should be as we en-live them and en-story them. We tell 
our tale as we see it, at the moment...

Read More

I blame me brother for the likes of this predicament,
when we pub crawled up to Bunyip, and where our night was spent.
Thank God I wasn’t in the driver’s seat, ‘cause we wouldn’t be alive, 
but...

Read More

COMPARISONS

I sit here now back on my bed
Bandaged and still quite sore
I think back to my Mum and Dad
And all they both endured

My Dad he died of cancer
My Mum of MND
Both were unpleasant ways to...

Read More

Wretched emasculated celibate anchorite

(any relationship between the following poem and living persons -
namely the writer of these words ranks as purely coincidental and fictitious).

nevertheless he suffers existential blight
covered head to toe
in black and blue bruises
linkedin...

Read More

Our anti-racism, pro-polyculturing health
anti-egopatriarchy, pro-ecofeminist wealth
anti-homophobic, pro-trans-regenerative
anti-injustice Team, pro-restoring peace Organizers

Meet inside a viciously anti-outdoor
windowless
airless
music-less
museless
left-brain oppressively dominant room,
climate,
atmosphere,
attitude of ungratitude.

Two women I passionately admire,
would warmly accompany within any outdoor sacred space,
are doing their best to...

Read More

It was late in gorgeous springtime, and I was teaching my class,
A lesson in African history, and the events of time's hourglass.

My fourth graders were very attentive, as I recounted the glory,
Of tales such as...

Read More

margins stimulate and juxtapose
  edges greet with troubled, disturbing friction
  faraway forces exert influence and combine relentlessly
  how the Sun and Moon dance together about the planet Earth
  their grasping hands...

Read More

Image of Grandparents Country Home from my family collection

The Two Drivers In My Life

In my younger years ...
I got to know the souls of my parent's worlds,
were as distant as our known solar system.
Mom was...

Read More

Metaphor of outrage, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Metafora del desafuero

			                    ( In celebration of...

Read More

There stood a castle on the summit of a hill
Now fallen to decay, hidden among bushes wild
It perched like an eagle’s nest on the steep hill
It was owned by a Lord, gentle and mild

Blessed with...

Read More

Formula One Poetry


Adverbs on your Mark!

Nouns get ready!

Verbs and prepositions get set!

There's the green light and they're off!

All words accelerating at an astonishing speed!

the crowd goes wild 

at the roar of the sound

of accelerating words....

Read More

What to do,
how respond,
to totalitarian tyranny
in someone else's home
or community
or economy?

OK, good question,
I hope,
yet with ample precedent
in polycultural battles to attain harmonious balance
where we have become monopolistically lost.

What do you do,
how respond,
to monocultural stimuli
advancing in...

Read More