Long Advent Poems

Impossible mission to captcha infinitesimal moment

alternately titled: tick tock runneth amuck
seconds elapse imperceptibly 
leaving me dumbstruck,
how quickly fleeting tempus fugit; 
ofttimes imagined as time thief.

Hence following vignette: quiet as a mouse lurks the time thief...

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Charles d'Orleans: a Medieval Marvel


Spring
by Charles d’Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab...

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Medieval Poems

How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern...

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Spring
by Charles d'Orleans (c.1394-1465)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab at whatever passes,
so we can...

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Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux

These are poetic forms similar to villanelles, with refrains (repeated lines) and sometimes double refrains.



Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot...

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Oasis
by Michael R. Burch 
 
for Beth
 
I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.
 
I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,...

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The Old Dark House

This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All...

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Oft in My Thought
by Charles D'Orleans
translation by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet...

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This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All Hallows’ Eve
before the...

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This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All Hallows’ Eve
before the...

Read More

Some Pro's and Con's of being Virtually Connected to Reality poetic verses

Dune not be bashful, grumpy, leery
or any other contemporary dwarf man
even countless less well known dwarves
(that never got a chance
to play a bit part)...

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Imitation! Creative Compliment, Lacking in Originality, or Plagiarism? 

This week takes me back to college days. I was taking a graduate course (as a Physics major)   in 'Modern Poets' at the University of...

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Patterns of phylogenic history
retell our creative creation story
as bicameral restoration
of Earth's nature-spirit ecology,
both Eastern karma
and Western co-redemptive grace.

Spiritual memory experience
of RNA
and later DNA developments
and traumatic extinctions,
positive great transitions
and double-negative traumas;
are exegetical rhythms
and sacred seasoned pattern...

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It's not so much
our cultural value conditioning
that presents a transitional communication problem
about changes of climate
within our Interior
and without
our Exterior
Landscapes.

It's more about discontinuous,
internally incommensurable,
cultural values
norms enjoined throughout Earth's fully domesticated human race
toward humane evolution's progress,
whether this...

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The Republican congressmen,
and I do mean white privileged straight men,
came to their Democratic opposition
concerned about how depressing
December can be,
and all of winter,
come to think and feel
of dark discerning Advent,

So maybe we could stage
a comedic debate
about...

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Dear neighbors,

I realize we have not met,
other than the guy next door
but that doesn't really count
cause that was just to put up a fence between us,
and I have met Marvelously Mad Max,
behind me, on the...

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Worth Two in a Buddha Universal Bush

Our permaculturist agenda,
primal principle of economic/ecological design,
is developing,
spreading,
hunting and stealing into fissures
fractally fracturing Business As Usual,
competitive monomials unveil Transitional Dual-Destiny of Time.

Nothing any one person or nation could do
or...

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Glory to thermodynamics in general...

and generation of heat in particular
cuz yours truly 
spoiled with trappings 
of Western Civilization.

How ideal I imagine 
to dwell in a self sufficient domicile,
where thrum of the central heater...
automatically activated 
upon...

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Most everything I learned about the history of evolution
feels colored by Julian Jaynes' theory of language
and culture
and history
and icons of ecological systems and functions,
forms and frequencies,
rhythms and ironic, ionic 
dualdark cosmological bicameral transparency.

This is not...

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I'm in the process of joining a Unitarian Universalist Green Sanctuary
communion of All Souls,
in Connecticut.

This is not my first time joining a new intentional good-faith community,
but it is the first time I have signed a...

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Au revoir oh perilous freedom...

Since pledging my troth
to the missus July 25th, 1996
after the comma error
punctuated mein kampf with disequilibrium.

Ever since the notions
of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
coalesced within the mindscape
attributed to one
or more...

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Perhaps you hear and see a yet emerging trend
among TransMillennials,
those born at end of the second millennium
carrying and burying ourselves in the third,
yet to die Post Bi-Millennially.

We hear a son who knows,
as his cells know...

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Dear National Science Foundation--Economics Department:

So,
here's what I want to learn,
or research,
if you will.

Why do we have a Financial Sector,
Business and Industry Sector,
Religious Sector,
Education Sector,
Health Care Sector, 
Food and Nutrition Sector,
Services Industry Sector,
and a Political Sector,
an...

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Universal elegy grieves and yet embraces shifts of paradigm
New beginnings consciousness initiates comprehends and thus proceeds from
Illusion’s delusion collusions misconceptions in the irritating
Vortex whirlpool immanent void of false containment

Enlightenment modern postmodern retro visionary futuristic aspirations
Resound...

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Gratitude
A co-empathic sense of trust,
awe,
appreciation of echo-resonant
deep-listening resolving life.

Gratitude 
Autumnal taproot harvesting spring-hope,
just as summer's nutritional maturation
unfolds Origin of fertile decomposing mindfulness.

Gratitude
Why Thich Nhat Hanh thinks it important to smile
nutritiously.
Why Positive Deviance works.
Why Positive Psychology...

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