Long Alarms Poems

Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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Poems about Butterflies and Bees



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were,...

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Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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Blossoming 
Effulgent sun proffers love 
Clambering… 
My brain makes me wonder if you remember the times shared
Back to the blessed times, I recall that you would listened, be worried about me, and, at the time,...

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The Pain of Love
by Michael R. Burch 
 
for T. M.
 
The pain of love is this:
the parting after the kiss;
 
the train steaming from the station
whistling abnegation;
 
each interstate’s bleak white bar
that vanishes under...

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"The Children of Gaza" Lyrics: II

These lyrics were written by Michael R. Burch and were adapted in places to the music by Michael R. Burch with input from composer Eduard de Boer.

World premiere, April 22,2017,...

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oh youth in all its callow shades
               is from our hope, precisely made
        ...

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Gloriously luxuriating in eternal sleep

Forlorn; bereft of golden
(slippered) opportunities I weep;
Three score and four years
replete with mailer daemons,
hence mindset adrip
with self denouncing expletive filled bleep
unwritten expressed recriminations
wielded upon figurative head of wimpy blip;
decades elapsed at...

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My grandparents' grandparents,
all sixteen,
digging roots through cultural meristems,
young adults,
adolescents during Time's 1880's,
post Civil War birth of Sir James Crow monoculture.

What would we name this self-hatred,
this lack of compassion and gratitude for help
for human nature's lavish...

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“Never forget 
everything Hitler did 
in Germany was legal.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

drop by drop lady liberty bleeds
red on white and blue
common sense vexatious 
verboten spins askew 

“We can and we must 
write in the...

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A country of dreams has burst its rainbow at all ragged seams

In a state of affairs illusion of fusion and widespread delusion

The constitution hallucinates as night settles scores of deceit

Bereavement takes its toll in anger...

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At last I was a fruitful writer, and my new novel was selling well,
Like the stars of a moonlit evening, putting lovers under a spell.

I had ever loved self expression, the power and beauty of...

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Once upon Trump time,
Free-range,
organic,
totally uncaged hens
brown
and black
and even white
and all things in-between
prepared to vote for more green climate health
growing indoor/outdoor good-egg chicken family values
planning to optimize healthy wealth
green ecoschool henhouse natural-spiritual remodeling
for deep and richly...

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I'm not addicted, so this will be easy
It's a hard truth to hear so I just tune it out 
and I’m arguing with walls 
but I end up letting them fall on me 
“But it...

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abuse, age, discrimination, health, introspection, lonely, old,

Customs To Getting Old  ©


There are very ingrained customs noted when getting old
Getting accustomed to old age is not one of them
One has to be blessed with 65...

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  In the meta-versed binaural wish song beats, 
skid row streets of the bottomless pits of Metropolis/ Thebes, 
you are quardoned off and printed in a likeness 
wronged-vaped, winged
to the wilderness by their covens,...

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"Shopping List"

Sister Kathy's going shopping and she's asked me for my list,
Needing LOTS of help, so I could not her, resist...

I have a Shopping List not too very long,
But the items listed must be sadly...

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Bring two poems is what he said. 

She chose a Personification, ‘Violin’, (the proud recipient of an International Poetry contest award), and a narrative, ‘The Rise and fall of an Empire.’ 

***

A Raven greets her.

She...

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*** In the Dream Foretold *** A Devotion Series Poem

I am getting over paralysis from nerves twisted along my spine.  The agonies are
passing, but not gone, so I am standing, leaning over the kitchen...

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It is time. Yes. It is time. Time for all time telling devices to climb up trees. The grandfather clocks can climb the oaks. The watches can climb the willows. The alarm clocks can climb...

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(Unsigned, Sealed, and Delivered)

Part 1:
Oh I worked several years at Atari (1)
Always thinking, "It's too good to last,"
Bushnell's (2) leaving - hand writing on rampart -
Though momentum would carry us past.

Nolan's (2) vision was not...

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I am anxious
as my 5:30 beeping alarm
grows defiantly louder,
reminding me of surreal difference
between asleep, longing for better days awake,
and,
now awake,
longing for more sleep
struggling toward alarming predawn buttons
to release from this first crisis
for depressing life's day-rousing...

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Private Residence

Sign at the gate – no solicitors –
Beyond the rosewood door sanctuary in seclusion
Untouched by hands racing round
A face framed by chimes and alarms –
Measures of mincing minutes
Exiled with suitcases packed
To astral planes of...

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Jimmy Rigg - this dork I know, from Billings, Pennsylvania - always carries doo-dads in his pockets, front to rear,
Just in case some unexpected problem might arise...bent on having what he’d need to fix the...

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