Long Anemic Poems

Limericks II - Nature Poems and Animal Poems

Dot Spotted
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a leopardess, Dot,
who indignantly answered: "I’ll not!
The gents are impressed
with the way that I’m dressed.
I wouldn’t change even one spot!"



Clyde Lied!
by...

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Dot Spotted
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a leopardess, Dot,
who indignantly answered: "I’ll not!
The gents are impressed
with the way that I’m dressed.
I wouldn’t change even one spot."



Stage Craft-y
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a dromedary
who...

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If I Falter
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the...

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Sonnets X-XVI


Archaischer Torso Apollos (“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...

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Sonnets LXXI-LXXX

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you...

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Perhaps infertile
incomplete
unwashed memories
of elder v younger,
Goliath v David,
crusades v communion
critical, yet part of chronic, events
speak extended family disengagement truth
to powerful dirty laundry engagement failures.

That disclaimer said,
I have two incomplete conversations
in mind and heart
and what I...

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Power to condemn others, and oneself,
is weaker than power to help others, as oneself.

Power to destroy others, and oneself,
is lesser than power to regenerate others, and oneself, 
interdependently.

Powers of fear and anger management,
with terrifying consequences...

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What lies between extremes of boredom and bliss
for you
and those you most love to work and hang with?

If your Business As Usual day
sends messages within
redundantly reiterating how life is always coming too fast
too needy
too deprived...

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Earth's Rights
and Lefts
for
and to
a Healthy Climate;
and please not so much climatic pathologies
for Her
and all her EarthTribal RNA/DNA encrypted species,
extended families,
if you could imagine for a minute
this vast co-in-sedately breathing organic network
hoping together for Earth's Present...

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"Evolution
takes its sweet time
in its work
on our collective consciousness;
the lasting leap from fear to love
in the human mind
will be its masterpiece."
     Walking to Listen, p. 139
     Andrew...

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Words tell a story
But tears make those words supernova
I'm here to listen
I told ya
And Friday you took my ears and poured 
Poured out every content and drop
And I know there's more 
At 3clock you ddnt...

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I retired a couple years ago
and decided to take a gardening class
because otherwise I probably would starve
even with food stamps,
given my retirement plan
was mainly to live off my still-freeloading adult perpetual-children.

This gardening class cost more...

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Waking up to despair,
sadness,
bone-tired at war with a beeping alarm clock,
an alarming list of immediately urgent responsibilities
without an opportunity in sight,
or at least not this first despairing fright,
at end of night.

If this sounds familiar
as at...

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Further post-millennial dialogue with Abraham Heschel:

"The problem of our youth is not youth.
The problem is the [learning] spirit of our age:
denial of transcendence [in our homes and schools],
the vapidity of [learning] values,
[competing] emptiness in the...

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Human Sack Gruff Ice Agonizingly Glommed...
Murderously Skewered, And Torturously Zapped

Directv linkedin to accentuate
piddly money crisis, tis zen uneasy fate,
I imagine dragons gyrate
ting, and licking chops, faux masticate
ting, no matter I didst pre
   ...

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Basic Attendance,
listening deeply to the sounds
and functions
flows and forms of nature's voices,
evolves from enthymematic roots
toward mutually empathic,
darkly transparent
nondual dark energy

Equivalently empowering/disempowering identity
of not-yet-full synergetically integrating
pregnant Time,
equivocating spatially incarnating
positive
protonic
polymorphic
polypathic
polyphonic
polycultural
multisystemic harmonic balance
between Yangstimulus(t) and Yinresponse.

From this epicenter...

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Beauty includes dignity,
respect easily visible
to our nutritional sensors,
including when Beauty grows dark edges.

We each, 
individually,
and as a species of life form,
have our unique and our speciated EarthBeauty functions,
perhaps what also translates as Sacred Grace
for some,
Sacred...

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Creativity opens doors to learning
to read our own, and others’, compelling literacy,
beautiful truths.

We are not an isolated supreme species creating nihilism,
self-serving egoists;
or, rather, we are,
but within an open sesame systemic potential
for also becoming more grace-filled...

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We are each and all Black Lives as small Deaths
inside our historical-cultural DNA emergence
into full-octave multicultural ecopolitics.

In Earth's ecosystem,
there can be no ecological entity perceivable as White,
or even Light,
unless historically emerged as reversing full-radial
progenitive Black,
dualdark...

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Turtle by the Door


The bears and wolves are few;
one threadbare widow mourning,
two grays as consumptive as smoke.
The large dwindle,
their bodies grow more awkward,
more at odds.
The heavier beasts sway
like drunks in the scant woods.
Under a pelting...

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ARGH! NO MORE MEDICARE!

A worst nightmare loomed large
notification courtesy Montgomery County
Assistance Office caseworker
implied medical coverage axed
I felt hammered, nailed, shingled out...
livid with rage
frenzied, harried, jarred...
railing away
fit tubby tied to train tracks
ready to kill myself,
but dang,...

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Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in...

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in the book of John Jesus reveals His divine mission
He makes known His purpose for being was to take on the Great Commission
to make disciples, to give life abundantly, to walk in truth and light
He...

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Are you feeling sad,
wanting your faith community,
democratic society,
to live more...
live more deeply...
live more widely...

Faithful to wealthy health, yes,
and I wonder if you are angry,
frustrated,
impatient,
wishing for more enthusiastic RESPECT,
more Aretha Franklin listened to
and more explicitly understood,
appreciated?

On...

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The formless spider, shaking 
            coins of mourning dew off her back, 
           ...

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