Long Anemones Poems

Where Does the Butterfly Go?
by Michael R. Burch

for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
Where...

Read More

The Moon as a Metaphor for Your Mouth
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a...

Read More

Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

Quiescent unions...

Read More

LOVE POEMS II

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch: original poems and translations about passion, desire, lust, sex, dating and marriage. On an amusing note, my steamy Baudelaire translations have become popular with the...

Read More

Picturebook Princess

for Keira

We had a special visitor.
Our world became suddenly brighter.
She was such a charmer!
Such a delighter! 

With her sparkly diamond slippers
and the way her whole being glows,
Keira’s a picturebook princess
from the points of her...

Read More

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...

Read More

“Her Ever Changing Moods, the Rapture Reprising”

Lavender seduces symmetry  
in her ever changing moods
slips into something more comfortable

a swollen tangerine sky 
moves its tongue over 
the blues of her violet harbour 

calling the siren...

Read More

POEMS ABOUT SCIENCE 3: EVOLUTION



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I grope,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as...

Read More

These are poems about animals by Michael R. Burch

Double Limerick: The Platypus
by Michael R. Burch

The platypus, myopic,
is ungainly, not erotic.
His feet for bed
are over-webbed,
and what of his proboscis?

The platypus, though, is eager
although his means are...

Read More

I was a vivacious, aroma loving barista, laboring midnights in a coffee shop,
Offering tasty drinks to fellow night owls, while others dreamed of lollipops.

My work was so pleasant and suited me, for I was enamored...

Read More

there is a body in your garden
exposed bones
exposed blood
exposed heart
laid bare

the walls of your garden 
watch the body with unease
The windows of your house
open onto your garden
and you watch, too, the body with unease

the trees...

Read More

 Her untamable sakura spirit
glows like scents of petrichor,
perfumed in jasmine water,
whilst there’s no path
to golden rays of sunlight,
she shines for the elite vines
trailing through silver 
    gates of heaven.

And when the...

Read More

SPHINX STONE 

I am Sphinx Stone
Sun stationed statue
silent sculptured synoptic 
not marble or granite 
nor black tourmaline or
crystal sapphire quartz
vortex for Void actualising 
sacred amber ambles

Timelines cutting cross
my magnetic magenta 
miracle to dissipate in
dry desert...

Read More

The drum, the drum, the Druid in the East
The daylight shattering the glass of night
Behold the mead and cake that form the feast
Behold the glorious blessing of the light


The blazing gorse flames yellow on the...

Read More

Haikus by René Etiemble, with commentaries,  Translated by T. Wignesan 

(Taken from Etiemble’s only collection of poems (out of thousands which he burned in a fit of rage against the university in 1983): le...

Read More

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden—
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing...

Read More

Maybe I’ll lick my savage knuckles
or shoot arrows at the sun

And if our anonymous devils dance
after slipping on their potential tap shoes
we might play the waiting game
	they’ll click click
away as paparazzi cameras
flash phosphorescent lights and
strip...

Read More

"50 Words for Poe: Hysteria"




Incantation to you
Manifesting the Phantom 
with the Hysteria Paroxysm Blues

Hellfire Club got nothin’ on you
Hot hysteria paroxysms 
flying on your broom

a whole new world

Black cat purrs
You, the catnip for this girl



https://youtu.be/boQ9ytantA0



(LadyLabyrinth/2019)



https://youtu.be/ETIPuORrPyo



“I...

Read More

they're not speaking to me now, the Muses; 
they're being stubborn, 
witholding information, like beetle-browed accomplices - 
their mouths pulled tight as drawstring purses. 
they sit on their twin thrones of epiphany and genius, 
smiling...

Read More

128 
128 
 
 
 
CharlaXFabels 
 
UnderwaterLover 

 I do love you Charlie Blue My brown eyed merman I kiss your hand Down by the 
sea Turn into me Eye love ewe fairest Ianthe...

Read More

As I recall my past, it was a sea kissed life
summers spent roaming the Rabbit Burrows
cradled by dunes, beyond Tramore strand
towels stretched out on Woodstown beach
soft powdered sand, surrounded by forest
adventures in the Saleens, daring...

Read More

Strewn on the shoreline, as I walk along the beach
Bits and pieces of life forms, churned up from beneath
Shells, jellyfish, crustaceans, even sea anemones
What was alive yesterday, lays shredded in the weeds

Hard to fathom what...

Read More

We dived on coral reef, my buddy and I,
virtually tethered to stay paired.
He was obsessed with clown fish.
I kept dragging him away,
to see other things.
He kept poking hands at colorful
anemones waving tentacles in the current,
shooing...

Read More

On the Beach, Translation of Etiemble’s poem: Sur la plage by T. 
Wignesan

(The end-rhyme scheme of the orignal : abb(b)a, cdcd, efef, ghgh, iijj, 
klkl, fmfm, nnhh)

How good-looking he was this spy
all studded with sea-shells,
that...

Read More

Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
by Michael R. Burch

“Evolution’s a Fishy Business!”

1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I...

Read More