Long Antiseptic Poems

Mother nature oh! Rose of roses!
Mother of all flowers' and smell,
Ylang Ylang! You don't know what it causes!
An aphrodisiac turns you on like hell!

Sandalwood with its masculine warmth poses,
Rosemary clears the head, you can tell,
Peppermint...

Read More

Oh to vacation behind the heavy metal door
To escape another election year.
All news is stopped at the door by the guards
Whoever sit in the same place
Waiting
Always
Waiting to retrieve all banned goods
And outside time. 
Between med...

Read More

Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and...

Read More

Gateway town, Mississippi and Missouri river flooding confluence,
with its celebration of manifest destiny, its looming, iconic archway.
Stainless westward marker, its culture flowed southward for influence
within the lawn-jockey, pink flamingo neighborhoods of moral decay. 

T.S, Eliot,...

Read More

“The Tear”



How many oceans of salt 
does it take to form a tear?

Unrelenting waves of sorrow 
pounding a broken heart
hears the howl of sharp beaked foolish flying monkeys
ignorant feeding frenzies swallow whole lost families 
swept...

Read More

I’ve only been at my fellowship gig a week, but It’s official, I’m a candy-striper. Sort of, I wear a blue vest, not the old, red-striped dress, but it’s the same job. I shadow my...

Read More

The words are dark, sharp,vicious, viscous.
The images like bubbling, darkest jam,
With bubble like grim faces riding to the surface
Then bursting.
I am thirsting.Alternately with blood and bile,black.
I am a sad sack,
A pillow filled with rotten meat
For...

Read More

In the beginning was the word-
and the word was…

light darkness 
dawn promise  dusk despair.

I was a tempest
child a feral cat-
alone wild and
untamed eyes a
jigsaw of shattered chaos.

Mom sighs a rustle
Autumn leaves of
disappointment her gaze
a...

Read More

You have to forgive me
Been in the hospital 
For 3 days now
With mi amor
Who has been
In a month
white uniforms
Calm colors familiar
I almost forgot I
Step on new 
ground each day

Antiseptic smell
Broken by humanity
When what is taken
To...

Read More

The Appalachian Trail is quite a long path.
Not many can go the whole way.
For those not content to do the math
It’s five million strides, so they say.

Most hikers elect to go part of the way.
A...

Read More

The Gift
                                 ...

Read More

In the back of my head, in the garden shed,
I see him as clearly as fresh white paint:
A little boy sat on the creosote floor, 
Dragged grazed knees hugged up to his chin, 
So familiar,...

Read More

Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
What are these objects in your frames?
Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
Why must they gotta be the same?

    Cars and busses, traffic lights
    Bicycles...

Read More

"Dream Bug"



Hour glass 
rainbows sparkling
crystal grainy rapids
sliding intrepidly through life’s fingers

their coloured sands speak in tones
they are obtuse and vapid 
like snowflakes they fall 
confetti on my hands

Writing you 
between there
and here again
a feckless court...

Read More

( while taking a tour through those poems readers are requested to keep in their hands,  a
feather from the pea-cock’s tail )

Volga - 1 

there might have been some provocation 
on the part of...

Read More

A sliver of bright light
seeps into the darkness
Echo of voices reverberate inside my head
I'm in limbo,
I can't move
Am I alive, am I dead?
I don't feel any pain,
I don't feel much of anything
But there's a sense...

Read More

“The Lost Daughter”



Thursday walked through the doors on a Tuesday
She sat in the Waiting Room, 
the place smelled too sterile, 
Antiseptic wash, 
rank clean with soaps of fine lyes 
no rugs to sweep bulldust under
such...

Read More

As par and parcel of being
    alive wire impossible aye
to maintain totally tubularly
     literarily celibate by and bye
with parochial restraint antiseptic dry
as dust poetic refrains
   ...

Read More

Travelling over fifty three metres on a baking tray is a wonderful way in which to pass the time. When loosening ties and burning buttons it is very clever to talk to a large parrot...

Read More

The Tangled Web

Lines on her face grew deeper when fabrications were conceived
When further contradictions came, she knew not what to believe
Caught in a lie I’d be sent to my room; there’d be no reprieve
Mom said,...

Read More

They wiped my thoughts
with antiseptic hands,
wrung my mind through linen logic
and hung me between breakfast
and scheduled silence.
Every hour—accounted for.
Every spark—neutralised.
Brainwashed.

Hope came in timed doses—
measured in milligrams
and dispensed with a paper cup
and plastic smile.
I swallowed the...

Read More

For Angie



The hallways rotated over and around me, maybe it was that aged smell of antiseptic affecting my equilibrium...
Trying to keep my feet, bracing the wall of the room she was assigned with my hand...

Read More

Sitting
In the demon chair
What am I waiting for?
You look familiar

                         As...

Read More

Burgerama

Wrap it
Plastic box 
In fast polythene food it
As easy as frozen
And having children
Mash it
Mince it
Churn out time saving
Quick cut cardboard
Dinner
Is ready

Smell it
The regularity
Of air freshed
Puff
Repeats in timely separation
Of stinkless Molotov’s
Antiseptic illusions
Of falsehood

Scrubs the advertisement
Quick and...

Read More

Outside

Sometimes distant music filters into
night on the back porch, where I swing
near the red geraniums while facing
the fairy lights glowing like fireflies.
Hearing the faraway music reminds me of my relatives’ late night parties,
listening to the...

Read More