Long Apartheid Poems

Once,
or twice, 
maybe thrice,
surely not
not fractal

A clan of crazy ecofeminists
conspired within an 88 unit residential castle
in their historically converted 
sometimes hysterically clueless condo
colonial-red predative brick 
badly bald aging building

With a sometimes soggy south walled school,
but...

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What fills your goals, son?

I told you!
Need to get my car rolling [life rolling, love rolling]
yesterday,
if not today...

If I may interrupt
to process mindful resilience
for a bit...

Let me ask again:
Noticing you are concerned about long-winded
and -winding
and...

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Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

This poem has also been titled "Epitaph for a Child of...

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It had been a hellish week.

On Monday
my lonely and tired AfricanAmerican husband
told me, as gently as possible,
that what I had hoped was a temporary separation
is to be extended into perpetuity.

This separation had been scheduled to...

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First they came for the Muslims

after Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was...

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When oppositional cognitive dissonance 
deflects focus from compassion,
I've learned to go back to when I deflected focus from her.
She sends me passive-aggressive messages,
bread crumbs leading back in time 
to where she began to feel alone,
marginalized,
siloed,
anxious,
neglected.

If...

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Today is assiduously
religiously different,
as I review our local RiverEast News.

Every week
Mike Thompson writes a solid Editorial
in a compelling voice.
I expect to only add
my hearty sacred
happy secular "Amen!"

Our nearly fearless Editor and Chief
calls for political "ACCOUNTABILITY!"
like...

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I'm working on this Systems Theory

All existing formal religious traditions
and informal spiritual experience 
of Great Sacred EcoLogical Transitions
[e.g. Holocene to 
Green AnthroScene;
HolySpirit to
Whole Holonic Natural Communion Systems]

Originally,
through our divine monotheistic
and/or polytheistic
and/or atheistic naturalistic branches
shared as...

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Identity Apples

iam a fat skeleton, resurrecting 
from the sad memories of dada 
and dark mysteries of aminism 
iam buganda 
i bleed hope 
i drip the honey of fortune 
makerere, think tank of africa 
i dance...

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Judging v Mediating,
like Teaching v Mentoring,
like Win/Lose Retributive Motives v Win/Win Restorative Motivators
like dogmatic Preaching v compassionately Communicating,

As felt
and appreciated by my LeftBrain dominant
RightWing hand
nurturing StraightWhite patriarchal 
overpoweringly privileged
systemically elitist judgment

Branching, colonizing, 
extending up and...

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Where to begin
in the middle of cold and dark
winter's solstice,
healthy green life's time
of impeachment,
excommunication,
dormancy?

Where does this all rightfully
and sacredly left end?

These are expansive gadfly questions,
problems,
issues of complexly dipolar reason,
leftbrain dominant
either-or thinking
we are either thinking or...

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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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Dear Bishop Michael Cote, Doctor of Divinity
through pre-historic untold ages
through reborn renaissance stages
through industriously energetic praises
through enlightenment phases
through empowerment dysphasia

Some of us lesser health care practitioners,
good faith social workers,
teachers,
parents and grandparents,
uncles and aunts,
and ecofeminist inter-religious...

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"The Children of Gaza" Lyrics: I

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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I believe it was Alfred North Whitehead,
an early developer of cognitive systems thinking,
who observed frequent miscommunication
and confusion
and chaos
over bilateral complexities
of Set v isolated Individual issues
within a systemic set
of inter-related issues.

This comes to mind
as I listen...

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Impressive values,
like love,
claim resources that liberally breed
ecological
natural
physically happy health
and conservatively feed
emotional
spiritual
mentally glad wealth.

Oppressive disvalues
like homophobia and racism
and sexism and ageism
and ableism 
and monoculturing disregard
for threats of global anthro-supremacist ecocide,
express what we are against
because these are...

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EcoPolitical Responses

Resonant empathy
trusts co-empathic experience
and cooperatively communicated reflection,
dialogue,
discussion,
discernment,

Multilateral paths toward shared values/disvalues
InBetween win or lose risks
misvalued as unfortunately necessary
forces of natural/unspiritual history

Of squandering opportunities to notice
PolyPathically resilient value systems
culturally 
bicamerally robust,

Politically 
and economically
and ecologically
and theologically
and...

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Free Power
                                 ...

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It's weird
and sometimes wild
living with a non-LeftBrain verbal dominant
aspiring child,
now young adult

I find myself waiting for him
to nonverbally connect
and correct me
about my patriarchal domineering
economic and political ableist sins
of felt omission from commercial value
and, perhaps worse,
my...

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Nelson Mandela, crossed my spirited mind today, a visionary legend of peace, love, equality, and unity of all people.

As a prevailer of great affliction, he was like a Greek God fighting for the—"Common man!”

I had...

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It seemed to me,
when I was eight,
U.S. Christian disciples and teachers
had been given so much grace

And had fundamentally boiled it down
to settling for such small subcontinental WhitePatriarchal colonizing gratitude
for God's universally healthy
multicultural EarthTribes.

It was so...

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I dream into my Ta(0)ist
not-Universal Yang equals
not-Unitarian Yin
Sanctuary,
expecting to be greeted
by visions
of familiar spiritual apartheid.

But I am not.
Instead,
communion in this Sanctuary
looks and resounds,
feels and resonates
with multicultural communities outside,
tilting GoldenRule windmills,
bowing toward Eastern nondual rainbows,
surfing NewMoon...

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Dear Neighbors,
community co-investors,
sharing an outdoor green riverside Commons
and an indoor
historical CommonSpace

Both, and all, sacred
to panentheistic me
and probably more mundanely secular
to monoculturing LeftBrain dominant
verbally rationalistic
you

And yet, co-relational lives of thought
and feeling always matter
to cooperative
effective communication resilience
through...

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Hello. I was born after the Civil War and met my fate after much civil unrest. You may have never encountered me, but some things you might already know. My name is Jim Crow, and...

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To faith communities
and fraternities,
brotherhoods
and sisterhoods
and sororities,
local non-profits
and friendly neighborhoods,
mediators
and counselors,
cooperative associations,
trauma-informed learning theorists
and practitioners for resilient
mind/body peace,

Do not deceive yourselves.
Continuing to gaze and daze 
on a monotonous monocultural path

Disassociating 
internal v external
navel v social 
my...

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