Long Apparent Poems

Spiritual Mahjong
Your Move Lord

Is there a God?
A benevolent entity.
An eternal presence presiding over me.
A creator, watching and observing.
All knowing.
Is my end determined and conclusive before it begins, before I begin?
If so, then to what purpose...

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I cannot let this obsession with Coronavirus (COVID19) go
It is apparent, from the number of deaths projected, to be in the hundreds of thousands, that many Americans still are not heeding the warnings. I hope...

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One week passed before Polly
Called. Molly and Dolly agreed 
To change the meeting 
Location. "We'll meet at the 
Small Park near by where we 
Used to live."  Dolly called 
Her mother and told 
Her...

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Date:  August 2041

Members of the Damian fraternity 
Were relaxing in the backyard. The
Soon to be 4 year olds conducted 
Themselves in their sandbox.
The older children picniced on
The grass. Amadeus DJ Damali 
And Desharah sat...

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Disability, Illness and Fundamentalism

My brother died of Cystic Fibrosis, 
When I was twelve and he fourteen, 
It took away his ambitions, 
To study at Oxford - the pipe organ’s steam. 

I understand being born with...

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You are a 15 year old girl;
so young and able;
stature small , petite short not tall,  they hardly see at the kitchen table;
And at school it's not cool;
you're chosen;
But not for love, just..
Lust;
you see...

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Hello,
you've reached the EcoTherapist Cooperative.
How can we help you
without bringing harm to Others?

That's a question I've never thought about.
I'm calling for the National Republican Party.
We would like to hire an EcoTherapist
for a consultation
during the 2020...

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I was listening to Cornell West,
who described our catastrophic tolerance of disvalues for others,
situations we would never tolerate for ourselves,
disvalues like homelessness and hunger,
but also like random violence, 
abuse and neglect,
lack of caring,
as a "conspiracy"...

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I have had a highly redundant,
one might even choose polypathic,
graduate studies experience
spanning my adult life to date.

This began with a semester of Philosophy.
Just enough to learn I wanted something more experiential,
a more communitarian environment of...

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TO:  Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner, Chief States Attorney

FROM: Dillen Dye’s Employer

8/16/16

RE: Some apparent non-compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act; common courtesy, civil respect; freely accessible pursuit of health, happiness, and prosperity

I don’t...

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This is the third time
I've read Beyond Religion:
Ethics
[non-sectarian, non-partisan, non-violent]
for A (not "The") Whole World
[ZeroZenZone Universe, psychological and politically eco-logical].

In the second, of two, sections,
the Dalai Lama discusses,
in most excruciating therapeutic detail,
emotional positive v negative...

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To receive care
that best meets your needs,
and also,
by the way,
everyone else's too,
we look first
to where and when we have given such care
since our original longest reborn journey
down Mom's birth canal,
prepared just in time for our...

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From the window of my chic city office, lost in thought, I gaze out.
The pedestrians scurry like frenzied ants below, caught up in their bustling state of holiday insanity.
In his haste to cross the street...

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(Remembering Innocence)


Note to Readers of Previous Versions:
There are so many new vignettes scattered throughout the poem that I hope you will reread the whole thing! There are new tales, improvements to previous verses, and improved...

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[ ... story with context, a plausible universe with top and bottom
  a coat of cosmos covering
  over a subterranean protoverse of potential fields
  a quantum cellar creating
  the very big...

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Do you know what it feels like when your dad leaves to go get the milk and comes back with a gun and some vengeance?
No? Well me neither.
See look, being funny is hard.
Some people don’t...

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Inxs of poison from iron maiden scorpion mamma and ac/dc charged aries papa

Although gainfully unemployed 
(fate now finds me receiving 
social security disability – 
for approximately 
the last baker's dozen years -
the yeast divine intercession...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems XII

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

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,...

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Don't you think that this title is darkly divine?
But, of course, there will have to be weirdness that’s funny,
Though my nightmares are many and have complex arcs
There’s some risk here I might have to work...

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I was born to be a survivor and a fighter.
That's why I became a writer.
As a child the physical abuse I endured.
Being a baby it was pretty absurd.

The child of recovering addicts.
Even one that still...

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C:
  I journeyed long upon the way, e-mailed through your router
  hello "Henry", good to greet, I am in your computer
  I am between him and her, so I am gender neuter

...

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It has been said
There is no bad question
asked with cooperative integrity.

While those asked with competing disintegrity,
mendaciously,
are not really questions at all.

That said,
conceded as asked and answered,
Some questions remain
more ecologically and economically,
politically and personally,
publicly and intimately,
naturally...

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It's been four years since I've seen so much as an insignificant mountain creek. Been overburdened with comfort, now frantic with nature withdrawals, having to settle for photos found on Google Images: emerald pine trees,...

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It's been four years since I've seen so much as an insignificant mountain creek. I've been overburdened with comfort, now frantic with nature withdrawals and having to settle for photos found on Google Images: emerald...

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Last Night 
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
translation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your memory stole into my heart
as spring sweeps uninvited through barren gardens
as morning breezes revive dormant deserts
as a patient suddenly feels better for no...

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