Long Aquiline Poems

I love you only because I love you
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
Between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates...

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Sonnet LXXXI-LXXXIX

Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew...

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"The discrepancies are many, the dalliances are few,
both pitched against one dynamic, lifelong achievement"

Poking through the woods of the Mill Grove Audubon Estate,
suddenly came upon an ivy-covered studio shed
tucked away amongst foliage near Perkiomen Creek,
apparently...

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Flying airships battling in the open sky,
 the sailors trying to save their own lives, 
and all the panoplies of war revealed in broad daylight
 unto the human psyche.

The cosmos composed wholly of oceans with...

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Is my family is like a mini zoo?                           ...

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I love how your long chestnut hair flows over your gentle shoulders,
And when the sun searches you out for a moment, your hair sparkles…

Because I lit a match and threw it into that rat infested...

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A Limerick response to Gershon’s “Hair Apparent“
* * *

Hair Apparent 

The loveliest girl in the world's named Rose
From aquiline nose down to graceful toes -- 
   Yet poor Rose can't get a date
...

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In the tenebrous, xenial realm of the lake, where human cadavers oscillate, suspended by verdigris chains, a lamia of unholy provenance, orchestrates a gambits cavalcade.

Each mortal she ensnares, a lugubrious, ghoulish spectacle unfolds, as if...

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She is, like seasons of my beautiful land
Smiles of spring, rain drops of winter
Impish of summer and giddy of autumn
Like a swift river her laughter echoes 
Like a dawning sun shining on forehead
Smile spreading like...

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Above the clouds and disappearing skyline
I was jetsetting on an international airline
That’s when I met a handsome Mr. Einstein
No kin to Albert, nose most perfectly aquiline

Said he was looking for a concubine
The whole thing to...

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As noses go, I’d say mine is okay
if it is viewed by someone from the front.
But if you look at it another way,
it’s not so wonderful; let me be blunt.

My nose is long, and if...

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When I was a little girl,
Mother said to me
on my dad’s side there had been
a pure Cherokee.

I felt so proud that I had
in my ancestry
blood of those who roamed this land
throughout history.

I’d been born with...

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To what zenith do our chimeras whither?
As we travel across discombobulated shores?
Do we strive to collocate together?
Or breed discord and close the doors?

The wayfarer creed is to induce wherry,
With our aphonic travelers on this path.
To...

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His fear he may have masked in front of the bear
But a metamorphosis had kick started in high gear
Hormones were pumping and changing his being
Transformed were his features which were aquiline
Trembling and convulsing and obviously...

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Painstaking plumes of surest gait
To wield diamond steel over fate;
With slow pair of wit-guarded lips,
As otiose words sway great ships. 

Invincible flair and exacting knack
To stand out from the frothy pack;
Ochred with all blue-penciled skill,
For...

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Greater Flamingo, you beautiful wading bird.
                 What a captivating sight you are!
 Long-legged, web-footed wonder with aquiline beak;
 ...

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Emery

Emery had a nose of stone,
An outgrowth of his weighted mind.
Of alabaster was it honed
Into a feature aquiline.
Its heft was such that Emery
Would counterbalance with his jaw
By upward thrust of chin; thus he
Intended to reduce...

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Onward now to vanquish the behemoth
And bequeath the cataclysm unto your kindred
Some squishy doom lingers
On that lithe aquiline figure in the distance
Guttural pinks cannot fathom
This species of maritime tranquility

As anchor splashes into ocean
Waves kiss splintering...

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Whining Horse
	

This is the angry mind 
  Of a whining Horse 
All it does detest	
  Is the Race Course	
A reason there is	
  To loath the Race Track;
The goad, the spur and
 ...

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A scented paradise of floral escapes 
beneath a blue Cerulean sky 
Azure thoughts of you aside the river 
flowing through my senses 
like rivulets of water 
pleasant hot winds skirting my wisteria trees 
wrapping me...

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