Long Artist Poems

"Go on forth young graduates,

And show us who you are

You're now our future leaders

We know you will go far"

And so commencement ended

Pictures done and people changed

Now, off to private parties

All orderly pre-arranged

But four young girls...

Read More

Impossible mission to captcha infinitesimal moment

alternately titled: tick tock runneth amuck
seconds elapse imperceptibly 
leaving me dumbstruck,
how quickly fleeting tempus fugit; 
ofttimes imagined as time thief.

Hence following vignette: quiet as a mouse lurks the time thief...

Read More

Here and Hereafter
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.



Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.

Because death...

Read More

Juvenilia: Early Poems XI

Myth
by Michael R. Burch

after the sprung rhythm of Dylan Thomas

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and...

Read More

Dear Donald John
and GoodFaith Followers,
CoInvestors,
ProActive Prayers for Rapturous Redemption
from Eternal Hellish
paranoid
Left EgoVoices anger and fear
Right SpiritFeelings ecodarkly terrified
from and of dying death.

Your LeftBrain does not lack
for paranoid Win/Lose conviction
We must live in a dog eat...

Read More

Medieval Poems



Deor's Lament (Anglo Saxon poem, circa 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland knew the agony of exile.
That indomitable smith was wracked by grief.
He endured countless troubles:
sorrows were his only companions
in his frozen...

Read More

Sonnets X-XVI


Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

Read More

The organic building of a coordinated artist
begins with reconstructing competitively clumsy LeftBrain technicians.

Whether learning to play the piano
or learning to communicate in some new language
or learning to adopt,
and/or adapt,
norms and nuances of some new cultural...

Read More

Conditions were harsh out in Kansas,
For the children and Sarah and Paul.
Neighbors and friends packed up and were gone;
Headed west they could hear fortune's call.
Never sure year to year of the harvest,
So their talents were...

Read More

I saw a girl at the museum. I had to take her number
It was like my heart woke up from a long slumber

She was admiring a Picasso painting.
 I knew nothing about art so I...

Read More

The pencil now resting the image was 'testing' for the creature before him, (his badly-drawn drawin') had come out 'not right' somewhat twisted and tight.

The picture in question, it burst with suggestion, for lines that...

Read More

Sharing my translation of a famous poem (Sadharan Meye) written by Rabindranath Tagore, who won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. It's one of his story-like poems, written in Bengali, which is one of the...

Read More

Once Upon a Time Everything was Perfect in Eden, NSW, Australia

This is a story about why snakes are reluctant to leave whenever you see them. 
Why they hang about, instead of scurrying off.
A reluctant snake...

Read More

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (c. 1460-1530)
loose translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

after William Dunbar

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that...

Read More

The Pied Piper from New York City – Part One

Dare his name be said?
I say, of course, Yes! 

The Pied Piper, himself, is the man, the myth, the legend.
And they, the so-called incurious lot of...

Read More

Translation of Eric Mottram’s Courbet: Elegy 8 by T. Wignesan

Blanches oeuvres ouvertes
résident dans les jours
la surface du banc de travail est noire
les géraniums-lierres
les fougères et les adragans
accumulent leurs oeuvres et jours:
La toile noire de Courbet
un...

Read More

Prose Poems

Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost?lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is...

Read More

you were an infant
i would sing a song i created for you

'there's a baby in my arms
there's a baby in the mirror
but honey 
there's not really two
the child in the mirror
is only 
an image 
of...

Read More

Yoga in Poem A Novel Approach Step 6

Brahmari Pranayama or Humming Bee Breath

IMP. NOTE: Temporarily I am stopping new episodes 
of Yoga in Poem due to personal reasons and will try 
to restart Yoga in...

Read More

When I was born in 1949, Harry Truman was the President of The United States.  Of course I do not personally remember him.  Mr. Truman was followed by Mr. Dwight Eisenhower, but I...

Read More

 

The Untold story of a Sitar Part 3 Concluded

.
A soothing musical note
Was coming out and floating 
In the air 
In that White coated 
Old auditorium  
Of a different era
Which was so alive before...

Read More

"Barefoot in the Bushfires of the Vanities"



Heat rises slowly to rapture flames licking and teasing
Blue Ghostgums to stretch and crack wide open
as Fire spreads molten sweet sap bleeding burgundy all over 
amber gold wild bush...

Read More

0


[ edit ]
pentopaper41
67 followers     59 following     664 
Message   Follow
I am a mom, an artist, and an office monkey.
 

14 contests • 2 lists • 1...

Read More

HEROES

Near somber guards, units of children heap 
dead leaves, naive to any else fallen.
Friend, you chuckle, but your posture speaks
of duty on this day of contradictions.

Firefighters bow heads in silent paean, 
while polished trucks stand...

Read More

War and Peace: That Midst Nations And Nationals

War and Peace, a classical fiction by Leo Tolstoy, first published as Voyna I Mir in 1865–69. This picturesque reflection of early 19th-century Russian culture saw as its...

Read More