Long Asylum Poems

With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

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Doggerel II: Doggerel about Doggerel, or, More Nonsense Verse

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood:
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the...

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 TUAN TATA : Song of Uda - I
by T. Wignesan

(Patrick Noone, a British anthropologist, discovered the Ple-Temiar tribe living isolated in the jungle highlands in the State of Perak on the west coast of...

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Perhat Tursun

Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Born and raised in Atush, a city in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Tursun began writing poetry...

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(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")

Human hatchery

Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete...

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Once a pawn a time within castellated bishopric

We purchased 2020 Hyundai Elantra
at Enterprise Car Rental
1207 West Ridge Pike
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania 19428
April thirteenth two thousand twenty three
witnessed greatest amount of money
I spent at one time.

The following day...

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Imagine with me that A regenerates Adenine,
B reproduces  ConVex-Yang Uracil or Thymine,
depending on whether you are a plant or a person,
C bilaterally represents EchoConCave-Yin(Yin) Cytosine,
and D is for full-interelational fractal-view Guanine,
which acts strangely Dopamine...

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I feel rather empty…
Flushed, confused, free me?
I’m feeling kinda dirty
To be honest, I’m fake happy

Wearing a smile like the rest of us
But, there’s a million rivers and fires between us
So, don’t throw me under the...

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thermometer reads zero, a chilly breeze blows
  apple cores thrown, the blackbirds feed
  my multi-layered partner dons her wooly hat
  impatiently, she waits for me
  securing covid masks amidst my overcoat
...

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Winnie, wild-eyed, went insane
and sang “Happy Birthday” in the rain, 
while she washed away her bloody pain.

Now all day long she sings that song,
she sings it loud, she sings it strong,
walled in where she does...

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foisted upon her was the merry go round crystal chandelier

it stuck in her beautiful mind like a beacon of flaming desire

of clouds fried by a cuckoo with an indestructible socket

her eyes wide upon pupils dilated...

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Take me to the tombstone 
let me touch the gray stone that stands
where life could not
I will put my face to that touchstone of deaf thunder,
What happened  to your breath baby brother,
what happened in...

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"Angel Eyes" 

that dark angel
standing in the corner
observing the shadows of man 
pass him by -

he has angel eyes

that shine high beam
bright bushfires that light 
the entire transparent 
padded room parade

dance cards lit 
he’s biding...

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Translation of Mathieu POKORA’s « Je suis tombé, tombé, tombé » by T Wignesan

(NOTE : I just thought I’d translate the lyrics (see the French original herebelow) of this lilting catchy tune not just because...

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Gloriously luxuriating in eternal sleep

Forlorn; bereft of golden
(slippered) opportunities I weep;
Three score and four years
replete with mailer daemons,
hence mindset adrip
with self denouncing expletive filled bleep
unwritten expressed recriminations
wielded upon figurative head of wimpy blip;
decades elapsed at...

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Easter as interpreted by one...

rebated, rebelled, rebirthed, rebooted, 
and rebuked courtesy 
one ill shod Unitarian atheist,
who means NOT to affect
any sacrilegious fallout
nor offend devoutly religious 
man, woman, or child,
when the most important 
Christian holiday notated,...

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“Never forget 
everything Hitler did 
in Germany was legal.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

drop by drop lady liberty bleeds
red on white and blue
common sense vexatious 
verboten spins askew 

“We can and we must 
write in the...

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A healthy dose of invective flourishes at Highland Manor asylum

I hate to be curt,
but welcome to the monkey house
at 2 highland manor drive,
where all manner of imbeciles go berserk.

I and the missus
(thee unfortunate recipient
of poisonous...

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"Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting." Robert Frost 


 
"Bees Under Milk Wood : A Spell"



Spider Web glistens wet 
in the spoilt lies of...

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Eastern stars light our responsibility
to ease ridiculously democratic suffering of Other.
Western horizons speak not of suffering
much less death as inevitable failure.

Dark horizons speak of pain,
and how to avoid it through Other as ourselves.

Eastern lights speak...

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A country of dreams has burst its rainbow at all ragged seams

In a state of affairs illusion of fusion and widespread delusion

The constitution hallucinates as night settles scores of deceit

Bereavement takes its toll in anger...

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Why do i miss you so much when i havent met you face to face.Can i really wait a year to see you ... when .. youre all i want and think about right now...

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-	Written August 11, 2018

Exhausted, you're playing as a suicidal victim once more
Confusion sucked me dry all the more to the deep core
Thaw me like frozen ground beef…
Give me some microwaving relief

Hate the actions you make...

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art inspires me, Van Gogh fascinates me! 
                                 
             ...

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The General Blues
c.1984-5

Again and again searching through grains of sand
hoping to find that certain elixir,
recovering lost bottle caps, 
when the silicon appears, i lose it..
To the ones who don't want or need it,
 I feel...

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