Long Atoms Poems

Sponsor : Regina Macintosh 
submission  : 2/7/25
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   embedded in avatar’s 
sequential chromosomes 
novel_sprite_ageless___BIRTHED 
Soul protected       simultaneously          ...

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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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Each flame 
elegantly weaves in waves
flowing up from resources red cinder hot,
similar in warm color
temperature decrees
of beauty as integrity's truth
trust each surrounding flame.

Each flame 
unique in point of origin below
as ubiquitously flickering fading destinations above.

Yet...

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Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus...

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Cleansings
by Michael R. Burch

Walk here among the walking specters. Learn
inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave
to bone this tightly if their hearts believe
that God is good, and never mind the Urn.

A lentil and a bean might...

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Poems about Things that Break I
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

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Poems about Things that Break III
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

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Sonnets LXXI-LXXX

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

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, in despair.

Because you...

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"Hey, you philosophysing Hindu. Give me a break, Buddy. I was just pulling your leg. [...] I want the rest of the story. Really, I mean it.” Theson said nothing. [...] “I can see you’re...

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When my life has finally left me and my last breath has been shed
And the silver cord is broken and my bodies firmly dead
I shall hover near the body, download the scenes of this past...

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Tell me, my friend,  
does infinity not unsettle your reason,  
or is it a comfort—to believe it meaningless?  

Look beyond the rust of your disbelief—  
this isn’t the frostbitten dogma you...

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I wonder if everyone
has a most dreaded dreamed
nightmare worst way 
to conscientiously drop wrong dead.

Mine is claustrophobi-recallish buried
half alive at best is worse
in a wooden rough pine crate.

I'm feeling angry with those who raped,
then buried...

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A lovely outcome for our recreational journey,
or Way
or Truths,
or LoveLives,
whichever you prefer to pick out
from among this graced array,
tells a multi-generational creation story
of cosmic sacred ecology
and Earth's evolution revolutions,
drawing on and with 
scientific deductive knowledge
both...

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I (a youthsome, wholesome, jokesome, handsome,...
gamesome, chucklesome, bothersome,
and awesome modest fellow)...
does not deliberately court immortalization,
and wonders what criteria confer elevation,
exaltation, glorification, hero worship,
idolization, veneration, or worship.

I go about a daily humdrum routine
me, a twenty first...

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Beginnings – Endings

Out of the darkest reaches of time and space
came molten minerals, gasses, rocks, comets
– life traversing aeons, in suspended animation
across millions of light years, billions of desolate miles
creating unseen universe after universe,
creating unseen...

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On a magnificent morning, in the fragrant month of July,
I was heading to a new job, amidst the golden butterflies.

For I had been hired by Nasa's, Langley Research Center,
To work on new projects, and to...

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Once wars were fought with sticks and stones
to flog the flesh and batter bones
and conquer lands, defending thrones -
though gods provoke, not one atones. 

The multitude (by hordes beset
with battle-ax or bayonet)
braved blades, dyed red...

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Choose unironically ripping off a film to be ironic
Choose now because then will never be enough
Choose puff puff puff puff puff pass because you’ll never have enough
Choose feeling guilty in the morning because it’s better...

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Which paradise is not the elusive chimère?
	 	 
…how long does it take to live one life…learn the lessons of a lifetime…find the time to live…find the time to sort things out…know what you did...

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Brains and guts orbit the soul—
that polar star searing in the marrow of being.

I was born somewhere between Einstein’s neurons
Ginsburg beat poetry, the birth of rock and roll, revolution marches,
and the calloused hands of a...

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"I do not see what right any one would have
to object to calling this part 
[the South American mainland], 
after Americus 
who discovered it 
and who is a man of intelligence, 
Amerigen, 
that is, the...

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From Earth's original OceanicWomb
our DNA regenerate Soul emerged.

Yet these are yet One
Sacred Ecological Nature.

DNA's memory strings
of Spiritus-Anima Mundi
became Greek encultured MotherWomb
of holistic uniting Earth.

Spiral dipolar poetry of motion
and emotion,
commitments
and recommitments,
bare analogical deep values
for regenerating healthy...

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All that does encompass bespeaks wonder in everything
bubbling brooks and waterfalls does your glory ring
terrestrial and celestial ever fill our eyes with seeing
how can not it's splendor not fill our very being
 
raindrops in waters...

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When I was a child, I wondered

Was deep sleep, death?

Was every morning a new life, a new incarnation?

Waking up, I found the people around me were the same

I was the same too, nothing changed

This cannot...

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Hypothetical Lust

                                 ...

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