Long Barnacles Poems

Sonnets XLII-LI

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

Moonbeams on water?
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night...
So your memories are.

Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter...
So near, yet so far.



A Surfeit of...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers IV



Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is your concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm...

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Poems about Children V

Pan
by Michael R. Burch

Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves

Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles

where we cannot return,...

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MODERN SONNETS II

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.



In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch

The...

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When my inkless isles 
become drenched 
   with icy wintergreen embers 
of apologetic auroras ~ 
 and l i f e loses its lyrics in lilith's labyrinth, 
  this soul orchestrating in...

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6/24/17


I've been thinking of a whole lot
None of the same old thoughts 
Never has it been about any jewelery or a gold watch
And the same could be said for having my soul lost


I'm not going...

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Excerpt from last night's dreaming:

Being plunged into the Lackadive Sea
blue green below me to sky scraper depths and beyond
With the quickness of burned off clouds, I think:
there must be sharks, somewhere, in the planet beneath...

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Out of the blue on this summer day
Richie asks me if I want to swim with him across the lake
Sure what the hell and that is that
I will match the older boy’s vim and whim
Two...

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WordScape Triptych  #1

Coming from the Underworld as a ghost, just sauntering out of the depths like you did;
With all the rest of us just watching and wondering what you were going to say;
Tell us...

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Folie à deux
("shared madness," or "madness for two").

I suffer in silence, though not alone
kvetching old curmudgeon (me)
(once upon a time, a promising
long haired pencil necked geek)
buzzfeeding off life's miniseries
of unedited miseries in tandem

with ideal counterpart...

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Time is a fickle thing for those
                            ...

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FROM BIKINI BOTTOM TIMES...

...Spongebob Squarepants...what...atoll...?
plunged into where,...no way...toilet bowl...
supposedly, when the ghostly hand ex-toll
ling praise from his late creator, and master

meow mind of popular Stephen Hillenburg
cast said main character in clean new role,
an unexpected greasy,...

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Supine, his fathomless eyes fixed 
     on clusters of grey clouds suspended above him.
       He's busy licking festering wounds of regret.
    ...

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The Wakening World

A new world spins kaleidoscopic, a whorl of color in revolt.
Oceans quake, molding into fissures of tectonic hunger,
ravaging the deep, stirring the primal need depressing
populations unseen to the denizens of land, left in...

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The world spins kaleidoscopic, a whorl of color in revolt.
Oceans quake malleable, molding into fissures of tectonic hunger,
ravaging the deep, stirring the primal need depressing
populations’ unseen to the denizens of land, disregarded in man’s wake.
From...

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Fisherman's Luck 

The rocks brushed by the waves, 
caressed and embraced by the ocean, 
slowly wearing down the land, 
to be carried away in pieces
back to the depths of the beginning. 

Marla Mayhem danced. 
She...

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I could never really understand
Why some women
Won’t give me the time of day
And seem to look the other way
Or I feel like I’m being hunted
And I’m their prey

I just don't get it.
I get so confused
You...

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Resting in Benign Pleasure
By Sy Roth 

They watched me, 
Waiting for a segue.
Continuously gazing at me 
A waxen bowl of fruit
Tantalizing, 
Clinging to my every move
Like lichen on the leeward side of an ancient oak,
Like...

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Walking along the ocean shore
Kicking up the golden sand
I feel the warmth of the rising sun
On the back of my freckled hand  
 
The willet and the sandpiper
Dash into the approaching waves
As the sand...

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I like to go to the sea sometimes, 
and listen to its roar.
With crashing waves of blue and white, 
with commands to attack the shore.

These waves that carry, their foamy white helmets,
Come in outstanding numbers,...

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There is a harbor, dark and still, 
That formed ten thousand years ago. 
It lies upon the western sill 
Of Grand Manan, in indigo. 

Seagulls soar above the cliffs. 
Puffins nest on jagged rock. 
From...

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I gazed upon the horizon
Down below with rocks plastered with barnacles 
Stubbornly clanging on its superior mother
I saw clashing waves pondering in their youth
On their twisted arms played childish acts
Slowly I move my gaze up
On...

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ULYSSES

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now...

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rootless on sapphire seas
tides dishonored then begrimed
a keel eroded, relentlessly thinned 
barnacles disguised with time

drifting toward dark horizons 
battered and barely alive 
distant isles beg an appearance
pleading I arrive

beyond the rotting corpses 
mired and run...

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Sand and surf of Oahu.
Boogie boards and kids.
Feeling breathlessly safe.
Surrounded by friends -
strangers-in-arms safe.

Elsewhere in time and space
the beaches of Normandy
tell a different tale. Holding
their breaths - will they see
mamas and papas, siblings
and lovers. Bullet-showers,
thundering...

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