Long Beakers Poems

These are English translations/modernizations of Medieval poems written in Old English and Middle English.

Exeter Book Gnomic Verses or Maxims
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The dragon dwells under the dolmen,
wizened-wise, hoarding his treasure;
the fishes bring forth...

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Riding tides since creation
Unfamiliar sensations 
Looking back to see my face
All is void black filled future 
Ignorant of our true nature 
Riding this wave of confusion
Feeling the ripple effect 

I cant defect this mold
Thick as...

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Wearing thick glasses
and braces on her buck teeth,
Professor Harriet carried
her pile of books while accidentally 
stepping into the wet cement,
going into her lab to go wash up,
afterwards she decided to work 
on a different kind...

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Not much about Goldilocks is really well known,
Except she liked to hang out in the woods all alone.
Of other customs and habits we have just a splintering:
She was whiney, persnickety,
And obviously skillful at breaking and...

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11/30/16


That girl is an over achiever
And avid reader

That girl is a real brainteaser
Yet a true pleaser

That girl had a golden retriever
And a house with multiple bird feeders

That girl yeah she's a high speeder
The music always...

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Intentions and innermost desires from minds sparkle in your eyes
Surface simulations and aberrations fly off sugar-coated tongues
Where cavalcades of pesky pies and their ties to lies
Assail love clung, flung, hung, slung, strung, stung in beakers...

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A seam in a sock is a whistling clock. Wheelbarrow hours like a treading of grapes for wine. But swamped with the rest of the waters, teas, coffees and creams can bring a mingle of...

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Slow motion memories.
Street lit like a movie set,
outside the dance hall.
Muffler-less cars,
full throttle, then eerily quiet.
Self willed machines idling along the street,
flooding the night; flashing eyeballs,
headlining teenage girls.
A sashaying crush; glancing, giggling,
disdainful in stinging beehives,
plastic...

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Opulence is not flatulence especially in a house. And onion peel is very useful for persuading a plant to float in a prism. It is often great to watch a pea boat sail past. Rather...

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In our house divided
Serpent swallows its own tail
Hiding under eaves from caustic rainfall
Slithers from relentless hail

The herald’s horn blows empty
Bannerless with rusted brass
As a pathway twists to nowhere
Sunken boneway through dry grass

All the bluff and...

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When I was born
the light was in other people’s eyes.
warm hands coddled
spills of milky mew-shaped thirsts
dabbed at my whiteboard mind.

I began to wink the world into shapes;
as a new Loosely fleshed presence
I turned listless in...

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Love can be amazing or it can be hell,
But it's not always easy to tell.
Some are afraid to find it or even say it,
I can understand how we feel "its complicated"
If you know it to...

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Beakers ready, gentlemen,
titration calibrated to the critical degree;
unveil the poetry distilled
until reagents strike at all the barriers
that we erect in love, in agony,
in little niches, shadowy within  the walls
along the course to home.

The night...

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Beyond the wave-sacked,
lie the pockmarked dunes, heaps dug
by the claws of scaly thrashers.

Here they huddle, my blood kin
flogging grim pleasures,
wolfing eggy sandwiches,
dipping tea-stained teeth into beakers.

By a shoaling shale and monochrome spray
one brine-splattered small fry.
A...

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Beyond the wave-sacked,
lie the pockmarked dunes, heaps dug
by the claws of scaly thrashers.

Here they huddle, my blood kin
flogging grim pleasures,
wolfing eggy sandwiches,
dipping tea-stained teeth into beakers.

By a shoaling shale and monochrome spray
one brine-splattered small fry.
A...

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Big brother on the corner and in the sky 
Big sister in the mixed bathroom
With a finger in your apple pie.
Credit cards only -no need for cash
the eagle has both talons on every greenback.
An unholy...

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There's truth in
Spontaneous generation
I've been there
Seen it
Observed the formation
It can't be disproved
Discounted
Diluted
It is creation
It is born instantly
Not from clay or cells
It's not like that
For this
There is no host
No Petri dish
But ourselves
And it's not slow
It doesn't...

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Beyond the wave-sacked pebbles
lie the pockmarked dunes,
sea-wind swept heaps,
burrowed by the claws of scaly thrashers.

Here they huddle, the working class,
flogging grim pleasures,
wolfing eggy sandwiches,
dipping tea-stained teeth into beakers
as a chill summer drizzles on.

I am a...

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We met over beakers
In the back of the class
Both knowledge seekers
Young scientists

Looking for answers
To the stars and beyond
My sweet little Alchemist
Has it going on

Mixing solutions
With the solutions she finds
Answering questions
To where mystery's do hide

Her scientific...

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Even though I read tribute poems at your memorial service I still
Can’t believe that you both died aged just 19 and 20.
Staring me in the face when I open my cupboard are the plastic beakers
That...

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