Long Beckon Poems

Unique: I need someone to hold me and tell
me it's alright.
I need someone to hold my hands and feel
my pain.
I need someone to kiss away my pain.
I need someone to look into my eyes and...

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The angles are in the storm
Just before  the break of dawn
Sending a message to everyone
Telling them to remain calm
The angels are singing out loud
They want to break the treacherous cloud
 and relinquish that awful...

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(In a Lush Garden Somewhere Out There)

The student stands where shifting sands of thought
Once firm with reason 
now elusive truths are sought.
Its splendor wanes 
a threadbare fading strand,
A quest for wisdom 
in this digital land.

Sage:...

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Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

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What Good Are Our Tears?
by Michael R. Burch

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

What good, the warm benevolence...

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"The Sleeper and The Supernaturalist"


The Sleeper
shone as she walked 
through the Woods

shining alive 
like nothing
natural could

caught 
in the moonlight 
unaware

the innocent
red-caped roses stared
the trees whispered,

"beware, beware"

barefoot softly 
the Supernaturalist 
transfigures instead

from under shine 
she bares...

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Highlight of Goofus and Gallant 
bred within the survival instinct 
of hungry hordes of prey, 
when Earth in the balance 
against an uncomfortable truth 
smug smurf like scavengers. 

     Punishment meted...

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(continued from A Year Of Months (January-June)
https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/heroic_crown_of_sonnets_-_part_one_772928


A Year Of Months (July-December)

8. July

July now follows summer's song of June;
with sun ablaze, her days are humid, warm.
Great time to languish in the afternoon,
and later, watch an evening...

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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...

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Once so loyal and always true the gargoyles watch everything now
During their stony slumbers with their careful one-eyed open view,
As evil red-eyed demons rain down upon us in their dark-sprit forms,
Whilst our unsuspecting mortal Earth...

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A Bohemian Maze of True Evil

Once so loyal and always true the gargoyles watch everything now
During their stony slumbers with their careful one-eyed open view,
As evil red-eyed demons rain down upon us in their dark-sprit...

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As I ascend the podium, a predator of piquant pontifications, my eyes ravage the assemblage of adversaries, their countenances a canvas of consternation and morbid fascination. The atmosphere is heavy with the miasma of malignant...

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Once so loyal and always true the gargoyles watch everything now
During their stony slumbers with their careful one-eyed open view,
As evil red-eyed demons rain down upon us in their dark-sprit forms, 
Whilst our unsuspecting mortal...

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when I met you, I was dying. for the very first time in my life, but certainly not the last- you made sure of that
when I met you I was dying. I hadn’t eaten in...

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[Before you read, here's something you should know. Parenthesis after the line means the definition of that line.]

Chastened by sudden change in mind - I'm exhausted, so stop treading my trail of thought if you...

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Ah... the glory of a restful sleep

Nothing beats the refreshing
blissful peaceful easy feeling
resulting from shut-eye after
feeling zonked out staying up
late after a hard day's night
binge reading or slaving o'er
crafting an umpteenth brilliant
masterpiece a comment from
modest...

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It’s Christmas Eve, Babe
In the car pound
It shouldn’t be this way
Should not have been found

But I’m the lucky one
I am the thirteenth one
And when I got a scare
I hi-tailed out of there

But everywhere I went
It...

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The elderly, the injured,
The deficient, the mentally ill,
The sick, the chastened,
The weary, the suicidal,
The innocent, the broken,
The lost, lost, LOST ...
You are NOT there with them ... 
Only sadness and loss and pain.
The animals, the...

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O to tune in to good times of childhood—
To re-live gone-by years, not just to brood,
To lighten dust-laden baggage’s dead tare,
To unburden mind of deadwood afloat, 
To fast-forward to dusky days of old, 
To turn...

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It is no small feat to attempt to speak 
of the dying of our Lord
who sacrificed Himself for us 
by a fate far worse than fire or by sword.  
For one as whom not...

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Ancient Shadows Awaken into God’s Light

Underneath the deep seabed the stirring sands of time have passed on.
Ancient shadows continue to haunt all of us from the oceans’ depths,
And insidious and violent nightmares portray bloody and...

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Ancient Shadows Awaken into God’s Light

Underneath the deep seabed the stirring sands of time have passed on.
Ancient shadows continue to haunt all of us from the oceans’ depths,
And insidious and violent nightmares portray bloody and...

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The Ballad of the Lucky Man

She visited me at 15

Like an untasted maelstrom of tempestuous emotions

She whispered like a midnight seductress

So mysterious and so enchanting

She stole my youth away

She dissolved my loneliness
And we were as...

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You toss them to the ground, they don’t beckon or call,
They’re a pair of jeans, and to the ground they fall,
They stay as long as you threw them,
Yet they could stand tall,
When they’re on you...

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My coping method fraught with utmost futility thus...

My professional treatment plan
predicated upon duress in extremis
hence Electroconvulsive therapy,
a last ditch effort I avail
and surrender self qua
to shock the monkey (me)
one (twenty first century)
obstinate bipedal hominid turncoat
optioned,...

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