Long Blackness Poems

When I was a child
Everything was magical
Full of mystery and the unknown
I read hundreds of books
The library my haven
My home
Hours upon hours
Night and day
I read and got lost in text
They supplied me with adventures
Secret journeys
Fun...

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Where art thou anonymous benefactor...to offer me succor?

Ah... methinks legal tender 
could be a boon to help me bolster 
mein kampf with necessary material equipage,
which prospect to acquire essential 
commodities sabotaged 
at the altar of...

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Nemesis, Confrontation And The Rejoined Battle,
Now Completed


(Nemesis) - Part One

O'lord of blight dare thee to now abide
Leaving thy abode to earthen realm ride
As punisher with dark universal might
As grief bearer, humanity to smite!

Dar'est thee enter,...

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Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan 
loose translation/interpretation by...

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English translations of Arabic poems by Fadwa Tuqan aka "The Poet of Palestine"

Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink...

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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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The Story so far…
Makani (The Rising Wind), a beautiful extra-terrestrial researcher is sent to a remote island to observe earth. She finds Sam, a shipwrecked earthling near death owing to drowning. Sam (Ka ‘Lo -...

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Wovoka in the Feverland

In the Dying-Grass Moon came another winter to claim the old and sick.
This was when the first messengers came
To the desolation known as Pine Ridge.
They came riding in at the end of...

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On that night the moon seemed hidden from her starry brothers
The kind of night not suited for the fighters nor the lovers
I ventured out only to put out the low burning lamp
When there I saw...

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From the window of my chic city office, lost in thought, I gaze out.
The pedestrians scurry like frenzied ants below, caught up in their bustling state of holiday insanity.
In his haste to cross the street...

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Differences – you say !

I – me Lass – brave Helios, rides his golden chariot, 
drawn by fiery Steeds, into the vastness of this universe.

These mighty Titans, dispatched – brilliant, glowing -
ruled, controlled the blueness...

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WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

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Don't you think that this title is darkly divine?
But, of course, there will have to be weirdness that’s funny,
Though my nightmares are many and have complex arcs
There’s some risk here I might have to work...

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Rosalia - The Evil Black Witch of the Harz, Part Three

Vespers’ Prayer Preparation for Black Mass
In preparation for the ritual Black Mass at midnight, Rosalia recites the following prayer incantation which must be rendered latest...

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I crept into the pit of hell all alone. Contingent upon my lifestyle I knew this could be my last day alive…

She haunted me in my dreams. She terrorized me in the sunlight but through...

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I went out for the newspaper at the usual time this morning, shortly after 5AM, (yes, I'm one of the "odd few" who still enjoys the crisp feel of a morning paper in my hands),...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s 1922 Section 1 by T. Wignesan

for David Attoe

Notre devise pourrait être: ‘que nous nous ne soyons pas envoûtés’
Wittgenstein in Zettel

laissez pendre   la graisse   sans cou
où la tête...

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After enjoying a pleasant walk, I then spent an hour at a park,
And I relished the dulcet sounds, of cheery airborne skylarks.

The blooms were so lovely, all sultry in the fervid sunshine,
And the hummingbirds were...

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(Apropos Of A School-Day Happenstance)

There she stood on the edge 
of the cliff of loneliness—her
tiny eyes staring out into space.

As I cautiously approached her,
I softly asked if everything was ok.
She replied that everything was fine;
that...

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I awoke the next day, with a soft smile,
Not awakened by the screeching and the moaning of the demons beside,
But of the intense breathing of my collaborator,
Crouching above me, glaring me down with eyes abhorred
Though...

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Beneath a misty veil of ‘Euphoria’ by Calvin Klein, she dares to dream of acceptance in a world of wanna-be Literary Giants who are members of an elite writer’s group, as she drives along a...

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The bird wanted to fly

But the wind wanted to blow

“Rest now bird”, said the wind

“You now take it down slow,

And let me flow.”

 

The bird accepted thinking it was a request,

And ignored the proud in...

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I.	Imagine a stack
Of razor blades
Bolted together
Polished edges
Forming a blunt mass…
Who would guess the 
Blackness of that face? 
	
II.	Picture Pandoran box
Harboring atom pulse; 
No less a voyeur
The scientist peering
Through revealing keyhole
Finds an interior
Darker than any light.
	
III.	Such...

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