Long Bleakly Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems XI

Myth
by Michael R. Burch

after the sprung rhythm of Dylan Thomas

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and...

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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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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch



Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch

Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to...

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Daytime sleep apnea takes over during the day as my brain fights to stay awake drifting off into deep sleep rather on a bus school doctors office in public places this disease is very disturbing...

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Let's imagine that you are, 
like Buckminster Fuller, 
karmically absorbed with Unitarian genes,
were there such a thing,
which of course there are not,
but perhaps something like an evolving Unitarian Universalist post-millennial teleology.
Basically, some shared sense of...

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    Sponsor : Tom Woody 
Contest : Black Hole Love
Submitted:   16/7/25

_____________

“Love embodies in millions of forms and frequencies, not all known. Its intrinsic nature is detachment, with eventual dissolution into...

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Dark chances,
unhealthy and unsafe trauma 
HiStories

Degenerating predative dogmas
not wanting to let go of ballistics
even for dawning light's sacred peace promise
to grab full-immersion hold
and heal dark mythologies
lose now and again later ecologies
repeat rehearsed
inside-only voiced economies
exploiting dark...

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Why does the voiceless canary stare so bleakly?
Why do the sullen grey clouds desert a sombre sky?
As the ugly black smog blots out the valiant sun’s rays
The honey less flowers kiss the dying bees’ goodbye
Never...

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If I tell you the story of old, of how one tiny dream come into being and changed the race forever with just a silent whisper, would you believe me? If I tell you the...

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People say my poetry is mostly doom and gloom
But I’m a funny person and I’ll prove it to you soon
My wit and sharp ripostes are a constant delight
Let’s see if I can tell this story...

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Blank page syndrome
feels like full page longing
to be done with some work project
that will not slowly grow worthy 
of my time
and certainly no captivated reader.

I feel victimized,
tortured, actually,
by blank page syndrome

Where I want to feel...

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Covered Dishes

1

The password is… password, shhh...
Try to remember if possible,
this sure-fire way of getting through the door;
Entering indeed, as with all lithesome ladies,
and their dithering dogs, after
entreating the big dude at the entrance gate,
with licorice...

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what is that ... there ... in the darkness?

what is that hollow creature, cold and callous
that shrouds its image in the deep, remorseless black?
careless, the coal-red glint in its eye ...
ragged-edged teeth to tear truth...

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it glistens …
can you see?
do you see that little drop -
the tiny streak that
writes your name upon my visage -
that etches it’s damp and
dour reality onto what the mirror
shines back at me each day?
do you...

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(thus, I revel to reveal 
     more'n juiced poppycock
     perhaps casting impression, 
     I  hale from Mars,
     thus...

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THE PRANKER AND THE PRANKEE

Pranking might be a game to a pranker
But an unpremeditated shocker.
The prank might become costly 
Cos when you presumed it'll be funny,
the fun becomes a life breaker.
The prank cost a life...

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Perfect Love is what makes a powerful nation
What makes hurt and depression
Fade bleakly away
Perfect Love is what makes jealousy rooth-up
What makes countries' hate
Unfold

They thought a crash - a destruction or two
Of buildings we seemed to...

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To the skies...cries of have we sinned..the seasons spinned...winter grinned as before it’s really beginned...spring’s been sneakily binned..

That bitter wind does cheekily blow...delivers tingling..slivers of mulled wine mingling shivers..oh and..shed loads of snow..

You know it...

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Perched upon a behemoth
A mountain, a companion to a lonely god
Perched is a man
Scanning the Mother
He eyes the ground
As a hawk would spot his prey
He made that world his captivating obsession
There skittered people of a...

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When the starless nights are bleakly opaque, 
and the sunless days desolately misty, 
to steer the astray life across ambiguity maze 
in the miasma of misery isn’t easy. 
When the garden of flowers turn fawn,...

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"we are
All pawns in the chessboard of an
Unknown skilled magician..." (By Poet)

On a calm tranquil afternoon,
When playful chirping and cooing  
Of birds lavishly entertain my throbbing senses,
I drown myself in reverie and retrospection,
Of times...

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She spends the last night lying all awake....
Staring bleakly in the darkness of the hollow inside..
Trying hard finding an answer for her soul's sake...
But restlessness is what in her mind reside...
    ...

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I screamed loud, the scare from my diagnosis,
My streams of tears filled seven hundred oceans.
The doctor spoke bleakly of the prognosis,
His face lay bare, devoid of all emotions.

Now anguish walks with glee where dreams once...

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When you are bawled with all sorts of insults when the sun sets,
Yet you are the uncommonly precious daughter all mothers wish for in the community
When your only heart's desire is serenity
When you play by...

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Mine was a world without flowers
where nature had nothing to give.
Bleakly, a path stretched before me.
That life I was fearful to live.

In the desolate dust long I wandered
‘til oasis I found in your love.
A mercy...

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