Long Briar Poems

Winter
by Michael R. Burch

The rose of love's bright promise
lies torn by her own thorn;
her scent was sweet
but at her feet
the pallid aphids mourn.

The lilac of devotion
has felt the winter hoar
and shed her dress;
companionless,
she shivers—nude, forlorn.

Published...

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Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch
											
There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her, and is not the same.
I still love her and extend this sacred...

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Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has...

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Sonnets X-XVI


Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

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Oasis
by Michael R. Burch 
 
for Beth
 
I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.
 
I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,...

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I hanker and pine for wood burning stove weather

I haint no spring chicken,
("Buk buk buk buk ba-gawk!")
but in Summer re: 
long in tooth sexagenarian 
nostalgic for the following imagery 
evoked yesterday with very little effort
(aside...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems (I)

These are poems about World War II and the Holocaust, which is also called the Shoah in Hebrew. 



Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust
by Michael R. Burch

I...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (III)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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**Trigger Warning**



"I Knew Anne Silently - My Ravenous Poe" 

I knew Anne.
you’d think 
with a name like hers
she’d be able to find her way 
out of unchartered waters.

it didn’t come as a suprise, 
then, on...

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Each day’s (we’re alive) one more leaf that has fallen
from tree (Fate’s collusion?), our edifice grown
with the help of light garnered from sources outside
of our provenance, moisture, and minerals,
‘cheap’s’ turned to ‘gold,’ not by Chemistry’s...

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1. A constant smile is the alabaster
for struggle’s ornaments be made faster
average looks with a smile can be labial
its absence points to problems so filial,
may not keep the wolf away from the door
or deliver salvation...

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Nexus had not yet reached the other side
When we started to enter in a wood
On which no any sign of pathway lied. 

No green fronds,, but grey dusky color stood;
No smooth branches, but all with...

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To a Mouse
by Robert Burns
translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sleek, tiny, timorous, cowering beast,
Why’s such panic in your breast?
Why dash away, so quick, so rash,
In a frenzied flash
When I would be loath to run after you
With...

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Nine years my leave had spanned
            travelling to my island in the sun.
A native son returning his native land
     ...

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Walter Branham, a retired teacher, and his wife Victoria went to Applebee’s, the chain restaurant, for lunch one day last week. First time they had gone there. Usually they go to an ethnic restaurant but...

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(Isaiah 50: 4, 5 /  Song of Solomon  /  John 11: 23 – 27  /  Revelation 21: 3, 4)


Out of Cold Shadows On A Highland Moor
Will You Come Walking To...

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Have You Tried My Slushie?             By 
Briar Rabbit
 
 
 
I don’t know if it brings the boys to the 
yard
I’d want some time to myself
 
I  think..
 
I think of angel dust
while
liberty belles call my name
 
 
cement and concrete as...

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Cruelest thoughts overwhelm
beyond the patrol
beyond the drowning sunlight
firelight creeping up my back,
grab your camera and attack
a moment that doesn't hear
the glowing blue
I should have kept in a faerie jar

ajar is my mind,
hinges broken, hinges built
100...

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In the thicket forgotten of deeply anchored thoughts,
Where ideas nest, across time and tailored spaces,
There I stand, guardian of the undimmed realm, the archivist of the flame
That knows not extinguishing in the beating winds of...

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Now, Railroad Bob has lost his job, he’s got no place for working,

His wife, she cries with desperate eyes, their baby’s head’s a’ jerking.

The union man don’t give a damn, Big Brother lies a’ lurking,

the...

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While I gaze in your eyes, cool cerulean blue,
Sifting night, straining stars through morning’s sweet dew,
I can fathom the depths of empyreal skies,
Angels fluttering by, riding wild butterflies

While I gaze in your eyes, changing, aqua-blue...

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you are all a lost generation -- Gertrude Stein ?

I

Once hallowed encephalon 
cavernous cerebral chasms
	now less serene 
		ruptured n' spleen
Subjected to ravenous days?
Days n' illumination?
n' summers hibernation?
Awaiting eschatology and Madonna's divination

In summers somnolent slumbers I...

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HISTORY IN POETRY

REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE 5TH of NOVEMBER.

The world still remembers Mr Guy Fawkes,
who plotted to blow up the House of Lords.
Tortured, guilty of treason, the story is told
how he cheated The Hangman; he jumped...

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Outside of civil man’s well tended garden,
A field of briars willfully encroached,
Threatening the peaceful flowers without pardon.
Oh these gardeners fought hard as the briars approached.

“You don’t belong here, you’re not good enough!”
“You are snarled with...

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A pregnant lass with eyes of glass had never learned to cope;
once set adrift her fall was swift, she slid a slipp’ry slope.
She fled the curse of worlds perverse by shooting shots of dope,
and stalked...

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