Long Broader Poems

Epigrams by Michael R. Burch

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity 
are the whole of it.
—Michael R. Burch

To write an epigram, cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
—Michael R. Burch

Conformists of a feather
flock together.
—Michael...

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He walks around with his nose pointing upward in the air
With calculating eyes that are so fearful, mouth moving from side to side and a tongue that keeps twisting around the things that are profound....

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The word Wyrd is Old English and means 'destiny'. From the same root comes Urd, one of the Norns, and the Germanic words Werth, Warth, and Wurth, which mean 'become'. The root word means 'to...

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Before we had the LeftBrain eclipse word,
circa 1200s on back through space and time,
we had great sacred transformational co-arisings,
re-alignment as BlackHole icons
of ancient eco-alignments,
Yang solar resilience 
with Yin lunar resistance.

Before we had dualistic separation,
from sunlight's...

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Future selves recycle past dynamic imaginations,
Greek Gods as muscular Yang athlete images
evolve from older internal messianic bodhisattva Yin,
double-edged incarnations of power.

It is in this coincidentia oppositorum,
claims Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
that the peaks,
the Taoist Tipping Points
of wu wei...

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The question is; What does Resilience Means?
It is having the capacity to recover Quickly from difficult circumstances and situations. You are able to spring back into shape, not allowing misfortune and challenging conditions stop you.
In...

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I knew that  I had to go somewhere but I did not know where 
I knew I had to go somewhere that was not  very far from here
So I  put on my...

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Written: 21 July 2023 
Submitted to No. 1231 New Poem Only Poetry Contest 
Sponsored by Brian Strand 

Bridging the Unbridgeable Chasm*

As rises the wealth of nations,
As grows the limb of a township
So declines the flowers...

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In the raw expanse of land where rivers sigh,  
marked by the shadows of cats and dogs,  
with each puddle of yellow reminding us  
of lives once lived, hearts bound to the...

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If Laudato Si'
were written by Pope Francine
and not me
replacing Pope Francis's
root anthrosupremacist choices
with similar
but more nuanced
and multiculturally inclusive choices,
cooperatively healthy premises
might further enlighten
to resolutely empower
a rather more transubstantially engaging
creolizing catholic haute cuisine.

#110.  The LeftBrain...

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After the wife made a suggestion about what to write about...

I decided to title my piece
a concatenation of a few different notions
incorporating fictional romance
alluding to myself and spouse
in conjunction with hybridization
stemming from vague references
to tried...

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Years ago I wrote this poem to help me understand my god…
To get it straight inside my head…
as I watch what’s happening in God’s name today 
I think it’s time for me to remind myself...

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I’m going to reveal a fact about myself some of you may find odd…
It’s that I am not religious…but I do believe in God.

My God has given me a brain, a heart, a soul and...

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Deep In Newly Disturbed Soil, Lies My True Love

(  “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them” – George Eliot.)

Deep in newly disturbed soil, lies my true love
'neath a canopy...

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Image of Grandparents Country Home from my family collection

The Two Drivers In My Life

In my younger years ...
I got to know the souls of my parent's worlds,
were as distant as our known solar system.
Mom was...

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The bar is tacky and unclean. The lighting early modern neon.
dead insects litter glowing tubes.
I found him in the corner nursing an empty glass.

“Are you recording this?”
“Yes.”
“Good, very good”

“Let’s get started then. Are you a...

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Indefinable Love...

Duty without love makes us hard and dictatorial.
With Love, we are softer, have a clearer, wider understanding. And: Accountable for what we do and who we are.

Education without love creates efficient, obedient but heartless...

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Some say it began with the Jehovah's Witnesses
ingesting sacred substances with the Rastafarians.
Others say that could not possibly be true or false.

What emerged one sultry August Town Council evening
when half the town had found some...

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The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue,
Will always remain in a dead language for degenerate times;
And we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line,
Conjecturing a broader...

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A magnet for tsuris

Summation notation of achievements
wrought absolute zero
pridefulness to self -
a veritable highstrong yoyo
(lame at walking the dog)
a solitudinarian devoid of xoxo
methinks (writer of these words)
Hebrew a legacy of woe
courtesy self apathy
expanding across his...

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Doubt is anonymous.
It's (more) synonymous,
to the fairer sex.
It's a, in built feature,
of possessiveness.
A default setting,
of mother nature.
Selfish at times,
devoid of broader vision.

Natural defense mechanism;
that activates when love
is not reciprocated.
Just a shadow of affection,
towards another.
Can cast...

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John: Sounds like I might like to straddle her equator with my meridian and throw down with a hula hoop on each arm. How soon can I execute my commission?

Mitchell: Do you like to eat...

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Asian Epicurean Quest

At the heart of China Town, Kuala Lumpur (capital of Malaysia) is Petaling Street.
  
Domain of hustlers, hucksters, cheap-jacks and diblers; purveyors of street food, rude t-shirts, and rubber sandles to put...

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Ecotones
are ruled by prevailing polycultures,
unusually fertile margins between two bioregions,
like a continental-ocean shoreline
or a clear blue lakeshore
poised above green grassy plains
and below glaciered and alpine forested mountains.

Ecotones
are broader when horizontal,
or can be,
but always comparatively narrow
when...

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A Blue Jay flew squawking into a crown
alerting all the other birds around
News of coming danger ran through the stand
down to the floor and across all the land
The Mother Tree signaled through the air,
it's time...

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