Long Burrowed Poems

See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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Sonnets XVII-XXIV

Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten...

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C:
  I journeyed long upon the way, e-mailed through your router
  hello "Henry", good to greet, I am in your computer
  I am between him and her, so I am gender neuter

...

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The half elf watched as Lumi spoke with Chroí; then, in the center of the circle the soil began to move and from it appeared the Garden Elf.  He said nothing, he never spoke....

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The missus served me high test coffee...

Ah... tis nothing more heavenly 
(to one borne again devout atheist)
then a spring like January 18th, 2023
here at Highland Manor apartments
picturesque green covered landscape,
where intrepid dandelions 
dare to defy...

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Ah... tis nothing greater than...

malfunctioning heater 
on that brisk winter day
recorded here as proof positive
regarding following reasonable rhyme.

While scrolling thru 
poems crafted yesteryear,
I chanced to jog my memory where
there
occurred power outage necessitated 
more than divine...

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"The Monochrome Echo Chamber"




How many Roads
to "IT"
Black 
as Black & White? 
or Unicorns and Rainbows?

Unitarian 1 and only 1 
Trinitarian 3 exist in 1 
An answer 
arrives 
unheralded 

Reversed in Time
Something 
has lit the fuse
Something...

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a force for good
(for john coltrane and ahmed obafemi
based on ‘trane’s treatment of ‘nature boy’)

“…I wanna be a force for good…”
		-John Coltrane
 
…there was a man…
a very brave, enchanted man…
and he spoke of many things…
peace...

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                                  ...

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Coke and weed
Hold nothing on me
She spoke the dream
 I chose to believe

We ride behind the unseen
Stride valleys of green
With shadows that sheen
 And caveats that sparkle

Even further a field
What may you yield
These layers unpeeled
...

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THE STENCH OF INSOMNIA

   narcoleptic deities in charge of the world
   are tangled and detangled in the threads of time 
   
   they are sardonic and bitter...

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Hush the silence, hurt the ignorance,
Hurt in the silence, hushed by your loud heartbeat,
I couldn't fight for you, I wasn't strong enough,
You left me no choice, you pushed me away and pulled someone else close,
Now...

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Normandy

For man to set alight his earthly pyre 
was destined from the capture of the spark.
T’was mere survival harnessing its fire
to lift his primal world out of the dark.
It seared his prey, it warmed his...

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a walker, I.


A walker fancying himself
a hiker, on a walk, self-narrated as
an expedition.

The incline is gentle, consistent,
insistent and yet i insist,
as i am inclined to do,
to think it steeper.
In fact, to think deeper,
about most things.

a...

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Once upon a magical evening an enchanted fairy I happened to see 
dressed in a fantastical dress with two dappled wings of lace,     
she shone like the midnight sun. 
I must...

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As the final child of the catacombs fell
your plastic knife driven into their heart
as they evaporated into the wind
you didn’t stop.
you kept searching desperately for a new toy.
someone to slice
someone whose fragments you could scatter...

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Bethlehem nights were far colder than the bright sunlit days,
  as creatures in the stable were taken out to graze.

The ox, the ass, the donkey, and the mule
  were pastured out to earn...

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would what that be junior? senior? sophomore?

since this brother in law rarely emails, 
     ye may scrunch countenance puzzled, 
     or on verge of emitting flatulence, 
...

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In my imagination I have 16 nostrils,
As you can imagine that’s quite a buildup of green snot,
But it doesn’t matter because in my imagination,
I have 16 index figures, each one with a little mouth,
With razor...

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Little girl, you who plays princess with the glittery hat perched on your head,
The ribbons cascading down from its tip, tears from your heavenly eyes,
The scepter of a metal pipe and ball gemstones in your...

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The animals know better than us. The rain has never poured so loudly in a key so soft.
To the front, the sailing of city buses and mini vans cruising across in this weather makes the...

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Holograms and hieroglyphs

The whole weighs heavily
touched caressed lightly 
brushed on feather canvass
granite marble marvellous papyrus 
innocence rejuvenated
partial and impartial

Chiselled in and out
of comprehension angled
layered facets facts
subjective trueness 
ciphered and deciphered

Snow flakes teardrops
ink on paper hailing...

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prison life.
life prison.
life as a prison.
prison as a life.
what can be said is
simple, 
if one doesn’t want to
be where one is, doing
what one is doing, then
one is imprisoned---
the walls are high, built
of the strongest, most
impenetrable...

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You were but a worm and then there was I, a beautiful pink rose growing wildly where there had once been no life
Long ago someone placed me here, someone planted the seed, for me to...

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Why don't we discard the mask, let all the stage props fall?
The answer, whispered through shadows, is found in our sunlight-forgotten guise.
The true color has washed away in the rains of days, so that we...

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