Long Calf Poems

Native American Translations

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own...

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Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch 

(dedicated to my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr.)

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long...

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IN THE WILD

Early morning, we go for a drive,
An awesome feeling as we arrive,
At our camp gate which, opens 
At 6 o’clock, 
Now we are in the African bush
Which, will unlock,
Moments that we have missed...

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IN THE WILD 
( Re Post)

Early one morning, we begin our drive,
An awesome feeling as we arrive,
At our camp gate which, opens 
At six o’clock, 
Now we are in the African bush
Which, will unlock,
Moments that...

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Story has it you used your power to run amuck
Putting fear into the people, and brides in Uruk

So the people of Unuk pray to the sky God Anu
To sort out Gilgamesh, without any further ado...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - IV - Primo Levi

Shema
by Primo Levi
translation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable houses, 
who return each evening to find
warm food, 
welcoming faces...

consider whether this...

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Where to begin
in the middle of cold and dark
winter's solstice,
healthy green life's time
of impeachment,
excommunication,
dormancy?

Where does this all rightfully
and sacredly left end?

These are expansive gadfly questions,
problems,
issues of complexly dipolar reason,
leftbrain dominant
either-or thinking
we are either thinking or...

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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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Something that stuns me from revelations awakening 
All good people of the world see you Isis 
clearly diamond cut your scale tips heavy 
with the wealth that's stolen from foreign lands 
to build weapons of...

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Venite
Come let us sing to the Lord;*
let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving*
and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.
For the Lord is...

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I once walked into my backyard
and found two slugs mating in a bucket
I had just learned how slugs go about mating, 
or trust-I would have been rightly confused

Here hangs a long line of slime, almost...

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THREE WAYS of Swiping the World Cup

"It is sweet and fitting/glorious to lay your life down for your country » - from a poem by HORACE

(See my story selected to represent France in the 2006...

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Cascading off the winter chill
leaving warmth wherever it traces
the edge of the daffodil, tulip or crocus
spring shines its brilliant rays across
the windowpane that mirrors the friendly praise
coloring the seals with such sweet appeal 

lavender lilacs...

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This is a translation from Rabindranath Tagore's (Nobel-laureate Poet From India in 1913) narrative poem - Phanki. We need to remember that this story is based on life at late nineteenth century Bengal, India. The...

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THE LAST THOUGHTS OF A FALLEN CHAMPION

This one time I know I was  caught below the belt
No doubt I got it wrong and I'm far from my best
My last chilling and coin now I've...

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She stirs first..restless..looking longingly over..senses awakened.
Their feet shuffle slowly under warm covers. The moonlight shines thru the window catching her face. .illuminating it…her tousled hair frames her face.
She looks up, hopefully for his eyes to...

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Glory unto His written word
That brings forth light 
To shine on darkness
And create light within 
that was in darkness 




They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the That was the...

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Crazy Horse Monument

Up there! On the Black Hills Mountain, 1
A work in progress sculptured in granite,
Of a stern faced warrior, strong and determined, 2
Unadorned in a war bonnet, with his hair flowing in the wind,
And...

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Cascading off the winter chill
leaving warmth wherever it traces
the edge of the daffodil, tulip or crocus
spring shines its brilliant rays across
the windowpane that mirrors the friendly praise
coloring the seals with such sweet appeal 

lavender lilacs...

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A field day shoe fit for Mother Goose
  
Fruitless effort squeezing figurative juice
Pandora called triggering 
helter skelter to get loose
necessitating Bullwinkle J. Moose
to usher at yours truly 
(an aspiring wordsmith) vamoose!

Hey diddle diddle the...

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"Who can bear to lose a tie
With a dog that is man’s best ally? .......by poet


"Here lies my dog, motionless in his kennel
unable to wag his tail as he always did.
yesterday when I saw him,...

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In the red desert of the rising sun  
In the surrealness of its silence  
The sky turned grey and ominous  
Amidst the blackened  rain   
As the suns fell into...

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Driving my car across the country, numerous years ago, going to a new place,       
     Changing who I’d know
A loud bang broke the boredom and...

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An elephant weakened by drought, had become helplessly mired down, in the deep mud of the water-hole's edge. Ironic that death was eminent from the place she sought life - giving water. Too weak to...

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A kettle can never call a pot black 
Are they not from the same world of pain?
I swing my Ego in one last time of my life
And i was caught in the absence of hundred...

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