Long Canisters Poems

These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems ...






Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“... what rough beast ... slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”?W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a...

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Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here?among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes,...

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Refugee

Tonight I awoke
To the voices
The voices that drifted through the darkness
Straight into my soul

	Yesterday I stood there, my son beside me
	As the “soldiers; dragged my neighbor
	From his home
	Into the street

	For what seemed like hours
	They beat...

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Call me a pacifist activist deploring insanity of war,
never a Fitbit moon-unit soldier of military industrial
complex, this articulate baby boomer verily stupefied,
openmouthed, dumbfounded at inane ill logic to send
best and brightest, or even those boasting...

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13, West Macott Road

My limbs are weak and body old,
Tired am I and withered are my bones,
The skin has wrinkled and is quickly peeling off,
The heart is lifeless and tears have dried,
My feet are shrinking...

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I'm a Facebook rebel
An Internet introvert
More like the Anonymous hackers
Masked cowards who can't stage a 
coup like our ancestors
And change the course of our social 
discourse

I condemn all forms of atrocities
And all retrogressive political 
mechanisms
By...

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Five-and-Dime Store
                    by Odin Roark

Maybe I remember ‘cause…

Everyday was a holiday
At Woolworth’s Five-and-Dime store.
Colored things were...

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Twas a dark knight, 
whence there came a pawn the hushed crowded movie house
A phantom of horror sprung out of the rookery that wrought deadly havoc
Renting asunder innocent audience members
Anticipating Batman annihilate evil within Manichean...

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Exploding Airbags

There you have it, another car user death reported in an accident..
Somewhere in Houston , Detroit a 17 Year old is the latest statistic...

As in any day, while being on the road, we risk...

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He was the only one from the house of the dead at the cemetery

and he scared the living daylight out of other guests at the funeral

shuffled in rigor mortis and reaped a few condescending remarks

How...

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when Democrats outliers gnashed
teeth, and nonestablishmentarian outlaws 
pistol whipped and hashed 
tagged traitors who roared America 
went bankrupt at sold at fire sale price slashed

when Donald Trump ran the country 
into the ground evidenced by...

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Breathe deep into the shale,
vent your anger out into the deep blue
Strangle that rage in the seaweeds,
let the calming tortoise walk of peace
move slowly across the ocean floor bed
There, gently rest your troubled head,
and pacify...

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“Lynching”

Black man floating in space
Knotted rope about his face
Crosses burning
White sheets chanting

Black man squirming     
Blue knee choking 
Buildings burning
Dark nights looming

A noose from a tree
A boot and a knee
A black man...

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If you fly with an African airline, start praying
This is a true story, you will know what I’m saying
It happened in Kenya in the town Kisumu
Forty-four passengers in a plane with nothing to do

Just when...

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After an occasion of travel 
I have reached this new found world. 
My report however is not an encouraging one. 
The life forms here are very primitive. 

They house their spirits in a canister, 
each...

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like some sorority or fraternity house 
   left the sanctified righteous West Wing 
with powder puffs sans canisters 
   of pepper spray, whereby 
   most docile, humble, and liberal...

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Tracks stretch across
barren winter fields
yet their steel trace
like a snail's trail appears polished,
glinting in dying light,

stifling your breath,
towards a dark shed
doors creak
like a sprinter's graveled gasp.

However, birds don't sing 
above the stretched tram lines,
you cannot...

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Men with chests and muscles set on trail
war had ripened, enemies were to be harvested
they filed along narrow path
a path that could transform all into charcoal

Bombs were thrown, bullets fired
enemies sited took cover
surprise, enigma emerged...

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We moved house today
This house lacks warmth and heart
Everything in disarray
We don't know where to start
Things in packing cases
Others in a box
A pile of dirty laundry
Underwear and socks
Old toys that the children
Refuse to throw away
Looks...

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Poppies in Profusion on the proud chests of the Brave
Old and aging survivors, of a time when things were Grave
Stones on a hillside, edelweiss under Moon
Light on a bomber’s wing carrying canisters of doom.
White hot...

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Colorless Confessional


It was as if time had resisted capture
hid its most precious commodities
averted its eyes lest you see into its soul
withheld all but the extremes of color

Everything became a negative reflection
black on white, white on...

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Working ethic.
          steel ethnic.
Pittsburgh in the rain
like metal canisters.

The grain of the Alleghenies.
Old labor's hand sings your
dark iron tones.

Sadlowsky galvanized stainless,
your student of struggle.

Inhale the cloudy...

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Lennon's music still plays in our cars
as we travel across the countryside,
yet masses have to die for elections.

Michael Jackson's "Earth Song" still plays
in our earphones, yet the sounds of guns
and bombs can be heard across...

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ETHIOPIA

see talking slums
silenced tongues
freedom silenced
hope killed
a bling of ghettos
collapsed humanity

mothers weeping ,
under the compression of religion
trees dripping tears
Ethiopia your festering open wounds
you are my anger!

children burn in smoldering canisters of hunger
time opened new wounds of...

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Tumultuous rivers submerged the streets.
Variegated shades of humankind
Cascading, unfettered by the clouds of 
Fumes from the canisters and smoke grenades.

Guards turned against the guarded with bullets.
Although rubberized to reduce impact, 
But enough to hurt without...

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