Long Cells Poems

There's consequences in all we say and do 
Go forward and walk your walk and I'll go ahead and talk my talk 
Quite distraught due to the fact that you're too good to be true
I...

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Oh my soul what hails you?
Oh my soul what awaits you?
Oh my soul why are you in despair?
Oh my soul I have not deserted you
Oh my soul I have something to share
Oh my soul I...

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Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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Rejection Slips 2

The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch
 
The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,
 
the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,

the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,
 
the face in the...

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I'm so confused,
raised to believe cooperative love powers
over competing fears
about scarcity of healthy time, 
and other resources
for evacuating anger 
about past over- and under-valuing of myself
as a regenerate wealth source

CoPresent ReTort,
raised to believe the Golden...

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Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in...

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Hi.
We don't have a lot of time,
or, well, I guess you do,
but I don't,
so let's plunge right into the first big question:
Which came first, form or function?

False dichotomy. No such thing as a totally dysfunctional...

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Political Science of EarthTribe Education

Really? That’s my topic?
Didn’t Paulo Freire already do this one?

Oh, I see..neurosystemic therapy learning 
and restorative justice mentoring,
including healthy pedagogical development 
of ecologically cooperative systems
doing the best we can
to avoid retributive...

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Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed...

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Angry FireGod sneers sarcasm,
"Not warm enough yet?"
"Still too much clean water and air
and other healthy stuff,
like sun-baked red chili peppers?"

Excuse me,
I was under the impression
that I invited you for my interview,
which would involve me asking...

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“le livre bleu” 

Terabytes.
lonely poets, writers, 
musicians and artists play here,
they wear masks that cover
vermillion dripping smiles
over sharp little wolverine teeth,
they drown their sorrows in their muses -
contemporary little monsters – Still Life, 
they call...

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Prose Poems II
by Michael R. Burch

These are prose poems (is that an oxymoron?) and experimental poems...



briefling
by Michael R. Burch

manishatched, hopsintotheMix, cavorts, hassex (quick!, spawnanewBrood!); then, likeamayfly, he’s suddenly gone: plantfood.



bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch

u are charming...

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My eyes stare straight,
fixated on something in the distance, 
humming a song that would send chills,
if you ever got the chance to listen.

A padded cell and a straitjacket,
the doctor giving one of his ‘visits,’
his moans...

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THIS WAS BASICALLY ORCHESTRATED BY CIRO GARGANO IDEA MAKING DONALD PELLEGREN BELIEVE HE AND I WERE PARENTS AFTER A BREIF ENCOUNTER WITH HITMAN PELLEGREN HE BECAME OBSESSED WITH FATHERING A CHILD WITH ME HE RANTED...

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Today we begin with a quote from Eisenstein
with commentary in brackets
informed by Bucky Fuller's cooperative metaphysic 
of Synergetic Steerage.

"We have a[n autonomic neurosystemic] need to stay in contact with people with whom we share emotional...

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(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")

Human hatchery

Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch



Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch

Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to...

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What have you learned from your family experience
that influences your position
on public health and safety,
national health defense
and economic offensives you might propose
for healthier individuals 
and families
and nations
and even planet Earth, hopefully?

Could you give me an...

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[ ... story with context, a plausible universe with top and bottom
  a coat of cosmos covering
  over a subterranean protoverse of potential fields
  a quantum cellar creating
  the very big...

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I sing my songs with rageful joy in mind,
Forgetting the past struggles, aches and sorrows
That intertwine with my mind’s eye, leaving all of me behind
Forgiving others of their wrongs for better tomorrows

You know who comforts...

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Religious gatherings happen on Thursday as well in Bean’s Cathedral.  The Scribes would read from The Doctrine of Crop and Harvest and the Bean people who attended would be blessed for a greater existence...

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Last night I dreamed I was Donny's sexy Secretary 
of Public Health Education,
charged with training health therapists
who traveled from home to shelter
with a one question survey,
"Which do you experience as healthier
for yourself,
those around you,
for your...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems XII

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly,...

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"Artificial Iris"


Orwell was lurking in the background, somewhere;
the dream was eerily familiar, 
the words and their meanings, read in Syntax,
once read between pages of hardcopy in school 
were aptly ignored - 

however, 
our Overlords were...

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