Long Chapbook Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems VIII

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school and college student. 

Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that...

Read More

Most imp potent and salient playbook page...
'bout fluffiness of hair after washing

Now get ready for...
yup intelligent persiflage
determining if potty "talk" gauge
correctly calibrated courtesy this sage.

Beats out global warming
by a long stretch
most important commander
must set example...

Read More

I felt tears trickling down. After so many years. All persevering truce is a magnificent allegory , measuring minuscule salt portions with a grandiose precaution. The immediate call will be the lasting diva:
“When you are...

Read More

footnotes

im tryina finish another 20 page chapbook

this is the first part of 2 of what i got so far because its too long for 1

then sneak is thin
an inch is in
transition is trinsition

Riverside

1 The Watchtower

Embryos...

Read More

Thinking about Brian's recent Footle contest (my crazy eyes had been seeing FOOTIE all this 
time and just realized yesterday it is called FOOTLE with LE on the end) I proceeded to drive 
to the...

Read More

I dream of magic lines but they  elude me.
Chapbook on acrylic tube  palette, janus-faced cave in 
at the crack of dawn,
crescent moonlight awnings turn to  circus of the  soul, 
images that...

Read More

(Poem included in the Poems of Yosemite chapbook.)

Ineffable – 
Still, I write these lines
                     ...

Read More

My elderly friend and I walk along
the raised flower beds
full of rainbows of blooms,
becoming the mother and daughter
in the famous Renoir painting,
now with the daughter grown up.

We slow our pace,
gazing at pink and yellow dahlias,
velvety...

Read More

[This poem first appeared in the anthology, "The Soul and the Singer," Young Publications, c. 1968.  It was reprinted in my first poetry chapbook "The Lady in the Pink Hat," Candor Press, 1969.]

God rises...

Read More

D enver, Colorado was the place that Dave called home.
A fterward, he headed east and learned to write a poem!
V iolins he loved to play and did professionally,
E njoying his years in many a symphony.
R...

Read More

The poet dreams, and with a simple glance
at trees or sky or at a mountain spring,
begins to write, endeavors to enhance
each sight of beauty with imagining.

He paints midsummer as a day of gold,
the song of...

Read More

The Messenger

I watched the clouds of afternoon
 Gather tempest force;
Now, from a cozy shelter
 View October's raging storm;
Watching through rain washed windows
 Golden oak trees quake
While from their summered branches
 Autumn treasures take.

Drops of glistening...

Read More

The last hour lies down
in mid-winter’s gully      
a frosted string of light 
spooled into dark 
stitched into fantasy

Flying birds gather the city
in their wings
Ah, to love birds and their flights...

Read More

Brisk the air, a fall breeze sways the tree on this new land. 
Forest druids can be seen but be wary on approach. 
Most of the land still stays unmanned. 
Streams flow through the forest...

Read More

A fledgling poet round two thousand three,
I found some friends who mentored me; they led
me to a site called Shadow Poetry.
By mental challenges there, I was fed.
I learned to better write according to
specific forms or...

Read More

Every where in the world
When you eat fish
In a restaurant

The restaurant owners
Claim it is salmon or tuna
Or other delicious fish

But the sad reality
60 percent of the time
You are eating fake fish

The fish may be fish...

Read More

We were beginning 
to gather 
   at the "Shut up and Write"
workshop on Broadway
   I brought a couple 
of chapbooks of my 
   poetry 
    ...

Read More

Don’t waste the magic children have.
They cry out in consternation at each new sensation
As though bludgeoned once again by feelings earned in another life.

Wail!
Oh, wail!
          The...

Read More

One of the poems from my chapbook #IT'S GODLY

The howling winds depicts no hurricanes
The sound of rains tapping on the stones is no noise
But a reminder that in the fields,
human silence predominates,
In the fields time...

Read More

After a perilous journey
          They came to Rivendell
           A port in
A stormy sea
The home of Elrond
...

Read More

When Rico said, Thirty days will go by
and I’ll be forgotten after I die
I knew what I had to do
I’ll make a book for you
At least the cover will catch your eye

I decided to do...

Read More

When I go to a vegetarian restaurant 
I often encounter fake meat
Often called mock meat

Made out of soy beans, and other things
And I wonder 
Why bother with the façade

I mean if you are a vegan
Be...

Read More

When I go to a vegetarian restaurant 
I often encounter fake meat
Often called mock meat

Made out of soy beans, and other things
And I wonder 
Why bother with the façade

I mean if you are a vegan
Be...

Read More

When I go to a vegetarian restaurant 
I often encounter fake meat
Often called mock meat

Made out of soy beans, and other things
And I wonder 
Why bother with the façade

I mean if you are a vegan
Be...

Read More

When I go to a vegetarian restaurant 
I often encounter fake meat
Often called mock meat

Made out of soy beans, and other things
And I wonder 
Why bother with the façade

I mean if you are a vegan
Be...

Read More