Long Chapters Poems

When I was a child
Everything was magical
Full of mystery and the unknown
I read hundreds of books
The library my haven
My home
Hours upon hours
Night and day
I read and got lost in text
They supplied me with adventures
Secret journeys
Fun...

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"The Payload" 

The payload 
came crashing down
like rain expelled
from the fat belly 
of a ruinous pregnant cloud 
bilious with buxom promise

it came crashing down 
like school fish released 
from the tight confines
of a course rope...

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"As other spirits sail on music, mine, oh my love, swim on your perfume." Charles Baudelaire

"Sometimes you find an old bottle from which the soul returns." 
Charles Baudelaire

"Smell is a Word. Perfume is Literature."

"There are...

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Impossible mission to captcha infinitesimal moment

alternately titled: tick tock runneth amuck
seconds elapse imperceptibly 
leaving me dumbstruck,
how quickly fleeting tempus fugit; 
ofttimes imagined as time thief.

Hence following vignette: quiet as a mouse lurks the time thief...

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"Peace in the Nowhere"

Ghosts remain in this place
they read their words 
marked each day on walls
like prayers, it gives them
peace in the nowhere

someplace relevant to go

Ghosts commune in this place
disowned long ago or walked
off the...

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"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems IV
I wrote this around age 17.



Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.

I read the Bible from cover to cover at age eleven, ten chapters per day, at the suggestion...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch



Smoke
by Michael R. Burch

The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in)...

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My love is light (a fairy kiss?)          
               Like the pressure of...

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Something strange

and unexplainable comes this way,
this way, it comes to us sly and fast, 
some say, perhaps, 
it has already arrived, 
it walks unseen, in the midst of all, of us 

we go about our...

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I wondered how that I could be a child of the King.
A long lost soul, I had no goal, but to maybe act and sing.
I believed in Jesus, a man of love,
But scared to death...

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The Picture of Dorian Gray: Paint Me As An Event
The Picture of Dorian Gray, a decent fanciful novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde, published in 1890. The novel, the only one written by Wilde, had...

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Toddlers' Exploration: 

Cardboard drum, a thunderous beast,
Playful roars in tiny fists and feasts.
Fleeting wings glide, dreams just out of reach,
Soaring through tales of barnyard Waddles and Squeaks,
Moo! Quack! Giggles tumble and bump.
Flaps flapping, bright colors...

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Was this a bold  endeavour or worst-case high risk plot?
 In one sense I was caught between two poles apart  concerns.
One must never underestimate indeed trivialise a devilish 
difficult decision.
A decision that may...

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- - - Chapter 1: Early Days - - - 

My father was a rich man, la, *
Though schooled in poverty, (1)  
As such he seldom raised his head, 
Displayed humility.
The center of the...

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September   2017
Warm sunny Saturday early 
Afternoon
Damian was indulged in stock
Market purchasing. He was 16
He believed he needed to spread
His wings. Damian made big
Purchase that would net boastful 
Future funds. He bought 2 shares
Of...

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In It,  I Saw Prometheus Chained And Bound


I was reading Salinger's, "Catcher In The Rye" 
A follow up from Leo Tolsty's,  "War and Peace"
I heard a voice say, "seek wisdom before you die"
Remember...

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"Heart"  

Deep fissures formed
in the cracks of 
the nowhere place
where time leeched
bleeding claret 
through the green 
veined blues

protean bit by bit
the flesh disappears
prematurely 6ft under
mulch for rebirth
the subcontinent
conscientious conscience 
inward reaching

the divine central tableau...

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Niithaar Perumai, the Fundamental Role of Ascetics, Canto 26 of the Thirukkural, the Tamil Classical Treatise on Ethics, Translation and Commentary by T. Wignesan 


[Given the scarcity of information (mostly conflicting even then) on the...

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"The Unlit Flame at Blue Feather’s Cross Roads"



Words these days are seldom Red
like drops of lifeless blood falling cold on a hot frying pan,
sentences are scattered, stuck in Go Nowhereland,
semi-solid, immovable coagulating gelatinous, turning dark...

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“The Lewis Trap”



Well, of course he's misanthropic
He’s a Misanthropic Man
The Devil’s in the details
Buried deep under the covers
Of bedtime stories, slithers ‘neath loose sand

A Liddell bit of cake
A Liddell bit of julip
Sweets for a sweet...

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The Anatomy of a Kural: Maxim Number 245 (taken at random) of the Thirukkural, the Tamil Classic on Ethics by Thiruvalluvar 

allal arulaalvaarkku illai valivalangum

mallalmaa naalam kari (K245)

“The teeming earth's vast realm, round which the...

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The force of the righteous is full of the misguided, a forsaken realm to which we're never invited.  
The gullible minds of weakness, led by their own obliqueness.
"Take your children (Psalms)  and thrash...

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I.
GRAIL OF TIDES

from the brewing storm’s steeping chalice
the breath of death’s journey awakens in quiet tides 
beckoned by the stirring whisper of mortal winds
furrowed by stoic angels in pallid temporal skies
on wings they dance with...

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Zero.
By which nothing is divided.
No zero
no negative
no opposite
no hope
no Adam, no apple, no marriage, no morning.
No mirror
no knowledge
no God, no soul, no ear lobe, no Iliad, no Odyssey.
No universe
no black hole
no zodiac
no hero
no mission, no...

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