Long Chasing Poems

Just enough to make it just
I want this to be enough to make this
The last song ever, the last note ever
The last romantically, poetically sad excuse for an apology, epilogue
But I've already messed up the...

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“SUMMER”



Where 
has Summer 
gone?

The world 
has lost 
Summer

Sweet 
little 
dream

missing 

all those other 
beautiful  
small dreams 

seen as toys
small and 
inconsequential 

casually tossed aside, 
disposable play,
things

pure shining lights
smiling eyes once so bright, 
switched off,

'neath...

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"Oak" 

The guardians
stood around and 
shook their heads

great thoughts 
quivering 
from the ground, roots up, 

as if to walk 
confidently 
with great armies

yet hesitation 
was witnessed
in their waving gestures

perplexed 
and touching 
green crowns, 

there they...

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Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers III




Success
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

We need our children to keep us humble
between toast and marmalade;

there is no time for a ticker-tape parade
before bed, no award, no bright statuette

to be delivered...

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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"The Strange Case of F.T."



They say the dead don’t talk
the stories I have calculated
to deliver a saving grace 
confessional shared amongst 
my equal peers, or so I deem 
you somewhat sometimes seem,
less than me, you...

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Fulfilled fantasies and legitimate realities…you do know how to please…
Are you listening to my voice of longing and yearning?
No, don’t backstab me with your broken promises…stop being a horrid tease…
Do not worry, Lord, I am...

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Poems about Children IV

Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of 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...

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At the footbridge Sue was meeting her beau
(He was married to a woman called Flo)
Sue soon found out his deception
She dismembered his erection
For his love life it was a massive blow

To the hospital fled poor...

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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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I know I promised
 no more ‘Make you Cry Poems’
I said I'd never write another 
‘Wipe your eye poem’

 And for three years 
I tried not to retract, 
but after so many tears 
I have...

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This is all done for Love of Another

The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.
John 6:63 NIV

Sadly we fight against...

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Prose Poems

Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost?lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is...

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The excitement mounted as we rummaged around in the attic looking through old steamer trunks for discarded clothes and props to make Halloween costumes. With an old suit and hat of Granddads, I became a...

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Lumi's hand pressed upon his shoulder in a surprisingly firm grip guiding him into the dining area and to the second of two long slender tables where sat five older elves including DynDoeth.
  ...

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"White Noise and the Mother Load of Dark Matter" 

underneath the static
what exists 
is never seen nor heard

for what it truly is 
the eyes and mind 
retaliate in the deciphering

the invisible return 
each night and...

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Part 02


"...and it's not a horror movie?"
"Yeah.  It's just a regular knock at my door."
"OK,  I guess it is a horror movie." 
"Yup."

"So are you telling me, I'm dreaming?"

"I'm telling you, it's just...

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My wounded heart drinks deep from the rotting gut of misery,
Humanity vomits its relics onto the oozing tiles of the real.
I see kids chewing syringes like candy canes,
Their innocence smashed, face down on the concrete...

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Face to the sky,
Breath of the Caribbean
Woven with earthy Autumn,
Saturates the alveoli of my lungs,
Pouring raw impulses into the neurons of
My pleasure centers, so triggering a myriad of
Memories ... the demurring requiem to summer tide...

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   Symbols cry in dry ice theater -
the expanse of aesthetic visa-
drawn-
from the romance of the silvery eye -
as it golden advances the lid of covenance 
in dynamic enzyme.
Open faced type interpreted-
interpreter-embossed embol-
in...

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A a 	big A little a
                   What words start with the letter A
    ...

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Feel more than free to take a quick tour into my mind's eye
Then, you'll find that you're on my mind and I don't know why 

Dare to wonder Where to wander
Dare to wonder What I...

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Heavy storm was sweeping dark Paris streets
Lit with dim lights that dreary November night 
With ghostly shadows lurking in the corners
Cold wind dancing with dirty wet leaves fallen 
In the water pools in the middle...

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