Long Chute Poems

The ship came like a flying horse, at an inexact time
Our brother-sailor, from the Pantheon of Poets, was on board
Jean Pierre Basilic Dantor Frankétienne D’argent
Who wrote, in haste, the last act
Happened to be miraculously on...

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She Wrote To Me

My secret lover I left you 5 years ago I could not take it anymore I had 
to fill my emptiness without you since I left I would cut out my heart...

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You know that fun song “Grandma got run over by a reindeer?”
I was doing some paranormal research tonight, when it hit me.
Of course they believe; they lived it!
If you live it, it’s pretty impossible to...

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The skipper had sailed quite a few storms and survived

Strong as a cross hanging over an apocalypse’s altar he

Had weathered all seasons and crossed heaven and hell

Tempted his fate and good fortune at times but...

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I will eviscerate you with wit 
            and promise to make it uncomfortable to sit... 
        ...

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Animal Chain Atrocities

No longer a bucolic photo op
bedecking a cover of Life magazine

Free grazing
pastoral images
now but bewildered enslavement

Animal commodities
factory farms and feedlots
CAFO habitats raising
sixty billion a year for dinner tables

Chickens

Hi-Tech slaughter
football fields long
alethic poor
four walled...

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EGBERT THE ADORABLE OCTOPUS & OTHER NONSENSE VERSE

Egbert the Octopus
is so damn cute
& smarter than u
(the point is moot) 
'cause he doesn't pollute
when he commutes, 
only, perhaps, 
when he (ahem)  "poots"! 
—michael r. burch



Monarch
by...

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Students their little burning harmonies | you compos’d it 
One single gallery | public arras blasé debate re-placed
Sheets just- | cool on clothesline whiskered with wear.
Variousness was it| trusted its core | bayou, brilliant books
In...

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Two soldiers. One fancies himself a punk rocking soldier of fortune and the other, nicknamed hillbilly, because he lost his shoes, they plan a trip anarchist cookbookrecipe fear and loathingbeyond culture shock  We journey...

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Oh cripes I’ve gotta tell yer of a horror ride I had,
	That beat any bronc or bull I’ve rode, and I must say I’m glad,
	I’ll never have to ride like that, again to hold me...

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In her slippery salmon swim
    And red streaked Crawdads chute
    Into her eddying pools
    To stare at her from beneath rocks.
    Whitewater rapids...

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In a room stark & white 
A nightmare he will ride tonight 
Twisted sheets in a rider's grip 
as he settles in for that fateful trip 
silently he screams & shouts 
This time there'll be...

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mysterious as Lemuel
     unlike hundreds of
     other rowdy seniors
     constituting the nineteen
     seventy seven graduating class
   ...

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Thralldom etched in Homo sapiens (mine) DNA

Though your true blue stated civilian
never enlisted nor impressed,
nonetheless I own an opinion
originally embarked on poetic quest
to express purposelessness,

when soldiers rest
at peace i.e. eternally,
many attired courtesy
smart uniform strong with...

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It was bucking bulls and cowboy busting broncos
And the challenge that accompanied each ride
That consumed the heart and mind of my young cowboy
And this fact my Buddy never tried to hide. 
I recall the time...

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The sun plunged
In the space of silence,
The summer has been extended
In a slow wandering ...

The orb has been drunk,
Gradually, by fringes.
> We did not hear anything,
From the fall of the angel ...

The horizon has folded...

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(On May 1 1960, at the very depth of the
Cold War, CIA pilot Gary Powers was shot
down over the central USSR.  Here we are
imagining his conversation with a charge
d'affaires of the US Embassy. ...

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Her mocking salutation in salute.
Sudsing down your brains drawingboard in a victoriously ill repute.
Nature's pendulum holds you in it's dungeoness pattern of holding, then you go down it's chute. 
Hell's guillotine greased, oiled,
sparkling it's grinning...

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February and its much-vaunted chill
comes down with vengeance, and does what it will,
this lake that in summer jams full with boats
is now frozen over, nothing can float.

Most people stay home at this time of year,
and...

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Poet's Notes:
My poet's notes must precede the next Echo Poem as well because the poet 
has not given me permission to publish her poems on my site. I can, of course, 
reference her poems without...

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Animal Poems 3

These poems about animals include man's best friend, dogs, as well as cats, hamsters, whales, sea lions, caterpillars, butterflies, and even snails! 



Hell-Bound Hounds
by Michael R. Burch

We have five dogs and every one’s...

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this time together has been
conceived by liquid starlight
and bound by terrestrial moonlight

an experience of bombardment by proxy

elemental and eternal are the binds
which we have finally succumbed to
with earnest intentions without
anticipation of outcomes

our trajectory points in...

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My heart was pumping hard that day I faced the maddening crowd, 
Despite the spinning in my head I stood there mighty proud. 
Though racked with pain my reddened hand acknowledged them a wave 
And...

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Blues in the Night.

A malignant moon
shines his metallic claws -
combs my hair and brushes me forward.
I am alone in the shadowy crooks 
of a poisoned metropolis.

A clandestine garbage chute -
where waifs and strays burn
within the...

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Have you ever experienced a day, when it seemed like you just did not exist?
A time when you were actually a passenger in a truck or car with someone at your side?
And as you were...

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