Long Cleaves Poems

With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

Read More

Perhat Tursun

Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Born and raised in Atush, a city in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Tursun began writing poetry...

Read More

He wondered with horror how so many memories, so many forms to be branded on his skin and engrave there.

Then the wet rattle of a twisted throat, and he beats his last breath to his...

Read More

Over yonder pastoral realms, with heaving mounds of green
Birds of variegated colors shine, where.streamlets gleam with opal sheen.
In circles round, fleetfooted Zephyr sweeps the laurelled ground
With footfalls that loom, a sweet scented voluptuous sound
Which gently strike...

Read More

Three wholesome troubling years before, a thousand cursed days back
    I lay, most stiff within my bed, my house of death did reek
And all my nightmares, all my slumbers, they were deep...

Read More

   


   "I have seen and heard the vibrancy of dreams, 
and the way 
of the crossings-through the ills 
and through the barriered things."

A fleeting spark that perceives, 
I, have seen...

Read More

Everything around is quiet, not a sound could be heard, except for the engine running up and down the street and the ticking clock erupting my heart beat.

I hear the sound of music, a yonder...

Read More

Sappho, fragment 155
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

A short transparent frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

NOTE: This is a translation/interpretation of an epigram by the legendary Sappho of Lesbos. Pollux wrote: "Sappho...

Read More

Under millions of stars...................eyes deeply fixed to the golden moon..............when dew on the grass is shinning like pieces of glasses...............on the bus to town................like a monkey on a tree,
With my favorite blue pen................sometimes draft in...

Read More

With the end of days upon them
Nears the time of final battle
In the halls of high Valhalla
Asgard senses its death rattle

In the forest crows the rooster 
In the sky the sun does darken
In the cave...

Read More

God created man in His Image
Man is to have dominion 
Over all the animals 
And land

God Blessed Man
With Woman
Taking in fashioning a woman
From out of the side of man
From Out of man’s Rib

God stated Man...

Read More

To create art is to dance with the unseen and the ethereal,
A mystical journey, an enigma even to its creators.
Poets feel this deeply,
A difference they can't yet define, an unspoken aura.
Within them, emotions boil in...

Read More

Impeccant,
 of non-textual matters
 one’s covered flesh,
 and hidden embrasure’
 as diffusate primer
 slips life’s veil, and
 in agitated pontlevis,
 cleaves the universe’ reason…
 “Egads! What sorcery is this?”
 Holy heart failure, Batman!
 “Beavis and...

Read More

The day would pass in blissful brightness, with our brains on auto-pilot. The stories we'd tell and the memories we'd conjure up from years past, one couldn't help but think we were all running on...

Read More

November 19 Relationship to God Bible Meditations Based on Galatians 4-6

Key Verse – Galatians 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
	
LORD...

Read More

According to the will of fate 
I have come... 
I emerge from the flood 
A living soul. 
My memory is torn by the night. 
The night is enshrouded with darkness. 
I wander around the world...

Read More

I am blessed by God 
Justice and mercy 
are found in the grace of the Lord 
I am blessed by His Holy Spirit. 
          Thus, my...

Read More

Ecstasy:
*an overpowering emotion or exaltation; a state of sudden, intense feeling.

* slang  3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine; MDMA: a powerful drug that acts as a stimulant and can produce hallucinations

Some time after midnight, a change in the noise
The...

Read More

A seething summer morning in the oil boom trailer park
Oral Roberts on the radio with the gospel told by Mark
The reek of raw petroleum is everywhere around
We little oil trash urchins play marbles on the...

Read More

Dusk marks stygian depths of this eldritch eve quay grim specter beneath the moon's silvery sheath surf cleaves with a hiss as the banshees keen weave lure to the thicket where shadows deceive yet beckoning...

Read More

1. I am blessed by God 
    Justice and mercy 
    are found in the grace of the Lord 
    I am blessed by His Holy...

Read More

                                  ...

Read More

In the distance, [He] centers on [Her] shadow,
Resting in the emptiness by the desolate window.
Moth, masticated curtains imprison the light, 
By casing the lampshade and confining the bright.

Faintly in view sits the intense apparition of...

Read More

May 20, 2022 Scripture Meditations Based on Psalms 85-89

Key Verse – Psalm 85:6 Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? 

MY GOD, THANK YOU FOR REVIVING ME AGAIN

Thank You...

Read More

The calling gull leaves her nest
her wild magic cleaves the nimbus.
An avian aerialist suspended aloft 
she sails on tapered ribbons of cirrus silk,
ruffled sea breeze ironed ‘neath her lustrous wings.

A wind witch, she defies and...

Read More