Long Cloaked Poems

I smell like pencils in September.
After they’ve been brought to that…to the machine hanging on the closet wall where our coats, our boots, our bags, and nonsense lived.

You stared me in the eyes, since the...

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Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

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I melt into the plural sky
its rippling tableaus of tomorrow
underneath open light waves 
see-saws the labyrinth
like Delphi tendrils crossing channels 
all the changing faces played
automatic, embedded in misty consort 
with Hyde-Lees and Yeats 
love-crushed oracles
ghostwriting...

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Alone I arrive, walking from Frederick
over the gaps, across gentle hills
out onto a knoll
overlooking this burnished landscape.
Before me I see countless writhing rows
of indiscernible shapes gathered
in terrible rituals mid fire and smoke
darkening the sun.
From distant...

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“Warrior” 

When the Argonauts, came across 
the abandoned Starship, they 
found within the wrecked 
command console, a DNA code
with encrypted message. 
It took several attempts to 
reactivate, but when opened, 
the following was translated: ...

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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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Pellucid pachyderms wade across
the purpling River Manjees
and Tozzath watches from the bank, 
the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud,
his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias,
whose lacey petals flutter
like the wings of long-dead...

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Continued from Maya 1

At length, when the womens' screams had ceased
and the sound of the thunder had stopped,
he gathered his courage and withdrew himself
from his hiding place beneath the corn.
He left the hut and prostrated...

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I am an Outlander
Who lives on a high hill
Overlooking a man-made lake
That once was a rapidly rushing river
Along whose banks the Ozarks Bluff Dwellers and the Osage and then Delaware
Hunted, fished, and created shelter
For their...

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A babe born, in darkness braved
Bring love to the world if only for a day
No questions asked, nor answered, nor saved
Let peace abide in every child, we pray
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As they stood watching their son, enthralled in...

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For a few coins Melord, I'll tell a story of two that met in this place, 
and here you can take your rest, and leave sumpter to graze in the tall grass.

I payed the old...

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The reading of Villon poems at West Berlin’s Free University, Winter Semester 1957-58
                      ...

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"Kaleidoscope" 

They say another
wrote the story, not I.
that I, mere I,
having little experience, shy 
and far removed from 
such an alien world,
would not possess the knowledge
of such terrible and ruthless, lusty 
characters of strong will;...

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Neigh say being  corralled & cult shod 

"Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis"
translation = thus always I 
bring death to tyrants.”

Above the fray of twittering, 
squabbling, and madding crowds,
an arrogantly belligerent creature deified, 
yet vilified...

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“Ten Years, Somewhere in their Lost Neighbourhood”

Of course,
he said, like a god,
there is no course,
one must simply go with the flow
the penumbra stands waivering its existence,
a kind of deactivation, fuzzy borderline hanging, 
backing the art...

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As dawn unfolds today beyond my fractured windowpane,
a breeze beguiles the ashen drapes. Like snakes they slip aside,
revealing wanton worlds that race and run aground, insane,
immersed in scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and...

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Lilith Waits   



Lilith waits as she surveys, all her brutal yesterdays

She cruelly paved with stepping-stones of broken hearts and human bones.

Her lips turned up at their red corners, she grins at all the...

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Poet: Ken Jordan
Poem: Watts Is Burning
Edited by: Sparkle Jordan
written: July/2014


Run children run!
Run sister run!
Run brother run!

Run for your guns

We ain't backing down
Not this time -

Run through
the
poisoned 
 black smoke,

that
permeates
through
Watts -

Run pass
the
looting,

Run down
the
land mine
streets,

Run pass
the house
that's 
no longer
your home -

Run...

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Poet: Ken Jordan
Poem: Watts Is Burning
Edited by: Sparkle Jordan
written: July/2014


Run children run!
Run sister run!
Run brother run!

Run for your guns

We ain't backing down
Not this time -

Run through
the
poisoned 
 black smoke,

that
permeates
through
Watts -

Run pass
the
looting,

Run down
the
land mine
streets,

Run pass
the house
that's 
no longer
your home -

Run...

Read More

“The Apocrypha of Familiars” 

Wings hover 
light luminescent
revelling sprites dark pearls
Corvidae shades
of a family 

highly functioning
dysfunctional plural
morphing unobserved
perceived non-unique 
spiralling into shape

more black and grey
than white spills 
from their eyes
light from their shining 
hidden away

intelligence...

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THIS THOUGHT THIS TIME
This is the time. To put forth in writing the words that plague my mind. An inevitable forthcoming of thoughts internally suppressed, I have thoughts that beg to be told from a...

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“Never forget 
everything Hitler did 
in Germany was legal.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

drop by drop lady liberty bleeds
red on white and blue
common sense vexatious 
verboten spins askew 

“We can and we must 
write in the...

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Oh, these trees, arms reaching as they
      did then, but even wiser ... perhaps I as
         well have learned another thing-or-two
 ...

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You really want to know who I am?  
Are you interested at all,
In what lies behind the pretty face?  

Perhaps in search of,
A little substance?
A certain grace?  

Not unlike any other 
Mother...

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PTSD

Like rabbit in the headlight caught
I want to move, i know I ought
But quicksand stuck, I’m petrified 
My body still, arms laid by side
Stretched out on mattress, naked, soaked
From sweat in which my body’s cloaked
My eyes...

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