Long Clothesline Poems

The Original Sin: Rhyming Haiku!
 
Haiku
should never rhyme:
it’s a crime!
-Michael R. Burch
 
The herons stand,
sentry-like, at attention ...
rigid observers of some unknown command.
-Michael R. Burch
 
Late
fall;
all
the golden leaves turn black underfoot:
soot
-Michael R. Burch
 
Dry leaf...

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Yosa Buson haiku translations

On the temple’s great bronze gong
a butterfly
snoozes.
?Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hard to describe:
this light sensation of being pinched
by a butterfly!
?Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not to worry...

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Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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New England's late May sun was long up,
and yet her laundry began to unfold
and clip onto the droopy clothesline,
while yet to warm into 8 AM.

She wore a light spring jacket
and need not think long
about why...

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Grandma Gretchen's in her rocker and she has something to say. 

She tells a visitor, a young man from the city, if he plans to write a book about life on a farm in the...

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Haiku Variations
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem composed of haiku-like stanzas:


Variations on the Seasons I
by Michael R. Burch

Lift up your head
dandelion,
hear spring roar!

How will you tidy your hair
this near
summer?

Leave to each still night
your lightest...

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                                  ...

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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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What softness in silence amidst the cacophony of a spin cycle world war.
Lying next to your glow in sleep's stillness, careful of your bandaged hand.
Watching your breath enter and leave, the rise and fall of...

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Ones who are blessed and don't even know it
Feeling the love but too frightened to show it
Courage comes in all multitudes of ways
And so much will be needed toward the end days
But sometimes the bravery...

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A hank of damp hair hangs limply on her forehead.  With the back of a work reddened hand she brushes it from her face.  From the galvanized tub before her, she withdraws a...

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On the south-western side of the old mission school,
near the corner of First Street,  where blackberries grew
a field claimed by youngsters was crosshatched with tracks.
It was riddled by gophers and, nettled with fox-tails
and the...

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I'm ready if you are.
Steadily walking past wekas, canoes, sailboats, motorboats, along concrete paths, down ash-felt slopes
Across intersecting car trails
Drawn only by the beckoning beach.

Feet slipping over Northland's rough green grass
Damp, spongy, smooth grit of...

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" LAKESIDE" LAUN NIOSES AND " BIG KNUCKLE" TRYST HESSLER
WERE VICTORIUS IN A TAG BOUT AGAINST
GALBITRON TU M'AIMES AND " THE spotLIGHT" BRENT SPINNER

 A SCIENTIFIC CLASSIC SAW
" THE WORLDS FINEST" JEFFREY GRANT
  ...

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Oh no, I wasn't watching the bed side clock.
My husband is home and he has a Glock.
Quick, out the window, my sweet dark night.
If he sees you, then he'll be ready to fight.
He cannot know...

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To access the house there was a slight slope from the sidewalk, the door was in the gap under the stairs that led to the upper floor, behind that building was the vegetable garden with...

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In the fifties
it was the suburban icon
that survived the start 
of the renovation phase
and still graced the backyards 
of most houses in the neighborhood,
the ubiquitous Australian 
outside dunny.

Ours was a corrugated iron
oven that cooked you...

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Relax, count my breath up to 4
Recall how Jesus chilled on His cross
Pinned like a cool butterfly
Hung like a shroud on the line
The crown of thorns felt fine
The nails betwixt ulna and radius divine
He didn't...

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What's the problem with homelessness,
other than the violence from which it comes
and toward which it further travels?

Why not ignore 
and grow tolerance
for the inevitability of caravans
of sojourners
on pilgrimage
toward mirages
of Uniting Promised Lands?

I have more immediately...

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she admitted to being a moron
                             ...

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LINES

We LINE up in traffic, or clear out the door, 
And there are BEELINES we make, to the seashore.
Get mad and we're "DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND," 
He USES A LINE when he asks...

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To never be happy again, I announced it; at the time perfectly justified
now regret is the tennis ball on my side of the court
I fear it may have been a declaration of Surrender
a personal skeleton...

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They stayed focused
they knew if they honed there craft
they could be contenders
and maybe even "champion's"
a world awaited them.
He recalled a match at the
"York's Towne arena" where 
dueling reluctacey gave way to
a match which ended in...

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They are playing that song again
The one that reminds me of you
It began to rewind as I turned up the dial
from a place long ago that's been bleached for awhile

"California Dreamin" sifts through the air
like...

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on the wall a framed pistol

red velvet backing 

simple wooden frame

sixty years or more old

old as the vinyl record 

or  a real rootbeer float

maybe the year of the color tv

I imagine it as a...

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