Long Clustering Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems X

These are early poems written in my teens and twenties.

Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret,
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once...

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LOVE POEMS V

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch, about life, the dream of love, virtue, a first kiss, a first crush, the birth of a first relationship, the joy of a first love...

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"Backhand"



You have turned me
inside out, cut open
like a tennis ball
I used to beat backhand
along with the racket
hard against the garage wall

To make sense of it all
as a child, the grief stolen
all too swiftly and replaced...

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The moon rabbit is chasing a man on the moon                         ...

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There’s a throng of dark matter storms clustering at the base of my spine. 
C20H25N30 is encoded in the cord I decided to plug myself into when I 
was 15. Jami told me that I...

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“Magic can create wonders bordering between reality and fantasy, creating before us an aura of chimera. All celestial phenomena may flash past before our naked eyes and we cannot decide if we are dreaming or...

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Rodents can be loquacious
That includes your average gerbil
They love to prattle, chat and blather
They really are quite verbal

Hamsters are talkative too
Just as garrulous as can be
With running mouth and wheel to match
They are a sight...

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Tight Spaces 

I wriggle through the tight spaces, 
moving between these fussy wise cracks,
all in forward motion, my forward goal,
moving towards a light beyond, way up ahead.
A dimming glow, like a watery eye,
lubricating and easing...

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The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom-
Maya Angelou


Reality may be a...

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One fine autumnal afternoon, I set out sauntering
Along country paths that lay rugged and meandering
To see Nature, not in her cultivated neatness
But in her stark nakedness and innate sweetness

Passing fields of corn with golden ears
Peeping...

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NORA

Carefree-spirited, wild at heart she sped down the steep streets of San Fransisco
Racing heart torn to pieces pounding from her chest, even after a bottle of Cisco        ...

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Shards
Fracturing light
No rainbow
Visible to the magnitude of eyes
No depth
As a bowl to catch the sun
No scooping 
Of pictures from this emptiness
Nothing but splinters
Scintillating brilliantly
On a flat surface
Of soil.

When we were young
And I had not left...

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That's a long way from sighing freely
just one calm brushstroke
wrapped in a sea of tranquility
to suit phantom clustering to occur

         soundless groans of despair
         permeate deeply below
     ...

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Hart Crane tribute

forsake our eyes
  in a lovers cry
&sigh
    shadows sweep decends
that
   doubtful day:
a lie revealed
    now proved
first seen
in its fall
   on a cloud
...

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"Vibrationary Roadkill High Beam "  

You look at a screen,
it’s like you’re driving
you know, full speed, 
there you are planted 

firmly 
behind the wheel,

the windscreen wipers 
are swiping bugs and crap 
off the page...

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“Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” — Lawrence Ferlinghetti


When starlings were swimming in the azure lake
When bats and owls began their nocturnal ride
When all the Earth under a dark blanket lay
My...

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That's not MY elephant!
A spiteful conceited elephant that ran away from the circus
MY elephant provides copies of the Bill Of Rights to all 2nd graders in Macon County
Considers fund-raising possibilities of selling elephant ears at...

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The Land Where the Lemon-Trees Flower

I know the land where the lemon-trees flower,
where citrus fragrance lingers after a summer shower.
In sun-sweetened India, lemon-trees radiantly bloom,
flourishing unfazed by tropical monsoon’s gloom. 

Glistening with dew drops, greeting...

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REFRAINS OF WINTER SONATA


When fallen brown leaves brush a sepia picturesque 
and the bubbly breeze blows a heated winter sonata,
the giant roses of clouds are teased, they shed
icy petals tumbling, drifting like little ballerinas

dropping to...

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Prometheus

The legendary story is still alive as stupendous force,
the fire of the Gods the caring metaphor as source.
The warmth of concern on which strength depends,
forsaken in these days by commercial happy ever after ends.
The genesis...

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I bid farewell to pristine auroras
upon the backdrop of a still clear sky
Venus rising from the distance,
the harbinger of light and shadow.
Intricate shades of pink sprawled 
across the arhed span
like strands beneath a canopy white...

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Love's Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch

Time unfolds...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.

Night and day...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close...
You were...

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Unfoldings

for Vicki

Time unfolds ...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering ...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.

Night and day ...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close ...
You...

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Breathless and falling ...                (Breathless and falling)
So lucent the vapor
The morning star's fluent light...     (She's now...

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Mysterious monarch of the sky micro fauna             									like the moth to the flame drawn to sweet purple perfume	 	    ...

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