Long Collapsing Poems

Just enough to make it just
I want this to be enough to make this
The last song ever, the last note ever
The last romantically, poetically sad excuse for an apology, epilogue
But I've already messed up the...

Read More

Rumors
How we arrived at where we are
By Franklin Price
05/03/2020

By now you've heard the rumors
How Covid-19 came to Earth
How it did not come here naturally 
How Wuhan, China gave it birth

Maybe aided by our government
To make...

Read More

R.I.P.
by Michael R. Burch

When I am lain to rest
and my soul is no longer intact, 
but dissolving, like a sunset
diminishing to the west...

and when at last
before His throne my past
is put to test
and the demons...

Read More

For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight...

Read More

Enheduanna is the first writer we know by name. She created the first poetry anthology and hymnal, circa 2250 BC, in ancient Sumer. She was the daughter of King Saragon the Great. 

Lament to the...

Read More

MODERN SONNETS I

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.


Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem...

Read More

Sonnets XXV-XXXII

Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

Read More

Translation of Les Moulins de mon Cœur-THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND by T. Wignesan

(For the orignal text in French by Eddy MARNAY : see here below. The English version by Marilyn and Alan BERGMAN differs...

Read More

Lament to the Spirit of War
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You hack down everything you see, War God!

Rising on fearsome wings
you rush to destroy the land:
raging like thunderstorms,
howling like hurricanes,
screaming like...

Read More

Chernobyl.


A nuclear disaster, in the Russian town Chernobyl,
An odor-less killer, the invisible force.
As the radiation escapes, from the crumbling reactor,
We must cool it down, before it blows.


Evacuate Pripyat, the employee’s town,
The town of 35000; first...

Read More

(One poet's vision of what being indwelled by Christ's heart might look like)        

What makes me feel loved isn't easy to say, 
And not because the heart of...

Read More

t was half past five before sunrise, 
when darkness faded into the misty Saturday's dawn, 
just an hour after a bloody confrontation, 
but a brave woman descended into a blood-bathed
street of Lustre, 
with hungry cats...

Read More

The Deception of Free Verse: Dreams I, Translation of Etiemble’s L’imposture du vers libre by T. Wignesan 

(From René Etiemble’s only poetry collection: le Coeur et la cendre: soixante ans de poésie (the heart and...

Read More

The Square Root of Beiruit 
 
Ten men bending while theyre pretending to be near the ending
A capitalist nightmare glares like rotten fruit
The squate root of Beiruit
No it isn’t fair, so they’ll start to loot
 
The soldiers are...

Read More

Damn where is my mind at, striving and finding the best way to adapt,

            Collapsing the conditioning through written raps that never nap,

 ...

Read More

Spawned from the loins that 
Perpetuated the loyal serfs mongrel
Seed:-
These peoples of a conditioned and
"Resigned-To-it-all" breed.
Born into the enveloping tedium
Of interlocking days...Interwoven
With interlocking days -
Victims of stark circumstance
And vague promises unmade.
Gregariously living out their lives
When...

Read More

But we of the Three Tribes live undiscovered 
   In the reverberating stillness of the 
 Three Gorges...
And are therefore unknown to the warring mongol;
    His impassioned lusts -- his...

Read More

margins stimulate and juxtapose
  edges greet with troubled, disturbing friction
  faraway forces exert influence and combine relentlessly
  how the Sun and Moon dance together about the planet Earth
  their grasping hands...

Read More

When it comes to us, we want to break free from despondency
When it comes to me, I don't want you to be angry at me
So, I look up to the rivers of dimensions for my...

Read More

Hypothetical Lust

                                 ...

Read More

11	Contracted in this state our marriage made
		And only far too late we recognize
		That gladly with Reptilian Flesh we’ve laid
		The veil torn away revealing eyes
		Of yellow flame exposéd we surmise
		Out from the darkened room these floating...

Read More

It was just a silhouette but it reminds me why I left the spirit box closed 
I felt as though the hand I was holding
Was yours and not my own
In my want to believe
But reality...

Read More

YouthGroup interviews WiseElder lunch crowd

Notes:

(1) What do you recommend for improving our long-term health prospects?

Question met with quiet,
not smug,
possibly embarrassed?
amusement.


Honey,
I'm eighty years old.
My goal is to continue gracefully accepting my future losses.
I'm not sure that...

Read More

The feeling of comfort

Is one of the most incredible and humbling

Emotions that has ever flooded through my veins

And caressed every nerve in my body.



Having all of your troubles be lessened

And the ache of your troubled...

Read More

Do not read if offended by human imagination 
as this will appear heretical to religious people, 
and perhaps nonsensical to everyone else

As far as I can perceive this universe began 
the moment I was born...

Read More