Long Columns Poems

Oh my soul what hails you?
Oh my soul what awaits you?
Oh my soul why are you in despair?
Oh my soul I have not deserted you
Oh my soul I have something to share
Oh my soul I...

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Sappho fragment #155
translation by Michael R. Burch 

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

*

Sappho fragment #156
translation by Michael R. Burch 

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable...

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Poems of Recanted Bachelorhood

bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch

u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly ALARMING
since my resolve
dissolved!

*

Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch

Beth, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I’m with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy ...

*

What Goes Around, Comes
by...

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Beckoning
by Michael R. Burch 
 
Yesterday the wind whispered my name
while the blazing locks
of her rampant mane
lay heavy on mine.
And yesterday
I saw the way
the wind caressed tall pines
in forests laced by glinting streams
and thick with...

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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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The language and images of Mario Vitale's poetry are so closely bound to the natural cycles of seasons, of generations, of the body's functioning, that is surprising to realize how many of his poems deal...

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Dear Novice Poet,
Welcome to the wide open wonderful world of poetry!  Today more than ever before, a poem can easily be whatever you want it to be.  The rules are simple.  There...

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(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")

Human hatchery

Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete...

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Greetings to those who would willingly seek admission to theater of the absurd. Zoltan Goliath and Otis Trench are masters of the avant-garde genre silent musicals for the imaginary stage, an art form sui generis....

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Act 3. A dark, empty stage.

Marat
(standing up)

My eyes went blank. That's how it goes when
you have been doubly knocked flat on your back
in half an hour. He went, he went,
he went, he went, he went,...

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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...

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there, among those Ruby Spires
          stood I, a-gazing toward the mist
               red...

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And I begin my own steep climb into 
The Chalkland Downs                        ...

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within these times of war
Within these times of war


Within the times of war

Silence of its terrors calling
Children play within their laughter
Now recedes in cries of torture
Screeching whistles scrap metal clusters
In murderous heat of summers day
rage...

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On the spur of the moment forecast by eternal script in the stars

The Bard strummed his guitar and sung a ballade from heart’s lute 

Wild horses would not keep him away from her as he...

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‘WHITE COLUMN RESSURRECTION’

Even now you stand poised with memories of a corned cobbed pipe in one hand-tight gripped lapel in the other-perched against thick southern charmed columns positioned on a once so powerful veranda .

Peering...

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Made in Neonazia

Life wrote you and I this poem on a sunny day of watching
penguin’s colonies bathing on the beaches near Cape Town 
A splendid display of harmony of sun ocean and tourist attraction
warm sand...

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My time on the shore
Along the edge of the shore there are no footprints
nor are there bits of driftwood from lost voyages
just the dunes behind and the horizon bedding down
It’s been this way now since...

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Let hope rely upon your Maginot
for swift retort has choked your Gallic might.
It crushed your will beneath its undertow
as diligence receded in the fight.
Your flailing forces teeter on defeat
and any hint of truce shall be...

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G O D

God my professor who does not sit on a stool at the head of the class correcting exam papers with their columns of graphite-filled dots with each question being multiple choice and the...

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Today I sit on the pinnacle of trust knowing that my poems will reach the masses
I look past all the critics who claim," Your not good enough to be a poet".
Put my thinking cap on...

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We often hear of hardship with single motherhood,
how tough it is to raise a family on her own.
How a drunkard and a basher never makes life good.
Winning the gambling debts; losing the family home.

But there's...

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Along the edge of the shore there are no footprints
nor are there bits of driftwood from lost voyages
just the dunes behind and the horizon bedding down
It’s been this way now since I first set my...

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EARTHLY TO HEAVENLY MANSION 

When I think of a Mansion I think, 
of one with “Vintage appeal,”
Stone architecture, welcoming pillars, 
A monumental royalty feel.

Great palms and great magnolia trees,
Defining the estate’s history, 
Pathways of fragrant...

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Five miles of neatly spaced suckered palm planted 
Bustling promenade,
Not withstanding a provincial cafe-culture 
Of restaurants and exciting little bars,
Enhance upon regal elegance of the crammed hotels
Regency period style facades;
Their fashionable shadows slowly lifting and...

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