Long Composts Poems

SELF REFLECTIONS

These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections, impressions and self-reflection. 

Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch 

for anyone struggling with self-image

She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she's grossly...

Read More

Poems about Poems III

Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil?
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but...

Read More

Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the...

Read More

These are poems about Dylan Thomas, as well as poems "for" and "after" Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas was one of my favorite poets from my early teens and has remained so over the years. I...

Read More

Myth, after Dylan Thomas
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low...

Read More

When passion plants a multicultural seed,
then justice flourishes a polypathic trusting flower.

Permaculture and polyculture, 
grow holistic cause-effect karmic significance 
for our physical, and mental, political and spiritual health.

Permacultural, as I intend it this morning,
refers to...

Read More

Sonnets LXXI-LXXX

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you...

Read More

Step out with me,
if you would be so kind,
on this melting island of ice.

Full-heated summer sun
feels good on backs and shoulders
and faces turned down and in to hunt,
to fish.
We start each day with gratitude
for warmth...

Read More

"...a network.., in the local [RightBrain] language,
is called 'mandala'.
I'm more [LeftBrain] comfortable
with the word 'ecology,'
but they're  very closely overlapping ideas.
At the root,
is the notion that ideas [like energy and climates] are interdependent,
interacting, that ideas...

Read More

She runs for President
investing  less carbon footprint and dollars
than did her less permacultural rivals,
a top campaign priority.

He invests his Stone Soup platform
with organic roots of cooperative intent
inviting us to share both what we have...

Read More

Earth Time's song and dance
through nonexisting space,
my song
our PolyCulturing Opera,
time's co-passion story,
history and cultures of existing place as space.

Time's Blacker premillennial face
haunts richer wisdom
but often fails to find just and righteous pace
for decomposing dominant Western...

Read More

Poems about Poets

Elemental
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea...

Read More

Talk to yourself.
Think and thank about yourselves,
how you have changed into different interests/disinterests over years and decades.
Think about yourselves
at least as generously
as you might best listen and smell and taste,
both digest and nourish,
your own worst...

Read More

Miracles of GrandMother WinWin Tree
begin with her purgative peaceful birth.
For at this time,
so long before her cycling rings of time began,
we see her original seed
and this seed's less original composting environment,
and within this brief timeless...

Read More

Missy is an only child with no kids of her own.
She’s never been inconvenienced for long.
She sets her own agenda by following whatever is trending on social media.
She learned about relationships from watching reality TV.
She...

Read More

With indecision rode abreast
              Intended path becomes digressed 
             ...

Read More

there is a certain taste to Autumn
almost alien to Summer's fruition of life
it is a different celebration
where the living having succeeded
fruits succumb to ripened apples
the hazel sweetens its core
gourds of every color 
deck the leaves...

Read More

Ode to the earth which we enjoy
Bringing us happiness and sorrow ness
Bringing each other closer and closer to the most closest
Bringing us together for joy

We think we care so much for the earth
Yet we pollute...

Read More