Long Conducted Poems

Dear people, 
    (Am i?) Mad it’s a conformist state?
A status that perpetuates people to pair, to compare, to prepare, 
to perfect, before performance, …?
    -sure hard to try...

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Date:  August 2041

Members of the Damian fraternity 
Were relaxing in the backyard. The
Soon to be 4 year olds conducted 
Themselves in their sandbox.
The older children picniced on
The grass. Amadeus DJ Damali 
And Desharah sat...

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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...

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With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

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The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines and Excerpts 
by Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon I of Akkad and high priestess of Inanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers!
Lady of the resplendent light!
Righteous Lady...

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justice 

What does this vastly misunderstood word mean to you? 

Too what ends? 

May we seek? 

Who(m) may guide us? 

Endless deliberation (spiss spiss spiss)

Debated and glorified by us all 

Beloved; instilled among (a) core...

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The First Thanksgiving (Sept. 3, 1578)

The shortest distance to Cathay 1
(Land of riches: silks, teas and spices)
Lay to the north to the South Sea. 2
Didn’t Barlow tell the King, 3
Was reserved for England.

The routes ‘round...

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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...

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                             Brahman Nemesis

    ...

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The Game of Hockey 

By Government decree, lacrosse
Is Canada’s national sport,
But in the hearts and minds of Canadians,
Hockey rules supreme.
Hockey is a winter sport enjoyed by Canadians since 1875,
When the game was first played, on...

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He walks around with his nose pointing upward in the air
With calculating eyes that are so fearful, mouth moving from side to side and a tongue that keeps twisting around the things that are profound....

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I was pushed to write this comparison after reading the poem on Byron by the souper poet Gary Bateman.
Wandering on internet I found the Byron's version of Francesca's words in CANTO V of Dante's Hell...

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To God be the glory - great things he has done.



‘I am Eddie Rowlands, I became a Christian in 1985, at that time I also experienced evil opposition toward me, to the extent of being...

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If you could look through any window
Of any house on any given street,
You might find yourself quite surprised 
At the variety of people you would meet.

The couple at number twenty-three
Have been married nearly seven years
They...

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Literate lettered latitudinarian

Presents the following slapdash
higglety-pigglety bupkis, whereby reader
experiences being mentally hogtied
perusing pseudo poetic perambulation
devoid of sense and sensibility
welcoming character assassination
concerning pride of yours truly,
who merely strung together
words sharing "arian"

as their last five letters
for no...

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When I was a child, I wondered

Was deep sleep, death?

Was every morning a new life, a new incarnation?

Waking up, I found the people around me were the same

I was the same too, nothing changed

This cannot...

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Wherein lies the great dividing moral distinction
between hate crimes of socioeconomic historic proportion
and multicultural perpetuation,
and the more mundane population of defiance crimes
of a more personal nature?

Why is society's right to aggressively imprison unto nutritional neglect,
to...

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A combination of Prose and Free Verse:

The most thrilling and inspirational piece of music ever to reach my 
ears is, without doubt, Handel's Messiah. I've never known anyone 
who could experience a performance and remain...

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I. Early Childhood’s Gifts

Gift 1:
Is love felt from our parents, our friends a true gift
or more something we earn bit by bit over time,
(a child adds to, subtracts from, as days turn to years)?
This is...

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At sixteen
People's Bible Church
sent me from rural Michigan farm lands
to Moody Bible Institute
in siren-screaming Chicago

Church fathers assumed,
despite curious evidence to the contrary,
that I was a StraightWhiteMale
born-again
wanna be choir director

Because I could sing with gospel appeal
and...

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Skin of Terror
- Daniel Henry Rodgers

(Lights slowly rise on a lone figure, MICHAEL, hunched over a steering wheel. His knuckles are white against the worn leather. Pre-recorded sounds of a desolate highway hum faintly in...

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A True American Hero for the Ages

I thought it would be most appropriate to take a moment to
reflect on the life and public service of the late U.S. senator,
retired U.S. naval officer and aviator, and...

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Mitchell: Good sirs, my word was fair. No discrepancy stains the pages of my ledger. The fifth tier is a sub-basement beneath the cellar floor of the temple’s vestibule. Any woman who is not tagged...

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Ah the cake before the icing!!!!!! 

Notes:

Aimee Semple McPherson (October 9, 1890 – September 27, 1944), also known as Sister Aimee, was a Canadian born in Salford, Ontario. She was a Los Angeles–based evangelist and...

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(Apropos of Black Poetic Griots)

We may not be deemed apostolic recorders
But we poets, guided with divine wisdom, are
The lay scribes thereof in the chronicling of
Our life’s sojourn in the shadowing times
we spend here on this...

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