Long Contentious Poems

Poems about Poems (II)

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss?
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds



Flying
by Michael R. Burch

I shall rise
and try the bloody wings of thought
ten thousand times
before I fly...

and then I'll sleep
and waste ten thousand nights
before I dream;

but when at last...
I soar the...

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State of the Art (II)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer 
~~~~underwater~~~~
watching the shoreline...

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There is nothing weaker than water
But none is superior to it in overcoming the hard,
For which there is no substitute.
(Laotse, "Nothing Weaker Than Water", Lin Yutang, trans.)

That weakness of mind and body overcomes strength
And uniting...

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An old Greek word, ecclesia,
is often translated as church,
but could also be thought of as a civilization
acting civilly,
as a citizenry
acting as responsible citizens.

The noun side of Ecclesia
casts residents as consumers
of democratic and economic cooperative systems,
while...

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Poems about Poets I


The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch

for Leslie Mellichamp

The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true ...

but...

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What words do we choose for maximizing our ultimate accomplishments,
achieving our healthiest goals,
measuring our 100% successful therapeutic outcome projections?

Why do these words, 
and our feelings about these choices 
wave in and out of optimal happiness...

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Oh Hanna. 

The sinking of the USS Stefan wood. 

Oh Hanna 
I want to take you to Montana. 
We can camp out by the springs we will go and see the way oil is founding...

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Worth Two in a Buddha Universal Bush

Our permaculturist agenda,
primal principle of economic/ecological design,
is developing,
spreading,
hunting and stealing into fissures
fractally fracturing Business As Usual,
competitive monomials unveil Transitional Dual-Destiny of Time.

Nothing any one person or nation could do
or...

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He didn’t really meet Sally as such, more she met him. He was walking down the High street when she tapped him on the shoulder. I’m in a real hurry, but your brother Tom says...

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I was interviewing ecotherapeutic health workers
and ran into one from the Conceptualist School
of Positive Psychology.

While this sounded quite abstractly wonderful,
I asked her for the elevator version.

"Ceptual" derives from "septum",
a (0)-centric bilateral boundary platform
for "conceptual" as...

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Elder Darwin swims in ethology.
He rolls in his deep grave ecology.
He itches and scratches his dissonance
that survival of most fitted and dense
implies manifest destiny for those YangStrong
while Darwin's Cross and his own eyes
clearly disguised
camouflaged ectosymbiotic...

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Let's start with one shared understanding:
life is a more dynamically relational synonym for "nature".

So when we ask,
What is the purpose of life?
we are also asking,
What is nature's purpose?
which sounds similar to asking if evolution is...

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These are poems about Ann Rutledge and her romantic relationship with Abraham Lincoln. 

Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge
by Michael R. Burch

Winter was not easy,
nor would the spring return.
I knew you by your absence,
as men are...

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"Energy fields extend to infinity.
Consequently they are open--
not a little bit open,
not sometimes open,
but continuously open.
The long-established view of the universe as an entropic,
closed system is rapidly losing ground.
Proposals that living systems were open systems
led...

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A KIND RECONSIDERATION 
OF THE ABRAHAMIC FAITHS
IN A DIFFICULT TIME
I
I am interested in Moses,
the baby in the bulrushes
who eventually was able
to speak truth to power and
delivered his people to a
promised land
I am interested in Saul...

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My grandparents' grandparents,
all sixteen,
digging roots through cultural meristems,
young adults,
adolescents during Time's 1880's,
post Civil War birth of Sir James Crow monoculture.

What would we name this self-hatred,
this lack of compassion and gratitude for help
for human nature's lavish...

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Pleasant spring like day February 9th, 2024

A scent (and sixth sense predominates),
when apple boughs
and other aromatic flora
laden with blossoms and fruit
gently assail cilia of the nostrils,
aside from aiding distinguishing 
pleasant or unpleasant smells 
additionally incorporate...

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Sogyal Rinpoche
tells a Doors to Perception story.

Positive and negative feeling individuals
bear witness to a river.

Those more goddess-like
see this river as great
savory
fragrant
nutritious
beautifully resonant
musically harmonic
multiculturally rich,
a transporter of karmic mediation
preferring win/win cooperative
ecofeminist
green energy conservational
and black lives matter...

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If, 
in the NorthWestern Hemisphere,
each Earth Day's EgoCenter
includes a Bicycle Warrior for True EcoLogic,

If,
in South and Eastern Hemispheres,
each Earth Day and Full GrandMother Moon
Allah-Brahman Night of Tao,
includes a Bodhisattva ZenWarrior
of Beauteous EcoJustice Fire
through DualDark TransParent...

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Anomalous poetic contrivance evokes...
googling inept kickstarted lame outré jaunty hokum

(alternately titled:
Random screenshot within me noggin
instantaneously transforming, 
née devolving into gobbledygook.)

I got born with poker faced physiognomy,
no matter yours truly doth not play cards
though self same...

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She has been planning this vacation for more than a year, she has so much love to share, she could not get any of it so she has to give away all of it. Sometimes...

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From Darwin, and other naturalists,
we learned survival of the fittest
as polymorphically equivalent
to thrival of the fit-in-ingest.

Hmmm,...fittest mutual cooperators
...or maybe peer-to-peer positive-to-positive
equals reverse correlative negative-to-negative communisystemic.

Yikes!

At least permacultural naturalists 
speak evolution of biosystemic species
as an EarthTribe...

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Dispassion speaks as the child of reductive suffering.
Peace instinctively feels childlike kindness.
Contented,
content-full,
mindful therapeutic child of present identity's
contentious presence.

Yang's passion, without Yin's kind-mind
and pleasure-body,
necessary for comprehensive consciousness,
but not quite Yintegral enough
for resonating resilient

Peace, without suffering unresolved...

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I can still hear that voice speaking as if someone was dreaming, it is the voice that you hear when someone is trapped between mid-night and daylight and the sun comes charging at you and...

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