Long Continue Poems

AFTER THE KARCHER FIRE LOUD SILENCE FBI AGENTS WERE GETTING CLOSER CIRO GARGANO WAS NERVOUS UNRAVELING THE CREW STORED THE CONTENTS OF THE TAILOR SHOP IN THE GARAGE AT LAKE COUNTY MUSIC COMPANY THE GARAGE...

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MY STALKERS BEGAN TORMENTING ME AFTER SEVERAL BREAK INS I CONTACTED SPECIAL AGENT PAULA BRAND ARLINGTON HEIGHTS FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION BECAUSE SHE INSTALLED WIRES ON MY UNBORN CHILD WHILE I WENT INTO HOSTAGE SITUATIONS...

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I have had a highly redundant,
one might even choose polypathic,
graduate studies experience
spanning my adult life to date.

This began with a semester of Philosophy.
Just enough to learn I wanted something more experiential,
a more embodied communication environment...

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Atmospheric Elocutions For Surviving Armageddon 

Elocution lessons for the morality police 
Persecution of those not callously elite
Convolution of the elongation of the technique 
Revolution from the poor, downtrodden and bleak 

Ageless reckonings that are born...

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There are many Christians today, that are advocating always,
That we leave 'left behind letters,' to be read latter on, after 
The harpazo of the church has both come and also gone.
Instructing our left behind loves...

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An icy chill descends on 13 Beaver Veil Cottage as sisters Ester and Ellie walk gingerly up the steps on this wet and windy night.
This once charming pied-a-terre was now in a final phase denouement.
The...

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n icy chill descends on 13 Beaver Veil Cottage as sisters Ester and Ellie walk gingerly up the steps on this wet and windy night.
This once charming pied-a-terre was now in a final phase denouement.
The...

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GOOD NAME MATTERS:
This is ANDERSON WALKINGSHOES.. 
VERSE 1:
Inna real life many pipo no dey reason.
More time demm dey see life as simple,
So demma life all be some way.
Demm no fi decide give demma Self.
Wherever di...

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Summer Solstice 2025

Friday, June twentieth
at 10:42 Post Meridian
Eastern standard time
will find Earth's North Pole tilted
closest toward sun. 

This demarcates
most daylight hours of the year 
for people living 
within the northern hemisphere.

Just shy of the supposed...

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Unique: I need someone to hold me and tell
me it's alright.
I need someone to hold my hands and feel
my pain.
I need someone to kiss away my pain.
I need someone to look into my eyes and...

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I see people moving, but going nowhere
I see people moving with their hands thrown in the air
I see people moving but they have nothing to share
Bags and pans, old kettle, and old man
The scavenger, the...

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Poem revised Memorial Day May 30th, 2022 at 1500 hours

Flagrante delict adulterous sordid behavior 
automatically linkedin with Lothario;
an unscrupulous seducer of women, 
based upon a character 
in The Impertinent Curious Man, 
a story within a...

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"Blue Sky, Why?"

stories speak to us.
inside our heart 
is crying.

Blue Sky, Why?

why do children
holding sunflowers
watch their parents die

why do sweet children,
now war torn, 
some the battle's orphans,
daily lose their lives

lying in their sick beds
bombed in...

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Limericks VII - Naughty, Bawdy, Risque, Absurd

There continue to be modern sequels of the famous "Nantucket" limericks, including this bawdy one of mine:

There was a lewd whore from Nantucket
who intended to pee in a bucket;
but...

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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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What fills your goals, son?

I told you!
Need to get my car rolling [life rolling, love rolling]
yesterday,
if not today...

If I may interrupt
to process mindful resilience
for a bit...

Let me ask again:
Noticing you are concerned about long-winded
and -winding
and...

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The first soft snow: 
leaves of the awed jonquil 
bow low
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Come, investigate loneliness! 
a solitary leaf
clings to the Kiri tree
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The cheerful-chirping cricket
contends gray...

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Dusk-gliding swallow, 
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers! 
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A bee emerging
from deep within the peony's hairy recesses
flies off, sated
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

That dying cricket,...

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Limericks III - Grab Bag

Being a peace activist, I once wrote a limerick in an attempt to stop needless wars:

Of Tetley’s and V-2's
(or "Why Not to Bomb the Brits")
by Michael R. Burch

The English are very...

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When oppositional cognitive dissonance 
deflects focus from compassion,
I've learned to go back to when I deflected focus from her.

She sends me passive-aggressive messages,
bread crumbs leading back in time 
to where she began to feel lonely,
marginalized,
siloed,
anxious,
neglected.

If...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems V

Poetry
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found you—shivering, bare.

They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both...

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My protagonist today,
a Gay Black Religious Mature Male,
not quite ready for silver-grey Obama temples

Is off this morning
to a new full-time job,
8 to 5,
Monday through Friday.

He has been out of his calming,
regular custodial collared routine,
for over...

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In Colchester, CT,
and possibly in your town too,
we have a LongTerm ReCoVery Committee
looking at 20/20 prevision
for post-pandemic climate health revisions
for wealthy local and global EarthJustice.

So, what have I noticed
that might be economically
and ecologically win/win useful?

In...

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Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
—Yamaguchi Seishi, translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
—Takaha Shugyo, translation by Michael R. Burch

The first soft snow:
leaves of the awed jonquil
bow...

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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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