Long Crinkling Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems X

These are early poems written in my teens and twenties.

Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret,
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once...

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LOVE POEMS V

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch, about life, the dream of love, virtue, a first kiss, a first crush, the birth of a first relationship, the joy of a first love...

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"Lizzie Borden took an axe,
gave her mother forty whacks,
when she saw what she had done,
gave her father forty-one,
she washed herself from a watered pail,
she claimed their lies and vicious tales,
she pled not guilty and moaned...

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These 2 different versions are separated by nine years

Part 1

MUST BE SPRING

Small speckles of wild grass 
Looking like tiny green drops 
That had fallen to the earth 
Were the very first sign 

Waving in the...

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Kit

Before I opened the carton,
   I’d chose the name Kit,
      Thinking of strong Wild West women.

Our little girl, Gigi, ran to my bedside, barking
   Excitedly, “A...

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Standing all alone in the woods;
eyes shut, I feel the lilting light.
Sun dodges needles through the crown,
beams land on my skin softly so.
Brisk breezes quicken and rustle.
Bristlecone pines ever sway slowly,
while pockets of air blush...

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Forth from the heaven, from the misty moorlands of all sacred woodland greens,
drop by drop by striking the pebbles and untouched vegetations oozes, 
the intoning hallowed water of evergreen woods' crystal cascades, brooks and streams.
to...

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The problem is her lips.
They don't form smiles any more than waves decide of their own accord 
to lift themselves up off of the ocean's surface.
And if lips are meant to be drowsy shutters
then hers...

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I came out screaming from the womb
No I am not a malcontent, I innocent
Was slapped upon my nakedness. Gloom
Was the first thing I grasp, a dissident
         ...

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Inside worn and weathered walls,
Nobles and commoners
Gather and share 
In the field of rosiness.
Together, they are
Composed, well organized.
Each one partaking in blind optimism.
Knowing truly, that
The odds prevail.

Uneasy
My eyes penetrate
The bleached and waxen folds
Of my buttoned-up,...

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The muscles flexed like wings for flight
I saw fell down from heaven like light
The trees shook
Off their callous demure, grew gold green
My masked look
Came where adoration feathered preen
The cold pride that risked my life
The risks...

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Columbus, you again
Your rotten caravels still unforgotten
Silhouette of flitting bats 
And old wives tale of true honor
For at each wheel
The old African seamen
Rana Raraku
And their big nose images of the Ra
Those who mined iron
For Hittite...

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Small speckles of wild grass
Looking like tiny green drops
That had fallen to the earth
Were the very first sign

Waving in the breeze
With their feathery tops rippling
They slowly reached for the sun
Growing much taller than myself

Then the...

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"You are ... different, aren't you?" she said, crinkling her nose.

That sentiment, spoken by my fourth grade home-room teacher
Had been paraphrased many times before
(And would be countless times again)
Different, unusual, odd, weird, curious, complex, or...

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Winter weather comes in starkness; but human spirit adds its blaze.
Flickering embers spark the fire; sending fragrance everywhere.
Stockings hung beneath the mantle, burning wood, eyes in a daze.
Glad hearts singing, holiday ringing, shoppers rushing here...

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A ringing bell in the near-distance makes her delicate body tremble, as she sat on the corner of the opaquely purple stained living room sofa. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. She grew in despair of how...

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The woodcutter and puppeteer
once lived 
in coexistence
although unknown
craft left hidden
strings quietly rewoven

In past life
the woodcutter 
was greedy
and when threatened
by possibility
cut the strings
holding together
glue and wax

The puppeteer planned
and they quarreled
until the woodcutter
lost their glue
and the strings
once...

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I am not all happiness.
I am not as bitter as your smile
and I have no lips to make me sense -
to curve around my name and give
me more depth than the air,
than the dust I...

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REFLECTIONS

I looked into my mirror today,
And saw an old face watching me
He wasn’t there yesterday
But I never see the same face twice

There have been lots of them. 
Years ago with brown hair and clear eyes.
Features...

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the wrinkles on your own hands

 

(no matter how many lotions you have rubbed on them, no

matter how much vitamin e oils, no matter how many

antioxidants you consume---all in the attempt to stall or

at least...

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what a calm sea hides

into the deepest indigo
air airwaves have settled
all that remains is a fringe of tide

the tree holds, forever

on the eighteenth day
of every second month 
an invitation arrives.

not encased in a stiff
white crinkling...

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What now try our souls at evening's faint hour? I
Shall not let some heavy foot use this heart
Like a common shoe. I shall yet defy
The tiger slinking to tear me apart
For daring to the forest...

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what a running chestnut sounds like                             ...

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By the surf's edge
Where the water nibbles at our toes
We are on life's ledge
Where tides snoring flows
No Columbus will come again
To rescue us with chains
No Hossanah to shout again
With the coming flood of pains
It is...

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My darling, I am awake today with birds singing
Sweetly through the wetlands, from mate to mates
They call their love, their choral notes rejoicing
And all earth a heaven seems as the dawn dilates
Into sweet thoughts of...

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