Long Cropped Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems IX

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school student and during my first two years of college.

Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of...

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For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight...

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Sonnets XC-XCVII

Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official?zenlike Art?
a...

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This piece has a fairly tricky rhyme scheme =  a-a-B /c-c-B


If All of the Weird Ones Were Cropped


I was sittin’ alone in a booth in a deli in Cody, Wyoming one day, 
When a...

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Lisa and I went to a reception, yesterday evening, for students who’d landed summer fellowships at a particular hospital in Boston. (Yeah us!) It wasn’t formal, so I wore a crimson cropped sweater, a beige...

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The Undertow


The two could feel the undertow
Pull at them both - then let them go
He wondered if she could know
Or sense it too and let it flow

The undertow in the fast-running tide
Ebbed and flowed at...

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Sun setting over the dark green fringe of a shivering lake on the last day of winter
An old man still unbent sits on a deserted wooden bench
   with the load of his cares...

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Up up the fly away wig doth go revisited and revised April 19th, 2023

IM pen named Pilot Jane A. Rug
who ascribes to writing poetry
as opportunistic, holistic, and cathartic
warming me body electric
courtesy an outsize 
warm brimful...

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Medusa had been a ravishingly beautiful maiden but her mirror was broken

Too many snakes in her head as she looked into the reflection of her prism

Condensed she gazed at the prison of shards cracks and...

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I know of a river of more than average 
Sorts...
Meandering, when not dallying to maunder,
Between many differing contours 
And unruly contorts;
Where a privileged youth once
Happily sought -
Pursuing about his passions
In the traditional methods 
By which...

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Up up the fly away wig doth go revisited and revised March 10th, 2024...

(Any resemblance between the following humorous account and real life circumstance tis purely coincidental).

Went off for hair raising shindig
donning noggin of villager...

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Or the fate that awaits one at journey’s  end. 
Like all distances I suppose.
My destination if you can call it that  is another world altogether." 
A lady who could structure her sentences with...

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Up up the fly away wig doth go revisited and revised March 10th, 2022...

Went off for hair raising shindig
donning noggin of villager in Nigg
(historic county of Ross-shire,
historic region of Ross
and Cromarty, northeast
coast of Scotland).

Somehow postiche...

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Pointed Art
Michael R. Burch

The point of art is that
there is no point.
A grinning, quick-dissolving cat
from Cheshire
must have told you that.

The point of art is this—
the hiss
of Cupid’s bright bolt, should it miss,
is bliss
compared to Truth’s...

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Anticipation,
faces sparkling,
wrinkles smiling,
memories at the ready.

Friends inter-mingling, while great grandchildren run through the gathering crowd.
Sun streaking through branches, warming joints, and turned up faces seeking the rare appearance of the coastal sun.

The growing color of...

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We were all born the same at different times,
‘Naked’ and closed eyes to the crime.
So why is she tugging down at her skirt,
In fear that we perceive her clothes as ‘too short’?
Yet wear non-fitted long...

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I.
Miles McNeill was not a fine young man,
he barley finished high school, with a D,
seemed more interested in a thug life,
ran with the gangs and lived life on the streets.

Already had a criminal record,
twice now...

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God cannot intervene in sovereignty 
and the boy will plead no innocence. 
Seedlings  cannot control the wind,
in birth the Oak has called their name
 a command from the forest  unseen.

A  biblical sandstorm...

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>Do you write on trees?

Was on the radio today, do you write on trees?
Cutting through their skin of bark, your love initials, for a lark.

I feel sorry, for the tree, as its life sap, leaks...

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The rising of the seventh moon in an ornamental lampshade is equivalent to a nice round smiley dinner plate that had been recently washed,
Recently washed is neither a rotating wimpy wishing walker and neither is...

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What Holds More Resplendent Gifts Of The Great And Vast Beyond

Seas of poetry orations, I once took my swims
being strong in spirit, stouter in heart and lithe of limbs
What dread had I of illness or...

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Here's  a terrifying piece of news about every mother's nightmare...
Happened in broad daylight with numerous customers everywhere...

A mother, busy festive shopping in a local retail store, was distracted for a couple of minutes...
She had...

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Having been born in ghetto in Mathare, 
twas' my best place to have ever fallen for
Experiencing a short motherly love, 
that led to total absence  between the two of us
Fatherly love,  never ...

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Many British Thermal Units needed...

To heat these lovely bag of bones
more so than required to generate clones
aging musculoskeletal physique groans
kvetching synonymous nsync with exactly
indistinguishable among where generic
garden variety alter kocker and/or like
mummified Pharaoh moans.

Hence, I...

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lids black out and allow me to write
while eyes shut tight
bring back four legged friends sprite
and though many years passed quite

I can remember those precious creatures 
   who barked at night
howling at inaudible...

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