Long Cynicism Poems

These are peace poems, prayer poems, hymns and lullabies I have written for family, friends and the world over the years ...

Peace Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

for Jim Dunlap

Be calm.
Be still.
Be silent, content.

Be one with the...

Read More

I'm so confused,
raised to believe cooperative love powers
over competing fears
about scarcity of healthy time, 
and other resources
for evacuating anger 
about past over- and under-valuing of myself
as a regenerate wealth source

CoPresent ReTort,
raised to believe the Golden...

Read More

It might take a more comprehensive review
to explain why I thought it would make sense
to read
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anger:
Using DBT Mindfulness
and Emotion Regulation Skills to Manage Anger
(Chapman and Gratz)
AND
Evolutionary Enlightenment:
A New...

Read More

Paradise
like Rome
is not built
and not rebuilt
and rebuilt
and redeveloped
and healed
and redeemed
in one 24-hour
cycle
and recycle
and revolving
round day v night,

And/or 
appreciatively regarding both day
and dualdark
rich and fertile 
souled and soiled
recycling night.

So too
my personal
and political
and economic
and ecological
and theologically reformed...

Read More

A plethora of complex verbiage clogs and clutters solemn university tombs,
gem-encrusted sequestered  vaults  impervious on  mountain peak percentage practical basis, 
when express benevolence  enjoins the ultimate in empirical  assessment ...

Read More

Perhaps infertile
incomplete
unwashed memories
of elder v younger,
Goliath v David,
crusades v communion
critical, yet part of chronic, events
speak extended family disengagement truth
to powerful dirty laundry engagement failures.

That disclaimer said,
I have two incomplete conversations
in mind and heart
and what I...

Read More

My wounded heart drinks deep from the rotting gut of misery,
Humanity vomits its relics onto the oozing tiles of the real.
I see kids chewing syringes like candy canes,
Their innocence smashed, face down on the concrete...

Read More

Could what a political scientist would call
deeply held belief
also be what a psychologist could identify as a
feeling of affinity or aversion,
trust or distrust,
confluent familiarity or cognitive-affective dissonance?

"I deeply believe Testosterone Trump
is the logical conclusion
so richly...

Read More

When I was sixteen
I wanted Robert Kennedy's life,
although I didn't know about his time squandered
in staffing McCarthyism's
Make America as Grotesque as Possible campaign,

Which would have given me pause
in that comparatively naive age
of green longing for...

Read More

Scent Of Paddy Flower

                               ...

Read More

I believe SuperEgo bicameral comprehension
functions, forms, and flows organic
ecotherapeutic integrity;
I believe balanced Left-Right consciousness
orbits toward ecstatic psychology.

I've got nothin' to say
And I'm gonna keep it just that way
'til my mean old SuperEgo
lets me go outside...

Read More

Trumpeting and mythologizing deranged deplorable basket case as demigod

Any idea regarding who unnamed individual earned such lofty title? I offer a clue, that averred person unknown to many others within the webbed, wide world, and...

Read More

When I was five, I asked the Lord…
To please protect my mom, my world
He whispered to my soul, “I will”
And went on to protect her from pain
From worry, doubt, fear and depression
From all the things...

Read More

See, I've been wallowing in it for far too long
knee deep sunk in it even at times 
eyes too marred by melancholy to see the way out 
even as I gave in to the allure...

Read More

"Nature yields to artifice,
not artifice to nature."
Iain McGilchrist

Winning yields to lost and last identity,
not ego-loss to healthier winnings,
more ecosystemically robust.

LeftWing values for transparent
inclusive
democratic rights
more than royalistic wrongs,
yield to RightWing 
nationalistic 
white supremacy,
not artifice to integrity
of...

Read More

Written: April, 16, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Kai Michael Neumann

          **************************

From a deep weariness of the soul 
to the discomfort embedded in our bones. ...

Read More

She knows what it means,
and must never not mean,
to work with newborn win/win children
perverted by wounding RightWing patriarchal punishments
overpowering LeftWing ecofeminist invitations
to liberality of loyal transparency 
and lovely vulnerability.

When she asserted her sociological conclusion:
Too many...

Read More

Bombarded by myriads of daily data without cease,
I suggest a forthright discourse on this topic,
carousel of trend and sound adherence  merely looming?
some unwitting sentiment  an aspirational diction,
reverberation or innuendo pending aftermath augur,
the world...

Read More

You’re the headless horseman running on half a heart 
You shouldn’t know where to go but you just do 
And you’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached to you 
Lost puzzle pieces, collecting dust,...

Read More

FYI: White House

FROM:  Mother Earth

In case you, or anyone you know, is possibly listening,
wanted to mention,

Climate change is a catastrophic NATIONAL,
even international, DISASTER;
a poly-psychopathic source of extreme dissonance.

Anyone who knows our butts
from a BlackHole...

Read More

Old Jambu tree
Still bearing fruits;
Generous delights

~~~~~~~~~


NDP crowd
Massive tapestry;
Community celebration

~~~~~~~~~


Each passing year
Affirms our country;
Diversity in oneness

~~~~~~~~~


We celebrate
Our little red dot;
Gratitude remembers

~~~~~~~~~


So much to see
So little time;
Familiar complaint

~~~~~~~~~


Fireworks display
After The Pledge;
Poignant philosophy

~~~~~~~~~


Politics means action
Mere words concede;
Happy results...

Read More

...It was amidst the aftermath of this
that Tanya first saw the man in the flesh,
he was half-blackened by the soot and smoke,
so taxed that even he struggled for breath.

People were circling around the man,
the cops...

Read More

...She was actually taken aback by that,
by the casualness of the whole thing,
was this the man who had snarled at her?
The brute with such simple understanding?

“Well you can go on, if you have questions,
I was...

Read More

Restlessness in youth,
placidity in the golden age...
do these two conflict
with the pace of motion
that desolation can assuage?
If being young means 
persisting in ambition,
an event of gratification,
venturing in fearless projects,
taking risks and walking through Hell;
is it...

Read More

In the twilight of thoughts, where shadows whisper the secrets of ideologies,
I stand, a prism refracting the multitude of hues of the "isms,"
Each beam a story of belief, a spectrum of convictions.
Socialism, communism, fascism, despotism—
Colors...

Read More