Long Debauched Poems

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...

Read More

Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

Read More

Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

Read More

The Making of a Poet
by Michael R. Burch

While I don’t consider “Poetry” to be my best poem—I wrote the first version in my teens—it’s a poem that holds special meaning for me; I call it...

Read More

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...

Read More

Various Heresies 2

You
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though strange communion between us.

For thirty years You would not open to me;
You remained...

Read More

Sonnets X-XVI


Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

Read More

MODERN SONNETS II

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.



In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch

The...

Read More

Easter as interpreted by one...

rebated, rebelled, rebirthed, rebooted, 
and rebuked courtesy 
one ill shod Unitarian atheist,
who means NOT to affect
any sacrilegious fallout
nor offend devoutly religious 
man, woman, or child,
when the most important 
Christian holiday notated,...

Read More

silently wailing analogy to Moby Dick 
regarding how yesterdays 
prurient laced introductions 
to rhyme in retrospect embarrassingly blows.

Herewith to enliven anecdote ever further,
I inject humorous tidbit
just gimme moment to unload and reach
into psychological metaphorical knapsack
particularly...

Read More

Easter as interpreted by one...
rebated, rebirthed rebooted, and rebuked
ill shod Unitarian atheist

Though avast percentage
of stonehenge temple piloted ghosts,
harking back millennia
constantly zip unseen thru aerospace,
they unwittingly espy
woolly sheep hush fleeced herd
profoundly religious peep pulls
plodding fast as...

Read More

We will be the trustees of life's passions...
The villas of villainous Rome are burning behind me
from Capua to the Cisalpine Alps the skyline is smoldering from her savage sins,
monuments of luxury built, furnished,  and...

Read More

It was a party like most, I guess
And not a “fun” one, I must confess
But our hostess I adored
And I just couldn’t say: “I’m bored”,

So, I milled around, and said “Hello”
And tried to fake a...

Read More

"50 Words for Poe: Foxglove"



What goes through the mind 
of Winter, when you are Autumn
just past Spring
Sometimes you’d squeeze IT
in the hot spaces left-of-centre
with the remnants of the
Summers-In-Between

She liked to keep it real.

She’d escaped
and had...

Read More

Some things are royal
others so prosaic

and then there's everything else

You bring your own biases to the choice

BUT the question then arises:

do these (even these)

belong to you?

It's Your day
Your life
Your breath

(cratered between small clumps
of sunrise and...

Read More

There’s a person who’s been in the news of late,
and he’s been causing great controversy,
goes by the name of Robert Abermarle,
who of late some people line up to see.

But others claim we should all ignore...

Read More

Through raven’s eye, viewed I my fate, blood scribed upon the ground,
whilst shadows of the darkwood’s dead, stood solemnly around.
Accusing faces staring down, from purgatory’s stay,
those wraith dead eyes, that froze the soul, will haunt...

Read More

though avast percentage 
     of Stone Temple Pilots, she push peep pulls 
     viz vernacular speaking population
     to most pious take as gospel...

Read More

She is a popular decadent aura.  
Accusatory and crafty beginning with the Torah.
Debauched by nature
 consumer of the spiritually immature. 
Guided by licentious ways 
she tries to plant her foot on the narrow path...

Read More

Nope! I haint gonna crack'n on the heat... just yet
until the cowed chickens come home to roost!

Sunlight streaming thru window
body electric of mine doth whet
begets hardiness to acclimate
against PECO shut off threat
ideal opportunity to spouse
analogous...

Read More

COVID-19 pandemic analogous how indigenous peoples got felled...

Woebegone, enraged spirits
holographic images taciturn
journeying somberly aghast
at their stolen sacred lands... mourn
dead souls impossible mission

sabotaged aery mission endeavor
happy hunting grounds upheaval
witnessed gaunt bloody sojourn,
perhaps collective aboriginal ghosts return
to...

Read More

I can't write nuttin' worth a damn on a full stomach!

Hunger pangs fuel mine poetic juices,
yours truly moost best be famished
resembling lovely bag of bones
beyond irreparable damage
wrought courtesy anorexia nervosa
nevertheless literary masterpieces
one written quick succession...

Read More

Exile prophet, seer of Patmos,
peering through a time yet future,
saw your rising, not from waters,
but from the bowels of the earth.

Lamb-like beast adorned with two horns,
destined by God’s grace for greatness.
Chosen while not yet a...

Read More

For so long you’ve held the key, the scepter and the crown,
Harrowing the reality, the subconscious, the deep within.
Your voice was deep, poignant, forbidding. Clattering like,
The tumbling down of ancient and spidery bones, swishing
Like the...

Read More

"For the mighty woes
of our desperation,
our much need'd embark,
an appraisal of 
valor.  I must 
lead this army
to uphold virtue."
Prince Alarumdives
strode upon, seeking 
the contempt of his 
desires.  The King and 
his bastard portrayal,
left...

Read More