Long Decline Poems

When I was a child
Everything was magical
Full of mystery and the unknown
I read hundreds of books
The library my haven
My home
Hours upon hours
Night and day
I read and got lost in text
They supplied me with adventures
Secret journeys
Fun...

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I have been trying to find the right words to pen this verse, but since I came to this country my words are suppressed and my voice is oppressed. The wind is blowing furiously, and...

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I woke up in the middle of the night with tears running from my eyes. I woke up in the middle of the night because my spirit cries
It is not the tear that falls when...

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Humanity keeps looking forward, toward the coming of a birth,
and we’re all deemed as equals on our first day on this earth,
but as the years go quickly by our lives become our own;
we’re seen as...

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The Original Sin: Rhyming Haiku!
 
Haiku
should never rhyme:
it’s a crime!
-Michael R. Burch
 
The herons stand,
sentry-like, at attention ...
rigid observers of some unknown command.
-Michael R. Burch
 
Late
fall;
all
the golden leaves turn black underfoot:
soot
-Michael R. Burch
 
Dry leaf...

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Zen Death Haiku

Brittle cicada shell,
little did I know
you were my life!
—Shuho, translation by Michael R. Burch

Returning
as it came,
this naked worm.
—Shidoken, translation by Michael R. Burch

As dew glistens
on a lotus leaf,
so too I soon must vanish.
—Shinsui,...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (II)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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Winter
by Michael R. Burch

The rose of love's bright promise
lies torn by her own thorn;
her scent was sweet
but at her feet
the pallid aphids mourn.

The lilac of devotion
has felt the winter hoar
and shed her dress;
companionless,
she shivers—nude, forlorn.

Published...

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These are translations of some of the oldest Japanese waka, which evolved into tanka, renga and haiku. 

While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
—O no Yasumaro (circa 711), translation...

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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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At the footbridge Sue was meeting her beau
(He was married to a woman called Flo)
Sue soon found out his deception
She dismembered his erection
For his love life it was a massive blow

To the hospital fled poor...

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Invocation to the Muse

From the gleaming skin of life’s underbelly, 
sin unreconciled, formed from Nephilim seed,
fleet footed jokers mask pawns into flight;
To the epistle of the Most High.
For in the beginning, the true and only...

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The many blessings taking classes at Saint Marks Catholic Church safe guarding gods children arch dioceses of Milwaukee raising my granddaughter from walking my pre schooler to our lady of mount Carmel kindergarten St Theresa...

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(Somewhere in late 18th-century Europe a friend, Laetitia, by way of a letter warns her beloved girlfriend, Euphoria--a young, gay and unsuspecting mistress--against the almost inevitable seductions of the infamous and maundering philanderer, Melancholia.).



Dear Euphoria,

...

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Happy Fourth Of July, Or Happy Independence Day

On this day we celebrate and commemorate the birth of our nation, The United States of America's Independence from Great Britain's monarchical hold and liberty's triumph
Congress voting in...

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The tears well up, and scarce could she not moan
When father, brother, husband, all have died.
She now has no possessions, neither home,
But travels to a distant, unknown land:
Once so secure, yet now compelled to roam;
Once...

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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...

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These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch 

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find...

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The Lord is faithfull.!
Thesselonians ch 3 v 3-5

Jerimiah in the midst of the rebbelious people, had taken
Note of a sobdrly clad 'new group to his awareness' he made
Enquiry at the market stalls, and was told...

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This is how it starts
the decline of who we are, the decline of something more
the start of wars
Installed in us is confidence
confidence, a blessing or a curse
Without confidence we stand degraded, disenchanted, alone
while with too...

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Where is the shining city upon a hill?                           ...

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When they came to a side hall Joulupukki stopped.
     “Do you feel the magic?”  He said to her.  She nodded.  He stepped around the corner, on the far...

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Glib rhetoric concerned with  striking independence may seem frivolous,
nuanced rational quite often a typical traumatic casualty,
the once interminable interdependent passionate zeal disintegrating in rapid spasms,
a longing sated and mutually embraced by two compatible persons...

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On the extremity of  a tall bank 
Of big broken stones in round circle done
We reached up a more cruel clutter flank;

And there, for the horrible and strong stun
Of rotten stench which the deep...

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Dream state yields deep sleep personifications

Upon lying supine - eye shutter lids
into the land of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,
where the sandman beckons and bids
dead to the webbed wide world,
yours truly immune to wakefulness 
despite being...

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