Long Defended Poems

Athenian Epitaphs

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls
in their...

Read More

Veronica Franco translations

Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was a Venetian courtesan who wrote literary-quality poetry and prose.

Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (I) 
by Veronica Franco
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

"I resolved to make a virtue of...

Read More

Winter Awakens My Care
anonymous Middle English poem, circa 1300
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything...

Read More

I was reading Rev. Julian Clifford Jaynes' homily,
delivered May of 1919
to the First Unitarian Society in West Newton, Massachusetts,
commenting on the 100 years since Channing's Baltimore Sermon.

Rev. Jaynes had a son, 
a second generation Julian...

Read More

Now is going on through a secret way
Between the martyrdoms and the ground wall,
My master, and I behind him to stay.

“Oh highest virtue, who me gently haul
In wicked rounds”, I started, “If you please,
Speak to...

Read More

“Here the fierce with the thin pointed tail,
Who passes mountains and breaks arms and walls!
Here who with stench can the world assail!”

So my duke started to talk with his calls;
And hinted then it to get...

Read More

The mind doesn't passively await impressions, no tabula rasa,
The mind is active, understanding, not just a passerby.
He had bete noire towards Christianity, a Scottish Nominalist,
David Hume, born in Edenborough, was a philosophical skeptic.
Born in 1711,...

Read More

It was noon, he was in the bush, he enjoyed this type of living, he sometimes played with the animals just to make himself happy and spend some time, Leisure and embraced them all as...

Read More

A Brief For The Defense 

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies 
are not starving someplace, they are starving 
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. 
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants....

Read More

A nice couple. The Tale of Jean and William. Part 1

Jean Fallen was born in 1999 and had a lonely childhood. 
She grew up in Redfern but never went to school.
She lived with her mother...

Read More

The Spirits of Culloden. 
This is like a pilgrimage, a try tae come every year,
Gather at the cairn, meet old friends, wipe away a tear.
Standin on that moor, that once with blood was sodden,
Paying respects...

Read More

The Rhymed Poem aka The Rhyming Poem and The Riming Poem
Old English Poem (i.e., Anglo-Saxon Poem) from the Exeter Book, ca. 990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He who granted me life created this sun
and...

Read More

The Rhymed Poem aka The Rhyming Poem and The Riming Poem - Part II
anonymous Old English Poem from the Exeter Book, circa 990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He who granted me life created this...

Read More

Last evening I noticed another disconcerting Trump headline.
This felt and smelled more like a deadline
for disintegration
than a lifeline,
a bootstrap, if you will,
toward integrity of health and regenerative safety,
which I thought was front and center
in our...

Read More

If I ask you to come and get me tomorrow
Would you turn down my request to come?
If I ask you to come and get me tomorrow
Would you lay down your burden and come?
Tomorrow might be...

Read More

Here are tribute poems for exceptional children and teachers who should be alive today:

Emilie Parker,
the horror grows starker
as we see your sweet image
and cringe at the carnage;
but dear, how you mesmerize
with those vivid blue eyes
and...

Read More

The walls are imprisoned in silence,
A heavy, powerless silence, shattered
By voices, tears, and crowded souls.
Justice hides in the corridors of greed,
Crimes are sentences uttered in the halls,
The innocent are moving targets,
An age-old burden on the...

Read More

How much simpler
and yet vastly more complex,
diversely resonant,
past decisions to hire the credentialed professional elite
also choices not to hire a charismatic
brown-skinned
ecofeminist,

And how much more resilient
urgently cooperative
corporate win/win covenant repercussions might have been
if we stopped compartmentalizing,
and...

Read More

Vanished

the wild magic of this place;

this wilderness I now roam alone
as its lifeblood seeps 
into 
Afterlife

..my mournful howls
across time and distance
go unanswered -
Oh, how I long to join again
in my brethren’s song..

fading sunlight falls in...

Read More

Do you remember stories about the incensed 60s?

The smoke-filled Beatles,
and acrid flowering Hippies,
and Aquarian Age of Free Love.

It fizzled out.
It wasn't such a Great Transition
as we had hoped.
Exhausted by Foreign and Civil Rights v Wrongs...

Read More

(There’s a song for this: ‘Confessions’ by Sudan Archives)

I remember it like it was yesterday (it was yesterday).

I arrived on a cool (42°f), blindingly sunny New Haven afternoon. It was as if they’d opened up...

Read More

Every morning
When I glance into the mirror
I look deep inside
Deeper than my subtly-thinning hair
Deeper than my raven beard
Deeper than my mocha complexion
Laden with marks
Of life's wear and tear 
And high cheek bones
I see multitudes
From across...

Read More

"The Arrows"


                            The arrows found their mark as...

Read More

Thought Train Location As of October 27th,2013
Take 1

…don’t even try to believe or perceive or conceive any of this*
when the clouds come to veil the stars and the night puts you in an unsure but...

Read More

Haiti, Haiti, Haiti, the Land of Martyrs
Haiti, Haiti, the Land of Great Slaves
Haiti, Haiti, the Land of Ancient Braves
For many, the betrayed Land that matters.

Haiti, Haiti, the volcanic land of Fire
Haiti, Haiti, the land of...

Read More