Long Defined Poems

SELF REFLECTIONS

These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections, impressions and self-reflection. 

Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch 

for anyone struggling with self-image

She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she's grossly...

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Too many times sadly
too seldom gladly
I must learn to trust
Earth's future more

Both Father Sun's timeless 
rounds of enlightenment
and Mother Earth's
codependent rhythms
regenerating rich 
empowering 
soulful soil
and surfing seas

And this trusting more
impels healing trauma's lessons,
surviving hale and...

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Hi.
We don't have a lot of time,
or, well, I guess you do,
but I don't,
so let's plunge right into the first big question:
Which came first, form or function?

False dichotomy. No such thing as a totally dysfunctional...

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You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
 
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened...
 
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching...
 
You...

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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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Date:   April   2026

The 1st degree is unknown 

Damian and Polly had planned
The trip to the Copy Cat Club
For weeks with Dolly and Molly
The club was popping when
They hit the scene.
The DJ...

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Senator Fuller,
a permaculture designer
turned architect of exterior landscapes
then public sector architect
of EarthShip cooperative interior landscapes,
is with us today
to tell us about why he supports Sanders,
at this point in time,
although he is making no commitments about...

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"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

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Creolization,
soars Dr. Jane Anna Gordon,
turns our co-empathic evolving democracy project
into a verbal,
active,
regenerative more,
degenerative less,
occasionally Elite-Pirates v NonElite-MultiCultural Prey revolution,
and even more unconsciously occasionally 
Elite/NonElite Creolizing-SelfReGenerative
crave to grave multicultural experience.

What could all this Elite and NonElite...

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It's all frustratingly LeftBrain relativistic,
even nihilistic in its darker 
ruminating 
paranoid about chaotic outcomes form,
said Einstein's post-millennial ghost.

So its all synergetic fractal 4D equivalent SpaceTime,
said Fuller,
in co-arising nondual P = N(NP)/2 (0)-Core response.

Interesting you should...

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The tears flowed and I still smiled,
My body and spirit and mind,
Were still in that state of residual bliss,
Soaking in your sweet smile,
And savoring the moonlit skin before me,
But my soul was being torn asunder,
And...

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RE: Continuing RedMeat Only,
much less any Green Leafy Salads

Abraham Lincoln thought it politically unhealthy,
and probably economically unwise,
to disinvest his Cabinet,
much less his entire Constitutionally incorporated population,
from ecopolitical diversity.

What is politically healthy,
probably not an all RedMeat...

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I would imagine Adam Smith's invisible cooperative economic
self-and-Other-investment hand,
at least during Christian Sunday morning services,
looked and sounded and felt very much
like the One Invisibly-Organic-Holistic-Enlightened MindBody of Christ.

I would further imagine
both he and George Washington,
at least...

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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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[Well, ShallowMan’s ne’er at a loss
for voicing shallow thoughts that gloss.
With trenchant wit he reaps the dross
when seeking sense in applesauce.

But to his aid flies FactoidMan
who always has a Fact at hand;
with him, who needs...

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Today we begin with a quote from Eisenstein
with commentary in brackets
informed by Bucky Fuller's cooperative metaphysic 
of Synergetic Steerage.

"We have a[n intuited, autonomic systemic] need to stay in contact with people with whom we share...

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That color vileness painted on my face
When coming back my duke to me I saw 
His new squeezing inside much more took place.

He heedful stopped as man hearing to draw;
Because his eye could not reach...

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Why does my multicultural applauding message,
my polycultural cheerleading,
sound so monocultural chant, rant,
a passionless litany of redundant verse?

Who would have it said of their voice
It remains both too rich
and yet wandering on far too long?

Even resonance
can...

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Some days and nights
I am terrorized by death,
cold silo ache-echoing fear,
claustrophobic breathless dark
barking inevitable factness and finality
of my decomposing mortality,
and posthumous demise,
probably post-humorous as well,
should we discover any essential difference.

What good is death
if it cannot...

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Could we be doing our best
to invest in Earth's cooperative health markets?
While you sell our most competitive killing machines
to our Saudi Arabian cousins.

Referencing this touchstone as an ecopolitical WinWin,
unlike Parisian multicultural investments in climate health,
as...

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I began reading Jane Anna Gordon's "Creolizing Political Theory"
from the back toward the front,
as usual,
because if I appreciate where this narrative journey will end,
then I probably will find we start off with similar questions 
of...

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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...

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It was September 
Of one thousand 
Nine hundred seven
The end of summer
With apples lying thickly
Under the apple trees
And the smell of Autumn
Covering the grass
Filled with ripe yellow
And orange squash
He was born in a little
Wooden house...

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Life as active love evolves toward more polycultural communication,
across both species and time,
within Earth’s Solar EcoSystemic Universe.

While this conversation includes human natured communicators,
we suboptimize our ecological balance
if endo-human discourse monopolizes our lifetime learning dialogue.

A life...

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