Long Departs Poems

Village in the Valley left behind, and then it's a fine find
Mountain in the making...in the dark alleys of my mind

You're a flashlight
In the night
You are a friend 
Till the end
Bite the bullet
You're the village...

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Today, catching sight of the mallards
crying over Lake Iware:
Must I too vanish into the clouds?
—Prince Otsu translation by Michael R. Burch  

This world—
to what may we compare it?
To autumn fields
lying darkening at dusk
illuminated by...

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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...

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Pellucid pachyderms wade across
the purpling River Manjees
and Tozzath watches from the bank, 
the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud,
his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias,
whose lacey petals flutter
like the wings of long-dead...

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Was the place where we climbing down the bank
Then arrived, alpine and, for what was there
Such as, that any eyesight would be shrank.

Similar to landslide that in side bare
Before Trento the Adige just smote,
Or for...

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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...

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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...

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Matsuo Basho New Haiku Translations

Air ballet:
twin butterflies, twice white,
meet, match & mate
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Denied transformation
into a butterfly,
autumn worsens for the worm
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Dusk-gliding...

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ME dear FATHER you already know,
But you need to be briefed,
On a tragedy I believe you must not know.
There’s a deadly dance with violence killing teens in America’s Black Communities.
Use to be, 
Good Christian mothers,...

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The time was 11:05. Damian 
Made the essential announcement 
"HAKIM the time is now 11:05
We will leave this place at 11:15am.
That's 10 minutes from now.
So use the toilet, do everything 
You need to do for...

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Pride and Prejudice: The Lacking Margins

Pride and Prejudice, a passionate novel by Jane Austen, published anonymously in three volumes in 1813. A masterpiece of English literature, composed with penetrating wittiness and exquisite character delineation, it...

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(Dedication: For Ann)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~



The tale now mints: a hero hears
A call that tints, a choice appears.


It cannot be, this journey quest
To cross the seas, to face the test.


Denial comes brisk, no hero here
To dare grave risk,...

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CONTINUES PART II:

Then she departs, ... his newfound friend
stands (clueless me, no intro of her) I with Rick ... waiting
wife comes--(Hellooo Oh) newfound by brochure stand
he says, "My wife Kris." "Hm" <--(My utterance--smiling, as I'm...

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I have a story that needs be told
A story I never knew if words can transcript
For it belongs when in dreams I enroll
Visions before or an afterlife if I shall seek

If it all shall begin…...

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Existentialism emancipation proclamation manumission...

Flourishes amidst freedom 
once invisible (alice in) chains shucked
when soul no longer kept linkedin 
to jane's addiction 
with corporeal duty, entity, fealty... 
while formerly shed body electric 
gendered as former googly eyed...

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Who suggests a trip back...rides to this bit of nostalgia in the middle years of the Great Depression aboard a Chicago elevated train, "the El." We hurdle head-long above asphalt blanketed streets that are determined...

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      In the purple shadows of the black's monoliths, where an ancient echo calls forth, at the blurry forge of "Ralkon Dis",
a salient dragon from mystery's petra cliffs drifts you...

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I.
GRAIL OF TIDES

from the brewing storm’s steeping chalice
the breath of death’s journey awakens in quiet tides 
beckoned by the stirring whisper of mortal winds
furrowed by stoic angels in pallid temporal skies
on wings they dance with...

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Sometimes everything seems fake to me, and I am so tired of people acting like they remember what love is. 
Everyone says it. 
“I love you, I love you, I love you.” 
No words are...

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We presume to know of a far better way
But our devices will falter somewhere, someday
Surely there will come a time, a time to pay
We don't care, our chosen course we shall stay
In light of His...

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"Who can bear to lose a tie
With a dog that is man’s best ally? .......by poet


"Here lies my dog, motionless in his kennel
unable to wag his tail as he always did.
yesterday when I saw him,...

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A midnight shriek or sudden bang
Disrupts the thread of tales,
Entangled in unconscious mind
With sounds of lashing flails.

Wherefrom it comes, whither it goes?
I threw my eyes up there,
The eerie void soon called me up
To trudge down...

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Una donna rattristita e velata dal pianto,
guarda verso un mare
piu' squallido di questo invernile mattino: 
rimpiangendo i pensieri dolci
cullati dalla nostalgia di ieri
che non sara' facile dimenticare!

Una nave parte,
si ode il suo rombo...
si infrancono
onde tempestose
sulla...

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PROLOGUE:

For what's in a name,
That Shakespeare untamed,
A lyric gained fame,
But when it became,
A different ball game,
For one who's insane.

Yet if twin Yanks say 'Gogh' , 'tis equivalent
might meant, to be, like 'goes',
Dutch disagree, cite, annunciation,
could...

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I was a professional landscaper, with passion for nature, and a green thumb,
Like passions of smothering, dreamy nighttime, to which we gladly succumb.

My work took me to many gardens, set in the butterscotch zones of...

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