Long Different Poems

I believed that I was rural … that I lived in country style,
where the city was close handy … that big distance was a mile.
Trains and buses ferried daily; a freeway ran close by …
comforts...

Read More

There's consequences in all we say and do 
Go forward and walk your walk and I'll go ahead and talk my talk 
Quite distraught due to the fact that you're too good to be true
I...

Read More

The Sun Is a Liar



It’s been quite some time since I've awoke early enough to meet the sun coming over the horizon. As I gazed out the window from my bedroom window seat, the sky...

Read More

You’re sick, demented, and twisted and you want to judge me for my sins? What about yours? The ones that lie deep within
The ones that sculpted you into the person that you are, the ones...

Read More

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...

Read More

Dad hit me only once, an upper cut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height,...

Read More

Rumors
How we arrived at where we are
By Franklin Price
05/03/2020

By now you've heard the rumors
How Covid-19 came to Earth
How it did not come here naturally 
How Wuhan, China gave it birth

Maybe aided by our government
To make...

Read More

Agony be to society's demise
Labels are for fools, not for the wise
Play the familiar tune of in-unison serenity 
Fatality won't come any time soon, thankfully...

Homeless people were on the news not to long ago...I weep...

Read More

WOMEN ...

Truly amaze me ... they possess the super-human
strength to birth a child - one of the most painful
and demanding physical and emotional feats of end-
urance known to our species - yet they have the
self-confidence...

Read More

"Who Put Luebella down the Wych Elm?"

There are rumours
about me, some 
come seeking me
with their geiger counters
and ouji boards
with their heart 
shaped planchettes

unanswered questions
in the woods, crackling
within the sounds of leaves
invisible dead things speaking 
underfoot...

Read More

When you came to me...

Not that you wanted me.  Oh, no!  It was I who wanted you,
Your comfort... your caring... your
... compassion, your compassion...
Your body, beautiful and young, perhaps that as well at...

Read More

As winter hazes of January spraying
While I was meditating on how
To write this riveting poem which
Seemed to be for someone who
I never cast in my sight.
Despite her name is not an odd in me
But I...

Read More

"Go on forth young graduates,

And show us who you are

You're now our future leaders

We know you will go far"

And so commencement ended

Pictures done and people changed

Now, off to private parties

All orderly pre-arranged

But four young girls...

Read More

“Frequency” 

we are separated 
from the others
by a thin membrane

electromagnetic

we are receptors
unignited ununited
only tuned into our own

frequency

existing to be lit
the fuses touching
reaching delicately 

that which we do 
and do not see, 
believe

answers embedded
in tablets read...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

"The Book of Changes"

Thoughts arrived before words,
1000s of years before
the crossing of curves

always seen to be 
swimming upstream 
against the current

thoughts … and feelings,
in the flow, always arrive 
before words, they are cast 

in the...

Read More

The angles are in the storm
Just before  the break of dawn
Sending a message to everyone
Telling them to remain calm
The angels are singing out loud
They want to break the treacherous cloud
 and relinquish that awful...

Read More

It had been a hellish week.

On Monday
my lonely and tired AfricanAmerican husband
told me, as gently as possible,
that what I had hoped was a temporary separation
is to be extended into perpetuity.

This separation had been scheduled to...

Read More

Medieval Poems



Wulf and Eadwacer
(Old English circa 990 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My people pursue him like crippled prey.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
We are so different!

Wulf's on one island; I'm on...

Read More

Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch

In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while...

Read More

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...

Read More

10 o'clock am the morning 
Quest: A country side bike ride.
Molly woke Dolly and Damian.
Woke Everyone on that July 
Morning of 2038. They had a Bicycle 
Expedition to tend to plus a newly
Minted swimming pool...

Read More

Date:  August 2041

Members of the Damian fraternity 
Were relaxing in the backyard. The
Soon to be 4 year olds conducted 
Themselves in their sandbox.
The older children picniced on
The grass. Amadeus DJ Damali 
And Desharah sat...

Read More

Near Sainthood
by Mirza Ghalib
translation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

On the subject of mystic philosophy, Ghalib,
your words might have seemed deeply profound
and we might have pronounced you a saint...
if only we hadn't found
you...

Read More