Long Disabuse Poems

For each gift that you make to a man’s spirit,
Servant gift, not the kind that dishonor brings,
There’s a peace that comes soft. (Can your ears hear it?)
And the heart of the man soon forgets its...

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Is it ‘friendship’ you proffer (to strangers who ask)
If you’re ‘sap for sad stories,’ deny other’s truth,
If you’ve something to barter, a ‘twit’ for ‘twat’ thought, (1)
Good advice you call ‘currency,’ aids in some plot
In...

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ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might...

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Mike and his father went grocery shopping.
Mike, age 4, chooses a tuna meal fish can.
Since his hands were full as he was swapping.
Mike opts to put the tuna in his pocket as a man.

A while...

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Today, when I'm in search of news, seems no honest place to choose

          No matter where my surfing lands, my wits are placed in biased hands


Facts...

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If I have to leave you, it won't be my choice,
But a desperate move by a man with no voice
In the judgments 'you' make on 'dark' friends I hold dear,
Don't just fear they're around, but...

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"Happy Easter To You!", is the greeting I hear them shout!
Alas, I just lamely roost here, brood, ponder and pout!
I've worked for weeks making eggs and I'm all tuckered out!
All this hoopla about rabbits, I...

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Go on, redouble, and write a great Rondeau;
Get out your best pen and call on your muse.
Let your light shine like Deliverance banjo;
The Lord gave you gifts He wants you to use.

Sure it’s a challenge,...

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Issue, O Iridescence!
Luminesce on the sly.
Pore over, phosphorescence?
Oh yes, and here is why!

Students of the nebula!
Empire has its cost!
Best to keep it regular?
That or deal of Faust!

Sauced, are ye, wild warriors?
Well, at times it's best.
Lost...

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Those that belong to God go to a much better place
For such as these - there’s always plenty of space.

Those that depart from us do not have regret
For such as these are blessed - lest...

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The first few years of life 
is little different 
than death or dreamless sleep
There is nothing we can recall
as if we didn’t exist at all
events failing to stick 
like an omelet sliding perfectly
from a Teflon...

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Inner child, forever confused?
Puzzled by alcohol misused.
His angry dad when so infused,
Did with hand, belt and bat abused.

Inner child, cruelly accused,
With arms and hips then deeply bruised.
His ‘self’ reduced and made diffused,
Mental pain left talents...

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to take a whole bottle of pills
to knowingly give up on life
to jump to your death
just to avoid struggle and strife
to disabuse alcohol
to take a drug over-dose
to voluntary check out of life
to have death's door...

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The redamancy flowed from within,
jumping down the line,
the nacarat sun;
blinding the ones alive,
listen to the canorous sounds;
blowing in the wind,
even though they are flagitious,
their nature seems forced,
how vociferous they can be;
lacking intrinsic will,
dripping with such...

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My inner monster lurks around.
Amid my anxieties, it can be found.
What I believed is hard to face,
Is where trauma finds a hiding place.
It could evade, disguise, and get loose.
This is the time to confront; disabuse.
Only...

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