Long Dissertations Poems

See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed...

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With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

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for René Passeron*

             You may not grow old too soon
          if
Things you have known...

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Privilege
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Harvey Stanbrough, an ex-marine who has written eloquently about the horror and absurdity of war in "Lessons for a Barren Population."

No, I will never know
what you saw...

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3 
Pay attention! 
Important chicken poetry coming up, 
though no binary fantasies shall deconstruct 
into raucous biddy enjambment. 


4 
Grandfatber always kicked Grandmother's chickens away 
while he sat whittling under the Oak, 
Those ruddy, Cherokee...

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Fragments of voices
like phrases of song
are accepted inside
as not too horribly wrong.

But whole operas,
learned dissertations,
and uncertain scientific recreations
are not accepted outside
without establishment's substantial reservations.

Indigenous wisdom hears 
and reveres interdependent wholeness
while modern patriarchal strength
is willing to...

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•	
I’m of Slovakian descent,
I can barely afford my rent,
Now I’ve run out of time,
And my very last dime,
I need to reach,
My time to teach,
To mold the minds and sculpt the dreams,
To reserve the tears and...

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At first school was cool
Had to abide by one simple rule
Read and write
And never fight
Recite the alphabet
How easy can it get?
One plus one is two
A E I O U
Two times two is four
D O O...

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Aye admit, an author's adept
and adroit mastery
to link words together subtly crept
(expressing contents
in a matter of fact

understandable fashion, except
for dissertations and/or kept
jargon for exclusive specialty)
posits, that my wordy verbosity,
revelation, viz "EUREKA" suddenly leapt

administers cerebral, harmful
offal...

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Soul,


"Even the mind fades with time . There’s no escaping it. One has to make the most of it (the mind) while they still have time  and some youth left. What stays beautiful is...

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These are neither ritual cuts
under the left eye 
of a married man, 
nor those forehead to chin,
proving Prussian manhood.

I speak here of geometries
describing present then gone,
marking disassembly 
within the flesh
drawn upon.

My father’s traced excavation,
down from...

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