Long Distraught Poems

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...

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Where Is Your Mind?

Where is your mind?
Is it way out there in the clouds of smoking cigarettes and cigars?
Is it way out there in the clouds of smoking marijuana?
Where is your mind?
Is it way out...

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Sonnets LXI-LXX

Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair?
bright carrot?and her milkmaid-pallid skin,

her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children?some conceived in sin,

the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of...

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Imagine,
said Yin to distraught Yang,
never able to get quite enough of himself,
never enough time to fully become his ego-potentiality

Imagine this day opens a new rhetorical event,
a new day of conversation between Ego
and those you live...

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Disability, Illness and Fundamentalism

My brother died of Cystic Fibrosis, 
When I was twelve and he fourteen, 
It took away his ambitions, 
To study at Oxford - the pipe organ’s steam. 

I understand being born with...

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Doggerel II: Doggerel about Doggerel, or, More Nonsense Verse

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood:
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the...

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 A French ‘Indianist’ Doctor: A Tribute to a Die-hard Humanist
                         ...

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Forever forgive me
For my one and only iniquity
Please forgive me
With forbearance eternally

Lots of anger and lust
Got a hold of me…
So, I must...oh, I must…
Set my soul free

Forever forgive me
Determine my footsteps to the light
Emotionally unhappy
Intervene...

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I went against my better judgment, I was flattered not appalled, the only affection that I had ever known was just affection that I didn’t want
By a man that was many years older than me,...

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Long in the tooth male doth recount, reflect, reimagine...
his woebegone damn dental daze today May 5th, 2021 

No particular rhyme nor reason
garden variety indentured flunky (me)
revisits his salmagundi salad days, 
when oral blight smote 
left...

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Verse 1: My destiny...
My dignity...
Is all gone since you left me with nothing to lose
I'm willing to let go of this grudge in my heart...cut loose the noose 
That's around my neck
Give me your love...

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As the life of the day nears its last breath,
With a glow of crimson, forewarning its death,
Upon its cresting, the reflection, daunting,
The sea sets free a beauty, haunting
The depths of its treasures of unknown span,
The...

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The Almost Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent Tech God Oisin
Session 2: Tech support notes from the server backup and dead chicken case

“Hello this is Oisin. How may I help you this morning?” Oisin says in his polite...

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Galloping hooves broke morn's peace in Soup Creek's Main Street
When Jimmy Smith rode in from Bar 20 his face white as a sheet
He stopped at Sheriff Koplins office and banged heavily on the door 
"What's...

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Unquotable quotes: Paris, the last week of the August reprieve – XXXV Part Two
                 II

The first signs reek tell-tale
Buffer-to-buffer...

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I’m afraid, but with hope in mind – 
Help me out of my cell if you can be so kind
My mind has been in a brain fog lately…
But my writing skills haven’t faded frankly…
Well, I...

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Yet there in the mist is the stories tusk
There full of the hidden secrets of men
The men and fairies who are full of lusk
They do hide them away here in the glen
Here they are hidden...

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Unquotable quotes: Paris, the last week of the August reprieve – XXXV
 Part One                     ...

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Story Poem Contest
Sponsor: Carol Eastman

Somewhere deep into the night, a unicorn decided she wanted to give up her wings. Her family was so distraught and they begged her nicely, “Oh Rainy don’t give up your...

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When I'm gone...
You're gonna miss me over my dead body 
When I'm gone...
Till I'm gone...bye-bye, love...I guess I was your nobody and love everybody, but me...
When I finally belong 
You're gonna depart from me
When I...

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As dawn unfolds today beyond my fractured windowpane,
a breeze beguiles the ashen drapes. Like snakes they slip aside,
revealing wanton worlds that race and run aground, insane,
immersed in scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and...

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After boxing day,
What are we going to do,
I look at you ,
And you look at me,
Simultaneously we 
Say, we have 6 days free	
We look a little lost we have
Not planned a holiday, I know
Let’s go...

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VERNANS PAIN              
 
                  ...

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These are poems about Ann Rutledge and her romantic relationship with Abraham Lincoln. 

Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge
by Michael R. Burch

Winter was not easy,
nor would the spring return.
I knew you by your absence,
as men are...

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I need to relax for a change
One last time, I'm giving it all of my might to fight the good fight
It's eccentric how time flies; I guess it's about time to rearrange...
I don't have a...

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