Long Don Poems

Humanity keeps looking forward, toward the coming of a birth,
and we’re all deemed as equals on our first day on this earth,
but as the years go quickly by our lives become our own;
we’re seen as...

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Poem revised Memorial Day May 30th, 2022 at 1500 hours

Flagrante delict adulterous sordid behavior 
automatically linkedin with Lothario;
an unscrupulous seducer of women, 
based upon a character 
in The Impertinent Curious Man, 
a story within a...

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Zen Death Haiku

Brittle cicada shell,
little did I know
you were my life!
—Shuho, translation by Michael R. Burch

Returning
as it came,
this naked worm.
—Shidoken, translation by Michael R. Burch

As dew glistens
on a lotus leaf,
so too I soon must vanish.
—Shinsui,...

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Poems about Poems (II)

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss?
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves...

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Instruction
by Michael R. Burch

Toss this poem aside
to the filigreed and the wild tide
of sunset.

Strike my name,
and still it is all the same.
The onset

of night is in the despairing skies;
each hut shuts its bright bewildered eyes.
The...

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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...

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State of the Art (II)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer 
~~~~underwater~~~~
watching the shoreline...

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You've heard that self-unfulfilling prophecy?
"I love humanity--
it's just people I can't stand."

I love healthy humanity--
it's just uppity and/or snooty people I can't stand

I love cooperative humanity--
it's just overly-competitive individuals I can't stand.

Not so distant from,
I...

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Donald impersonating
a nice guy publisher right 
after my accident traumatic 
brain injury car bomb attack 
he followed me to book stores 
ice cream shops art museum 
obsessed with my poetry my 
manuscript i was writing...

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Oft in My Thought
by Charles D'Orleans
translation by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet...

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"That also has a steep drop off the far side of Home Sweet Hell" said my soulless guide as he pointed in the direction of the nearby screams. 
I could see what resembled silhouettes or...

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YOU MEAN LIKE PETERS BOSS OF BOSSES DETROIT HITMAN OBSESSED WITH BEING BIG PAULIE THE MAKING OF JOHN GOTTI BOSS OF ALL BOSSES INCLUDING BIG DON OF CLASSIC SCUM PAYOFFS BRIBES BULLYING CAR BOMBS IGNITING...

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Was it a cruel twist of fate?
Sneering, laughing chance?
Perhaps something I ate?
A bad bout of happenstance?

It wrenched and tore at my gut,
A sickening, sober, foreboding sign.
Wretched chance it was not,
This time was by insidious design.

The...

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Says Csikszentmihalyi,
"Social scientists
(Abraham Maslow, Lawrence Kohlberg, Jane Loevinger, [Ken Wilber, Edward Podvoll, Julian Jaynes, Jack Kornfield, Richard Dawkins, Clare Graves, Carl Jung] and James Fowler)
describe a dialectical motion
between [Yang-ego-form] differentiation
and [Yin-eco-logical function] integration,
between turning attention...

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Yoga in Poem A Novel Approach Step 6

Brahmari Pranayama or Humming Bee Breath

IMP. NOTE: Temporarily I am stopping new episodes 
of Yoga in Poem due to personal reasons and will try 
to restart Yoga in...

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Silence reigns supreme in my reich

No don (except me)
doth trumpet within the aborted
barren reach of freedoms within expansive realm,
I annexed courtesy manifest destiny,
which peoples now inhabiting said jurisdiction
circumscribed by following coordinates -
Latitude: 40° 16' 22.20"...

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I walk o u t...

I am lost in unapproachable light—a spectral broth
I am tasting the screaming silence—the archetypal observer
dissects my essence-fossil Passion
a seismic rupture between life/death/rebirth
gnaws at my marrow This dilemma-kudzu
coils tight, constricting tomorrow's breath

Death...

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The Rhine Salmon Complaint, Translation of Etiemble’s Complainte d’un salmon du Rhin

						For Yvon Belaval
(A lilting musical poem of varying line length in quatrains with a refrain and much internal
 rhyming; end-rhyme scheme: alternate rhymes in...

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He walks around with his nose pointing upward in the air
With calculating eyes that are so fearful, mouth moving from side to side and a tongue that keeps twisting around the things that are profound....

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Come post presidential election 2024... 

heil to the Wharton chief firebrand -
more worrisome than an ovarian cyst
every race, religion, nationality, 
gender, creed, et cetera with impunity dissed
brigand able, eager, ready and willing
to punch contenders throwing...

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Poem 1: A Boy And His Painted Piano

he used lively greens
tender blues,
touches of plain mauve 
and rainbow trout splatters
to paint music
on the gas fumes 
that inhabited the clean air
that once use to live there.

he made...

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A MINISTER RETIRES :  
SOLILOQUY 

I arise as infant Phoenix 
from Akasha ashes 
counterparts frozen 
with foibles intact
a still Arctic of death
sheath for recalibration 

Source Light breathes into 
fontanelle slowly sleepily  
Sekmet my...

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Recluse by dint of circumstance

Proud anonymous troglodytes 
forerunners of mine
confronted threats less horrific
than forty fifth commander in chief
of United States of America.

He/him (matted hair, ratty, scrawny, 
and tetchy ugly villain)   
scurried into dark...

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(One poet's vision of what being indwelled by Christ's heart might look like)        

What makes me feel loved isn't easy to say, 
And not because the heart of...

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Brownian motion writ large...
within small medium 
as light brainstorm doth 
hail forth the following poem.

Across the realm of gray matter
slowly percolating within tissue
composed of neuronal, glial 
and endothelial cells, and although 
there must be biological...

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