Long Drain Poems

“I am NOT like my father!!!
You say that again, I’m going to kill you!”

I shrivel up in shame
For, I am not to blame
For the shenanigans you put me through so many times
Sometimes, I wish I...

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They were gambling in front of the house.
Manservants and pages bustled about
Serving Suitors who just curse and carouse.
Few mix wine with water. I heard one shout,
"Clean down the tables with wet sponges! Rouse
Yourselves! And when...

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Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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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...

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R.I.P.
by Michael R. Burch

When I am lain to rest
and my soul is no longer intact, 
but dissolving, like a sunset
diminishing to the west...

and when at last
before His throne my past
is put to test
and the demons...

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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MODERN SONNETS I

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.


Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem...

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~ Seek  The Lord  Everyday~ 
(Double Tanka) 


Extend God's  Love now 
Show to  others the right way 
In  bad  times  just  Pray 
Don't let  worries ...

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Sonnets XXV-XXXII

Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

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Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

Quiescent unions...

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I’m stronger than I realize,
I’m not alone
And I’m not a failure

I am focused on the prize -
God’s Kingdom today, though I’m on my own
Feeling like a Jailure

I was brave enough
Life can be quite rough
I was...

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I was nervous about my newest client.
Not every Permaculture Designer gets a contract
with the WhiteHouse.
But, when the President called,
or twittered,
for an intake interview,
I guess it felt like an obligation
to at least show up,
although perhaps about...

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When I was a child in Los Angeles, you could size up groups approaching by watching their movements.

I remember this gang of older kids approaching me, watching them carefully while looking down to see if...

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I must admit
You left me broken…
I am shattered shards,
Spread out on your hands…
Your sweaty palms of uncertainty at hand
But, we will land in a land of I-understand…

Make a stand and things won’t get out of...

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Feel more than free to take a quick tour into my mind's eye
Then, you'll find that you're on my mind and I don't know why 

Dare to wonder Where to wander
Dare to wonder What I...

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I’m stronger than I realize,
I’m not alone
And I’m not a failure

I am focused on the prize -
God’s Kingdom today, though I’m on my own
Feeling like a Jailure

I was brave enough
Life can be quite rough
I was...

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The Great Lakes acronym spells homes

I chose titled topic by a fanciful whim,
nevertheless still consider my knowledge 
of aforementioned material slim.

Housing multivarious biomes
register ecological syndromes
whereby constituents of NOAA 
Great Lakes Environmental 
Research Laboratory writ tomes.

Pellucid...

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You know when I think about it now and what I have to do,
a lot of you folk out there would have a bit of envy too;
you see I'm a 'lacky' for a vet, well...

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I don't know what came over me that day - an instant of weakness after years of resistance, I suppose.

My beaming spouse leads me, a dog on a short leash, into the forbidden citadel, the...

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Selena...Sarah the Sorceress
Russell...the Ghost of Never-land
This year has not been mine
Death laughs at me as he steals my grandfather from me
while I plead emptily for him to take me instead
yet I fail to realize I'm...

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 A sense of belonging 
Is amongst your nobility
Peaceably, truly longing
To give praise to You entirely

Take me all the way with your sway of youth
Give me physical poetry, please, beyond the truth
You are more priceless...

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The reading of Villon poems at West Berlin’s Free University, Winter Semester 1957-58
                      ...

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Continues the translation of the great Dante's poem written 700 years ago,
 probably the most important poetry ever written in the human story

When my mind returned back, after the stop
Due to pity for two brothers...

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Swept up into piles; everywhere 
Abouts; in collected heaps all 
Around.               
It is almost as if the drab 
Streets were strewn...

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