Long Drifter Poems

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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Poems about Poems (I)



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer
~~~underwater~~~
watching the shoreline blur
sees through his breath’s weightless bubbles...
Both worlds grow obscure.



Muse/Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

“What will you conceive in...

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From the window of my chic city office, lost in thought, I gaze out.
The pedestrians scurry like frenzied ants below, caught up in their bustling state of holiday insanity.
In his haste to cross the street...

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A born lioness my untamed heart? ha! 
a mouse, this pulsing token ruled by unruly wants
at times given, traded or stolen - sometimes
thrown down on a dare to be won or lost 
till it became...

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“Oh please don’t worry.
I haven’t a heightened sixth sense… about the mint infused lilt here.”
There must be a compass without a point surrounding me
“Looking for directions.
The town you’re seeking is a few winding roads and...

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It was still quite dark in Milton Creek, and it had just gone four
When Tom arrived at the sheriff's office, and knocked on his door
The Sheriff quickly opened up and beckoned Tom, to come inside
They...

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That soft-spoken Sovereign commands a big stick, 
runs the world into ruins, once our bailiwick.
If asked why, He grins grimly, pale lips slightly pursed:
"Vindication? Straightforward: It's Me and Me First" 

(To mesmerise people He needed...

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My  name is Mattie Ross and I hail from Yell County
In the state of Arkansas living, on a ranch with family
At the age of fourteen I suffered personal tragedy
When my father Frank Ross was...

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Cybersurfing netizen flounders...
analogous to a fish out of water

Ever since being a little gull hubble buoy,
I bobbed (while donning square pants)
like spongy flotsam and jetsam at sea.

Now as one decrepit
humble lumpenproletariat neopoet,
I experienced existence
with pronounced...

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I peered deeply into a water trickling  dyke clustered by pale blue and green peebles.
“Oh dear I sometimes dig too deep or maybe not diffidently.
Damon Deep thinker, lost in thought type.”
There is that mind...

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“The Lord will show Me, 
Has shown me, where your mind lies….”

I began to wonder if I was lost in that statement to him,
That fear and desire had blinded me to rush such an assertion
Upon...

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Let me tell you a story ...

Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist, who, to save the life of his sick father, 
a stunt rider also, gives his soul to the devil. But, the devil lies because...

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THE POET’S PANEGYRIC

“There’s someone I knew with talent unleashed
and a heart that had for so many relentlessly reached
This poet sought inspiration from the living and the dead
But I can tell you this about the poet...

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II.

When drinking one noontime broken Bob got a glance
at one of Rick’s men, a thug named Dorado Vance,
but what caught his attention was the bastard’s hat,
in the stage he had seen the miner wearing that!

Stumbling...

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It is said that here in old Elmerton,
up in the mountains of fair Idaho,
terrible things regularly went down,
evil all of the townspeople would know.

A bandit known only as ‘Beast’ Horton
had killed the sheriff and taken...

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Fun fact ...got a birth mark the size and color of a watermelon seed on the right lower cheek of my butt.
Hence my theme song she's got a freckle on her butt but she's purdy.Now...

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“Harlot! How dare you betray my dear son!
Now bearing a damned vagrant’s little one!”
But Joanne cocked her head, looked quite confused,
“But father wherever did you hear such news?!”
And then affected to look rather stunned.

“The evidence...

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A Fugitive
Bus Stop Overland Park, Kansas   7:35 PM

A furrowed brow and furtive eyes
that refuse to engage another,
striding quickly through the crowd
and putting people between him
and the police car.
He is hardly the drifter or...

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beyond what we know is the realm of wrapping
  can be no time, can be no space
  just stuff, bits and pieces, much coming and going
  the much going and coming base
...

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Spin that golden ball, let those lucky numbers to fall my way, 
Scratch me a shiny ticket for easy cash living, I’m in it to win
 After all, thus so I may achieve my lottery...

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Just a down a out drifter there sitting on side of the
road. You held a sign, "I'm hungry, please help" you 
seemed to shake with cold.

Some passed by giving coins. Some gave no second thought.
I...

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My chamber teems with tensions, taut, that logic can’t withstand,
fragmenting mental masonry with memories unplanned,
as bitter tears from hazel eyes reduce the stone to sand.

Dim shadows cast by candles flit across the haunted room,
beleaguer apparitions,...

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The House That Jack Built (Part 1)

Fatigued from years of gleaning storms of snow, sleet, and rain,
 I was yet an innocent and therefore unashamed.
 Her smothered walls creaked and her shingled roof leaked,
 The...

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Vivid flashbacks from bloodshed battles
his soul still ravaged by devious dictators,
cries from fallen comrades still echo in his mind,
but he continues to walk upon a path of pandemonium. 

Reluctantly he ventures forward with
vengeance portrayed through...

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Let me ride upon the crest of an aquatic wave, to spin and
Twist within the rippling tides, of the water spheres deepest
Ocean, allow this land creature to become as one, a liquid
Creature of complete fluidity,...

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