Long Dripping Poems

An icy chill descends on 13 Beaver Veil Cottage as sisters Ester and Ellie walk gingerly up the steps on this wet and windy night.
This once charming pied-a-terre was now in a final phase denouement.
The...

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n icy chill descends on 13 Beaver Veil Cottage as sisters Ester and Ellie walk gingerly up the steps on this wet and windy night.
This once charming pied-a-terre was now in a final phase denouement.
The...

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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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"The Messenger"

Love is rich with 
venom and honey. 

there was a female ...

snake, 
it watched 
with green-eyed 
avarice, covetting
a dove’s nest

the dove, 
was white as snow, 
not young, getting on,
tiny flecks of grey

the dove 
alone,...

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"As other spirits sail on music, mine, oh my love, swim on your perfume." Charles Baudelaire

"Sometimes you find an old bottle from which the soul returns." 
Charles Baudelaire

"Smell is a Word. Perfume is Literature."

"There are...

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“Forever”



When The Terrors came,
The Uncontrollable Ones,
she closed her eyes
and listened for the notes
her mother had planted
amongst the deep blues,
beds of Forget-Me-Nots,
she followed the 
labyrinthine trail 
and through a gate unhinged,
it would seem destroyed, thrown aside,
she...

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“Éagmais croí a dhíscaoileadh ar gach eagla.
Faoi dhíon taobh istigh de na blianta seo.
Fanacht i bhfianaise, a dhíscaoileadh ar gach eagla.
Ós rud é go ndearnadh tú a chaitheamh.
Briseadh an tost seo”



"An Bee Cailleach"


She lives to...

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Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch
 
We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each...

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Sponsor : Regina Macintosh 
submission  : 2/7/25
_____________________

   embedded in avatar’s 
sequential chromosomes 
novel_sprite_ageless___BIRTHED 
Soul protected       simultaneously          ...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers I

I translated the first six Native American poems for my father when he chose to enter hospice and end his life by not taking dialysis …


Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation...

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You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
 
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened...
 
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching...
 
You...

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The Moon as a Metaphor for Your Mouth
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a...

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The young lady's car slowed to a stop ...

As she pulled as far off the highway, (onto the shoulder), as she could
(Allowing for any snow plow that might come along).
She had chosen poorly this time
Believing...

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The kid who often was lost in 
The sauce Joshua! His 
 birthday was in June. He became
The strong silent youngster with 
The youngest kids. 
 A small Celebration was held in
Josh's honor party at...

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“ANTE BELLUM”


BEIGEBest served where it can’t be seen
On Stirling Silver platters
With redruM narcotics
Delivered by sharp Blood-Red
Well-mannered talons
Strutting in sleek wet rolling tight-skirted
Long French Silk Stockinged legs all the way down to 
Lethal Six Inch stilettos...

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THIS WORLD OF DEW

This world? 
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane's bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last? 
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dewdrops beading grass-blades
die before...

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Sneaking into the museum to avoid the sudden rain
Raisin said, “I don’t want to get soaked right through again,
It was bad enough when that truck through that puddle dashed
And you and me - but mainly...

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“le livre bleu” 

Terabytes.
lonely poets, writers, 
musicians and artists play here,
they wear masks that cover
vermillion dripping smiles
over sharp little wolverine teeth,
they drown their sorrows in their muses -
contemporary little monsters – Still Life, 
they call...

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The three little pigs came to the ball
Tried to blow the castle down
It didn’t work
It was made of solid gold
So they gave up and sat at their trough 
Ate noisily 
And snorted quite a lot

They...

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The excitement mounted as we rummaged around in the attic looking through old steamer trunks for discarded clothes and props to make Halloween costumes. With an old suit and hat of Granddads, I became a...

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The magic disappeared.  The lead Troll's hand fell through the air where the magic was released and he lost his balance almost falling to the ground.  He hesitated feeling the emptiness in front...

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IT WAS 1984 DURING AN ELECTION CIRO GARGANO RAN THIS SMALL TOWN OUTSIDE GREATLAKES NAVY BASE WITH HIS DRUG CARTEL AND AN IRON FIST OF  CORRUPTION HE BLACKMAILED THE ENTIRE CITY SEVERAL OFFICERS SELLING...

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WHAT BEGAN WITH PETER GARGANO TREASURY OF THE KNIGHTS IF COLUMBUS SAN CARLOS BEACH IGNITING A CAR BOMB IN MY FACE HE THEN HIRED JAMAICAN JAY TOWNSEND JOHNSON HENRY AKA JAMAICAN JOY Y JONES MY...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VIII

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school and college student. 

Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that...

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Was the place where we climbing down the bank
Then arrived, alpine and, for what was there
Such as, that any eyesight would be shrank.

Similar to landslide that in side bare
Before Trento the Adige just smote,
Or for...

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