Long Eagled Poems

Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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Limericks III - Grab Bag

Being a peace activist, I once wrote a limerick in an attempt to stop needless wars:

Of Tetley’s and V-2's
(or "Why Not to Bomb the Brits")
by Michael R. Burch

The English are very...

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Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!



Eternal Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm...

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What Good Are Our Tears?
by Michael R. Burch

What good are our tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence...

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Poems about Poems V

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She...

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Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have never been accepted for publication. Here are a...

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Sonnets XC-XCVII

Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official?zenlike Art?
a...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch 

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find...

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POEMS ABOUT SCIENCE 6: EVOLUTION

Singularity
by Michael R. Burch

Are scientists confounded like the ostrich?
Heads buried in the sand, they shout, *Preposterous!*
This universe, so magical, they say,
proves there’s no God. But let’s look anyway ...

He said, *Let...

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Mother of Cowards
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

So unlike the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Spread-eagled, showering gold, a strumpet stands:
A much-used trollop with a torch, whose...

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WALKING ON WATER
	
Saint of the Golden Gate Bridge
they called her, blessing the
crowd with her tears, performing

to the cheers of the enchanted,
flinging, first her pink raincoat,
her high heeled shoes, fluttering

down like doves, dancing, twisting
out of her...

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Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite ...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there
so that all that remains is to

fall?

Only...

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Descending,
  I manipulate and manoeuvre for the updraft
  Spluttering,
  I spiral down, then briefly up again, to glimpse a glowing sky
  Flapping,
  I fall forever faster, flat-eagled
  Plunging, 
...

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Within the glass backed walls of the  squash courts, ....

Eager junior players are busy getting into their strides..
In small groups of 4 to 6, they are seeking to earn their stripes..
Religiously undergoing punishing ...

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My days in the streets of despair took me from scanty shanties
Intermittent through dreams drinking the syllables of books
Cast before my eyes, I was at the bottom of nooks and crannies
Hiding in barren valleys of...

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Maurice the frog was q###r; of this he had no doubt and all the lady frogs just made him yawn.
He sat all day on his lily pad, flicking his tongue at passing flies, with never...

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The Champion

Controlled by remote desires  I trip the laurel fuse of longing ancestry
My Mom had been chosen to compete diving from the high platform of
Hitler’s mania for ‘Kraft’ ‘Freude’ living space terror raised arms...

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hear others out there, just beyond my wall-wrapped sharing space
  they break on through, sneaking inside my head
  far above, front-nosed pilots point high-flying seated people tubes
  passengers squeezed in tight, some...

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the bridge he needed to cross was overgrown with tangled thicket’s brush

ragwort and giant hogweed littered the pernicious path to his own progress 

of perspectives and the slow death from stagnation and frightening delusions 

he...

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Le gommier de la Municipalite - Translation of Oodgeroo Noonuccal's Municipal Gum Tree by T Wignesan

[Automatic re-translation into English edited for effect...]

Le gommier qui se trouve sur la rue de la ville,
Le bitume autour de...

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Sticks and stones, may break my bones,
but some words are like mountains that can swallow you in its depth,
overtake you in its splendor -
I've known caverns there that will wrap you in its arms
happy to...

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What’s going on at the Co op
Its been cordoned off, with some tape
The police have a ten strong contingent
Was it robbery, murder or rape ?

We telephoned Lynn cos she works there
But it turned out she’d...

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Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps . . .

How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the...

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her mind drifted over the alluvial landscape

covered a few sink holes and seeped quick sand

from a life built on dense sediment and erosion


she had never asked for much but now she was firm

not so quickly...

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