Long Eared Poems

"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...

Read More

The first soft snow: 
leaves of the awed jonquil 
bow low
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Come, investigate loneliness! 
a solitary leaf
clings to the Kiri tree
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The cheerful-chirping cricket
contends gray...

Read More

Dusk-gliding swallow, 
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers! 
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A bee emerging
from deep within the peony's hairy recesses
flies off, sated
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

That dying cricket,...

Read More

Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
—Yamaguchi Seishi, translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
—Takaha Shugyo, translation by Michael R. Burch

The first soft snow:
leaves of the awed jonquil
bow...

Read More

Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
carefully in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains...

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have...

Read More

Poems about Poems III

Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil?
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but...

Read More

~The Book~
 ( Narrative / Short Story)


 Shhh...Be quiet! please...or you'll wake up everyone...

 Did you see what that young man did all this evening at the table while taking some of his notes?
 Yes,...

Read More

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...

Read More

Key CapitalistYang/CreolistYin EcoHistoric Concepts

I find a fuzzy irony in this morning’s early search for a new journal notebook, having filled my last from what had been, five years ago, an inconceivably high pile of empty...

Read More

Poems about Poets I


The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch

for Leslie Mellichamp

The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true ...

but...

Read More

Shhh...Be quiet! please...or you'll wake up everybody... 

Did you see what that young man did all this evening at the table while taking  some of his notes? 
Yes, sure we did, and so what?...

Read More

"Christmas in the Cathedral of the Forest Deep"




The silent heart is found 
embedded in the 
Cathedral of 
The Forest Deep

The lost jewel
shines in the dark
see the reflection of emerald eyes
endless hazel woods scried

On Christmas Eve
when...

Read More

“The God Complex”



His face imprinted 
hidden under layers of ink
he whispers his words

like a haunting breeze
dust blown off the pages
towards the back of their minds

once-in-a-while 
reminding them of stories 
they are eventually, all souls

book-marked 
tagged...

Read More

Once upon an evolving time
we were a great first nation,
or second nation,
depending on your historical perspective,
but definitely not a third nation
although some cooperative economists
thought we might be competing ourselves
in that over-invested and ego-inflationary direction.

This first...

Read More

"The Unlit Flame at Blue Feather’s Cross Roads"



Words these days are seldom Red
like drops of lifeless blood falling cold on a hot frying pan,
sentences are scattered, stuck in Go Nowhereland,
semi-solid, immovable coagulating gelatinous, turning dark...

Read More

	GREEN DAY – revisited
     Although the following poetic/prosaic material written January eighteenth two thousand and eighteen, I came across these encapsulated, enclosed, encoded, and encrusted with barnacle clad body electric of...

Read More

I cannot die tonight
I dog-eared a book
Of pages I haven't perused
You know how long that took?
Scent of pages
Frayed and yellowed
Always get me
Calm and mellowed
The spine cracked and worn
Each page a promise, a tale untold
In the...

Read More

Who am I? I am me, and me is having a little me time
No way!  Five days plus a weekend. 7 days, that’s mine.
It’s not fair. It’s a sin. It’s crazy. No, really honey,...

Read More

Can I go to the bathroom? This place is full of jackasses. This place is full of jackasses jerking each other off. This place is full of ignorant, parochial, zit-sucking jackasses undeserving of their place...

Read More

[An Autumn kitchen a crucible of y e a s t and y e a r n i n g]

Samantha kneads dough with determined hands, she hears
    Hank's cry—"Vi vi an"—a phantom...

Read More

A Progressive Shadow

A series of real challenges and troubling world events 
In our twenty-first century give us a definite reason and
An urgency to pause and reflect on mankind’s situation.

Our world today—more than at any other...

Read More

"As  Above, So Below - The Messengers"



One day 
when this sad story 
has all blown over
of how we came to be
walking the earth 
below the veil
with monsters 
that are men 
with horns and tails
in...

Read More

Figurative paralysis laid waste body electric of mine

This is Spinal tap 
bamboozling, binding, bleeding, bombing...
ripped from every dog eared 
and book marked page
recounting latest ill fated fiasco, 
now peppering my life and hard times
causing quite...

Read More

Looking through the three-eighth gauge, at zebra's, stars and plumhead.
Listening to the expert in the trade and take in what he said.
I went home and scanned through pages of books and magazine,
perusing photographs of aviary...

Read More

The uniform on the floor was to be washed, dried then ironed but the scones that the pig ate meant that a walk to some hidden caves was achieved but only after the recycling was...

Read More