Long Eel Poems

Sonnet LXXXI-LXXXIX

Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew...

Read More

“Here the fierce with the thin pointed tail,
Who passes mountains and breaks arms and walls!
Here who with stench can the world assail!”

So my duke started to talk with his calls;
And hinted then it to get...

Read More

I used to slit my arms open like I was peeling fruit—careful, slow, watching the skin give way like wet paper. The box cutter blade was dull, sticky from God knows what—maybe dried glue, maybe...

Read More

The Rhine Salmon Complaint, Translation of Etiemble’s Complainte d’un salmon du Rhin

						For Yvon Belaval
(A lilting musical poem of varying line length in quatrains with a refrain and much internal
 rhyming; end-rhyme scheme: alternate rhymes in...

Read More

Drain away the pain that I feel
Drain away the rain that’s real 
Frozen in fire of your desire
Stay a while longer and admire
The healing rain that drains away the pain,
Nourishing the grains of His fruitful...

Read More

OOOniversal oo

Frightened tepid antisocial ant was football training avidly but failing to attend a fragrant tailor army. Oh dear. That was sure to be put forward to the sacred sanction ship and the sacred sanction...

Read More

Spring equinox arrives March 20th, 2023 at 5:24 PM

Despite what outside temperature registers
(even absolute zero), the official arrival
of spring occurs, when thee eel hip tic
of coe phish hunt holy Mackerel
becomes tangential to barenaked ladies 
barren...

Read More

Earth dwelling mongeese are neither toys nor coins and pedalling backwards then forward is not considered the primary way of jet propulsion off a very high hill. So one two ping means fried rice coming?...

Read More

Every year our community gets together at the annual church fair. This year they have changed the format with some new events and dropping some of the old events that appeared a little dangerous. How...

Read More

Along the road called forestry, the silver ash weeps over me
as I meander 'round the dell and glade.
Pass scars of sand pits long disused, where gullies, washes speak ‘abused!’
Reclamation offers now a new facade.

Need for...

Read More

I, A. Robbie - Ham guilty for gobbledygook...
and ruffling turkey feathers!

An innocent A1 miss steak kin kith
once, a former main lion resident 
living social where Tigress and Euphrates 
converge and pool into Lake Wobegone ...

Read More

Inevitable death defines afterlife - trois

So all I ask, would be
inviting, offering, and ushering me to 
top secret cygnet committee
to give this average sized 
chapped sticky man
spinning the david bowie playlist 
as a somber dee...

Read More

Charles Schulz Peanuts character Woodstock

Analogous to (being mine) security blanket
similar, but not identical
to the trademark one
clutched by Linus Van Pelt,
I take flight into sleep
courtesy holding fictional little yellow bird,
a mutual (of Omaha) best friend of...

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

I am sorry I gave you the cold shoulder and now I murmur
I was in hot lava in my broken-apart heart that was tough
I want to be devoted to you, my long lost lover…my lover…
I...

Read More

In the shadows of my half-waked condition of terra firma- patronus renditioned, I mudder into your soil,
snorkel into your swamp of inlet tributary, a flagellum personae , prosopopoeia explorae eel, "Marinas"
here waters water dreams, to...

Read More

I have heard about a village by the sea where everyone has a master and doctorate degree, the population is about ten thousand and they all have unique qualities that you can use when you...

Read More

These are my early poems, or juvenilia.

Stars
by Michael R. Burch, age 22

Though night has come,
I'm not alone,
for stars appear
—fierce, faint and far—
to dance until they disappear.

They reappear
as clouds roll by
in stormy billows
past bent willows;
sometimes they...

Read More

Advice to Young Poets
by Nicanor Parra Sandoval
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Youngsters,
write however you will
in your preferred style.
Too much blood flowed under the bridge
for me to believe
there’s just one acceptable path.
In poetry everything’s permitted.



Byron
was not...

Read More

curt hissy Matthew Scott Harris
who wishes ewe well
to make $cents of the following
mumbo jumbo lettered gumbo.

Hip puck crease see
(ad hoc) key hide dee claim
haint how my noggin 
comports itself to take aim,
cuz ear lee aire...

Read More

I don’t have asbestos fingers and my blisters come from the garden
Toiling the soil and growing fine ingredients for such gourmet cuisine
Like ‘throw it all in the one pan dishes’ and crystal ball cooking galore
Never...

Read More

this is my song,
  my love song of you,
    my land, my heart

             love for green ferns
  ...

Read More

The poetry of the COVID era (read to the end)

Thai pineapple rice. Wonton and Yaki Soba
Tortufo ice cream. Scallopini veal, halva and also soda
Tamago, octopus and yellowtail. Ribs, pasta fagioli.
Meat lover’s pie, sword fish, big...

Read More

The Atlantic ocean...,an unrelenting mistress

More'n ten thousand leagues under the sea
next to an octopus's garden in the shade.

OceanGate manufacturer
of the Titan Submersible,
which vessel that set out to reach
Titanic shipwreck with five passengers
officials believe the suffered
a...

Read More

Brilliant, grandiloquent, magnificent, trenchant...
albeit modest word zealot

Writing prompts burst asunder
snap, crackle, and sweet Mary poppin
within me scrambled noggin
witnessing yours truly to blunder
blindly along this dark and stormy night
deafening soundcloud roared
with apocalyptic thunder
'course only audible to...

Read More