Long Effete Poems

The Story of History  

Beyond those beaten days’ depleted daylight
Beyond the bathos of a pandemic bondage
With  the resurrected  sashay’s charmed night
Down in the dumps   at the pretentious  proscenium
A ...

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Soliloquio del Individuo by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan


(Homage to Nicanor PARRA, 1914-2018, the Chilean ANTI-POET, winner of the "Cervantes Prize" (the highest literary honour for writers in Spanish), four times nominated for the...

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       Hay un dia feliz by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

      To come by a happy day

(In this poem, Parra maintains lines of...

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Though a Democrat, I play the devil's advocate...

after reading the article
(published in the July + August 2024
issue of Mother Jones)
titled Raging bull - Donald Trump's
pugilistic spokesman has taken
campaigning to a whole new level of low.

Beyond...

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Unquotable quotes: Gals, Dolls, Bitches and Broads – XXXVII

( No aspersions are being cast here, willingly or otherwise, on the fairer, stronger and infinitely more sagacious sex. Even if these over-used words are somewhat overloaded...

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Emartra Van Doyle, II was a powerful leader.
As a powerhouse, he knew this was his golden age.
He formed leaders and defeated procrastination.
He prepared them for the world to come.
A connection of minds he was assembling.
Amass...

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Some men die to survive

	the Hard endures
the Soft succumbs   stews in juices  reproduces exults
			disappears
the heartless breaks cracks crumbles
							drags
   the Ephemeral down the ravines of the also-ran rivers
								   ...

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Do plans take stock of what you’d give to be a better man,
and somehow you have trust it’s true that human dream’s a gift,
that life’s a blessing on bad days? The world sees Grace (or...

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Unlikely Mike
by Michael R. Burch

I married someone else’s fantasy;
she admired me despite my mutilations.

I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine.
I hid my face and changed its connotations.

And in the dark I danced—slight,...

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Preposterous Eros
by Michael R. Burch

“Preposterous Eros” – Patricia Falanga

Preposterous Eros shot me in
the buttocks, with a Devilish grin,
spent all my money in a rush
then left my heart effete pink mush.


These are poems about Eros, the...

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These are my modern English translations/interpretations of ancient Greek poems by the immortal Sappho of Lesbos…

With my two small arms, how can I
think to encircle the sky?
—Sappho, fragment 35, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mother,...

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"Super Hero"



Krypto Knighted
Disrobed Le Penseur 
contemplates strength
a royal monk disrobing within
Rodin begins to think
new dreams dialled in
naked vulnerability begins
hiding behind dark angel wings
pinned between the box-cadged 
dimensions of a glass onion
black crows waiting along the...

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Over a yellow River of {Drunken} Smiles,
 
A Dove, faded by erasures and weeks
 
suffocating Crashing rotten Joy--- orgasm Smell of Arrested Motion
 
Coming swift without Warranty or Return Policy
 
Almost invisible Dusty Distance
 
Crossed...

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The bowl of fruit left on the table
to wither and rot by those unable.
Those whose minds are shattered by death,
whose minds are weakened and bereft.
There cliché exhibit they concede,
tells of their leal for their dead...

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Financiers feel superior to farmers
and pundits have it over poets.
All to the good because if you think America's
doing just fine, don't skip to the poetry reviews.
Our enemies are barbarous, our allies duplicitous
but our smart bombs...

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Self Empowerment Of This Shemevdik...

January thirteenth two thousand
and nineteen will complete
mine third score orbitz round the sun,
(I can hardly believe that either)
who as a youth evinced

demure and effete
traits, and now weathered, Ongepatshket,
and plenty seasoned,
I feel...

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Proyecto de tren instantaneo entre Santiago y Puerto Montt by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

Soliloquio del Individuo by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T Wignesan 

(Homage to Nicanor PARRA, 1914-2018, the Chilean ANTI-POET, winner of...

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Watching Homer struggle
to explain how a god wounded by a mortal
cannot die but may thereafter live with minor pain

and the humor when that god
complains to Jove that His supervision of His daughter
is inadequate and His...

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Antisocial anacondas don't associate in numbers;
Bears and beavers don't become the best of friends.
Civet cats catch rats, so is it any wonder
On doleful dingoes dire dilemmas do descend?
Effete elephants eschew jumping, it's ungraceful;
"Frenching" frogs will...

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It was a time to bond and booze with dear Papa,
An interval all the more naughtily charming
As it inflamed the temper of irascible Mama.
Before happy hour, we two went shooting
With the three o three I...

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A written word wistfully wrought into a compendium grim,
Of the darkling ravens beset upon the plutonian shores,
Hither did your shapeless muse invade our psyche and vapid minds dim,
Edgar has retired his effete quill yet still
it...

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Ill-fated crowds neath unchained clouds: the Silent City braved
against a sudden flashing flood, unleashing lashing waves,
which stripped its stony structures, blown with neutron bursts that laved.

Its barren streets, although effete, resound of yesterday
with chit-chat words...

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I found the bottle lying on a dune of wind-swept sand,
And I brushed the grains upon it with a weak and trembling hand,

I was crazy-mad for water, I was more than three days dry,
So I...

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The other day, for a brief moment
I recalled my good old times,
Where the bleakest of the panorama
And an eeyorish of the memories,
Invaded a hopeless hypocrite
As the strength faded away,
Faking the funk with brightest of looks,
It...

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A euphemism! I? That I do decry!
Why the very word does imply
That I would ignore, omit, pervert…
If only to prevent some hurt.

Well, let me speak out forthright:
Search thoroughly my ways as I might
I truly must...

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