Long Eliot Poems

Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

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Yosa Buson haiku translations

On the temple’s great bronze gong
a butterfly
snoozes.
?Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hard to describe:
this light sensation of being pinched
by a butterfly!
?Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not to worry...

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I.	  The Settlement

          Hickory bark bluffs
          at the blend of two 
    ...

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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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Poetic Encryption Like Ancient Egyptian

This terror and threat to poetic clarity,
Becomes a pet rock for some poets.

Words do count for sure, but so does
Clarity unless poets put a mask on.

Encryption can be used to mask...

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Unquotable quotes: Poets, Poetasters and Platos – XXXVI

     For James McAuley – in remembrance of a memorable week in Cardiff 1965 

The greatest poet ever is NOT Homer, Lao Tse, Ovid,...

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...inspired by 'Portrait Of A Lady' by T.S. Eliot


On winter days the view outside is nebulous at best,
within, the furniture is as it always was, and I am waiting,
waiting for a glimpse of you to...

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When asked
by my nephew
for an essential reading list
for PermaCultural Therapeutic Design,
my Taoist thoughts went back
to Unitarian-Universalist
Yin/Yang pre-history,
when Earth produced a theologian,
Dr. Thomas Starr King (1824-1864)
reaching out for non-violent dialogue
across all global healing cultures.

This 1800s Dr....

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Deep In Newly Disturbed Soil, Lies My True Love

(  “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them” – George Eliot.)

Deep in newly disturbed soil, lies my true love
'neath a canopy...

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Okay. So, according to her license plate, Sarah had something to do with the name “Welbeck Street” and had once asked if the Journal would consider using “Harvard Yard” in her name. Also according to...

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Gateway town, Mississippi and Missouri river flooding confluence,
with its celebration of manifest destiny, its looming, iconic archway.
Stainless westward marker, its culture flowed southward for influence
within the lawn-jockey, pink flamingo neighborhoods of moral decay. 

T.S, Eliot,...

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"No, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
                        ...

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1.    John Desmond Patrick Keegan
2.    Alfred, Lord Tennyson 
3.    Sally Aline Mae Beller
4.    Charles Edward A. Berry
5.    Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce...

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Into The Heart Of A Soulless Existence

Damn these flies! 
There must be a half dozen of them 
Buzzing around my tiny room here, 
Buzzing and humming spasmodically, 
Like tongue-less eunuchs 
In a locked church full...

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(alternate title: days of yore bubba's zayda
flush with buggy boo horse sense).

Norristown City Hall police person
informed yours truly
on September 15th, 2020
mine automotive driver license expired,
thus between January 13th 2019
and September 17th, 2020
I drove automobile,
(whether borrowed...

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Running fast thru Autumn’s dream, Vincent-bright in village winter’s light
Topaz-treed streets, eaves-filled , singing with saffron and  gold,
A Rocky Mountain cold cornflower sky over English hills
Vivid with Vincent-fuzzy ice-finger edges 
Photo-album best parts of...

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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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Late night summons madmen, 
madams, bold streetwalkers, 
picking pennies from the gutters 
as the merchants close their shutters 
and the homeless crouch in doorways 
in their rags, against the cold. 
Black or white, no compromise,...

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"The Kingfisher" 

Easters
fast escape us
like every 
Christmas 
comes and goes
like a Graduation
where the parent
is excluded
and the lost 
prodigious progeny
eventually 
makes their quest
for an elusive
Holy Grail
buried under shale
or burnt ashes 
floating on air, where,
the breeze pushes...

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Which late afternoon/ early evening
today adventuristic, edenic, and idyllic
April 13th, 2021
pitch perfect weather
serves as temporary tonic
to balm away blues.

Like a tumbleweed
aimlessly blowing in the wind
across infinitely wobegon open wide
prairie home companion land
(which wasteland famously
epitomized by...

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With a heavy heart,
the sorrow in it 
feels 
           all
	       hope
        ...

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when I was a child I played on a baseball  team
and my name on my jersey to me was my greatest dream
but as an adult I have now come to realize
that my name on...

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Grisly bared horror jawbones Kristallnacht
totalitarian brandishes, flaunts, launches 
global threat half cocked.

Vladimir Putin itching
to loose nuclear bomb
end of the world scenario ofttimes
iterated throughout history
though an atheist (actually Unitarian),
no doubt this, that or another psalm
countless times...

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Decided to go visit the long-lost relatives  
I'd  left when I broke away from family
To find myself as a teenager.
             ...

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