Long Enlisted Poems

With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

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Many of my favorite poems
How About This for Veterans Day

A monthly Monday morning military meeting
Would be great for them as way of greeting
Talking about things happening another day
Of past successes and prices they had to...

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How About This for Veterans Day

A monthly Monday morning military meeting
Would be great for them as way of greeting
Talking about things happening another day
Of past successes and prices they had to pay.

Enlisted Term of Service...

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THE GREATEST GENERATION
by

JOHN M. ARRIBAS



Many Have Called Them the Greatest Generation
They Had Struggled and Survived, an Ugly Depression
It Was an Era of Hard Times and Simple Diversions
Like Bank Night, Singalongs  and Picnic Excursions
Band Concerts...

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The bombing of Pearl Harbour was the turning point for me
That day I enlisted in the army, despite protests from my family
I tried to reassure them by saying that everything would be fine
And after six...

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Nelson Cedrick Thunderwood, a colonel in the army, has served his country faithfully for thirty-seven years. 
I doubt if there could be a medal Nelson hasn’t won, and he’s earned the admiration and respect of...

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How to attach a shower curtain...

I revisit rather than write from scratch
a poem crafted May twenty third 
two thousand and twenty
since the following words apropos
and amply serve a duplicate purpose
of aforementioned title,
when yours truly enlisted
(before...

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I lay awake in that dark hour and was reflecting on my life
From all the travelling I had done to the breakup with my wife
I was an architectural painter and was very successful too
And after...

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MY GRAND  AUNT
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS


She is still as elegant as I dare remember
Those early springs: its now late december
She is sitting  with her back perfectly straight
I’m afraid she’ll chastise me for being late
She...

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Got Me on the Edge known
It was the evening of March 5th on a Thursday pre evening I left my job and just approximately two blocks away at the Baxter Arena convention hall it was...

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Got Me on the Edge known
It was the evening of March 5th on a Thursday pre evening I left my job and just approximately two blocks away at the Baxter Arena convention hall it was...

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The Things Never Said
The terror…
The only things ever said about my daddy’s WWII service were that he’d been to New Guinea where he’d ridden on a truck full of soldiers by a river without a...

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anticipatory anxiety fosters catastrophization...,

especially bombardment of online scare tactics
courtesy fiendish insidious loathsome sinister oafs
rubbing their hands at aggrieved party;
punch drunk cyber thieves ecstatic
acquiring by hook and/or crook
sought after precious, priceless, and proverbial data
after loosed ransomware...

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Phoenix and Phoenicia

They had both been victims of their own sad minds stories lost told and untold
narratives to be re-authored livid experience lived in silence meaning smeared in
crusted mud slung in terminal slots shots executed...

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Vietnam in '68
By Franklin Price
08/10/2020

January '68, I arrived at Cam Rahn Bay
Found out this place, in Vietnam, was the best place I could play
Ground bound, in the Air Force, and living on the beach,
On a...

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I was born in ’24 near the California shore,
Where life was good, whether we were rich or poor.
We moved around a lot, but I never asked what for,
And my friends came and went like a...

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Leslie Holden came from East Adelaide a South Australia town 
When on 26 May 1915 he enlisted in the 4th Light Horse of the AIF renown
He was a driver when the 4th left for Egypt...

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PAST TIME NIGHTMARE

Based on events I experienced.

A child of four suffers recurring dreams,
disturbing parents and siblings with screams.
When she awoke, always sore in one knee;
next to a birthmark, it throbbed painfully.

Night after night she feared...

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Jeremiah did not hesitate,
he drew one up into his sights.
His Kentucky fired in dawn’s glow
caught a redcoat, dead-to-rights.

The others charged, sabers drawn,
so Jerermiah fled into the near forest.
Hiding and quickly reloading his gun,
the British charged...

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Luke’s Purpose
Luke 1:1-4

Luke: “Many people have applied themselves,
to the task of compiling an account of the events,
that have been fulfilled among us [the shelves].
They used what the original eyewitnesses [gents] -

And servants of the word...

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When my son was small he and his friends loved to play marines
A brown eyed soldier dressed up in his helmet and his jeans
I asked him why he always died whenever they would play
He just...

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Hey Mr. President tell us don't we have the right
To question your authority when you send us off to fight?
Are we never to answer when we hear our brother's cry
And must we all be silent...

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Beating the midday forlorn sun
By foot they begun the journey leaving the pun
Beware of the dangers and tactics to shun  
Between that time and reaching the destination without fun
Beholding the situation, carrying the bun
Before...

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I was born in far Morsania,
a small, backwater Eurasian state,
known to most folk in this wide world
for my grandfather’s prodigious hate.

My given name is Jocefeus,
but I mostly go by Joe these days,
because that tyrant grandpa...

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Teddy Bears in Space

Enlisted in the flying school
To join the Space Brigade
They’ve all been trying very hard
To try and make the grade.

Up an coming Space Cadets
The Teddy Bears are training
How to fly a Rocket Ship
The...

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