Long Erstwhile Poems

Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch

Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows.
And there you go, skipping your way to school.
And here we are, drifting apart
like untethered balloons.

Here I am, creating "art,"
chanting in shadows,
pale as the crinoline moon,
ignoring your face.

There...

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Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!



Eternal Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm...

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Sonnets LXI-LXX

Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair?
bright carrot?and her milkmaid-pallid skin,

her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children?some conceived in sin,

the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of...

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The pencil now resting the image was 'testing' for the creature before him, (his badly-drawn drawin') had come out 'not right' somewhat twisted and tight.

The picture in question, it burst with suggestion, for lines that...

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Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here?among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes,...

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Inxs of poison from iron maiden scorpion mamma and ac/dc charged aries papa

Although gainfully unemployed 
(fate now finds me receiving 
social security disability – 
for approximately 
the last baker's dozen years -
the yeast divine intercession...

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C:
  I journeyed long upon the way, e-mailed through your router
  hello "Henry", good to greet, I am in your computer
  I am between him and her, so I am gender neuter

...

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Like the twelfth
juror in the play
I must say I am not
convinced
For I know a recipe
for trouble 
I have seen the
double standards
And I do not approve
this for Kenya
I will never approve
it, and neither
Would you, dear
friend of...

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O to tune in to good times of childhood—
To re-live gone-by years, not just to brood,
To lighten dust-laden baggage’s dead tare,
To unburden mind of deadwood afloat, 
To fast-forward to dusky days of old, 
To turn...

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Do the Dead see with their own eyes

    for Thadchayani, my poetry-loving doctor sister :  28/08/1929 – 26/10/2014 
            ...

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Cybersurfing netizen flounders...
analogous to a fish out of water

Ever since being a little gull hubble buoy,
I bobbed (while donning square pants)
like spongy flotsam and jetsam at sea.

Now as one decrepit
humble lumpenproletariat neopoet,
I experienced existence
with pronounced...

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In case you don’t remember them they came from outer space
They were to be the first beginnings of the human race
But when they crashed they came down in a stark and frigid place
Antarctic ice interred...

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Clemency is a quality that I never understood
until after I crucified the Cilician pirates on Pergamus,
amusing isn't it, that I see mercy where brutality stood,
Death has a heartbeat for all of us,
there's no greater mystery...

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Worry knot chokes out the living daylights

I know from personal experience
the foolhardiness of
courting, flirting, honeymooning...
worse case scenario,
particularly when just a wee lad,
yours truly internalized
unfamiliar bodily aches and pains
as a death sentence,
slept with one eye opened
against...

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In a Stolen Moment
by Michael R. Burch

In a stolen moment,
when the clock’s hands complete their inevitable course
and sleep is the night’s dark spell,
I call it a curse,

seeking the force,
the font of candescent words, the electric...

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Limericks IX



Scratch-n-Sniff
by Michael R. Burch

The world’s first antinatalist limerick?

Life comes with a terrible catch:
It’s like starting a fire with a match.
Though the flames may delight
In the dark of the night,
In the end what remains from...

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I have invented a nonce nonsense form: the "dabble dactyl." A dabble dactyl starts out like a double dactyl, but forgets the rules and changes horses midstream. Anyone who prefers order to chaos should give...

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Poems about Poets IV



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for June Kraeft

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of...

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When one makes viable peace 
Between erstwhile colonial whites 
And erstwhile colonized blacks 
To the advantage of the whites
We urge for a Nobel Peace Prize
Such was the case in South Africa. 

‘It is all for...

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SLAVERY AND REPARATIONS
I am a descendant of slaves - from India!
Anyone who demands REPARATIONS shake & quake at my words
Competition? So, we have competing tales of bondage?
The Jewish people's perhaps the longest & cruelest,
With smaller...

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Trump poems and epigrams V

The prez should be above the law, he sez,
even though he’s no longer prez.
—Michael R. Burch



Mercedes Benz
by Michael R. Burch

I'd like to do a song of great social and political import....

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It is generally thought of to be one of the myriad,
Guiding, governing, binding principles and precepts of all 
Mature civilized countries that what horrors that they unleashed in
Vilest, bloodiest, convulsive conflictual combative martial 
Confrontation, on their fellow...

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Staring into a sky so perfect blue

The wispy white clouds 
highlighted now stand further out

And I am suddenly stood transfixed

And I can feel the sun warming 
comfortably at my back

As I am dressed inappropriately in...

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A beautiful Wintu girl reached puberty. Her sisters were sent to find 
maple bark to make her an apron. 

It so happened that Turtle, the mischievous son of the mighty ‘Sky 
Turtle’ stopped at the...

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With canoe and hook of a jawbone
  below a great fish Maui snared,
and his brothers half-crazed behaving
  leapt and gouged in frenzy craving.
From Palliser Bay to Cape Reinga 
 (departing place of the...

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