Long Estuaries Poems

Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers III




Success
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

We need our children to keep us humble
between toast and marmalade;

there is no time for a ticker-tape parade
before bed, no award, no bright statuette

to be delivered...

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Poems about Children IV

Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the...

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Like Hannibal we crossed the pass and crossed 
   the Alps (okay, the Brynderwyn Hills) 
and a bridge too far on north-west passage.
   From out of the Valley of Mizpah 
to...

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...and then just as suddenly, constellations appeared in a daytime sky, framed by white pines crawling with multicolored caterpillars.  So from this day forward, they would search the sky for more star pictures. They...

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Dear Sam, hello it’s me, don’t fret
old friend whom I have never met.
I wrote a letter time forgot,
you may ask why, I ask why not?
A sad meditation of late
on our nation’s new police state -
its...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s KRIM: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO SEPTEMBER 1989 - II by T. Wignesan

( This poem is from the collection, ESTUARIES: Poems 1989-91. Twickenham: Solaris, 1992, 62p. Pub. by Yasmin and Peterjon Skelt. Back...

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Time echoes and resonates 
without language,
successfully invests 
in green ecstatic backdrop,
below misty blue sky

Spotted and splashed Earth space,
blossomed in round yellows and spindling purples
soft blues and flaming orange

Fragile
naked moments of fully fertile tone
bilateral shapes and...

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Time echoes and resonates without language,
invests in green triumphal backdrop
below mystic blue sky,
splattered

Blossoming in yellows and spindling purples
blues and flaming orange,
fragile moments of fully fertile fractures,
flagrant erections of next generation's hope
for full coloring 
perennially emerging...

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“As God’s spark ensouling organic form,
I am that presence which cannot be named,
felt within as a magnetic bliss storm,
divine pulsation that cannot be tamed,
gentled by His touch, within body framed.
I am that which transcends both...

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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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"Thelma and Leanne"



prophecies arrived
in dreams that 
washed across
the soul in waves

messages were 
found like code
hieroglyphic 
glitches

written on the walls
of electric caves
by strange poets, 
some considered witches

there, 
light and dark 
rapturously 
co-existed 

we never slept 
inside...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s KRIM: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO SEPTEMBER 1989 - I by T. Wignesan

( This poem is from the collection, ESTUARIES: Poems 1989-91. Twickenham: Solaris, 1992, 62p. Pub. by Yasmin and Peterjon Skelt. Back...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s KRIM: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO SEPTEMBER 1989 - III by T. Wignesan

( This poem is from the collection, ESTUARIES: Poems 1989-91. Twickenham: Solaris, 1992, 62p. Pub. by Yasmin and Peterjon Skelt. Back...

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I am an unvoiced breeze~
a sea warrior 
    kite-surfing through 
    heinous waves, 
knitting cobalt chronicles 
    from smooth syllables~ 
tackling chaotic currents 
with chamomile magic...

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"Timeless trust,
   trapped in Selene's pendant,
                   pulsates purity and faith 
    ...

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*THE ARMAGEDDON   IN THE SOUTH*

Blessed with inestimable reservoirs 
Countless traps sealing gas yet untouched 
Seated on wealth beyond its numbers 
Wealth to sustain their  tenth generations 
Enough  to feed the glutton...

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As the peacock-sage 
waves of whimsical peace
faded in silence's 
pale watercolors, 
I masked my 
eerie eyelashes, 
with drifting 
angel-mist smog. 
For, I sensed the 
wistful wailings of 
ambrosial lilies, 
encased in my 
heart's crystal casket,...

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"Paying homage to ancestral kyanites, 
      which once vibrated with indigo streams
  in sparks of salient storms ~
   I soar across melancholic mangroves, 
   ...

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I still reminisce when it was raining incessantly at 3:55 a.m. in the nascent ticks of time on a wistful wednesday. My skin felt the spark of crying hail and maybe, the snow-storms melted too...

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 to the faceless 
   names I’ve phased, 
forgive the silent sunsets, 
    frozen in time, 
  and remember thin 
    cinnamon skylines, 
how ink carved...

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As the apologetic sun
melts in hibiscus vase
of pastel-peach 
horizons and peels off
those pristine pigments 
of egoistic elegance, 
sailing upon 
aquamarine foam
of vanilla waves ~
where dignity
unveils a clemency
within catharsis, 
I dare to surrender
towards the 
pink-teal blends...

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Freedom ~ an inked kingdom
of macabre mirrors,
a vermiform lie
veiling the vehement suffering
amidst serpent estuaries,
surging within strangled skin,
as if I am the living sin,
jinxed by the crawling creatures
in the lamented labyrinth
of deceitful dreams,
inhaling venomous vapors
rising from...

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When nylon nights
trade crystal colours 
in the stalls of nimble 
butterfly wings, 
I blossom as an 
irenic origami 
fervently fabricated 
with snowflakes of 
greedy gloom, 
stealing royal violets 
from the smokey estuaries 
flowing beneath the...

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There, mustardseed scatter’d on firm cement
Frank’s sense all but gone as architect-
ural borders take shape: the cloister sports 
Blue-green algae tanks | engineer-BREW
  guard’d by python & html 
Biomedical men GIVE IT | in...

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When the 
seaside sepulchre 
of a kingdom, 
without its queen, 
is smeared with 
screams of lighting, 
I wish to crackle
these slivers 
of silver shakle, 
and devour
that consoling 
taste of balsamic 
twilight, which 
drapes every 
ritual...

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