Long Ethereal Poems

Spiritual Mahjong
Your Move Lord

Is there a God?
A benevolent entity.
An eternal presence presiding over me.
A creator, watching and observing.
All knowing.
Is my end determined and conclusive before it begins, before I begin?
If so, then to what purpose...

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This is the second part of Rabindranath Tagore's Narrative poem - Phanki (Deception). The first part has been already posted. 




              ...

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Where art thou anonymous benefactor...to offer me succor?

Ah... methinks legal tender 
could be a boon to help me bolster 
mein kampf with necessary material equipage,
which prospect to acquire essential 
commodities sabotaged 
at the altar of...

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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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Watching wan moonlight
illuminate tree limbs,
my heart also brims,
overflowing with autumn.
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As I slept in isolation
my desired beloved appeared to me; 
therefore, dreams have become my reality
and consolation. 
—Ono...

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Poems about Poems III

Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil?
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but...

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As I slept in isolation
my desired beloved appeared to me; 
therefore, dreams have become my reality
and consolation. 
—Ono no Komachi, translation by Michael R. Burch

Submit to you—is that what you advise? 
The way the ripples...

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The Old Dark House

This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All...

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This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All Hallows’ Eve
before the...

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This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All Hallows’ Eve
before the...

Read More

Translation with commentary of an archetypal Wild West Classic : " Summer Wine "

(I'd wage my bottom diamond dime future generations will re-discover and treasure this true American classic like only a few others of...

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Goodness, I nearly lost my balance on the spiral seashells and broken sea stone chipping matrix.
My quaint obsession with marine life and that skyline paradox blossoming so tantalisingly,  might be a source of some...

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Hark and listen well, if those foretoken in the eyes of hungers lust
Trapped in their illusion, trampling the Stars into dust
Forced with the detestation stench by the swamp of absolute disgust
Thou blackest scorpion be accursed,...

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Skin of Terror
- Daniel Henry Rodgers

(The stage lights come up slowly on Michael's face, which is crisscrossed with wrinkles from his fuming anxiety. He peers out into the gloominess at the wheel and tightly clutches...

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Prose Poems

Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost?lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is...

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The Story so far…
Makani (The Rising Wind), a beautiful extra-terrestrial researcher is sent to a remote island to observe earth. She finds Sam, a shipwrecked earthling near death owing to drowning. Sam (Ka ‘Lo -...

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Unidentified extraterrestrial(s) willingly abducted me

As a divergence 
from the apocalyptical, dialectical, 
geomorphological, judgmatical, 
metaphorical, philosophical...,
I share an out of this 
(webbed wide) world,
light hearted anecdote 
ye may find far fetched.

Believe me you,
an unspecified number of...

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Know Thyself
(one of the two Delphic commands of Apollo)



For years before the narrow windows of my senses
                  ...

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[ ... story with context, a plausible universe with top and bottom
  a coat of cosmos covering
  over a subterranean protoverse of potential fields
  a quantum cellar creating
  the very big...

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   Symbols cry in dry ice theater -
the expanse of aesthetic visa-
drawn-
from the romance of the silvery eye -
as it golden advances the lid of covenance 
in dynamic enzyme.
Open faced type interpreted-
interpreter-embossed embol-
in...

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For years before the narrow windows of my senses
                          ...

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                             Brahman Nemesis

    ...

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June 12th 2017 TRANSITION revisited and revised today 4/2/2021

While scrolling over outdated docs
(i.e. namely OpenOffice documents)
derrière seated upon hard backed chair,
yours truly came upon following poem
to share with anonymous readers,
whereby slight modifications 
got made to...

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A MINISTER RETIRES :  
SOLILOQUY 

I arise as infant Phoenix 
from Akasha ashes 
counterparts frozen 
with foibles intact
a still Arctic of death
sheath for recalibration 

Source Light breathes into 
fontanelle slowly sleepily  
Sekmet my...

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8. Transformation

Yielding to those who have mastered the art
Of grasping one's place in existence's grand scheme
Life’s constant challenges never depart
But humble diligence will grow the dream

In passing from childhood to adulthood
Innocence to responsibility
Firm new role...

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