Long Exchanging Poems

Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip...

Read More

Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have never been accepted for publication. Here are a...

Read More

U can 2 was on the license plate of my 
store manager brown Benz where a dead man 
was found in the trunk Alston Isadore defense store 
manager at Fort Sheridan Army base Ronald Reagan...

Read More

This is a totally true episode from our 40 years spent collecting antiques -  


You never know for sure what lays ahead in life, my friend…
And here’s a tale I love to tell, and...

Read More

Here's the scoop, friends...like a bunch of my pieces now posted - and coming soon - this is, as indicated, the 1st HALF of this fairly lengthy poem. The 2nd half had to be posted...

Read More

“I prob’ly shouldn’t be telling you, Marge, but...knowing I can count on you to never tell another soul...get a load of this!
Just as I was hoping, my biggest prayer was answered - and after barely...

Read More

"We have an enemy within called the ego
who prevents us from using our mind intelligently.
It hides deep within our heart
and emerges with regularity
to challenge and consume our will."
     Rumi (M. Mafi,...

Read More

A crown that is broken cannot be fixed
It has to be replaced 
Changed 
Because a crown that is broken 
Cannot be turned into joy
So why exactly 
Do you make me sad 
You broke my heart...

Read More

ZeroSum Spirit
bicameral begins
playing through Ego-Eco Me.

Nondual trinitarian bilaterality
of a Mother Scaling Tree
forecasting and shadowing
WinWin
healthy branching
and rooting properties.

Spirit consciousness,
DNA with RNA tribal strings
of multicolored cooperative intelligence.

ZeroSpirit
fractal-seasoned
developing psychology
phylogeny
homology
toward
WiseElder WinWin GoldenRulology.

ZeroAnimated
AcclimatingMundi,
full-mooned Boody
multiregenerational cosmos
where ev'rything grows living out
and fades...

Read More

“I’m sorry that it’s been so long,” the old man told the tombstones, scanning them that brisk fall day, in 1969.
“It’s not that I’ve forgotten you.    It’s not that I’m not proud...

Read More

It is with tears in my eyes that I write these verses of hope, it is with tears in my eyes I climb the mountain of joy  and stands on top of it and...

Read More

"Angels & Demons"




The Soul never sleeps
battered and lonely, the lesson 
Life spent in The Hard Sell

Soft-served you become
melting Insomnia 
mouth sucking a loaded gun

blue ribbonned and veined
pulsing electricity 
from heart to lung to brain

you’re a...

Read More

The forest had enjoyed a magical transformation.
Dusk had ushered in the firefly brigade.
They lit up the pond area like tiny LED lights.
I could see they were excitedly motioning to the faeries.
Although I do not speak...

Read More

Love wants nothing to do
with the everyday affairs of men.
Love's only intention
is to catch the lover!

Rumi

God wants nothing to do
with the routine affairs of men,
God's only intention
is to catch the lover's attention!

I wonder if Freud's...

Read More

 Diary Notes: Lament at Dawn A Year Ago and yet now No Change
				                     ...

Read More

I would add to all Evolutionary Cooperative Warriors
a nuance regarding my teleological
raison d'etre
defined as "freedom to choose"
as not necessarily sufficient to define my purpose of evolution
v. purpose of devolution, decay, death.

Earth's regenerative evolution
slow-grows freedom to...

Read More

My grandparents' grandparents,
all sixteen,
digging roots through cultural meristems,
young adults,
adolescents during Time's 1880's,
post Civil War birth of Sir James Crow monoculture.

What would we name this self-hatred,
this lack of compassion and gratitude for help
for human nature's lavish...

Read More

Let's imagine that you are, 
like Buckminster Fuller, 
karmically absorbed with Unitarian genes,
were there such a thing,
which of course there are not,
but perhaps something like an evolving Unitarian Universalist post-millennial teleology.
Basically, some shared sense of...

Read More

Last year you beat me up
And poured vinegar in my cup
Last year you humiliate me
And hire criminals to torment me.
Last year you deny my friends and families
The natural right to be happy
My children went to...

Read More

"Inside the Winter Wild"

Inside the Wild, 

Winter races 
towards Time 
like a runnaway train

it’s shadowy 
and dark,
yet, inside Winter, 

the wild keeps
without fail
its burning light, 

a passion play

for everything 
and all, 
along the way

discovered 
in...

Read More

I will admit I was a tightwad, though that fact shames me now,
As never changing mountains, often colorful mists will allow!

I never meant to be unkind, but only endeavored to be practical,
Like the moon exiting...

Read More

We often lament long-term effects of slavery
on those enslaved across multiple generations.

Enslavement leads to addiction and codependent denial,
then is taught and mentored to enslaved children,
also separated from family and sold,
until third generations and beyond
were dressed...

Read More

Mitchell: Good sirs, my word was fair. No discrepancy stains the pages of my ledger. The fifth tier is a sub-basement beneath the cellar floor of the temple’s vestibule. Any woman who is not tagged...

Read More

My mom was everything to me
She was my every day, my every morning
She was literally my life and I lived every single bit of it, in her world
She was my inspiration and her smile, was...

Read More

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...

Read More