Long Exhausting Poems

Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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10 o'clock am the morning 
Quest: A country side bike ride.
Molly woke Dolly and Damian.
Woke Everyone on that July 
Morning of 2038. They had a Bicycle 
Expedition to tend to plus a newly
Minted swimming pool...

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We need to talk.

Is this one of those times
where you need to talk
and I must pretend to listen
while you rant?

Well, yes,
if you could extend this favor.

Your topic?

Social Darwinism.

Isn't that the birthplace of unfettered Capitalism
and Fascism
and...

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Heavy storm was sweeping dark Paris streets
Lit with dim lights that dreary November night 
With ghostly shadows lurking in the corners
Cold wind dancing with dirty wet leaves fallen 
In the water pools in the middle...

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I was walking while reading
because this had been recommended,...

Well,...
actually more like required reading
while walking,
rather than too much blindly reading
while passively impassively sitting through
Earth-reflective stalking exercises

For improving body health
and soul wealth,

Not that these are really two...

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Dream state yields deep sleep personifications

Upon lying supine - eye shutter lids
into the land of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,
where the sandman beckons and bids
dead to the webbed wide world,
yours truly immune to wakefulness 
despite being...

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Who died
and made God the Father
the Christian Fundamentalist Law of Cooperative Redemption?

Well, dear, that was Jesus of Nazareth,
your CoMessianic Avatar of regenerative health trends,
remember?

Right,
OK, so,
in my heroic ego-narrative,
we are the purest, most right, oldest exegetical...

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Send me no more peak experiences.

They are too dear
for my everyday time budget
of liberal
liberated
liberating 
resonantly exhausting compassion.

I am too addicted
to conserving resilient peaks,
avoiding dissonant valleys
of mundane anonymity
sometimes winning
sometimes losing
in-between equanimity
integrity 
of co-empathic co-arising intent
for more...

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The distress... fatigue, combined with restlessness, tossing, and turning. Assuming I possess more energy than I truly do because what is worse, exhausting oneself or lying there, depleted? Many of us meet our end wishing...

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I am a right-brain prominent writer
which must not be confused with
a prominent left-brain writer,
which I am almost decidedly not
nor would I aspire
toward such all or nothing thinking
and not at all both/and feeling.

Like most writers,
I feel...

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1st wind, childhood
2nd wind, jobs, career
3rd wind, elder life.

                          ...

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It was not yet noon
when Ben said
a host of lovely things.
As far as we know,
no one accused him
of being publisher shy,
or sleeping in.

Ben said,
Early to bed
Early to rise
Makes a man,
and perhaps women and children more...

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According to The National Fatherhood Initiative, there is a father absence crisis in America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18.3 million children, 1 in 4, live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in...

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It has been said
Charles Darwin was not happy
with leftbrain's Survival of the Fittest
without rightbrain's ecosystemic health roots
in Thrival of the Fit-in-ingest,

Which Bateson,
and other systemic ecologists, 
would later call interdependent co-acclimation,
and Jane Gordon politically theorizes
rare histories...

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Dear friiends those who first read my poem i left an important line out in the donkey story

The first dance after our wedding,
Was absolutely exciting, intoxicating,
My darling whispered in my ear,
My wedding present to you...

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Ohh I could have sat with my heart 
--elevated with dribbled echoes-- 
ahhhhhh until it yet exhaled the tarnished seams 
capturing only the quiet current lapping
and soaking dirty steel embankment	
along the river’s edge beneath the...

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Jinxed jesting jejune junior jobber...
just jabbering gibberish (A - J)

Again, another awkward ambitious
arduous attempt at alphabetically
arranging atrociously ambiguously
absolutely asinine avoidable alliteration.

Because...? Basically bonafide belching,
bobbing, bumbling, bohemian beastie boy,
bereft bummer, bleeds blasé blues, begetting
bloviated boilerplate bildungsroman,
boasting...

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I wish I didn't suck at telling her how overwhelmingly strong I feel
I wish sometimes I wasn't so blunt, offensive, and abrasively real
I wish I knew the words to secure her entire weary heart
I wish...

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Imagine you
and I
are rightbrain impressed
with each Other
as also integrally
spiritually shared emoting parts
of One noetically graced BicameralHeart
together,
pumping in and out,
left and right,
nutritional lifeblood.

Suddenly, or was it gradually?
we become aware, 

"I have lost my leftbrain objective
to share...

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"Their World"

Of course, there was no re-assurance from them that they would respond to the message I had sent. Morning had arrived. 

The day had commenced as any other, unravelling out of bed, in itself...

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Waking up to despair,
sadness,
bone-tired at war with a beeping alarm clock,
an alarming list of immediately urgent responsibilities
without an opportunity in sight,
or at least not this first despairing fright,
at end of night.

If this sounds familiar
as at...

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I crossed my legs but there was a flood
Blushing red I hope folks understood
But my waters had burst
And the baby's my first
Guess I'm ready to start motherhood!

NOT FOR CONTEST

WRITTEN on 27TH August 2016 BY JAN...

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Damian searched for Molly.
He found her at 10:30 in 
the morning 
In the biggest bathroom 
Bathing Godfrey and Barrington.
Matthias and Shadir were still 
Sleeping. The other 6 kids were
In school. 
"Hey Mallory, been okay?" He
Asked...

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March came in like a lion
And never let up, not really 
The children, Markie and Stu, spent most of their day outside
Except, as usual, for a quick lunch and a quicker hug

In the country, the...

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