Long Exile Poems

Poems about Adam, Eve, Lucifer

Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone, unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma...



Outcasts
by...

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Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

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Medieval Poems



Deor's Lament (Anglo Saxon poem, circa 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland knew the agony of exile.
That indomitable smith was wracked by grief.
He endured countless troubles:
sorrows were his only companions
in his frozen...

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History’s Greatest Miracle Play

Let me tell you a story - Prologue

Actors gather to play their parts
To set the stage – backdrops and props –
In history’s greatest miracle play
Called to speak their lines
On redemption’s stage
In a...

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Moby Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, published in London in October 1851 as The Whale and a month later in New York City as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. It is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne....

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Deor's Lament

(Old English/Anglo-Saxon poem circa the 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland endured the agony of exile:
an indomitable smith wracked by grief.
He suffered countless sorrows;
indeed, such sorrows were his bosom companions
in that frozen...

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Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable...

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War and Peace: That Midst Nations And Nationals

War and Peace, a classical fiction by Leo Tolstoy, first published as Voyna I Mir in 1865–69. This picturesque reflection of early 19th-century Russian culture saw as its...

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Within the frame a sepia scene
a dusty porch   a rickety chair   
the fabric of your dusky face creased
with ceaseless sunbaked woes
your old pair of getaway feet gives 
a different walk of...

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She was happy to deliver the news if only to get a glimpse of Lumi.  They had 
met some years back, before he had been exiled to the northern desert.  She thought she...

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The Earth dry and bare; waiting eagerly for the drops of care;
 


Caught in the hot, steaming summer’s snare;
 


The flowers and creepers decorating window sills; all look desolate and ill;
 


As the nature withers...

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Dissolving death
                                 ...

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This is the story of Jeni Haynes, whose father inflicted horrific physical and sexual abuse on her from the age of four years old. As a result she created over 2000 alter egos to get...

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Mine courtship and marriage with deadly obsession...

As September daze will soon arrive
recollections from a 
psychologically checkered  past
loom large recalling  
tragic storied days of mein kampf.

Circa early nineteen seventies:
As a mere slip of a...

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                      I
 Remember when days were long
   and all de children do...

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someone always told me this with tears in her eyes...


(for Lata Sethi's late-mother, who was my mother’s ‘sister’ and who took us all into her heart, and for Lata and Ravi Sethi of Defence Colony,...

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How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!
How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces, has now become a slave.
Bitterly she weeps...

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Chains never fall completely.
Scars embed themselves like burns under the skin,
And even though the skin is a body, it cannot hide the shadow of the irons.
History screams, but its lips are sealed with silence,
A silence...

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Glory unto His written word
That brings forth light 
To shine on darkness
And create light within 
that was in darkness 




They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the That was the...

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My boots, still burdened with the dust of Carpathian trails,
Silently slip over the gleaming tiles of an urban temple,
Where hipsters sip artisanal nectar on lazy Tuesday afternoons,
Under the impassive gaze of a Bucharest wrapped in...

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The date of the celebration
(the second day of February) coincides
with medieval feast of Candlemas,
and its pre-Christian predecessor,
Imbolc, a day also rich in folklore.

An old Scottish prophecy foretells
sunny weather on Candlemas
means a long winter.

The tradition is...

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"The Great Forgotten Language" 

In the forest
Love shows
the way
spreading seeds

strange creatures
come forth
into the clearing 
of a known self

some run away
spooked as if 
the bare reflection 
shows their undressed soul

confronting, 
are the peculiar
ghosts risen, speaking 
like...

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Black Iraqi Woman
Written by Faleeha Hassan
Translated from the Arabic by William Hutchins
Shortly before my father died, he whispered to me longingly: “Daughter, treasure this, because it authenticates your heritage to our kinsfolk!” When I accepted...

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Visual surroundings-
Some of it are monotonous -
Tiring are Some of it sometimes-
Maybe traditional scenes
Unknowingly builds the pinnacle -
Of the dreamless minaret.

Or-
Talk about rubbish
That rains incessantly
Disturbs the Subconscious.


Rather in the darkness of decade
Or-
It can be seen...

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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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