Long Explores Poems

Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers I

I translated the first six Native American poems for my father when he chose to enter hospice and end his life by not taking dialysis …


Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation...

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Native American Translations

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own...

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Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch 

(dedicated to 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 front porch swing,
dangling his long...

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I don't think it's just me.
I find myself challenged to change LeftBrain cognitive beliefs,
languaged abstractions of personal knowledge,
perhaps because it is not possible to change Right Brain's
Elder feelings of co-empathic trust
where dipolar co-arising mutual immunity
raises...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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"And when he came to himself"
Luke 15:17

In another millennial time and Chinese/Russian place,
Taoism began as aphorisms and poetry
about political philosophy,
articulating a bicameral tension
between Conservative Yangers,
patriarchal universalist ego empire builders,
and Unitarian Progressive Yinners, WinWinners,
a matriarchal cooperative...

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Part I

Where gladiators fought for life,
we meet to fight for love
The constellations in the Roman night sky,
celestial spectators, bathe the Colosseum
in the white blood of light
The night is throbbing with the heat of our battle,
our...

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My TransITion began there
right there
in my woodland playground,
when I first knew
something right feels wrong to others.

I was blind to curve-balls
hurled at me.
Being "It" is not why I grow
this TransIt mind and body!

Or, is it?

Could I...

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“ChatGPT-4, can you give me your literary opinion on the following sonnet? By the way, it is preambled by an explanatory prolegomenon which discusses the sonnet’s theme and my inspiration for composing it:”

Mental “Masturbation”

(The title...

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THIS IS A FICTIONAL WRITE THAT EXPLORES THE QUESTION OF WHAT LOVE IS. IT DOES SO IN A DRAMATIC WAY, AFTER ALL THAT IS MY DNA. IT ALSO TAKES A UNIQUE AND CONTROVERSIAL APPROACH TO...

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She stirs first..restless..looking longingly over..senses awakened.
Their feet shuffle slowly under warm covers. The moonlight shines thru the window catching her face. .illuminating it…her tousled hair frames her face.
She looks up, hopefully for his eyes to...

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Double-binding Win-Win
nondual manifest destiny of health
as wealth of eco-consciousness,
like double-transparency of ecologic's Yang,
with eco-normic YinYin-square-rooted
c-squared = e-squared = Language-squared,
Positive OVER AND WITH double-negative
subjective/objective Time's decomposing binomials.

"Instead of giving our children
clear and explicit explanations
of the game-rules...

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"Evolution
takes its sweet time
in its work
on our collective consciousness;
the lasting leap from fear to love
in the human mind
will be its masterpiece."
     Walking to Listen, p. 139
     Andrew...

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Life explores integrity,
hoping to fulfill
all exploding polypathic 
curiosities polyphonic.

How might history rewrite humanity
if those who adventured out
and eagerly invaded
felt more reluctant to dominate?
More sure that their long-term survival
in this, or any, non-native land
required them to...

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Ecology of Time
explores resonant rings of sustained health vitality,
a red strong-willed loving heart
pumping Earth’s nutritional wealth
through our circulating and dynamic biosystems,
beautiful minds
with graceful dancing bodies
on pilgrimage through revolving memories
of time’s embryonic ecological balance,
and climatic dissonance,
Earth’s...

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In the orchestra of being, 
   life’s patterns emerge, 
Ancient voices resound, 
   as harmony weaves its surge. 
Music breathes life into the silent stars, Plato said, 
As heavenly tunes dance,...

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I was a famous, learned historian, living a good life in prevalent today;
As vast, grey clouds must move on, once wild storms are swept away.

I spent many golden days and plum evenings, perusing historical books,
Like...

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The raging party goes on into the night 
Near the market place 
Where the poor search for a fix
In the royal kingdom of religion 

The girls come and go like birds in the wind
Enjoying the...

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WHEN I WAS A LITTLE boy

i knew no wisdom
i knew no hate
i knew no lies

WHEN I GREW UP

i understood history
i understood love
i understood truth

NOW AS I AM DYING

i know a lot will change
i know the...

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I balance my illicitly obtained bottle of absinthe from a man who knows a man, for an exorbitant amount of Euros, on the worn wooden windowsill of my topmost room at the rundown pension overlooking...

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A man named Ai was sent to Gethen on a ship in the solar orbit, 
he was the first mobile who had the ability to mindspeak-
He spends two years in Karhide convincing them to join...

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A walk upon a path to the forest that spreads out beyond
This is adjacent to a pond that has many venues
Seeing spectacles of sun flickering amongst the hemlock trees
That aligns this path which leads to...

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"Where love rules, there is no will to power;
and where power predominates, there love is lacking.
The one is the shadow of the other."
            ...

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“All their comings and their goings were so closely scrutinised 
as the prosecution’s trump card was the evidence they prized.  
Though the wily prosecutor gathered facts to build his case,  
some old bushmen...

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